Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Dedication
- Preface
- PREFACE TO THE PAPERBACK IMPRESSION
- Introduction: the terrain of revision
- PART I HISTORIANS AND HISTORIOGRAPHY
- PART II DARWINISM AND EVOLUTIONARY THOUGHT
- 5 Darwinism in transition
- 6 The challenge of Lamarckian evolution
- 7 The vogue of Herbert Spencer
- 8 Darwinism and Neo-Darwinism
- PART III THEOLOGY AND EVOLUTION
- Conclusion: on coming to terms with Darwin
- Dedication
- Notes to the text
- Bibliography
- Index
5 - Darwinism in transition
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 22 January 2010
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Dedication
- Preface
- PREFACE TO THE PAPERBACK IMPRESSION
- Introduction: the terrain of revision
- PART I HISTORIANS AND HISTORIOGRAPHY
- PART II DARWINISM AND EVOLUTIONARY THOUGHT
- 5 Darwinism in transition
- 6 The challenge of Lamarckian evolution
- 7 The vogue of Herbert Spencer
- 8 Darwinism and Neo-Darwinism
- PART III THEOLOGY AND EVOLUTION
- Conclusion: on coming to terms with Darwin
- Dedication
- Notes to the text
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
When one discusses Darwinism, to what does one refer? Is it a theoretical Darwinism, … what Neo-Darwinism retained or adapted from Darwin? Or is it the historical Darwinism, with its doubts, its retractions, its concessions to critics, from the first edition of the Origin of Species to the ‘Essay on Instinct’? … [Would it not be] simpler to start with Darwin himself and what he wrote than with an imaginary Darwinism whose existence in the realm of ideas creates unnecessary difficulties?
Jacques RogerThe works of Charles Darwin (1809–1882) have been cited more frequently than read, and read far more often than understood. Religious reactionaries and the sycophants of scientism have alike forced Darwin to serve their dubious ends, while even persons of moderation have represented as Darwinism either more or less than the primary texts allow. Under these circumstances, which have only lately begun to change, a just understanding of Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection must be founded on Darwin's statement of it. Fortunately, there is at least one passage in the Origin of Species that remained substantially unaltered throughout the book's six editions (1859–72), which distils the essence of Darwinism into less than five hundred words.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- The Post-Darwinian ControversiesA Study of the Protestant Struggle to Come to Terms with Darwin in Great Britain and America, 1870-1900, pp. 125 - 139Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1979