Imagining the Darwinian Revolution: Historical Narratives of Evolution from the Nineteenth Century to the Present

by Ian Hesketh (Editor)

Overview

This volume considers the relationship between the development of evolution and its historical representations by focusing on the so-called Darwinian Revolution. The very idea of the Darwinian Revolution is a historical construct devised to help explain the changing scientific and cultural landscape that was ushered in by Charles Darwin’s singular contribution to natural science. And yet, since at least the 1980s, science historians have moved away from traditional “great man” narratives to focus on the collective role that previously neglected figures have played in formative debates of evolutionary theory. Darwin, they argue, was not the driving force behind the popularization of evolution in the nineteenth century. This volume moves the conversation forward by bringing Darwin back into the frame, recognizing that while he was not the only important evolutionist, his name and image came to signify evolution itself, both in the popular imagination as well as in the work and writings of other evolutionists. Together, contributors explore how the history of evolution has been interpreted, deployed, and exploited to fashion the science behind our changing understandings of evolution from the nineteenth century to the present.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780822988724
Publisher:	University of Pittsburgh Press
Publication date:	06/14/2022
Series:	Sci & Culture in the Nineteenth Century
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	335
File size:	3 MB

About the Author

Ian Hesketh is associate professor of history at the University of Queensland. He is an intellectual historian and historian of science. He has written extensively on the history of evolution, the history of historical writing, the philosophy of history, and the history of religious thought.

Table of Contents

Contents Acknowledgments Introduction | Ian Hesketh Part I: Origin Stories One. Imagining the Darwinian Revolution in the Nineteenth Century | Ian Hesketh Two. The “Greatest Living Philosopher” and the Useful Biologist: How Spencer and Darwin Viewed Each Other’s Contributions to Evolutionary Theory | Bernard Lightman Three. The Darwinism of the X Club | Ruth Barton Four. “A Monkey into a Man”: Thomas Henry Huxley, Benjamin Waterhouse Hawkins, and the Making of an Evolutionary Icon | Gowan Dawson Part II: The Politics of Darwinism Five. The Politics of the Darwinian Revolution | Piers J. Hale Six. “This Great Principle of the Continuity of Phenomena”: Edward Aveling on the Evolutionism of Darwin and Marx | Joel Barnes Seven. Darwinism and Historiography: What Is Excluded? | Sarah A. Qidwai Eight. Darwinism and Neo-Darwinism in Recent Colloquial Science | Jamie Freestone Part III: Evolution's Imagined Pasts Nine. Darwin of the Mind: Freud’s Darwinian Image | Henry-James Meiring Ten. R. A. Fisher and the Scientific Past: From the History of the Darwinian Revolution to a Darwinian Revolution in History | Alex Aylward Eleven. Indirect Descent: Darwin’s Legacy in Twentieth-Century Paleoanthropology | Emily Kern Twelve. French Naturalists versus Darwinian Specialists: Albert Vandel and Pierre-Paul Grassé’s “True” Synthesis | Emily Herring Thirteen. The Rise of Darwinian Literalism | Erika Lorraine Milam Coda | Ian Hesketh Notes Selected Bibliography Contributors Index

Editorial Reviews

Imagining the Darwinian Revolution is enormously rich, pulling together succinct and elegant summaries of existing work and adding fresh sources, arguments, and perspectives.

Victorian Studies

This is history of evolution come full circle to look anew at Darwin and the revolution that bears his name. Multifaceted, vibrant, and engaging, this volume offers a rich array of scholarship that integrates an impressive spectrum of historical research with a critical understanding of how evolutionary history is created through its representations in the shifting historical, scientific, and popular imaginations.

Evelleen Richards

a model of coherence and skillful organization, with especially helpful framing discussions by the editor

British Journal for the History of Science

This volume . . . is strikingly fresh in outlook. . . . A sparkling line-up of contributors navigate the wider repercussions of developmental thought in the 19th and 20th century and explore what the term 'Darwinism' might have meant in contemporary debates. . . . The essays genuinely open new ground, bypassing the well-worn field of what Darwin might have said, and the customary reception stories whether intellectual or popular, or coupled with particular social or religious groups.

Journal of the History of Biology

This is history of evolution come full circle to look anew at Darwin and the Revolution that bears his name. Multifaceted, vibrant, and engaging; a rich array of scholarship that integrates an impressive spectrum of historical research with a critical understanding of how evolutionary history is created through its representations in the shifting historical, scientific, and popular imaginations.” —Evelleen Richards, University of Sydney
 

"Imagining the Darwinian Revolution is a model of coherence and skillful organization, with especially helpful framing discussions by the editor."
—British Journal for the History of Science
 

From the Publisher