Darwinian Heresies

About this book

Traces the history of evolutionary thought and challenges many assumptions, suggesting for example that Darwin's true roots lie in Germany, not his native England, that Russian evolutionism is more significant than many are prepared to allow, and that the true influence on twentieth-century evolution biology was not Charles Darwin at all, but his contemporary, Herbert Spencer.

Contents

Introduction Abigail Lustig; 1. Russian theoretical biology between heresy and orthodoxy: Georgii Shaposhinikov and his experiments on plant lice Elena Aronova and Daniel Alexandrov; 2. The spectre of Darwinism: the popular image of Darwinism in early twentieth-century Britain Peter J. Bowler; 3. Natural theology Abigail Lustig; 4. Ironic heresy: how young-earth creationists came to embrace rapid microevolution by means of natural selection Ronald L. Numbers; 5. If this be heresy: Haeckel's conversion to Darwinism Robert J. Richards; 6. Adaptive landscapes and dynamic equilibrium: the Spencerian contribution to twentieth-century, American, evolutionary biology Michael Ruse; 7. 'The ninth moral sin': the Lamarckism of W. M. Wheeler Charlotte Sleigh; 8. Contemporary Darwinism and religion Mikael Stenmark.

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Biography

Abigail Lustig is a postdoctoral fellow at the Dibner Institute for the History of Science and Technology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She has previously held fellowships at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, Berlin, the SNRS, Paris, and the Universitat Autonoma, Barcelona. Michael Ruse is Lucyle T. Werkmeister Professor of Philosophy at Florida State University. He is the author of many books, including The Darwinian Revolution: Science Red in Tooth and Claw (1999), Monad to Man: The Concept of Progress in Evolutionary Biology (1997), and Can a Darwinian be a Christian?: The Relationship between Science and Religion (Cambridge 2000). Robert J. Richards is professor of History and Philosophy, and director of the Fishbein Center for History of Science at the University of Chicago. He is the author of Darwin and the Emergence of Evolutionary Theories of Mind and Behavior (1987), The Meaning of Evolution (1992), and The Romantic Conception of Life: Science and Philosophy in the Age of Goethe (2002).