Journal of the History of Biology (2005) 38: 51–66 DOI: 10.1007/s10739-004-6509-y

Ó Springer 2005

The Darwinian Revolution Revisited SANDRA HERBERT Program in the Human Context of Science and Technology Department of History University of Maryland Baltimore County 1000 Hilltop Circle Baltimore, MD 21250 USA Abstract. The ‘‘Darwinian revolution’’ remains an acceptable phrase to describe the change in thought brought about by the theory of evolution, provided that the revolution is seen as occurring over an extended period of time. The decades from the 1790s through the 1850s are at the focus of this article. Emphasis is placed on the issue of species extinction and on generational shifts in opinion. Keywords: Darwin Archive, Darwinian revolution, generational shifts in scientific opinion, species extinction

In this essay I reflect on the propriety of the phrase ‘‘Darwinian revolution’’ and on my experience working in the Darwin Archive. I also make two claims: that knowledge of the extinction of species was at the top of the list of causes promoting evolutionary thinking and that the fate of evolutionary ideas from the 1790s through the 1850s can be viewed in terms of generational shifts.

A Rolling Revolution On receiving a presentation copy of the first edition of On the Origin of Species by Charles Darwin (1809–1882), the botanist Hewitt C. Watson (1804–1881) wrote to its author, ‘‘You are the greatest Revolutionist in natural history of this century, if not of all centuries.’’1 Allowing for some hyperbole and flattery on Watson’s part, it is interesting that the terms under discussion in our present assignment – ‘‘Darwin’’ and ‘‘revolution’’ – emerged so early. Watson’s usage lends historical authenticity to the concept. This was no analytical category invented 1

Darwin, 1859. Hewett Cottrell Watson to CD, 21 November 1859, Burkhardt et al., 1985-, 7: 385 (hereafter Correspondence); also see Cohen, 1985, pp. 290–291. Watson has been recently been given his due in Egerton, 2003.

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retrospectively, as was Richard Hofstadter’s ‘‘social Darwinism.’’2 It was a characterization born in the heat of experience. There are problems with short labels. Peter Bowler objects to the phrase ‘‘Darwinian revolution’’ on the grounds that the majority of natural historians in the late 19th-century, including Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–1895), expressed skepticism over natural selection.3 In his book on Robert Chambers (1802–1871) – the anonymous author of Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation (1844) – James A. Secord claims that a ‘‘Darwin-centered account is no longer credible’’ and that ‘‘what once made sense as the ‘Darwinian Revolution’ must be recast as an episode in the industrialization of communication and the transformation of reaching audiences.’’4 Both Bowler’s and Secord’s points have merit. Natural selection did not win widespread agreement until the 20th century, and the currency of the idea of evolution in Britain during the 19th century can only be understood in relation to publishing history. Yet Huxley and Chambers looked to Darwin as the most prominent English expositor of transmutationism. With a skillful deployment of presentation copies of the Origin and numerous letters of encouragement, Darwin assembled his forces in the months following publication of his book.5 Thus at the 1860 Oxford meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science such a strong personality as Huxley (whatever his later hesitations over natural selection) would assert that Darwin’s theory ‘‘was the best explanation of the origin of species which had yet been offered.’’6 For his part, Chambers was the person who, by his own account, persuaded a hesitant Huxley to attend the climactic session at the Oxford meeting where proponents and opponents of the merits of Darwin’s Origin faced each other in fierce debate.7 Huxley’s impassioned and timely defense of Darwin and the Origin at Oxford is legendary. It is thus difficult to separate Huxley and Chambers from Darwin and the Origin. Of course, one can always add names to the list of innovators. There are two problems here: the list could easily become too long to use conveniently as a handle, and the one person whose name would surely appear on the list – Alfred Russel Wallace (1823–

2 3 4 5 6 7

Hofstadter, 1955, p. 6. Bowler, 1988, pp. 72–104. Secord, 2000, p. 4. On presentation copies of the Origin see Correspondence 7: Appendix VIII. Quoted in Correspondence 8: 595. Browne, 2002, pp. 120–121.

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1913) – vacated his claim early on by modestly labeling their joint theory ‘‘Darwinism.’’8 Darwin was aware of this problem of the multiple authorship of the theory. To the claimant Baden Powell (1796–1860) he observed, perhaps a touch defensively, that ‘‘No educated person . . . could suppose I meant to arrogate to myself the origination of the doctrine that species had not been independently created.’’ He referred the problem of assigning proper credit to the ‘‘Historian of Science’’ rather than to himself.9 We come next to the suitability of the term ‘‘revolution’’ with respect to the publication of the Origin. If the spectrum of explanation for historians runs from ‘‘change’’ at one end to ‘‘continuity’’ at the other, ‘‘revolution’’ lies at the ‘‘change’’ end of the spectrum. The strength of the reaction in the review literature alone suggests that publication of the Origin in November 1859 was a significant event, but did November 1859 represent a revolution? Some think it did.10 Yet, though there is something extravagant and wonderful in benchmark datings – I think of the phrase uttered by Virginia Woolf (1882–1941) that ‘‘in or about December, 1910, human character changed’’ (she was speaking of end of the Edwardian era, among other things) – hanging too much on November 1859 leads to overestimating the immediate impact of the publication of the Origin.11 Unlike dating the outbreak of a war, one needs to respect the subtleties of change in intellectual climate. In my view, one could better say that this was a rolling revolution, with a number of significant markers along the way, among them publication in November 1859 of Darwin’s Origin. Since we were asked to be bold in our assessments, let me here put forward a highly schematic characterization of the revolution. In analyzing the ‘‘Darwinian revolution,’’ it seems useful to me to look at it as occurring in three stages. During the first stage, evolutionary visions were articulated; during the second stage (its origins roughly contemporary with the first stage) those visions were subjected to challenge; during the third stage the challenges were addressed, and, to some extent, answered. Further, in my view, the single most important propulsive force driving the sequence of thought from stage to stage was the question of the extinction of species. The theory of evolution emerged alongside the notion of extinction. 8

Wallace, 1889. CD to Baden Powell, 10 January 1860, Correspondence 8:39. On Baden Powell see Corsi, 1988a. 10 Hull, 1973; Glick, 1974; Ghiselin, 1969, p. 1. 11 Woolf, 1967, 1: 320 [from an essay written in 1924]. 9

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The main events in this sequence took place from the 1790s through the 1840s and 1850s. Before discussing the individuals involved, let me make another claim. The sequence of stages in the development of evolutionary ideas had its parallel in the general movement of thought in Europe during the period, which in turn resonated with political events. Here the key idea was progress, rather than evolution, but the sequence of stages in exposition and reaction was similar.

Identifying One’s Point of Entry In reflecting on the stream of scholarship since 1959, as we were asked to do, one cannot help but be autobiographical since each of us entered it at a different time and from a different point along the shore. Owing to the work of historians of science, I now understand why evolution played so little role in my early interest in biology. Evolution had been pushed to the rear of our high school textbook.12 Much has been made of the negative effects of the marginalized position of evolution in American high school textbooks before Sputnik, but that circumstance aroused my curiosity. Given the high percentage of American scholars active in the field of Darwin studies during the 1950s and 1960s, I suspect this may have been the case for others as well. My sustained interest in Darwin began with a reading of his transmutation notebooks while a graduate student.13 In addition to the inherent interest of the subject matter, what struck me in Darwin’s notebooks was his agility in sifting through large amounts of material. He changed directions with ease, first entertaining one possibility, and then another. This was science in process. I was hooked. If there is now a Darwin industry, the 1960s must be characterized as a preindustrial decade. The Handlist of Darwin Papers at the University Library Cambridge was published in 1960, and it took until the early 1970s for more than a few scholars to learn of the size of the collection 12 Grabiner and Miller, 1974, pp. 833–835. The book in question was by Moon, Mann, and Otto, the most widely used American biology text from 1945 to 1960. The treatment of evolution in the textbook was downgraded from the original edition of 1921 whose frontispiece was a portrait of Darwin. After the Scopes trial, a cut-away diagram of the digestive system was substituted for Darwin’s portrait. 13 De Beer, Gavin (ed.), 1960. I was graduate student from 1963 to 1968 in the History of Ideas Program at Brandeis University. My guides to the history and philosophy of science were my dissertation adviser Stephen Toulmin, Harold Burstyn, and Frank Manuel. As an undergraduate at Wittenberg University, Peter Celms and Jeffrey Mao introduced me to the history of science and, in particular, to the works of Herbert Butterfield and Joseph Needham.

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and its significance. Exploration of the Darwin manuscripts has transformed our understanding of his work. As an example of that I would mention an author and a book that I hold in high regard: Loren Eiseley and his Darwin’s Century, first published in 1958. Eiseley’s range is broad, his style inviting, and his scholarship deep (his chapter on ‘‘The Minor Evolutionists’’ is one of many that can be read with profit today), but the chapters on Darwin himself remind one how much has been learned since 1958. For example, Eiseley doubted the existence of a larger work from which the Origin was abstracted.14 But the ‘‘long’’ version of the Origin was no ‘‘dream’’ as Eiseley described it. Darwin’s cumbersome unfinished manuscript, provisionally entitled Natural Selection, was painstakingly edited by Robert C. Stauffer, one of the early workers in the Darwin Archive.15 As it happened, it was at Stauffer’s urging that I first went to Cambridge: if you are doing a dissertation on Darwin, you must go, he wrote. For practical reasons, my trip in October–November 1966 was brief and hastily arranged. First stop was the British Museum (Natural History). While Gavin de Beer, its director, and editor of the transmutation notebooks, was not in residence at the time of my unscheduled visit, his secretary B.M. Skramovsky welcomed me.16 In the course of our conversation I asked her about Darwin’s metaphysical notebooks (M and N), which I knew to be at Cambridge. To my surprise she pulled her rough transcription of the notebooks from her desk. She had thought that the Museum should publish them but had been overruled. That day I flipped through her transcription, noting with pleasure that, as I had expected, I would find the name of David Hume (1711– 1776) among Darwin’s readings. Darwin’ notation in Notebook N, page 101, ‘‘Hume has section . . . on the Reason of animals’’ documented my hunch. My initial question answered, I thought how obvious it was that these notebooks should be published and commented on. Others shared that view.17 Paul H. Barrett, who had surrendered publication of the Notebook B through E series to Gavin de Beer, was first out of the gate this time. Later, upon further reflection, and with greater knowledge, I also realized that Darwin’s theoretical notebooks from the late 1830s represented a unified, coherent whole, and I was happy to be part of a group that published them together. The British Museum (Natural 14

Eiseley, 1958, p. 157. Stauffer, 1975. 16 For evidence of Miss Skramovsky’s work see de Beer, Rowlands, and Skramovsky, 1967. 17 The M and N notebooks were first published in Gruber and Barrett, 1974. Also see Herbert, 1974, 1977; Manier, 1978; Richards, 1987. 15

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History) was our publisher.18 In retrospect, perhaps the greatest service that historians of science have provided to the biologists in regard to Darwin is to give him back to them in all the fullness of his interests. In 1966 manuscripts and rare books were housed together in the Anderson Room at the University Library in Cambridge. At that time there were also evening reading hours, so that in the three weeks at my disposal I was able to survey the collection. Peter J. Gautrey, manuscripts librarian, fielded inquiries; Sydney Smith instructed. Both encouraged. Aside from the theoretical notebooks from the late 1830s, the material from the Beagle voyage (1831–1836) stood out as being of the greatest importance, particularly the zoology notes – published in 2000 by Richard Darwin Keynes – and the geology notes, as yet unpublished.19 Not yet clear at that time was the extent of Darwin material that might be elsewhere than Cambridge. Nora Barlow, a Darwin granddaughter, had discretely guided the assembling of the collection, which was then still in flux.20 It had been her decision to place the notebooks from the voyage at Down House, Darwin’s former home and a museum. On my last day of research in 1966 I visited Down House and was able to find evidence that had eluded me at Cambridge – textual material that would reveal when Darwin had turned the corner on evolution. The heavily excised notebook containing evidence of Darwin’s adoption of transmutation had been begun on the voyage but completed after his return to England. The transmutationist passages appeared in the post-voyage portion of the notebook.21 The pace of activity in the manuscripts reading room quickened in 1974 with the arrival of Frederick Burkhardt, who came to work with Sydney Smith in organizing the publication of the entirety of Darwin’s correspondence. With this ambitious project Darwin studies moved from ‘‘little (history of ) science’’ to ‘‘big (history of) science.’’ The fruits of this research were available in the pages Journal of the History of Biology, whose far-sighted editor, Everett Mendelsohn, fostered the field of Darwin studies; in the papers assembled by David Kohn in The Darwinian Heritage; in a major textbook by Michael Ruse; in two engaging and well-researched biographies, one by Adrian Desmond and James R. Moore, the other by Janet Browne.22 John C. Greene and 18

Barrett, Gautrey, Herbert, Kohn, Smith, (eds.), 1987. Keynes, 2000. 20 On the assembling of the collection see Smith, ‘‘Historical Preface’’ in Barrett, Gautrey, Herbert, Kohn, and Smith, eds., 1987. On Nora Barlow’s early career see Richmond, 2001. 21 Herbert, 1968, 1974, 1980; Sulloway, 1982. 22 Kohn, 1985; Ruse, 1979 [+1999]; Desmond and Moore, 1992; Browne, 1995, 2002. 19

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Ernst Mayr also graciously supported the growth of Darwin studies by their ready service as sounding boards for other scholars, as well as by their own researches. The overall result of recent scholarship has been to adjust prior views on nearly every point. Interestingly, while Darwin’s reputation has been enhanced, that enhancement has not come at the expense of other authors. Rather, the vastness of the natural historical enterprise as evidenced by the extent of Darwin’s reading and correspondence is coming more fully into view. The image of Darwin as a sifter, coordinator, and evaluator – as well as a discoverer and experimenter – now seems even more pertinent. That he was able to sustain such a high level of activity in this role for over 50 years seems especially remarkable.

The Anomaly of Extinction What area of research was the primary driving force behind the first invention of evolutionary hypotheses? I would select the following three candidates: (1) studies in taxonomy and in the geographical distribution of species, (2) studies in anatomy and in embryological development, and (3) studies relating to the possible extinction of species.23 I place the greatest emphasis on the third of the candidates because, while all three areas of research were overlapping, and each could be seen as consistent with evolutionary explanations, the issue of extinction, more than the others, forced the issue of transmutation into the open. To use Kuhnian language, extinction was the strong anomaly. The other two areas of research also presented problems, as, for example, the difficulty of fitting exotic species into classification systems established for European species, or, the difficulty of relating the pattern of embryological development to the appearance of adult individuals in various species. But, while pressing, these issues were not so troublesome, in my view, as that of extinction. Perhaps no quotation captures that sense so vividly as does the remark of Thomas Jefferson (1743– 1826) in 1785 that, ‘‘Such is the economy of nature, that no instance can be produced, of her having permitted any one race of her animals to become extinct; of her having formed any link in her great work, so 23

Browne, 1983; Farber, 2000; Fra¨ngsmyr, 1994; Mayr, 1982. On the themes of philosophical anatomy articulated by Etienne Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire (1771–1844), see Le Guyader, 2004; for his clash in the 1830s with Cuvier see Appel, 1987. For new work on philosophical anatomy, particularly, with that of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832) see Richards, 2002. With regard to Darwin’s own relation to ‘‘philosophical anatomy’’ see Ospovat, 1981; Rehbock, 1983; Sloan, 1992.

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weak as to be broken.’’24 Extinction presented not merely a puzzle; it presented a burden. We can see that best by discussing cases of individual natural historians. Operating within a brilliant milieu, two figures dominated the theoretical aspect of the French debate over species in the late 18th and early 19th century. They were Jean Baptiste Pierre Antoine de Monet de Lamarck (1744–1829) and Georges Cuvier (1769–1832). Each confronted the issue of extinction: Cuvier to assert its factuality, Lamarck to posit species mutability to deny its factuality. As Richard W. Burkhardt put the issue: There were basically three ways of explaining the differences between fossil and living forms. Cuvier identified the options in a paper of 1801: It is a question of finding out whether the species that existed [in the earth’s distant past] have been entirely destroyed, or if they have only been modified in their form, or if they have simply been transported from one climate to another.’’ Cuvier himself favored the first of these alternatives, at least initially. . . . Lamarck, unwilling to call upon a major catastrophe to explain nature’s processes, relied in part on the third and readily embraced the second, namely, the idea that in the course of the earth’s history species have been modified.25 In the short run, Cuvier had the better of the argument, and his legacy, both intellectual and institutional was massive, as Martin J.S. Rudwick and others have shown.26 By the 1830s, when Charles Darwin entered the scene, the factuality of extinction was not in question. What remained open was the correlation of the extinction of species with geological change. As Jonathan Hodge and others have shown, Darwin followed the lead of Charles Lyell (1797–1875). In Lyell’s view the birth and death species occurred singly.27 A powerful contrasting view was held by Louis Agassiz (1807– 24

Quoted in Greene, 1959, p. 102. Also see: Greene, 1971; Rudwick, 1972; Toulmin and Goodfield, 1965. The burden posed by extinction was felt within the tradition of religious belief as well as of science, for extinction might suggest imperfections in the original creation. John Greene, Peter Bowler, and Michael Ruse have explored the religious implication of evolutionary ideas in various works. 25 Burkhardt, 1972, p. 421. Burkhardt locates Lamarck’s adoption of species mutability in his studies on the relation of fossil to living shells. Also see Burkhardt, 1995 for a review of the extensive literature to date on Lamarck. For a rich portrait of Lamarck amidst his numerous contemporaries see Corsi, 1988b. 26 Rudwick, 1972, pp. 101–163; Rudwick, 1997; Coleman, 1964; Outram, 1984. 27 Hodge 1983. Herbert 2005. I would also note that Ghiselin, 1969, p.12, asserted, ‘‘Darwin’s evolutionary biology grew out of his geology.’’

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1873), Darwin’s contemporary.28 Darwin argued for evolution, Agassiz against it. But both men were firm believers in extinction. They did not swerve to avoid it, as had Lamarck. For Darwin, with Lyell’s version of species extinction in hand, a host of other issues – on the geographical distribution of plants and animals, on adaptation, on generation, on the unity of life – could be put to the service of a transmutationist hypothesis.

Generational Shifts On June 10, 1793 the Jardin du Roi was transformed into the Muse´um d’Historie Naturelle. As Toby Appel and E.C. Spary have shown, French political culture was intertwined with histoire naturelle.29 Concretely one sees this in the activity of the savants, including Lamarck, as the Museum planned for expansion. One sees it also in the prominent role played by natural historians in analyzing material collected during the 1798–1801 French occupation of Egypt.30 Most poignantly one also sees the interweaving of biological and cultural subjects in the reflections of Marie-Jean-Antoine-Nicolas de Caritat, marquis de Condorcet (1743–1794) as he wrote his Outlines of an Historical View of the Progress of the Human Mind while in hiding from the Terror of 1793–1794. Condorcet linked the two as follows: ‘‘Our hopes, as to the future condition of the human species, may be reduced to three points: the destruction of inequality between different nations; the progress of equality in one and the same nation; and lastly, the real improvement of man.’’ Condorcet expanded the last phrase to read: ‘‘the real improvement of our faculties, moral, intellectual and physical, which may be the result either of the improvement of the instruments which increase the power and direct the exercise of those faculties, or of the improvement of our natural organization itself [.]’’ Using ‘‘different breeds of domestic animals’’ as his example, Condorcet

28

Agassiz, 1842; Gould, 1979. Appel, 1987; Spary, 2000. For reasons of space I emphasize the dominant French and British roles. On German contributions see Richards, 2002. For an example of a Spanish contribution see Lo´pez Pin˜ero, 1988. 30 Gillispie, 1989, p. 456, ‘‘The commission that received [the natural historical collections] consisted of Cuvier, Lamarck, and Lacepe`de. The last wrote the report and noted specially that the mummified forms were identical with corresponding species today.’’ The leadership of the French in natural history during this period hinged in large part on their superior and centrally administered collections. 29

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suggested that individual improvements in human faculties could be transmitted to succeeding generations.31 Without attempting to draw point-by-point comparisons, let us simply note that openness to notions of political and biological change present in Condorcet’s writing of the mid-1790s was in concert with Lamarck’s openness to the possibility of species mutability. In the same period, openness to change, both political and biological, was also characteristic of the views of Erasmus Darwin (1731–1802), whose sketch of evolutionary views is increasingly recognized as integral to the history of biology.32 There was widespread revulsion to cruelties of the Terror, most noticeable in the works of several younger critics. The Essay on Population (1798) by Thomas Robert Malthus (1766–1834) is a case in point. Malthus turned against Condorcet, as he did against other thinkers who argued that man was now moving ‘‘with accelerated velocity towards illimitable, and hitherto unconceived improvement.’’33 Malthus was also concerned with reasserting the power of fact over the power of system. A comparable reaction can be seen with Cuvier, three years Malthus’s junior. Oddly, Cuvier’s own career benefited indirectly from the Terror, for while in Normandy in 1795, he met Henri-Alexandre Tessier (1741–1837), a prominent Paris academician, who was hiding from it. Tessier recommended Cuvier to naturalists in Paris. Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire – later Cuvier’s opponent – claimed to have welcomed him with the words, ‘‘Come to Paris. Come play among us the role of another legislator of natural history.’’34 Once in Paris Cuvier was conservative in science and in politics, ignoring the theoretical claims of Lamarck, and eventually arguing against Geoffroy’s philosophical anatomy. Thus we see a generational shift, a reaction. Similarly, also on the geological side, in Britain a well-articulated argument against Lamarck appeared in volume 2 of Lyell’s Principles of Geology.35 A generation shift, yes, but is there something more? Is there a dialectic at work? Does the scheme of ‘‘thesis, antithesis, synthesis’’ fit 31 Condorcet quoted in Manuel, 1965, pp. 178–179. The 1796 Philadelphia translation of Condorcet is used. 32 For a engaging recent portrait of Erasmus Darwin and his circle see Uglow, 2002; on Erasmus Darwin himself, see King-Hele, 1999. 33 Malthus, 1959 [1798], p. 1. Malthus’s argument against Condorcet (pp. 50–60) is biological in its thrust. See also Young, 1969. 34 Appel, 1987, p. 31. Also relevant to understanding Cuvier’s conservatism is the fact that his wife was a widow whose first husband was a tax collector guillotined in 1793. (Le Guyader, 2004, p. 12.) 35 Lyell, 1832.

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the evidence? To put it baldly, was Charles Darwin synthesizing the work of Lamarck and Cuvier, of Erasmus Darwin and Charles Lyell? And, if there was a dialectical movement of sorts across generations, is there value for historians of science in identifying it? Very schematically and roughly, Charles Darwin did combine a number the notions of the first generation of evolutionists and progressminded philosophers, including his own grandfather, with notions developed by their critics. Desmond King-Hele, Erasmus Darwin’s biographer, has emphasized the similarity of the views of grandfather and grandson.36 Simply by asserting a belief in the unbounded mutability of species, Darwin was allying himself with Lamarck and others. As between the progress-minded Condorcet and his critic Malthus, Darwin’s political sympathies probably lay more with Condorcet than with Malthus as, for example, in their common outspoken opposition to the institution of slavery. Further, the general connection of progress and progressive development to the evolutionary debate has been well established by historians.37 On the side of the critics, Darwin’s debt to Malthus in regard to understanding the growth of population, and, by extension, the nature of intraspecific competition, is also well known. Similarly, Darwin took a statement of the species problem from the anti-transmutationist Lyell. Darwin then proceeded to counter Lyell’s arguments against transmutation point by point, often filling the margins of the Principles of Geology with commentary. In his work from the 1830s and early 1840s Darwin was – in part – taking a dialectical approach as he went about synthesizing earlier views. There is a challenging, back-and-forth quality to many of his notebook entries. Since he rejected as much as he accepted, and added his own research into the mix, his act of synthesis must be seen as creative.38 Yet even if one accepts a dialectical schema as a rough approximation to the movement of opinion on evolution – as I am suggesting – one has to qualify that claim by stipulating that knowledge on a number of topics was simply becoming more accurate as time went on. For example, in the various natural historical atlases produced during the early 19th century, graphical representations of animals and plants were clearly becoming better. Similarly, many of Darwin’s empirical findings, as in regard to Gala´pagos species, were more accurate and insightful than any previous work on the same subjects. One need not be a positivist to note improvement. 36

King-Hele, 1999, pp. 218, 234, 299, 359, 363–368. Ruse, 1996. Peter J. Bowler and Robert J. Richards have also made this a theme in a number of their works. 38 Herbert, 1968; Limoges, 1970; Kohn, 1980; Ospovat, 1981. 37

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Finally, what value is there in characterizing the Darwinian revolution in terms of generational shifts? Two points are worth considering. First, this reading of the revolution is consistent with the response of a number of Darwin’s contemporaries. Such a relatively sympathetic reader as the American geologist Henry Darwin Rogers (1808–1866) could say in December 1859 of the Origin that, ‘‘It is suggestive book, full of ingenious arguments in favour of the Lamarckian hypothesis.’’39 Or Darwin’s book could be traced to the work of his grandfather Erasmus. A lengthy treatment of the Origin in the influential Quarterly Review had this to say: ‘‘For if we go back two generations we find the ingenious grandsire of the author of the ‘Origin of Species’ speculating on the same subject, and almost in the same manner with his more daring descendant . . . Many of our readers will remember the humour with which Frere and Canning, in the ‘Poetry of the Anti-Jacobin,’ exposed these philosophical arguments of the last generation.’’40 One reviewer was intrigued and respectful, the other negative and reductive. Yet both reviewers found Darwin ‘‘ingenious,’’ and both traced his views to the first generation of transmutationists. They described a generational dynamic. On the French side, there was a similar tendency to, equate Darwin’s Origin with the views of Lamarck, which made it difficult for Darwin to find a French publisher.41 The second reason for considering a generational characterization of the Darwinian revolution has more to do with the requirements of historians of science. In analyzing the confluence of intellectual traditions that led up to the Origin, historians credit not only those thinkers who promoted transmutation, but also a number of thinkers – as Cuvier, Lyell, and Malthus – who were critics of that notion. Criticism was essential to the eventual framing of the theory of evolution through natural selection. The theory was equally indebted to skeptical parents as it was to imaginative grandparents. Of course one should credit those 39

Quoted in Correspondence, 8: 55–56. Quoted in Correspondence, 8: 293. The anonymous reviewer was the bishop of Oxford Samuel Wilberforce (1805–1873). Later in the review, Darwin’s views are also associated with those of Lamarck: ‘‘The contrast between the sober, patient, philosophical courage of our home philosophy, and the writings of Lamarck and his followers and predecessors . . . is indeed most wonderful. We trust that he [Darwin] is mistaken in believing that he may count Sir C. Lyell as one of his converts.’’ ([Wilberforce], 1860, p. 263.) 41 Correspondence 8: 135; Conry, 1974; Harvey, 1997; Appel, 1987, pp. 233 notes that the Cuvier–Geoffroy debate of 1830 tended to be read as a replay of the Cuvier– Lamarck standoff of earlier years. In fact, she points out (p. 235) evolution was at most a secondary issue in that debate, which rather turned on the tension between morphology and functionalism. 40

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who remained faithful to the transmutationist hypothesis during the decades when it was under severest assault. But the history of evolutionary theory, and its ultimately successful reincarnation in 1859, owes nearly as much to the critics of the notion as to its advocates.

Conclusion The ‘‘Darwinian revolution’’ is most accurately viewed as a rolling revolution, its formative years running from the 1790s through the 1850s. The fact of species extinction was the key discovery prompting the revolution. Accommodating this discovery was the work of several generations of thinkers (French and British naturalists, geologists, and intellectuals figuring prominently), who struggled with notions of species change, and of progress. Since the 1960s, Charles Darwin’s manuscripts have come fully into the public domain, allowing the creative nature of his own contribution – his place within traditions of inquiry, as well as the strength of his empirical work – to be better understood than formerly.

References Aggasiz, Louis. 1842. ‘‘On the Succession and Development of Organized Beings at the Surface of the Terrestrial Globe.’’ Edinburgh New Philosophical Journal 33: 388–399. Appel, Toby A. 1987. The Cuvier–Geoffroy Debate: French Biology in the Decades before Darwin. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Bowler, Peter. 1988. The Non-Darwinian Revolution: Reinterpreting a Historical Myth. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University. Browne, Janet. 1983. The Secular Art: Studies in the History of Biogeography. New Haven: Yale University Press. ——— 1995. Charles Darwin: Voyaging. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. ——— 2002. Charles Darwin: The Power of Place. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. Burkhardt, Frederick et al. (ed.). 1985-. The Correspondence of Charles Darwin. 13+ vols. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Abbreviation: Correspondence. Burkhardt, Richard W., Jr. 1972. ‘‘The Inspiration of Lamarck’s Belief in Evolution.’’ Journal of the History of Biology 5: 413–438. ——— 1995. The Spirit of System: Lamarck and Evolutionary Biology, 2nd ed. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Cohen, I. Bernard. 1985. Revolution in Science. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Coleman, William. 1964. George Cuvier, Zoologist: A Study in the History of EvolutionTheory. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Conry, Yvette. 1974. L’Introduction du Darwinisme en France au XIXe sie`cle. Paris: Vrin. Corsi, Pietro. 1988a. Science and Religion: Baden Powell and the Anglican Debate, – 1800–1860. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

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