By: Dr. Frank J. Collazo
Personal
Profile:
Name: Charles Robert Darwin
Citizenship:
British Naturalist
Birth
Date: April 19, 1809
Known
for: Proposing the theory of natural
selection.
Birth
Date: February 12, 1809
Death: April 19, 1`882
Known
for: Proposing the theory of natural
selection
Chronology of Darwin's Evolution Theory:
1800 - Little was known about the mechanisms of inheritance.
1827 - Darwin dropped out of
medical school and entered the University of Cambridge in preparation for
becoming a clergyman of the Church of England.
1830 - English scientist Charles
Darwin used the fossil record to form his theory of evolution in the 1830s.
1831 - Darwin's father tried to
prohibit him from joining the Beagle voyage in 1831 for fear that it might lead
him away from a future in the clergy.
Graduated from the University of Cambridge with a degree in
theology.
1831-1836 - Sailed around the world as
a naturalist aboard the HMS Beagle.
1835 - The British naturalist
Charles Darwin, traveling aboard HMS Beagle, spent six weeks studying the
animal life of the Galápagos.
1836 - After returning to England
in 1836, Darwin began recording his ideas about changeability of species in his
Notebooks on the Transmutation of Species.
1838 - Darwin immediately applied
Malthus’ argument to animals and plants, and arrived at a sketch of a theory of
evolution through natural selection.
1839 - Published notebooks
containing meticulous observations of animal and plant species and geology made
during the Beagle voyage.
He married his first cousin, Emma Wedgwood, and soon after moved to a small estate, Down House, outside London.
1850 - In Social Statics (1850) and other works, Spencer argued that
through competition social evolution would automatically produce prosperity and
personal liberty unparalleled in human history.
Lamarck’s ideas about the influence of environment on organisms
and the resulting changes in organisms over generations were forerunners of the
theory of evolution that was introduced in the late 1850s.
Darwin developed the theory of natural selection and the modern
concept of biological evolution.
1858 - Published a paper
introducing his ideas on natural selection; the paper was presented to the
Linnaean Society, a scientific organization in London, concurrently with a
similar paper by British naturalist Alfred Russell Wallace.
British naturalist Alfred Wallace independently conceived a theory
of natural selection identical to Darwin's; both Darwin's and Wallace's
theories were presented on the same day in 1858 to the Linnean Society of
London.
1859 - Published “On the Origin
of Species,” his complete theory of natural selection. Charles Darwin showed
how the study of insects illuminates certain aspects of evolution.
1866 - The term ecology was introduced by the German biologist Ernst
Heinrich Haeckel in 1866; it is derived from the Greek oikos (household)
sharing the same root word as economics.
In developing his theory of evolution, Darwin stressed the adaptation of
organisms to their environment through natural selection.
1869 - In “Hereditary Genius”
(1869), Sir Francis Galton, a British scientist and Darwin’s cousin, argued
that biological inheritance is far more important than environment in
determining character and intelligence.
1871 - Published “The Descent of
Man” and “Selection in Relation to Sex,” which explicitly stated that humans
are descended from apes.
1872 - Published “The Expression
of the Emotions in Man and Animals.”
Darwin was elected to the Royal Society (1839).
English journalist Walter Bagehot expressed the fundamental ideas
of the struggle school in “Physics and Politics” (1872), a book that describes
the historical evolution of social groups into nations.
1874 - A caricature of Charles
Darwin as an ape appeared in the London Sketch Book.
1878 - Darwin was elected to the
French Academy of Sciences.
1880 - Charles Darwin
demonstrated that growing tips of plants bend toward a light source. This phenomenon is known as phototropism.
The most prominent American social Darwinist of the 1880’s was
William Graham Sumner, who on several occasions told audiences that there was
no alternative to the “survival of the fittest” theory.
1882 - He was also honored by
burial in Westminster Abbey after he died in Downe, Kent on April 19, 1882.
1883 - In the United States,
Spencer gained considerable support among intellectuals and some businessmen,
including steel manufacturer Andrew Carnegie who served as Spencer’s host
during his visit to the United States in 1883.
The most extreme type of reform Darwinism was eugenics, a term
coined by Sir Francis Galton in 1883 from the Greek word eügenáv, meaning
well-born.
1890 - After 1890,
hereditarianism gained increasing support, due in part to the work of German
biologist August Weismann.
For many political scientists, sociologists, and military strategists, this strain of social Darwinism justified overseas expansion by nations (imperialism) during the 1890s.
1890++ - After 1890, social
reformers used Darwinism to advocate a stronger role for government and the
introduction of various social policies.
1890-1902 - Kropotkin expounded his
ideas in a number of works, among them “Mutual Aid, a Factor in Evolution”
(1890-1902) and “Ethics, Origin and Development” (posthumously published,
1924).
1900 - The theory of
psychoanalysis focused on the importance of early childhood experiences. American psychologist G. Stanley Hall at
Clark University began large-scale investigations of child development through
surveys and interviews with the adults who cared for them.
1907 - In the United States the
first sterilization law was passed in 1907 in Indiana.
1911-1930 - Numerous states enacted
anti-miscegenation and sterilization laws.
1914-1918 - Although social Darwinism
was highly influential at the beginning of the 20th century, it rapidly lost
popularity and support after World War I (1914-1918).
1920-1930 - Many political observers
blamed it for contributing to German militarism and the rise of Nazism. During this same period, advances in
anthropology also discredited social Darwinism.
1924 - The crowning moment of the
U.S. eugenics movement was the passage of the Immigration and Restriction Act
of 1924.
1927 - The infamous Buck v. Bell Supreme Court case of 1927, in which
Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes authorized the sterilization of a Virginia woman
on the grounds that “three generations of imbeciles” was enough, led to
thousands of forced sterilizations across the country.
1935-1945 - By shifting the emphasis
away from biology and onto culture, these anthropologists undermined social
Darwinism’s biological foundations.
Eugenics was discredited by a better understanding of genetics and
eventually disgraced by Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler’s use of eugenic arguments
to master race.
1953 - Social theories based on
biology gained renewed support after 1953 when American biologist James Watson
and British biologist Francis Crick successfully described the structure of the
DNA molecule, the building block of all life.
1959 - The Ecuadorian government
established Galápagos National Park in 1959 to protect large parts of the
islands from exploitation.
1960 - During the 1960s
anthropologists interested in the influence of DNA on human behavior produced
studies of the biological basis of aggression, territoriality, mate selection,
and other behavior common to people and animals.
British biologist W. D. Hamilton and American biologist Robert L. Trivers produced separate studies showing that the self-sacrificing behavior of some members of a group serves the genetic well-being of the group as a whole.
1967 - A satellite tracking
station has been on the Galápagos since 1967.
Books on this theme, such as Desmond Morris’s “Naked Ape” (1967) and
Lionel Tiger’s “Men in Groups” (1969) became best-sellers.
1970 - American psychologist
Richard J. Herrnstein revived the social Darwinist argument that intelligence
is mostly determined by biology rather than by environmental influences.
1975 - American biologist Edward
O. Wilson drew on these theories in “Sociobiology: the New Synthesis” (1975)
where he argued that genetics exerts a greater influence on human behavior than
scientists had previously believed.
1978 - The United Nations
Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) declared the
islands a World Heritage Site, saying they are of such outstanding interest
that they should be preserved as a heritage of all mankind.
2000 - The Ecuadorian government
enacted a law that prohibits further settlement on the islands and controls
tourism and fishing on them.
Notes:
1. Prior to the publication of Darwin's ideas, most people believed that species were eternally unchanging.
Introduction:
Darwin, Charles Robert (1809-1882). He was a British scientist who laid the
foundation of modern evolutionary theory with his concept of the development of
all forms of life through the slow-working process of natural selection. His work was of major influence on the life
and earth sciences and on modern thought in general.
Born in Shrewsbury, Shropshire,
England on February 12, 1809, Darwin was the fifth child of a wealthy and
sophisticated English family. His
maternal grandfather was the successful china and pottery entrepreneur Josiah
Wedgwood; his paternal grandfather was the well-known 18th-century physician
and savant Erasmus Darwin. After
graduating from the elite school at Shrewsbury in 1825, young Darwin went to the
University of Edinburgh to study medicine.
In
1827, he dropped out of medical school and entered the University of Cambridge
in preparation for becoming a clergyman of the Church of England. There he met two stellar figures: Adam
Sedgwick, a geologist, and John Stevens Henslow, a naturalist. Henslow not only
helped build Darwin’s self-confidence but also taught his student to be a
meticulous and painstaking observer of natural phenomena and collector of
specimens. After graduating from Cambridge in 1831, the 22-year-old Darwin was
taken aboard the English survey ship “HMS Beagle,” largely on Henslow’s recommendation, as an unpaid
naturalist on a scientific expedition around the world.
Voyage
of the Beagle: Darwin’s job as naturalist aboard the Beagle gave him the opportunity to
observe the various geological formations found on different continents and
islands along the way, as well as a huge variety of fossils and living
organisms. In his geological
observations, Darwin was most impressed with the effect that natural forces had
on shaping the earth’s surface.
At the time, most geologists
adhered to the so-called catastrophist theory that the earth had experienced a
succession of creations of animal and plant life, and that each creation had
been destroyed by a sudden catastrophe, such as an upheaval or convulsion of
the earth’s surface. According to this
theory, the most recent catastrophe, Noah’s flood, wiped away all life except
those forms taken into the ark. The
rest were visible only in the form of fossils.
In the view of the catastrophists, species were individually created and
immutable, that is, unchangeable for all time.
The catastrophist viewpoint
(but not the immutability of species) was challenged by the English geologist
Sir Charles Lyell in his three-volume work Principles of Geology (1830-1833). Lyell maintained that the earth’s surface is undergoing constant
change, the result of natural forces operating uniformly over long periods.
Aboard the Beagle, Darwin found himself
fitting many of his observations into Lyell’s general uniformitarian view. Beyond that, however, he realized that some
of his own observations of fossils and living plants and animals cast doubt on
the Lyell-supported view that species were specially created. He noted, for example, that certain fossils
of supposedly extinct species closely resembled living species in the same
geographical area. Near the end of his
five-year voyage from 1831 to 1836 on board the English surveying ship the HMS Beagle, British scientist Charles
Darwin explored the Galápagos Islands.
In the
Galápagos Islands, off the coast of Ecuador, he also observed that each island
supported its own form of tortoise, mockingbird, and finch; the various forms
were closely related but differed in structure and eating habits from island to
island. Both observations raised the
question, for Darwin, of possible links between distinct but similar species.
These
observations led him toward his masterwork, “On the Origin of Species” (1859). Darwin edited his journals from the explorations and published
them in 1839 as The Voyage of the
Beagle. The scientist’s abundant
enthusiasm and curiosity shine through these richly detailed accounts.
Theory
of Natural Selection: After returning to England in
1836, Darwin began recording his ideas about changeability of species in his Notebooks on the Transmutation of Species. Darwin’s explanation for how organisms
evolved was brought into sharp focus after he read an essay on the “Principle of Population” (1798) by the British
economist Thomas Robert Malthus who explained how human populations remain in
balance. Malthus argued that any
increase in the availability of food for basic human survival could not match
the geometrical rate of population growth.
The latter, therefore, had to be checked by natural limitations such as
famine and disease, or by social actions such as war.
Darwin immediately applied
Malthus' argument to animals and plants, and by 1838 he had arrived at a sketch
of a theory of evolution through natural selection. For the next two decades he worked on his theory and other
natural history projects. (Darwin was
independently wealthy and never had to earn an income.) In 1839 he married his first cousin, Emma
Wedgwood, and soon after moved to a small estate, Down House, outside
London. There he and his wife had ten
children, three of whom died in infancy.
Darwin’s theory was first
announced in 1858 in a paper presented at the same time as one by Alfred Russel
Wallace, a young naturalist who had come independently to the theory of natural
selection. Darwin’s complete theory was
published in 1859, in “On the Origin
of Species.” Often referred to
as the “book that shook the world,” the Origin
sold out on the first day of publication and subsequently went through six
editions.
Darwin’s theory of evolution
by natural selection is essentially that, because of the food-supply problem
described by Malthus, the young born to any species intensely compete for
survival. Those young that survive to
produce the next generation tend to embody favorable natural variations
(however slight the advantage may be)—the process of natural selection—and
these variations are passed on by heredity.
Therefore, each generation will improve adaptively over the preceding
generations, and this gradual and continuous process is the source of the
evolution of species.
Natural
selection is only part of Darwin’s vast conceptual scheme; he also introduced
the concept that all related organisms are descended from common
ancestors. Moreover, he provided
additional support for the older concept that the earth itself is not static
but evolving.
Reaction
to the Theory: The reaction to the Origin was immediate. Some biologists argued that Darwin could not
prove his hypothesis. Others criticized
Darwin’s concept of variation, arguing that he could explain neither the origin
of variations nor how they were passed to succeeding generations. This particular scientific objection was not
answered until the birth of modern genetics in the early 20th century. In fact, many scientists continued to
express doubts for the following 50 to 80 years. The most publicized attacks on Darwin’s ideas, however, came not
from scientists but from religious opponents.
The thought that living things had evolved by natural processes denied
the special creation of humankind and seemed to place humanity on a plane with
the animals; both of these ideas were serious contradictions to orthodox
theological opinion.
Later
Years:
Darwin spent the rest of his life expanding on different aspects
of problems raised in the Origin. His later books—including The Variation of Animals and Plants Under
Domestication (1868), The
Descent of Man (1871), and The
Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals (1872)—were detailed
expositions of topics that had been confined to small sections of the Origin. The importance of his work was well recognized by his
contemporaries; Darwin was elected to the Royal Society (1839) and the French
Academy of Sciences (1878). He was also
honored by burial in Westminster Abbey after he died in Downe, Kent on April
19, 1882.
Darwin Published his Theory:
When Charles Darwin published "The
Descent of Man" in 1871, he challenged the fundamental beliefs of
most people by asserting that humans and apes had evolved from a common
ancestor. Many critics of Darwin
misunderstood his theory to mean that people had descended directly from
apes. This caricature of Charles Darwin
as an ape appeared in the London
Sketch Book in 1874.
Darwin’s
Influence on Genetics:
A surprising supporter of pangenesis was the British naturalist Charles Robert
Darwin, who believed that the theory accounted for the process of heredity and
the wide variety of traits seen among offspring. Despite his mistaken belief in pangenesis, Darwin nonetheless had
an enormous impact on human understanding of heredity. During his years of extensive worldwide
travel, Darwin collected many observations of how related species adapt to
their local environments.
Darwin
and British naturalist Alfred Wallace independently formulated the theory of
natural selection, which holds that members of a given species born with more
favorable characteristics to deal with their environment would be most likely
to survive to pass on these traits to the next generation. This important theory was popularized by
Darwin’s publication On the Origin of Species (1859). The book was an immediate sensation, but it raised many
questions. Foremost among these was the
mystery of how organisms could appear with modified or entirely new traits.
Galapagos Islands
History:
The islands were uninhabited
at the time of their exploration by Spaniards in 1535. During the 17th and 18th centuries they were
used as a rendezvous by pirates and buccaneers. British and United States warships and whaling vessels landed
frequently at the Galápagos in the 19th century. The islands were not settled until after they were annexed by
Ecuador in 1832. In 1835, the British
naturalist Charles Darwin, traveling aboard HMS Beagle, spent six weeks studying the animal life of the Galápagos. His observations furnished considerable data
for his Origin of Species
(1859). A satellite tracking station
has been on the Galápagos since 1967.
The Ecuadorian government
established Galápagos National Park in 1959 to protect large parts of the islands
from exploitation. In 1978, the United
Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) declared
the islands a World Heritage Site, saying they are of such outstanding interest
that they should be preserved as a heritage of all mankind. In 2000, the Ecuadorian government enacted a
law that prohibits further settlement on the islands and controls tourism and
fishing on them. The law also
discourages the introduction of foreign plant and animal species into the
Galápagos ecosystem.
Environment
Description:
The islands are volcanic in origin, with level shorelines and
mountainous interiors culminating in high central craters, some of which rise
more than 1,500m (5,000 ft) above sea level.
Several volcanoes are active.
The islands are fringed with mangroves; farther inland, although still
in coastal regions where little rain falls, the vegetation consists chiefly of
thorn trees, cactus, and mesquite. In
the uplands, which are exposed to a heavy mist, the flora is more
luxuriant. The climate and the
temperature of the waters surrounding the islands are modified by the cold
Humboldt Current from the Antarctic.
The Galápagos group is
noted for its animal life, which includes numerous species found only in the
archipelago and different subspecies on separate islands. Unique to the archipelago are six species of
giant tortoise. Other reptiles on the
islands include two species of large lizards in the iguana family: a burrowing
land lizard and an unusual marine lizard that dives into the ocean for
seaweed. The islands contain as many as
85 different species of birds, including flamingos, flightless cormorants,
finches, and penguins. Sea lions are
numerous, as are many different shore fish.
Part of the Galápagos is a wildlife sanctuary.
Social
Darwinism
Origin: Social Darwinism originated in
Britain during the second half of the 19th century. Darwin did not address human evolution in his most famous study :On the Origin of Species” (1859)
which focused on the evolution of plants and animals. He applied his theories of natural selection specifically to
people in “The Descent of Man”
(1871) a work that critics interpreted as justifying cruel social policies at
home and imperialism abroad. The
Englishman most associated with early social Darwinism, however, was
sociologist Herbert Spencer. Spencer
coined the phrase “survival of the fittest” to describe the outcome of
competition between social groups. In “Social Statics” (1850) and other
works, Spencer argued that through competition social evolution would
automatically produce prosperity and personal liberty unparalleled in human
history.
In the United States,
Spencer gained considerable support among intellectuals and some businessmen,
including steel manufacturer Andrew Carnegie, who served as Spencer’s host
during his visit to the United States in 1883.
The most prominent American social Darwinist of the 1880s was William
Graham Sumner, who on several occasions told audiences that there was no alternative
to the “survival of the fittest” theory.
Critics of social Darwinism seized on these comments to argue that
Sumner advocated a “dog-eat-dog” philosophy of human behavior that justified
oppressive social policies. Some later historians have argued that
Sumner’s critics took his statements out of context and misrepresented his
views.
Overview:
Social Darwinism, a
term coined in the late 19th century to describe the idea
that humans, like animals and plants, compete in a struggle for existence in
which natural selection results in “survival of the fittest.” Social Darwinists based their beliefs on
theories of evolution developed by British naturalist Charles Darwin. Some social Darwinists argue that governments
should not interfere with human competition by attempting to regulate the economy
or cure social ills such as poverty.
Instead, they advocate a “laissez-faire” political and economic system
that favors competition and self-interest in social and business affairs. Social Darwinists typically deny that they
advocate a “law of the jungle.” But
most propose arguments that justify imbalances of power between individuals,
races, and nations because they consider some people more fit to survive than
others.
The term social Darwinist is applied
loosely to anyone who interprets human society primarily in terms of biology,
struggle, competition or natural law, a philosophy based on what is considered
the permanent characteristics of human nature.
Social Darwinism characterizes a variety of past and present social
policies and theories, from attempts to reduce the power of government to
theories exploring the biological causes of human behavior. Many people believe that the concept of
social Darwinism explains the philosophical rationalization behind racism,
imperialism, and capitalism. The term
has negative implications for most people because they consider it a rejection
of compassion and social responsibility.
Mendel’s Laws: Mendel’s Laws are principles of hereditary transmission of
physical characteristics. They were
formulated in 1865 by the Augustinian monk Gregor Johann Mendel. Experimenting with seven contrasting
characteristics of pure-breeding garden peas, Mendel discovered that by
crossing tall and dwarf parents, for example, he got hybrid offspring that
resembled the tall parent rather than being a medium-height blend. To explain
this he conceived of hereditary units, now called genes, which often expressed
dominant or recessive characteristics.
Formulating his first principle (the law of segregation), Mendel stated
that genes normally occur in pairs in the ordinary body cells but segregate in
the formation of sex cells (eggs or sperm), each member of the pair becoming
part of the separate sex cell. When egg
and sperm unite, forming a gene pair, the dominant gene (tallness) masks the
recessive gene (shortness).
To corroborate the existence of such hereditary units, Mendel went
on to interbreed the first generation of hybrid tall peas and found that the
second generation turned out in a ratio of three tall to each short offspring. He then correctly conceived that the genes
paired into AA, Aa, and aa (“A” representing dominant and “a” representing
recessive). Continuing the breeding experiments, he found that the
self-pollinated AA bred true to produce pure tall plants, that the aa plant
produced pure dwarf plants, and the Aa, or hybrid, tall plants produced the
same three-to-one ratio of offspring.
From this Mendel could see that hereditary units did not blend, as his
predecessors believed, but remained unchanged from one generation to another.
He thus formulated his second principle, the law of independent assortment, in which the expression of a gene for any single characteristic is usually not influenced by the expression of another characteristic. Mendel's laws became the theoretical basis for modern genetics and heredity.
Hereditarianism: Studies of heredity contributed
another variety of social Darwinism in the late 19th century. In “Hereditary
Genius” (1869), Sir Francis Galton, a British scientist and Darwin’s
cousin, argued that biological inheritance is far more important than
environment in determining character and intelligence. This theory, known as hereditarianism, met
considerable resistance, especially in the United States. Sociologists and
biologists who criticized hereditarianism believed that changes in the
environment could produce physical changes in the individual that would be
passed on to future generations, a theory proposed by French biologist
Jean-Baptiste Lamarck in the early 19th century.
After
1890, hereditarianism gained increasing support, due in part to the work of
German biologist August Weismann.
Weismann reemphasized the role of natural selection by arguing that a
person’s characteristics are determined genetically at conception.
The
Struggle School: Toward the end of the
19th century, another strain of social Darwinism was developed by supporters of
the struggle school of sociology.
English journalist Walter Bagehot expressed the fundamental ideas of the
struggle school in “Physics and
Politics” (1872), a book that describes the historical evolution of
social groups into nations. Bagehot
argued that these nations evolved principally by succeeding in conflicts with
other groups. For many political
scientists, sociologists, and military strategists, this strain of social
Darwinism justified overseas expansion by nations (imperialism) during the
1890s. In the United States, historian
John Fiske and naval strategist Alfred Thayer Mahan drew from the principles of
social Darwinism to advocate foreign expansion and the creation of a strong
military.
Reform
Dawinism: After 1890, social reformers
used Darwinism to advocate a stronger role for government and the introduction
of various social policies. This
movement became known as reform Darwinism. Reform Darwinists argued that human
beings need new ideas and institutions as they adapt to changing
conditions. For example, U.S. Supreme
Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr. reasoned that the Constitution of the
United States should be reinterpreted in light of changing circumstances in
American society.
Some reformers used the
principles of evolution to justify sexist and racist ideas that undercut their
professed belief in equality. For
example, the most extreme type of reform Darwinism was eugenics, a term coined
by Sir Francis Galton in 1883 from the Greek word eügenáv meaning well born.
They proposed to control human heredity by passing laws that forbid
marriage between races or that restrict breeding for various social “misfits”
such as criminals or the mentally ill.
20th Century
Darwinism:
Although social Darwinism was highly influential at the beginning of
the 20th century, it rapidly lost popularity and support after World War I
(1914-1918). During the 1920s and 1930s
many political observers blamed it for contributing to German militarism and
the rise of Nazism. During this same
period, advances in anthropology also discredited social Darwinism. German American anthropologist Franz Boas
and American anthropologists Margaret Mead and Ruth Benedict showed that human
culture sets people apart from animals.
By shifting the emphasis away
from biology and onto culture, these anthropologists undermined social
Darwinism’s biological foundations.
Eugenics was discredited by a better understanding of genetics and
eventually disgraced by Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler’s use of eugenic arguments
to master race. During World War II
(1939-1945), the Nazis killed several million Jews, Roma (Gypsies), and members
of other groups, believing them inferior create a “to an idealized Aryan
race.” Aryan Race was named for the
white race used by white supremacists that claimed the superiority of certain
whites to other people. In Nazi
Germany, the term was narrowed to refer to certain “pure” Germans. In linguistics, it is sometimes used to
refer to people who speak any of the Indo-European family of languages.
Social theories based
on biology gained renewed support after 1953, when American biologist James
Watson and British biologist Francis Crick successfully described the structure
of the DNA molecule, the building block of all life. During the 1960s anthropologists interested in the influence of
DNA on human behavior produced studies of the biological basis of aggression,
territoriality, mate selection, and other behavior common to people and
animals. Books on this theme, such as
Desmond Morris’s “Naked Ape”
(1967) and Lionel Tiger’s “Men in
Groups” (1969) became best sellers.
In the early 1970s American psychologist Richard J. Herrnstein revived the
social Darwinist argument that intelligence is mostly determined by biology
rather than by environmental influences.
During the 1960s, British
biologist W. D. Hamilton and American biologist Robert L. Trivers produced
separate studies showing that the self-sacrificing behavior of some members of
a group serves the genetic well being of the group as a whole. American biologist Edward O. Wilson drew on
these theories in Sociobiology: the
“New Synthesis” (1975), where he argued that genetics exerts a greater
influence on human behavior than scientists had previously believed.
Wilson
claimed that human behavior cannot be understood without taking both biology
and culture into account. Wilson’s
views became the foundations of a new science—sociobiology—and were later
popularized in such studies as Richard Dawkins “The Selfish Gene” (1976).
Wilson’s critics have alleged that sociobiology is simply another
version of social Darwinism. They claim
that it downplays the role of culture in human societies and justifies poverty
and warfare in the name of natural selection.
Such criticism has led to a decline in the influence of sociobiology and
other forms of social Darwinism.
Other Scientists Supporting Darwin
Aristotle: The influence of Aristotle's philosophy has
been pervasive; it has even helped shape modern language and common sense. His doctrine of the Prime Mover as final
cause played an important role in theology.
Until the 20th century, logic meant Aristotle's logic. Until the Renaissance, and even later,
astronomers and poets alike admired his concept of the universe. Zoology rested on Aristotle's work until
British scientist Charles Darwin modified the doctrine of the changelessness of
species in the 19th century. In the
20th century a new appreciation has developed of Aristotle's method and its
relevance to education, literary criticism, the analysis of human action, and
political analysis.
Huxley, Thomas Henry (1825-1895). British biologist, was best known for his
active support of Charles Darwin's theory of evolution.
Born
in Ealing, Middlesex, on May 4, 1825, and educated at Charing Cross Hospital,
London, Huxley received his medical degree from the University of London in
1845 and was admitted to the Royal College of Surgeons. The following year he entered the Royal Navy
as assistant surgeon aboard the HMS Rattlesnake. During his tour of duty in Australasian
waters, which lasted until 1850, Huxley became thoroughly familiar with the
surface animals of tropical seas. His
observations on the medusa family of jellyfish led to the formulation of the
zoological class Hydrozoa and to the realization that the two germ layers found
in members of this class are comparable to the two germ layers that arise in
the early embryological stages of higher animals.
Returning
to England in 1850, Huxley was made a fellow of the Royal Society. The Royal Navy retained him as a nominal
assistant surgeon until 1853; he used this time to write several scientific
papers, including an authoritative work on the morphology of cephalopod
mollusks. Huxley became professor of
natural history and paleontology at the Royal School of Mines, London in
1854. He accompanied the Irish
physicist John Tyndall on an expedition to the Alps, where they studied
glaciation.
When Charles Darwin
published “On the Origin of Species”
in 1859, Huxley became the foremost supporter in England of Darwin's
theory. His lucid, popular lectures on
organic evolution, which he gave at various times from 1860 until his death,
were an important factor in the acceptance of the theory of evolution by both
scientists and the public. Huxley died in Eastbourne, Sussex, on June 29,
1895. His chief writings include “Zoological Evidences as to Man's Place in
Nature” (1863), Collected
Essays (9 volumes, 1893-1894), and Scientific Memoirs (5 volumes, posthumously published
1898-1903).
Nina Rodrigues, Raimundo (1862-1906): Brazilian scientist and physician, supported Darwin’s Theory. He was one of the first social scientists to study Afro-Brazilian culture and particularly Brazilian religious syncretism. Born in Vargem Grande, Maranhão, Brazil, he was trained as a medical doctor and graduated from the medical school of Bahia. He was also interested in the study of anthropology, sociology, and criminology. He became a professor of general pathology and forensic medicine at the medical school in the early 1890s and was a pioneer in Afro-Brazilian ethnology and forensic medicine. Rodrigues founded the Forensic Medicine magazine and was a member of the Forensic Medical Society of New York and of the Société de Medico-Psychologique de Paris.
Rodrigues identified two distinct African "cults," which
he termed the Iorubanos and the Malês.
He devoted most of his attention to the Iorubano cults, which he felt
were more strongly influenced by Catholicism.
These originated from the Candomblé Gêgê-Nagô, whereas the Malês were
thought to be more associated with Islam.
Among his most important works were “O animismo fetichista dos negros da Bahianos” (The Fetishist Animism of Bahian Blacks, 1935), “Os Africanos no Brasil” (Africans in Brazil, a posthumous collection of his papers, 1932), and “Brasil, the Human Races and Penal Responsibility in Brazil,” 1958.
Rodrigues' work embraced theories of scientific racism and social
Darwinism broadly held by the Brazilian intellectual elite of his time. He viewed
racial mixing and the black presence in Brazil more generally as hindering the
nation's progress. His views greatly
influenced a national immigration policy that discriminated against Africans
and Asians while encouraging European immigrants to immigrate to Brazil. Rodrigues also applied his theory of racial
inferiority in the field of forensic medicine.
In 1894 he published a book stating that the
"degenerates," that is, the Negroes and Indians, should have only
attenuated criminal responsibility given the allegedly different capacities of
what he believed to be inferior races.
Nina Rodrigues also influenced generations of students of Afro-Brazilian
culture. Nina Rodrigues died in 1906
while in Paris.
Oparin, Aleksandr Ivanovich (1894-1980): Russian biochemist who pioneered in
developing biochemical theories of how life originated on earth. Oparin graduated from Moscow University in
1917, became a professor of biochemistry there in 1927, and from 1946 until his
death was director of Moscow's A. N. Bakh Institute for biochemistry. Strongly
influenced by Charles Darwin's evolutionary theory, he sought to
account for the origin of life in terms of chemical and physical processes. He hypothesized that life developed, in
effect, by chance, through a progression from simple to complex
self-duplicating organic compounds. His
proposal initially met with strong opposition but has since received
experimental support and has been accepted as a legitimate hypothesis by the
scientific community (see Life). Oparin's major work is “The Origin of Life on Earth” (1936).
Wallace, Alfred Russel (1823-1913). British naturalist,
collector of wildlife specimens, and author, was one of the first to formulate
the groundbreaking theory of evolution by natural selection. Wallace's theory was made public at the same
time as that of Charles Robert Darwin.
Wallace and Darwin worked independently, each unaware of the other's
research. Yet both developed the same
insight into the biological mechanism by which species gradually change by
adapting to the particular pressures and requirements of their
environment. At a time when most people
believed that species were the fixed and unchanging product of divine creation,
this theory was revolutionary.
In 1858, while still on his Malaysian journey, Wallace wrote a
paper describing his theory and sent it to Darwin. Wallace was unaware that Darwin had been developing the same
theory for nearly two decades—although Darwin had not yet published it.
Admirably, Darwin elected to share credit with the younger naturalist. He arranged to have Wallace's paper and some
of his own unpublished writings read together at a scientific meeting of the
Linnean Society in London in June of 1858.
The next year, Darwin published “On the Origin of Species,” the book
that made the theory of natural selection famous.
Haeckel, Ernst Heinrich (1834-1919). German biologist and
philosopher, who, through books and lectures, popularized Charles Darwin's work
in the German-speaking world.
There he became the first energetic champion of Darwinian theory
in German.
Part of the attraction of Darwin's work for Haeckel lay in its
philosophical implications. He attempted to use evolution to construct a
unifying theory of biology, science in general, and even religion. For example, according to Haeckel, each
animal retraces, during its embryological development, the evolutionary steps
that led to its place in the natural order.
Thus, a human fetus begins its development as a single cell, just as
life must have begun. About eight days
later the cell grows into a hollow sphere (the blastula) that is similar in
morphology to the sponges.
The embryo then invaginates to form a two-layered, cuplike
structure (the gastrula) that is similar to cnidarians such as jellyfish and
the corals. The human embryo next
begins to elongate, and within 30 days it has passed through stages with gills,
a tail, and finlike limbs typical of fish and amphibians. Soon the embryo takes an obviously mammalian
form, but only after two months is it clearly seen to be a primate. In Haeckel's words, “Ontogeny recapitulates
phylogeny”—ontogeny being embryonic development and phylogeny being
evolutionary development.
Dr. Niles Eldredge: He began studying the mechanisms of evolutionary change while working on his doctoral thesis, a project that focused on the trilobite, an early ancestor of the horseshoe crab that lived during the Paleozoic Era 570 to 250 million years ago. After several analyses of the trilobite fossil record, Eldredge concluded that trilobites evolved in short, concentrated bursts, rather than the gradual and continuous change predicted by Charles Darwin in his theory of evolution.
In 1972 Eldredge collaborated with Gould to publish the theory of punctuated equilibria, which attempts to reconcile the discontinuities between the fossil record and the Darwinian theory of evolution. In his theory of punctuated equilibria, Eldredge postulates that species remain unchanged for hundreds of thousands of years, only to be abruptly replaced by newer and more successful forms—sporadic changes that appear as “punctuation” in the fossil record.
Hooker, Sir Joseph Dalton (1817-1911). English botanist and explorer
of the Antarctic. He conducted scientific studies in New Zealand, in the
Himalayas of Asia, in North Africa, and in the Rocky Mountains of North
America. Like his father, the younger
Hooker became interested in the study of plants. He also studied medicine at the University of Glasgow and became
a doctor.
In 1839 Hooker joined Sir James Clark Ross’s Antarctic expedition as a botanist and assistant medical officer. The expedition made stops at the Kerguelen Islands of the southern Indian Ocean, at New Zealand, at the island of Van Diemen’s Land (present-day Tasmania) and at islands of the Southern Ocean. In all of these places, Hooker undertook comprehensive studies of plants and collected thousands of specimens, many of them new to science. On Tasmania, he discovered a new species of eucalyptus tree. Hooker returned to England with the Ross expedition in 1843; over the next four years he published the results of his scientific research in Flora Antarctica (1844-1847).
In 1846 and 1847 Hooker served as
botanist with the Geological Survey of Great Britain, and in the late 1840s his
pursuit of botanical knowledge took him to the Himalayas of Nepal and what is
now Bangladesh. After 1865 Hooker
succeeded his father as director of England’s extensive Kew Gardens, also known
as the Royal Botanical Gardens, near London.
In connection with his work at Kew
Gardens, he made scientific expeditions to
the Middle East, the Atlas Mountains of Morocco, and the Rocky Mountains of the western United States. Hooker drew upon his worldwide studies to support the still-controversial theories of British scientist Charles Darwin regarding evolution and the origins of life on earth. Hooker also published the three-volume Geneara Plantarum (1862-1883) and the seven-volume Flora of British India (1875-1897). He was knighted in 1877.
Mayr,
Ernst (1904- ).
American evolutionary biologist known for his contributions to
systematics, the study of evolutionary relationships among organisms. Mayr is among the architects of the
so-called modern synthesis of evolutionary biology that showed that Charles
Darwin’s theory of natural selection applies to the evolution of genes at the
molecular level (see Evolution: The Synthetic Theory). He has also made contributions in the field
of ornithology—that is, the scientific study of birds—and the history and
philosophy of science.
Owen, Richard (1804-1892). English comparative anatomist, zoologist,
and vertebrate paleontologist. Owen was
the most distinguished zoologist in Britain during the mid-19th century and was
a fervent opponent of evolutionary concepts.
Owen was appointed Hunterian Professor at the Royal College of Surgeons
in London in 1836. He held the position
of conservator of the museum at the Royal College of Surgeons from 1842 to
1856.
During his appointment at the Royal College of Surgeons, Owen had
the opportunity to dissect the animals that died in the Regent’s Park
Zoological Gardens in London. The
knowledge of animal anatomy that he gained served him well when he began to
examine the fossil bones of extinct vertebrates, which were then being found in
increasing numbers in southern England and on the European continent. He described the first truly gigantic
reptile, Cetiosaurus, in 1841 from bones collected by British paleontologist
William Buckland. The same year, he
formulated the first classification of creatures that he named the Dinosauria (Greek for “terrible lizard” (see Dinosaur).
Owen was also instrumental in obtaining and describing the first good specimen of the primitive bird Archaeopteryx. This provided evidence for the theory of evolution proposed by English scientist Charles Darwin, but Owen opposed the theory. Instead, he advocated the idea of an archetype, or ideal original pattern, that was modified to form the different types of animals (aquatic, terrestrial, or avian) at the time of Creation. This concept earned Owen the praise of conservative politicians and clergy members, making him a powerful figure in science during the Victorian Age.
Owen’s scientific output of about 625 publications encompassed the
anatomy of living invertebrate and vertebrate animals and of a great range of
extinct organisms, including the dodo of Mauritius, the moas of New Zealand, the giant ground sloths of Argentina, the fossil
marsupials of Australia, pterodactyls, and even fossil footprints. He designed the first constructions of
dinosaurs, exhibited at the Crystal Palace in London, where once he held a
banquet inside the belly of the Iguanodon before its reconstruction was
completed. Despite his arrogance and
merciless use of influence, which earned him many enemies, and his refusal to
recognize the validity of Darwin’s theory of evolution, Owen stands high in the
ranks of scientific discoverers and has left a rich legacy.
Crowther, Samuel Ajayi (1806-1891). The first African
Anglican bishop. In 1864, he was
consecrated in a ceremony at Canterbury Cathedral as "Bishop of Western
Equatorial African beyond the Queen's Dominions." Crowther became the first African to hold
the title of bishop in the Anglican Church.
Despite numerous obstacles, after a few years under Crowther's
leadership the Niger Mission boasted 600 converts, 10 priests, and 14
catechists. Despite these successes, Crowther faced opposition, especially
among the younger generation of white CMS missionaries, who adhered to the
Social Darwinist and racist theories of the day that justified colonialism, and
who believed that they were better suited to run the mission than an African
such as Crowther. These views doomed
Venn's plan for an independent African church.
Thus, the CMS forced Crowther to accept a white associate to administer
the Niger Mission's finances, and Crowther faced accusations of
incompetence.
As a final insult, violating established church procedures, the
mission's finance committee suspended all of the African priests who Crowther
had ordained. Crowther resigned in
protest in 1890. He was making plans
for an independent African church when he
suffered a massive stroke the following year in Lagos.
Vries, Hugo Marie de (1848-1935). Dutch botanist independently rediscovered the laws of heredity developed by the Austrian monk Gregor Mendel and brought the concept of mutation into evolutionary theory. Born in Harlem on February 16, 1848, de Vries developed an early interest in botany. He received his Ph.D. from the Leiden University in 1870, then went to the University of Heidelberg to work with the German plant physiologist Julius von Sachs. In 1877 he became a professor of botany at the University of Amsterdam, where he continued his research on the physiology of plant cells.
By the late 1880s de Vries had become interested in the growing
controversy surrounding plant heredity, particularly with regard to evolutionary
theory. His hybridization experiments
led him in 1900 to rediscover Mendel's laws of
heredity. De Vries, along with two
other scientists who independently made the same rediscovery, gave full credit
to Mendel's work when he became aware of it.
De Vries, however, adhered to his own concept of heredity, published in
1899, in which he proposed that units called pangenes were the carriers of
hereditary traits. Like Mendel's
so-called factors, pangenes were theorized as discrete, independent units. Unlike Mendel's factors, they usually were considered to govern
larger-scale hereditary traits.
This viewpoint led de Vries to interpret his studies of the evening primrose in terms of what he called mutations: large-scale variations that could produce a new species in a single generation. According to de Vries, a new species arose primarily in this manner, with no obvious transition forms. The enormous early popularity of this theory was due in part to its being seen as an alternative to Darwin's theory of natural selection, which emphasized the slow development of new species through almost imperceptible individual differences. De Vries' formulation eventually had to be modified, and his research was shown to some extent to be in error. Nevertheless, his work is valued as the of Amsterdam, where he continued his research on the physiology of plant cells.
By the late 1880s de Vries had become interested in the growing
controversy surrounding plant heredity, particularly with regard to
evolutionary theory. His hybridization
experiments led him in 1900 to rediscover
Mendel's laws of heredity. De Vries,
along with two other scientists who independently made the same rediscovery,
gave full credit to Mendel's work when he became aware of it. De Vries, however, adhered to his own
concept of heredity, published in 1899, in which he proposed that units called
pangenes were the carriers of hereditary traits. Like Mendel's so-called factors, pangenes were theorized as discrete,
independent units. Unlike Mendel's factors, they
usually were considered to govern larger-scale hereditary traits.
This viewpoint led de Vries to interpret his studies of the evening primrose in terms of what he called mutations: large-scale variations that could produce a new species in a single generation. According to de Vries, a new species arose primarily in this manner, with no obvious transition forms. The enormous early popularity of this theory was due in part to its being seen as an alternative to Darwin's theory of natural selection, which emphasized the slow development of new species through almost imperceptible individual differences. De Vries' formulation eventually had to be modified, and his research was shown to some extent to be in error. Nevertheless, his work is valued as the
Jacobsen, Jens Peter (1847-1885). Danish novelist noted for his keen observations of nature and meticulous attention to craft in writing. As a university student Jacobsen specialized in natural sciences and later translated Charles Darwin's “On the Origin of Species” and “The Descent of Man into Danish.”
Herbert Spencer: Social Darwinism British sociologist
strongly influenced education in the mid-19th century with social theories
based on the theory of evolution developed by British naturalist Charles
Darwin. Spencer revised Darwin’s
biological theory into social Darwinism, a body of ideas that applied the
theory of evolution to society, politics, the economy, and education. Spencer maintained that in modern
industrialized societies, as in earlier simpler societies, the “fittest”
individuals of each generation survived because they were intelligent and
adaptable. Competition caused the
brightest and strongest individuals to climb to the top of the society.
Urging unlimited competition, Spencer wanted
government to restrict its activities to the bare minimum. He opposed public schools, claiming that
they would create a monopoly for mediocrity by catering to students of low
ability. He wanted private schools to
compete against each other in trying to attract the brightest students and most
capable teachers. Spencer’s social
Darwinism became very popular in the last half of the 19th century when
industrialization was changing American and Western European societies. Spencer
believed that people in industrialized society needed scientific rather than
classical education.
Emphasizing education in practical skills, he
advocated a curriculum featuring lessons in five basic human activities: (1)
those needed for self-preservation such as health, diet, and exercise; (2)
those needed to perform one’s occupation so that a person can earn a living,
including the basic skills of reading, writing, computation, and knowledge of
the sciences; (3) those needed for parenting, to raise children properly; (4)
those needed to participate in society and politics; and (5) those needed for
leisure and recreation.
Spencer’s ideas on education were eagerly
accepted in the United States. In 1918
the Cardinal Principles of Secondary Education, a report issued by the National
Education Association, used Spencer’s list of activities in its recommendations
for American education.
Agassiz Opposed Darwin’s Theory: Agassiz believed in a theory of epochs of
creation. This theory held that earth's organisms tend to become more complex
and better suited to their environment over time through a series of
independent acts of creation by a first
satisfactory application of experimental methods to the traditionally
speculative field of evolutionary theory.
Supreme
Being: Agassiz's theory opposed the mechanisms
outlined by Charles Darwin in his theory of evolution.
The Age of the Earth Debate: The first estimate fell during the 19th
century. To the great displeasure of
Charles Darwin and the geologists of the period, the physicist William Thomson
(later Lord Kelvin) performed a seemingly flawless calculation to show that the
earth had not existed throughout eternity, as many thought then, but had formed
100 million years ago. That chronology
collapsed at the turn of the century, when the advent of radioactive dating
techniques showed the earth's age to be a few billion years. After a fierce debate between geologists and
physicists, radioactive dating prevailed.
Above all, the age-of-the-earth controversy illustrates that emotion,
intuition and vested interests can direct the course of science almost as much
as logic and experimentation.
Darwin
on the Origin of Species: Few books have
rocked the world the way that “On the Origin of Species” did. Influenced in part by British geologist Sir
Charles Lyell’s theory of a gradually changing earth, British naturalist
Charles Darwin spent decades developing his theory of gradual evolution through
natural selection before he published his book in 1859. The logical—and intensely
controversial–-extension of Darwin’s theory was that humans, too, evolved
through the ages. For people who accepted
the biblical view of creation, the idea that human beings shared common roots
with lower animals was shocking.
In
this excerpt from “On the Origin of Species,” Darwin carefully sidesteps the
issue of human evolution (as he did throughout the book), focusing instead on
competition and adaptation in lower animals and plants. Open sidebar Genetics is the study of how
heredity works and, in particular, of genes.
A gene is a section of a long deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA) molecule, and
it carries information for the construction of a protein or part of a
protein. Through the diversity of
proteins they code for, genes influence or determine such traits as eye color,
the ability of a bacterium to eat a certain sugar, or the number of peas in a
pod.
A
virus has as few as a dozen genes. A
simple roundworm has 5000 to 8000 genes, while a corn plant has 60,000. The construction of a human requires an
estimated 50,000 genes. The principles
of heredity hold true not only for a puppy but also for a virus, a roundworm, a
pansy, or a human. If the DNA in a
single human cell could be unraveled, it would form a single thread about five
feet long and about 50 trillionths of an inch thick.
To
prevent this fine string of DNA from becoming knotted like a big tangle of
yarn, parts of the strand are wrapped around proteins like a thread is wound
around spools. These units of wrapped
DNA are called nucleosomes, and they coil and fold into structures called
chromosomes.
Humans
have 23 pairs of chromosomes. In each
pair, one chromosome comes from the mother and the other from the father. Twenty-two of the pairs are the same in both
men and women, and these are called autosomes.
The twenty-third pair consists of the sex chromosomes, so called because
they are the primary factor in determining the gender of a child. The sex chromosomes are known as the X and
Y-chromosomes. Females have two X
chromosomes, and males have one X and one Y chromosome. The Y chromosome is about one-third the size
of the X chromosome. A sperm, the
reproductive cell produced by the male, can carry either one X or one Y
chromosome. An egg, the reproductive
cell produced by the female, can carry only the X chromosome. When a sperm with an X chromosome unites
with an egg, the result is a child with two X chromosomes—a female. When a sperm with a Y chromosome unites with
an egg, however, the result is a child with one X and one Y chromosome—a male.
Gregor Mendel is known as the
father of modern genetics. He developed
the principles of heredity by studying the variation and heredity of seven
pairs of inherited characteristics in pea plants. Although the significance of his work was not recognized during
his lifetime, it became the basis for the present day field of genetics. Culver Pictures Current knowledge of
heredity is the result of more than 2000 years of contemplation of how
inheritance works.
The ancient Babylonians knew
that pollen from a male date palm tree must be applied to the carpels of a
female flower to obtain fruit, but they did not know about the reproductive
cells in humans. The Greek scientist
and philosopher Aristotle believed that inheritance was passed through the
blood. This concept was embraced for
centuries and persists today in such terminology as bloodlines, half bloods,
and blue bloods.
Mechanism of Inheritance:
In the early 1800s, little was known about the mechanisms of
inheritance. Lamarck’s ideas about the
influence of environment on organisms and the resulting changes in organisms
over generations were forerunners of the theory of evolution that was
introduced in the late 1850s. The past
few centuries have witnessed tremendous advances in understanding the role of
reproductive cells in heredity.
Eugenics: Eugenics is a
scientific and social movement whose central tenet ascribes human behavior to
genetic makeup, and that supports social policies to maintain “racial hygiene.”
The
philosophy behind the eugenics movement is that intelligence, health, and
social behavior are determined solely by genetic makeup. Popular in the United States, Britain, and
Germany from early in the 20th century until World War II (1939-1945), eugenics
dismisses the influence of social and economic factors on human behavior and
advocates policies aimed at maintaining the “fitness” of a “superior” racial
stock—that of white Anglo-Saxons.
British
biologist Francis Galton coined the term eugenics in 1883 to describe his
research on a trait he was convinced had been passed down through the
generations of his own family—genius.
Like other biologists of the time, Galton's interest in human heredity
was piqued by the theories of species evolution outlined in Charles Darwin's
classic treatise “On the Origin of
Species” (1859). Darwin's followers applied his views to
politics and economics. This
application has come to be known as social Darwinism, and it was the precursor
to eugenics. Social Darwinists espoused
a competitive model of species evolution summarized in the belief in “survival
of the fittest.” According to this
model the healthiness of a race would be ensured because weaker, recessive
genetic material would be naturally weeded out.
Social
Darwinism's laissez-faire attitude towards evolution distinguished it from the
aggressive policies of the eugenics movement, which sought ways to intervene in
human behavior to maintain “racial health.”
Eugenics was explicitly concerned with institutionalizing methods to
ensure the continued “improvement” of the white race. Two branches of the field emerged to facilitate positive and
negative eugenics. According to
eugenicists, through positive eugenics, the stock of genetically healthy
individuals would be improved and increased through selective breeding. Negative eugenics was applied to unhealthy
individuals. Through passing antimiscegenation
laws, curtailing immigration from countries considered to harbor weaker genetic
material, employing forced sterilization and supporting mercy killings,
negative eugenics would restrain the reproduction of the genetically unfit.
Early
in the 20th century, the eugenics movement quickly gained public support in the
United States, Germany, and Britain. In
the United States the first sterilization law was passed in 1907 in
Indiana. Three years later, the doyen
of the American eugenics movement, Charles Davenport, opened the Eugenics
Record Office in Cold Spring Harbor, New York.
Through the office, Davenport, a strong promoter of forced
sterilization, meticulously reported on what he believed to be the intellectual
degeneracy of the poor, criminals, and a range of ethnic and racial
communities.
Numerous
states enacted antimiscegenation and sterilization laws between 1911 and
1930. The infamous Buck v. Bell Supreme Court case of 1927, in which Justice Oliver
Wendell Holmes authorized the sterilization of a Virginia woman on the grounds
that “three generations of imbeciles” was enough, led to thousands of forced
sterilizations across the country. The
crowning moment of the U.S. eugenics movement was the passage of the
Immigration and Restriction Act of 1924.
Supported by a coalition of eugenicists and corporate interests
concerned with American standards of “racial hygiene,” the act effectively
barred immigration from eastern European and Mediterranean countries by
instituting drastically reduced quotas.
Eugenics
has been largely discredited since World War II, when the atrocities committed
by the Nazis during the Holocaust forced a rethinking of eugenics policies.
Contemporary geneticists now view human behavior as determined by a complex
interaction of biological, social, and economic factors. Beliefs in the innate power of race in
influencing human behavior have been debunked.
The central tenets of eugenics still persist, however. The publication in 1994 of Richard J.
Herrnstein and Charles Murray's controversial “The Bell Curve: Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life,”
demonstrates the continued appeal of biological explanations of human behavior.
Ethics: The scientific development that most
affected ethics after the time of Newton was the theory of evolution advanced
by Charles Darwin. Darwin's findings
provided documentary support for the system, sometimes termed evolutionary
ethics, propounded by the British philosopher Herbert Spencer, according to
whom morality is merely the result of certain habits acquired by humanity in
the course of evolution.
A startling but logical elaboration of the Darwinian thesis
that survival of the fittest is a basic law of nature was advanced by the
German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche, who held that so-called moral conduct
is necessary only for the weak. Moral
conduct—especially such as was advocated in Jewish and Christian ethics, which
in his view is a slave ethic—tends to allow the weak to inhibit the
self-realization of the strong. According to Nietzsche, every action should be
directed toward the development of the superior individual, or Übermensch
(superman) who will be able to realize the most noble possibilities of
life.
Nietzsche found this ideal individual best exemplified in
the persons of ancient Greek philosophers before Plato and of military
dictators such as Julius Caesar and Napoleon.
In opposition to the concept of ruthless and unremitting struggle as the
basic law of nature, the Russian social reformer and philosopher Prince Pyotr
Kropotkin, among others, presented studies of animal behavior in nature demonstrating
mutual aid. Kropotkin asserted that the survival of species is furthered by
mutual aid and that humans have attained primacy among animals in the course of
evolution through their capacity for cooperation.
Kropotkin expounded his ideas in a number of
works, among them “Mutual Aid,” “A Factor in Evolution” (1890-1902) and
“Ethics, Origin and Development” (posthumously published, 1924). In the belief that governments are based on
force, and that if they are eliminated the cooperative instincts of people
would spontaneously lead to a cooperative order, Kropotkin advocated
anarchism. Anthropologists applied
evolutionary principles to the study of human societies and cultures. These studies reemphasized the different
concepts of right and wrong held by different societies; therefore, it was
believed, most such concepts had a relative rather than universal
validity. Outstanding among ethical
concepts based on an anthropological approach are those of the Finnish
anthropologist Edvard A. Westermarck in “Ethical Relativity” (1932).
Classification: Before the 19th century, Linnaeus and other
taxonomists classified organisms in an arbitrary but logical way that made it
easier to communicate scientific information.
But with the publication of “On the Origin of Species” in 1859 by
British naturalist Charles Darwin, the purpose of classification took on new
meaning. Darwin argued that
classification systems should reflect the history of life—that is, species
should be related based on their shared ancestry. He defined species as groups that have diverged from a shared
ancestry in recent history, while organisms in higher taxa, such as genera,
class, or order, diverged from a shared ancestor further back in history.
Making evolutionary history compatible with the
classification systems already established was no easy task, however. Critics argued that classification should be
consistent with phylogeny, but not based solely upon evolutionary history. They advocated using other factors, such as
behavior or anatomy, along with phylogeny to better classify organisms. This controversy over the fundamental
approach to classification continues today.
Psychology: English naturalist Charles Darwin was
particularly influential in the development of psychology. In 1859 Darwin published “On the Origin of
Species,” in which he proposed that all living forms were a product of the
evolutionary process of natural selection.
Darwin had based his theory on plants and nonhuman animals, but he later
asserted that people had evolved through similar processes, and that human
anatomy and behavior could be analyzed in the same way. Darwin’s theory of evolution invited
comparisons between humans and other animals, and scientists soon began using
animals in psychological research.
Ecology: The term ecology was introduced by the
German biologist Ernst Heinrich Haeckel in 1866; it is derived from the Greek
oikos (household) sharing the same root word as economics. Thus, the term implies the study of the
economy of nature. Modern ecology, in
part, began with Charles Darwin. In
developing his theory of evolution, Darwin stressed the adaptation of organisms
to their environment through natural selection. Also making important contributions were plant geographers such
as Alexander von Humboldt, who were deeply interested in the “how” and “why” of
vegetational distribution around the world.
Stratigraphy: Stratigraphy was developed in England
during the early 1800s with the work of a land surveyor named William
Smith. Using stratigraphic concepts,
19th-century geologists clearly demonstrated that the earth was far older than
a million years. For example, sedimentation rates of marine limestone not
deposited on reefs typically range from about 2 to 20 cm (about 0.8 to 8 in)
per thousand years. At these rates,
about 6000m (20,000 ft) of marine limestone exposed as tilted beds in southern
Nevada required at least 30 to 300 million years of continuous deposition. Additionally, these rocks overlie rock units that
show a complex history of metamorphism, intrusion, faulting, and uplift prior
to deposition of the limestone.
The knowledge that the
earth is ancient rather than young has several important implications for our
society. From a historical perspective,
this recognition led, in the 19th century, to a broadening of the scientific
mind beyond the confines of religious dogma and opened the way for Darwin's theory of natural selection (see Darwin,
Charles: Theory of Natural Selection).
It also demonstrated that humanity has only existed for a small period
of the earth’s history. An ancient
earth points to the urgency for resource conservation.
Because
natural resources form on a geologic time scale, the rate at which they are
naturally replenished is far slower than the rate at which they are currently
being depleted. Finally, realizing the
earth’s age makes habitat preservation and other environmental issues
particularly relevant. Like resource depletion,
environmental degradation occurs on a human time scale, but generally requires
a geologic time scale for repair.
Race
Without Color: Nearly 125 years ago
Charles Darwin himself, the discoverer of natural selection, dismissed its role
as an explanation of geographic variation in human beauty traits. Everything that we have learned since then
only reinforces Darwin's view. We can now return to our original questions: Are
human racial classifications that are based on different traits concordant with
one another? What is the hierarchical
relation among recognized races? What
is the function of racially variable traits?
What, really, are the traditional human races? Regarding concordance, we could have classified races based on
any number of geographically variable traits.
The resulting classifications would not be at
all concordant. Depending on whether we
classified ourselves by anti-malarial genes, lactase, fingerprints, or skin
color, we could place Swedes in the same race as either Xhosas, Fulani, the
Ainu of Japan, or Italians. Regarding hierarchy, traditional classifications
that emphasize skin color face unresolvable ambiguities. Anthropology textbooks often recognize five
major races: "whites," "African blacks,"
"Mongoloids," "aboriginal Australians," and
"Khoisans," each in turn divided into various numbers of sub-races.
But there is no agreement on the number and
delineation of the sub-races, or even of the major races. Are all five of the major races equally
distinctive? Are Nigerians really less
different from Xhosas than aboriginal Australians are from both? Should we recognize 3 or 15 sub-races of
Mongoloids? These questions have
remained unresolved because skin color and other traditional racial criteria
are difficult to formulate mathematically.
Comparative Anatomy: The term comparative anatomy was first used
by English scientist Nehemiah Grew, who published a book in 1681 describing the
anatomy of stomachs and intestines in several different species. During the 18th century, knowledge of
comparative anatomy advanced rapidly.
The French naturalist Louis Jean-Marie Daubenton compared the anatomies
of many different animals in a section of Buffon’s Natural History (a 36-volume
work published between 1749 and 1789 that contained observations about the
mineralogical, botanical, and zoological characteristics of the Earth). This section of the Natural History is today
considered the first extensive work in comparative anatomy.
During the 19th century, comparative anatomy
studies helped British scientist Charles Darwin to develop the modern theory of
evolution. On a voyage to the Galápagos
Islands off the western coast of South America, Darwin saw more than a dozen
different species of finches living on various islands. All the finches were similar in size and in
their dull, blackish or brownish gray coloring, but their beaks varied widely
in size and shape. These similarities and differences suggested to Darwin that
the various finch species might be related to one another and that they had all
arisen from the same ancestral species.
Around the same time, modern concepts of
comparative anatomy were developing from the work of many great
zoologists. Sir Richard Owen, a British
biologist known for his studies of the fossil birdlike dinosaur Archaeopteryx,
published the third edition of his Comparative Anatomy in 1871. He also developed the concepts of homology
and analogy.
Thomas H. Huxley, another British biologist,
published his Comparative Anatomy of Vertebrated Animals in 1871. He also established the modern concept of
the evolution of the vertebrate skull.
German biologist Ernst H. Haeckel contributed to the knowledge of the
three germ layers that are found in the early embryos of most animals and
develop into the organs of adults. He
also established the biogenetic law, which states that during their development
from fertilized egg to adult, animals pass through stages that recapitulate
their evolutionary development.
Although it is now known that this law does not
hold absolutely (Haeckel constructed evolutionary trees based entirely on
embryology that are now known to be false.) Haeckel’s idea has remained
profoundly influential.
Homo Erectus Discovery: Scientific study of Homo erectus began in
the late 19th century. Excited by
Charles Darwin‘s theory of evolution and fossil discoveries in Europe,
scientists began to search for the fossilized remains of “the missing link,”
the evolutionary ancestor of both human beings and modern apes. In 1891, Dutch anthropologist Eugene Dubois
traveled to Java, Indonesia, where he unearthed the top of a skull and a leg
bone of an extinct hominine.
Measurements of the skull indicated that the creature had possessed a
large brain, measuring 850cc, while the leg-bone anatomy suggested that it had
walked upright.
In recognition of these characteristics, Dubois
named the species Pithecanthropus erectus, or “erect ape-man.” Canadian anthropologist Davidson Black found
similar fossils in China in the late 1920s.
Black named his discovery Sinanthropus pekinensis, or “Peking Man.” Later studies by Dutch scientist G. H. von
Koenigswald and German scientist Franz Weidenreich showed that the fossils
discovered by Dubois and Black came from the same species, which was eventually
named Homo erectus. Since these earliest
discoveries, Homo erectus fossils have been found in East Africa, South Africa,
Ethiopia, and various parts of Asia.
Kenyan fossil hunter Kamoya Kimeu discovered an
almost complete Homo erectus skeleton, known as the Turkana boy, near Lake
Turkana in northern Kenya in 1984. The
oldest known specimen, dated at almost 2 million years old, also comes from
northern Kenya. Recently developed
dating methods have shown that Homo erectus also lived in Java almost 2 million
years ago.
Early views of Creation: Before English naturalist Charles Darwin
published “On the Origin of Species” in 1859, most people in the West—including
the great majority of scientists—accepted creationism in some form, although
they rarely used that term to describe their views. Despite mounting evidence of the great antiquity of life on
earth, many Christians continued to accept the traditional biblical account of
a relatively recent six-day creation in the Garden of Eden, culminating in the
appearance of Adam and Eve.
Writing in 1852, American commentator William B.
Hayden estimated that one-half of the Christian public remained loyal to the
traditional view; the other half had adopted one or the other of two popular
reinterpretations of the creation account in the biblical book of Genesis. These reinterpretations permitted Christians
to accept the accumulating paleontological evidence without abandoning their
faith. The first was the so-called
Day-Age theory, according to which the six days of the biblical creation
(Genesis 1:1-2:4) represented vast geological ages rather than 24-hour
periods. The rival reinterpretation,
known as the Gap theory, allowed for an immense interval between an initial
creation and the creation of the Garden of Eden in about 4000 bc.
Darwin's
Hawk Moth: Scientists were looking for this particular
moth, Xanthopan morganii, even
before they were sure of its existence.
The 19th-century naturalist Charles
Darwin, studying an orchid whose
nectar-producing organs lay 30 cm (12 in) inside the flower structure,
hypothesized that there must be a moth with a tongue long enough to pollinate
it. He proved to be correct: This
Madagascan species, with the long front wings and thick body characteristic of
other hawk moths, has a proboscis that measures between 30 and 35 cm (12 and 14
in) in length.
Race: In the 1850s British
naturalist Charles Darwin developed the theory of natural selection and the
modern concept of biological evolution.
Unlike most of his contemporaries, Darwin thought that human variation
did not lend itself to taxonomic organization because the differences among
people do not fall into distinct categories.
In his book “The Descent of Man” (1871) he wrote, “Every naturalist who
has had the misfortune to undertake the description of a group of highly
varying organisms, has encountered cases ... precisely like that of man; and if
of a cautious disposition, he will end by uniting all the forms which graduate
into each other into a single species; for he will say to himself that he has
no right to give names to objects that he cannot define.” Supporters of
polygenism, meanwhile, rejected Darwin’s evolutionary theory and persisted in
believing that races were fixed, unchanging entities.
Child Development: In the late 19th century, interest in the
characteristics and needs of children produced more systematic efforts to study
their development. The modern theory of
evolution, conceived by British naturalist Charles Darwin, contributed to this
interest by arguing that human behavior is best understood through knowledge of
its origins—in both the evolution of the species and the early development of
individuals.
Darwin himself studied children’s growth by
writing one of the first “baby biographies,” consisting of careful observations
of his children.
In the early 1900s, the theory of psychoanalysis
focused on the importance of early childhood experiences. American psychologist G. Stanley Hall at
Clark University began large-scale investigations of child development through
surveys and interviews with the adults who cared for them. For the first time, children warranted
scientific attention because of society’s interest in their development and
well being.
Young Plant Shoots Growing Toward Light: Since green plants are autotrophic, they are
able to manufacture their own food from water, carbon dioxide, sunlight, and
inorganic molecules. They need to grow
where there is available sunlight. In
response to this need, plants are termed phototropic, that is, able to grow
toward a source of light.
In pioneering work in plant tropisms, Charles
Darwin in 1880 demonstrated that growing tips of plants bend toward a light
source. This phenomenon is known as
phototropism. Darwin also observed that some shade plants turn away from bright
light by a negative form of phototropism.
The turning is due to the action of the plant hormone auxin, which
causes elongation. On the side of a
plant facing the light the auxin is inactivated, and only the side away from
the light elongates; hence the plant tends to bend toward the light. As a result of phototropism, plants avoid
excessive shading by other plants. Phototropism stimulated by sunlight is
called heliotropism. As a result of
phototropism, plants avoid excessive shading by other plants. Other responses are observed in plant
growth.
When a seed germinates, the young root turns
downward regardless of the way in which the seed is planted. This bending, known as positive geotropism,
enables a plant to anchor itself in the soil.
The young stem, which turns upward away from the earth, is said to be
negatively geotropic. The positive
geotropism of roots may be modified if more water is present near the surface
of the soil than at greater depths. In
this case, roots tend to grow toward the source of water, a response known as
hydrotropism. Vines have to depend for
their support on other plants or surfaces, and the tendency of the vine to
respond to touch or contact with such supports is known as thigmotropism.
Vines may climb and support themselves by
twining their stems around plants or other objects, as in the nasturtium or the
mistletoe by attaching specialized tips of leaves known as tendrils, as in the
sweet pea or the Boston ivy, or by forming aerial roots during growth as in the
common ivy and the philodendron. In
1975 scientists observed that vine tips creep along the ground toward vertical
objects by responding to the stimulus of the darkest sector of the nearby
horizon. This response was termed
skototropism (growing toward darkness).
Entomology: Entomology is a
branch of zoology dealing with insects.
Although insects were studied as early as the 4th century bc, particularly by Aristotle, the
modern science did not begin to develop until the 17th century ad.
The science of entomology received great impetus in the 19th century,
largely as a result of the publication of “On the Origin of Species” (1859) by Charles Darwin, which
showed how the study of insects illuminates certain aspects of evolution. In the 20th century, entomological research
was further stimulated by successes in the search for solutions to medical and
economic problems involving insects.
Today, there is more research done and literature published annually in
this field than in any other branch of zoology.
Darwin’s Cousin Measures Intelligence
(Psychometrics):
Sir Francis Galton, a cousin of [British scientist] Charles Darwin, made
the first scientific attempt to measure intelligence.
Teleology: Teleology (Greek telos “end,” logos “discourse”) in philosophy, is the science or doctrine
that attempts to explain the universe in terms of ends or final causes.
Teleology is based on the proposition that the universe has design and
purpose. In Aristotelian philosophy,
the explanation of, or justification for, a phenomenon or process is to be
found not only in the immediate purpose or cause, but also in the “final
cause”—the reason for which the phenomenon exists or was created. In Christian theology, teleology represents
a basic argument for the existence of God, in that the order and efficiency of
the natural world seem not to be accidental.
If the world design is intelligent, an ultimate Designer must exist.
Teleologists
oppose mechanistic interpretations of the universe that rely solely on organic
development or natural causation. The
powerful impact of Charles Darwin's theories of evolution, which hold
that species develop by natural selection, has greatly reduced the influence of
traditional teleological arguments.
Nonetheless, such arguments were still advanced by many during the
upsurge of creationist sentiment in the early 1980s.
Since green plants are autotrophic, able to
manufacture their own food from water, carbon dioxide, sunlight, and inorganic
molecules, they need to grow where there is available sunlight. In response to this need, plants are termed
phototropic, that is, able to grow toward a source of light. Photo Researchers, Inc./R.J. Erwin pioneered
work in plant tropisms, and Charles Darwin in 1880 demonstrated that growing
tips of plants bend toward a light source.
This phenomenon is known as phototropism.
Darwin also observed that some shade plants turn
away from bright light by a negative form of phototropism. The turning is due to the action of the
plant hormone auxin, which causes elongation.
On the side of a plant facing the light the auxin is inactivated, and
only the side away from the light elongates; hence the plant tends to bend
toward the light. As a result of
phototropism, plants avoid excessive shading by other plants.
Phototropism stimulated by sunlight is called
heliotropism. As a result of
phototropism, plants avoid excessive shading by other plants. Other responses are observed in plant
growth. When a seed germinates, the
young root turns downward regardless of the way in which the seed is
planted. This bending, known as
positive geotropism, enables a plant to anchor itself in the soil. The young stem, which turns upward away from
the earth, is said to be negatively geotropic.
The positive geotropism of roots may be modified if more water is
present near the surface of the soil than at greater depths. In this case, roots tend to grow toward the
source of water, a response known as hydrotropism.
History of Paleontology: Modern paleontologists have used the fossil
record to further develop the theory of evolution. The collection and study of fossils began in the late 17th
century when English naturalist Robert Hooke examined fossils of marine
creatures from England. He realized
that these animals must have lived in different climatic conditions and were
now extinct. The field of paleontology
grew as more fossils of different ages were discovered around the globe.
English scientist Charles Darwin used the fossil
record to form his theory of evolution in the 1830s. Modern paleontologists have used the fossil record to further
develop the theory of evolution and to divide earth’s history into periods
based on the kinds of life that were present.
These periods begin with Precambrian time (about 4 billion to 570
million years before present) when earth was populated by soft-bodied organisms
whose remains were not well preserved, and extend through the current time
period, the Recent, or Holocene, Epoch (10,000 years before present to the
present time).
Tulip: Tulip is the common name for
any member of a genus of spring-flowering, bulbous herbs, of the lily
family. About 80 species of tulip
exist; these plants are native to Asia and the Mediterranean region, and
thousands of varieties are widely cultivated as garden flowers. Tulips are erect plants with long, broad,
parallel-veined leaves and cup-shaped, solitary flowers borne at the tip of the
stem. The flowers are either single or
double and occur in a wide range of solid colors. Some, called broken tulips, are varicolored as a result of a
viral disease carried and transferred to the plants by aphids.
The
garden tulip was introduced into western Europe from Constantinople
(present-day Istanbul) in the 16th century and soon achieved great
popularity. Interest in tulip growing
mounted, especially in Holland, where it developed by 1634 into a craze called
tulipomania. Wild speculation in tulip
stock ensued, and enormous prices were paid for single bulbs. After many people had gone bankrupt, the
crisis was ended by government regulation of the tulip trade. Tulip growing eventually became established
as an important Dutch industry, and tulip bulbs are still a major export of the
Netherlands. In the United States
tulips are grown commercially in Michigan and Washington.
Darwin’s Tulip:
Because of extensive hybridization, the origin of the garden tulip is
extremely difficult to trace. The
best-known varieties include the Darwin tulip, a late-flowering plant with
tall, strong stems and deep-colored blossoms; the parrot tulip, another
late-flowering type, which has petals wrinkled at the edges; and the
early-flowering Duc van Tol tulips, which rarely exceed 15 cm (6 in) in
height.
The International Holland Bulb Selections for 1968 included ten
tulips, a daffodil and a hyacinth, chosen because of their popularity with visitors to the Keukenhof gardens in Lisse, The
Netherlands. They were Mendel tulip
Athleet, Darwin tulip Flying Dutchman, Darwin tulip Stylemaster, Darwin tulip
Utopia, Darwin hybrid tulip Golden Apeldoorn, lily-flowered tulip Maytime,
Cottage tulip Asta Nielsen, Cottage tulip Bond Street, Cottage tulip Greenland
(also listed as Viridiflora or Green tulip), Parrot tulip Black Parrot,
daffodil Cheerfulness, and hyacinth Blue Giant.
Scientific
Classification: Tulips make up the
genus Tulipa of the family Liliaceae.
Volcano Darwin: There is a volcano named after Darwin in the center of the
Galapagos Islands, Ecuador, South America.
HMS
Eagle: Darwin’s job as naturalist aboard the
Beagle gave him the opportunity to observe the various geological formations
found on different continents and islands along the way, as well as a huge
variety of fossils and living organisms.
In his geological observations, Darwin was most impressed with the
effect that natural forces had on shaping the earth’s surface.
Wallace, Alfred Russel (1823-1913): British naturalist, collector of wildlife
specimens, author, and one of the first to formulate the groundbreaking theory
of evolution by natural selection.
Wallace's theory was made public at the same time as that of Charles
Robert Darwin. Wallace and Darwin
worked independently, each unaware of the other's research. Yet both developed the same insight into the
biological mechanism by which species gradually change by adapting to the
particular pressures and requirements of their environment. At a time when most people believed that
species were the fixed and unchanging product of divine creation, this theory
was revolutionary.
Born
in the small village of Usk, Wales, Wallace received his only formal education
in the one-room Hertford Grammar School.
Leaving school at age 14, Wallace joined his brother in London and began
to train as a surveyor. He also
embarked on an extensive program of self-education, attending lectures and
night classes, reading books about geology, optics, mathematics, botany, and
other subjects. He developed a keen
interest in wildlife and began collecting beetles. In 1849 he set off for the Amazon River with the British
naturalist Henry Walter Bates, convinced that he could make a living collecting
exotic specimens of wildlife for museums and universities.
Wallace
spent three years deep in the Amazon basin, collecting many species of fish,
insect, and plant life. He returned to
England with these specimens, establishing a reputation as a first-rate
wildlife collector. He set out again in
1854 on an eight-year trip to what was then known as the Malay
Archipelago—today, Indonesia and Malaysia.
On a journey that covered some 23,000 km (14,000 mi), Wallace collected
nearly 125,000 specimens of mammals, insects, shells, and reptiles. He also made careful observations of species
and how they varied. In particular, he
noted that different species separated by some geographical boundary, such as a
river, were in many instances very similar to one another.
While
in Malaysia, Wallace began to formulate his theory of natural selection, the
idea that competition for survival in a local environment exerts pressure on
populations to adapt. In effect, nature
selects the individuals with the best combinations of traits for survival. As these individuals pass their traits on to
their offspring, the number of individuals with this trait increases. Those individuals lacking the beneficial
traits gradually die off. As natural
selection works on a population that is adapting to a new environment, the
population may undergo such sufficient change that, in some cases, it will
become a distinct and separate species from its parent species.
In
1858, while still on his Malaysian journey, Wallace wrote a paper describing
his theory and sent it to Darwin.
Wallace was unaware that Darwin had been developing the same theory for
nearly two decades—although Darwin had not yet published it. Admirably, Darwin
elected to share credit with the younger naturalist. He arranged to have Wallace's paper and some of his own
unpublished writings read together at a scientific meeting of the Linnean
Society in London in June of 1858. The
next year, Darwin published On the Origin of Species, the book that made
the theory of natural selection famous.
Upon
his return to England, Wallace supported himself primarily as a writer and
lecturer. His written works include The Malay Archipelago (1869), Geographical
Distribution of Animals (1876), Darwinism (1889), and Man’s Place
in the Universe (1903). Later in
life Wallace became head of the Entomological Society and president of the
British Association, a scientific organization. His other distinctions included the Darwin Medal of the Royal
Society (1890), the Copley Medal of the Royal Society (1908), and the Order of
Merit (1908).
Helena Cronin said, “If it looks like a duck, walks like a duck,
quacks like a duck, it’s a social construct of a duck.” To a Darwinian, fashionable claims about
“the social construction of gender” are no less bizarre. Men and women look unalike, walk unalike,
talk unalike. They differ in who is
more competitive, single-minded and risk-taking.
Differences such as these are universal, transcending culture,
class, ethnicity, religion, education, and politics. They manifest themselves in all societies, across the modern
world, and in every known record back through time. And yet, it has been said that so-called “gender” differences are
just a social construct, a mere cultural artifact, as arbitrary; and therefore,
when it comes to explaining male-female differences, an evolutionary
understanding is irrelevant or marginal.
I hope to show why a Darwinian analysis is fundamental and
indispensable, and why to reject it is mistaken both scientifically and
pragmatically.
Let’s begin with the invention of formal sex, at least a billion
years ago. For a sexually reproducing
organism, reproductive investment divides into competing for mates and caring
for offspring. Originally, the two
sexes invested equally in these tasks.
But this arrangement turns out
to be unstable. Very soon, sex cells
had diverged. The total investment of
the two sexes remained equal. But some
organisms produced sex cells that were small, numerous, and low in nutrients,
each of which was cheap and mobile—sperm; sperm-bearers had thus specialized
somewhat in competing for mates.
Other organisms produced sex cells that were large, few, and
nutrient-rich, each of which donated essential provisions—eggs; egg-bearers had
thus specialized somewhat in caring for offspring. And so the divergence widens, generation after generation, down
evolutionary time, escalating even to such flagrant excesses as peacock versus
peahen—he investing prodigiously in competition, she correspondingly in child
care.
In human beings the divergence is more modest. But it nevertheless cleaves our species into two. For, although the differences originate in reproductive strategies, they permeate our psychology—our priorities, emotions, hopes, and desires.
Sexual Jealousy: Consider, for example,
sexual jealousy. Darwinian theory
predicts that male jealousy will focus heavily on sexual infidelity (because of
uncertainty of paternity) whereas female jealousy will focus more on emotional
involvement (because that could signal loss of resources). And this is what has indeed been found. In one study, 85 percent of women said that
emotional infidelity would upset them more, whereas only 40 per cent of men
said that it would. This has been
replicated in several cultures and corroborated using physiological measures of
stress.
Attitudes to Virginity: Darwin considered attitudes to
virginity. Darwinians expect a sex
difference, reflecting the difference in parental certainty. This was strikingly borne out in a study,
the most comprehensive ever made, of male-female psychological differences
(covering 37 cultures on 6 continents).
Universally, men valued women’s virginity more than women valued
men’s. Cultural differences make an
impact. But they merely shift the
extent to which people value virginity at all—a lot, for example, in Indonesia
and Iran, but very little in Finland and Sweden.
Women/Men Preferences: Universally, too, women preferred husbands
older than themselves; but there was not a single society in which men wanted
older wives. This difference reflects
women’s evolved preference for men with status (because status could deliver
resources for dependent offspring) and men’s preference for women with high
reproductive potential. For the same
reason, women universally tended to value men’s financial prospects (resources
in modern guise) more than men valued
women’s; and men universally cared more about women’s physical attractiveness
than vice versa.
Homicide Rates: Rates vary vastly from place to place and over time; compare, for
example, Iceland and Miami early in the 20th century, where the rates were
respectively less than one per million of the population a year and 1,100 per
million. But the sex difference is
invariant; and it is massive. About 95
per cent or more of all murderers are men, mostly young men. This faithfully reflects the Darwinian
expectation as to when male-male status competition will be most intense.
Prejudice Against Blacks: The rise of pseudoscientific racism and the
popularity of social-engineering ideas among Latin American white elites
militated against the social acceptance of the black population. The positivist followers of the French
philosopher Auguste Comte thought Africans were far from ready for the stage of
technical modernity, and neglected them.
Adherents of social Darwinism considered the African dimension of the
pluralistic society a sign of fundamental weakness
because they assumed the natural superiority of the white race. The preoccupation of Marxists with class
conditions dulled their awareness of the problems of race and color. Thus, the Latin American elites of the 19th
century refused to accept cultural pluralism, because they feared sharing power
with the domestic black populations.
Several Latin American nations adopted laws prohibiting black
immigration during the 19th century. In
most areas, the economic situation has not yet diversified or expanded
sufficiently to allow blacks to move out of menial occupations. Most of them, therefore, remain in the lowest
economic and social strata.
Guinness Book of Records: The most recondite aspects of life reflect
that same competitiveness—and single-mindedness, perseverance, and risk-taking,
all evidence of the lengths that males will go to in order to win. Overwhelmingly, it is men that hold the
records for “The Most” or “The First” or “The Greatest...,” however apparently
pointless the pursuit. Men are more
obsessive collectors—most notoriously of trains spotted but also of... well,
almost everything; they constitute the majority of serious collectors even of
such traditionally “women’s things” as kitchen implements. And whereas women tend to own objects for
sentimental reasons, men tend to collect them for their status or utility. It’s
no surprise to discover that women are more likely to buy classical recordings
to enjoy the music, men to complete the set.
And, from gambling to ballooning to motor racing to Russian roulette to
failing to apply sun block lotion, men are more ready to take risks.
Psychological Sex Differences: Tellingly, psychological sex differences
emerge as early as children’s play.
Boys opt for formal games, with a definite outcome that allows them to
be declared the winner; they quarrel repeatedly over the rules, with apparent
enjoyment, and are better than girls at competing with friends. Girls prefer unstructured play, without
rules and goals or winners and losers; and they waive formalities in favor of
consensus. Even among one-year olds,
girls are less willing to leave their mothers; boys are more independent,
exploratory, and active. And at just 20
months, girls choose dolls and kitchen toys whereas boys choose construction
and transport toys—not, of course, through innate preference for specific toys,
but because of what the toys offer.
“Men preferring younger women?
Darwinians have merely ‘discovered’ what we all knew already.” But we don’t all know this already. Results such as these fly in the face of
“the social construction of gender.”
Why such universality, such robustness?
Why divergence at such an early age?
Why do male-female differences show up even across huge cultural,
economic, social, political, religious, and historical divides? By contrast, evolutionary scientists have
not only found these results. They have
also explained them. The theory of natural selection both predicts that such
differences will exist and provides a scientific understanding of why they do.
The fashion for denying biological sex differences stems, I
believe, from good intentions. There is a fear that if sex differences are “in
the genes,” then a just and fair society, women and men having equal status, is
unattainable; instead, both sexes will be inexorably condemned to what is
“natural”—women minding babies and kitchen sinks, men striding forth into the
world to run it; and thus “socially constructed gender” is the only safe
sex. Well, the intentions are good, but
the science is bad.
Genes Influence Human Behavior: For a start, this position misunderstands
how genes influence human behavior. Far
from exerting rigid control, they underpin the behavioral flexibility and
variety that is so characteristic of our species. We are not destined to blunder through life like intractable
automata. We are designed to pick up
cues from our ever-changing surroundings, process that welter of information
and respond accordingly. That is why we surpass all other species on Earth in
our ability to behave appropriately, inventively, and ingeniously.
From the “automata” view follows a further misconception:
"that to change human behavior we would need to change our
genes." If our genetic endowment
really did exert a grip so impervious to environment, then it would perhaps be
true that little short of genetic engineering could deliver the world that we desire. But, given that our behavioral propensities
are designed to be sensitive to our circumstances, often exquisitely so, we do
not have to re-jig our genes in order to influence outcomes. It is genetic differences that account for
the vast difference in murder rates between men and women; but it is
environmental differences that account for the vast difference in murder rates
between men in Iceland and men in Miami.
Sex Differences Summary: In response to evidence of universality of
sex differences, it is commonly urged that the differences within the sexes are
greater than the differences between them. The implicit conclusion, I assume,
is that many women are likely to be at the male end of the axis and vice
versa. But, even if this is true, it is
seriously misleading if equity of outcome is at stake. For it would still be the case that the
outliers would be almost exclusively of one sex. Thus any positions that are necessarily rationed to one or a
few—from presidents to prizewinners—would be vanishingly unlikely to be shared
equally between the sexes. Rather than
helping to tackle this problem, anodyne assertions about “differences within
and differences between” serve to obscure it.
It is sexist discrimination that is iniquitous, not sex differences. If the aim is to combat inequity, then it is
inequity, not science, that should be opposed.
Indeed, a scientific understanding should be welcomed. Science cannot dictate values; it cannot
tell us what our goals should be. But
it can help us to achieve those goals.
Scientific understanding of how the sexes differ can help us to devise
policies that are fair to both sexes.
Louis Leakey Speaks on Evolution:
British paleoanthropologist Louis
Leakey explains that his recent archaeological finds had proven a theory
advanced by Charles Darwin that human beings, apes, and Old World monkeys
shared a common ancestor and that Africa was the cradle of human evolution.
Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde: The physical appearance of Mr. Hyde bears
some resemblance to the racist descriptions of stereotypical “Irish” persons in
newspapers and political tracts of the late 1800s, and to non-British
Caucasians. To this extent, the author
does not transcend his own elitist upbringing.
Mr. Hyde is supposed to represent the “base drives” from which Dr.
Jekyll would like to free himself, and so he has the physical appearance that racists scorned in the so-called “lower
orders.” Social Darwinists regarded the
Irish people and non-British Caucasians as less highly evolved than the British
and Northern Europeans.
Ari Atoll: An atoll is a ring-shaped coral island surrounding a central lagoon, primarily found in the tropical waters of the Indian and Pacific oceans. British scientist Charles Darwin believed an atoll was formed when an island encircled by coral reef gradually sank into the sea, leaving a lagoon behind. Ari Atoll is a cluster of small islands in the Maldives.
Novelist Antonio Fogazzaro: Another antagonist of realism was the poet
and novelist Antonio Fogazzaro.
Although a sincere Roman Catholic, he campaigned for acceptance of the
theories of British scientist Charles Darwin, and in “Ilsanto” 1905; and “The
Saint” 1906, he espoused a form of religious modernism that brought him
condemnation by Roman Catholic authorities.
His novels see a way out of the moral crisis resulting from social
revolution and advances in
science. Fogazzaro’s novels include
Malombra (1881; The Woman, 1907), Daniele Cortis (1885; trans. 1887), and
Piccolo mondo antico (1896; The
Patriot, 1906). The latter, also translated as Little World of the Past, 1962, is
generally considered his best work.
Humans First Evolved in Africa: Nineteenth-century naturalist Charles Darwin
pointed out that tropical Africa held the greatest diversity of apes, including
the chimpanzee, the closest living primate relative of humans. He argued that human evolution therefore had
its origins in Africa. Since then,
scientists have confirmed that the earliest hominid fossils come from Africa,
including the first toolmakers 2.5 million years ago. Nowhere else does the fossil record go back so far, so Darwin was
almost certainly correct.
Life and the Cosmos: Cosmologists go back before Darwin's “simple
beginning” and aim to set our solar system in a grand evolutionary scheme
stretching back to the emergence of the Milky Way galaxy—right back, even, to
the big bang that set our entire observable universe expanding. The sun's light takes eight minutes to reach
the Earth, and only a few hours to pass beyond Neptune and Pluto, the outermost
planets. The solar system is a
minuscule foreground feature in a vista of stars and galaxies stretching for
billions of light years. But even if we
knew nothing of the vast spatial scales revealed by modern telescopes, the solar
system itself stretches our conception of time scales to an extent that is hard
to relate to human (or even historical) perspectives. Moreover, our own star, the sun, is less than halfway through its
life. We are still near the “simple
beginning” of the evolutionary story.
Sociobiology: Although the term sociobiology is of recent coinage, the problems
the discipline seeks to resolve have been recognized for many years. Indeed, in the 19th century the main founder
of evolutionary theory, Charles Darwin, had already attempted to deal with the
question of altruism: the willingness of one individual to do favors for
another, even if the donor thereby reduces or even forecloses its own
opportunity to have offspring.
Examples of altruism include the caring for young by sterile
worker ants and bees and the sacrificial defense of young by older
animals. Even grooming a fellow
creature takes time away from selfish activities that, in the long run, might
increase an animal’s reproductive potential.
In attempting to reconcile altruism with natural selection, Darwin
foreshadowed the thesis later developed by sociobiologists: that the performer
of an altruistic act, though forfeiting some part of its own contribution to
the gene pool of the next generation, nevertheless contributes to the survival
of others of the species. But how
selection can reward such sacrifice was unclear to Darwin; in time, the genes
predisposing altruism should become uncommon and then go extinct, since their
possessors are reproducing less often than animals lacking them.
Agriculture/Horticulture: In 1881 Charles Darwin wrote a book
“Vegetable Mold and Earthworms,” and gardeners have long realized that their
burrowing lightened the loam, and that their castings contained the three chief
nutritive elements for plants; i.e. nitrogen, phosphorous and potassium. It is probable however, that the present
trend toward exalting the earthworm as the gardener's friend and savior
will shake down with a season or two to its proper and not too prominent place
in the broad picture of soil maintenance and improvement. A point usually overlooked
in discussion about earthworms is that they are pretty certain to develop
rapidly (without being artificially introduced) in any soil well supplied with humus
and otherwise properly cared for, as it should be to produce good crops.
What happens to the seeds?
It is not known what happens to the vast numbers of seeds produced by
flowering plants, although Charles Darwin did show that earthworms were important
both in tilling the soil and moving seeds.
But what happens to the seeds in the earthworm? Are they digested or do they pass
through? At the University College of
North Wales, M. McRill and G. R. Sagar fed earthworms with various kinds of
grass and clover seeds, recovered these from the worm casts, and measured their
germination rate. Worms showed marked feeding preferences, eating 60 percent of
the meadow grass seeds that were offered
but only 3 percent of the rye grass and none of the barley. Of the seeds eaten, however, only one-third
of the meadow grass seeds were recovered, while two-thirds of the rye grass and
clover seeds passed through the worm undigested.
It was found that passage through the worm increased the
germination rate of all the species tested.
With some of the grasses the rate rose from 70 to 90 percent, but in the
case of the clover the rate almost doubled, from 8 to 15 percent. Since most of the clover seed passes through
the worm, it is clear that the worm is an important link in the life cycle, not
only to distribute the seed but also to prepare it for germination. Presumably, too, the worm does not lose out
on the deal as it digests some material off the seeds.
Pollination Puzzle Solved: A scientific question dating back to the
days of Darwin seems to have been answered.
Botanists long wondered why some plants can fertilize themselves and
others must rely on cross-pollination with other plants of the same species. Researchers, working with the genes of petunias, recently reported finding direct evidence of a
self-incompatibility gene in plants that cannot pollinate themselves. According
to the researchers, the gene called an S gene, is designed to let a plant's
pistil recognize pollen produced by itself.
The gene for self-recognition is turned on in some plants but not in
others. To test their hypothesis,
researchers altered the petunias' self-recognition gene, inserting so-called
antisense DNA, which mirrors normal DNA.
The modified petunias were able to fertilize themselves. The discovery could be useful in commercial
agriculture.
Wilderness: Throughout
the 19th century, a growing chorus of artists and writers praised the virtues
of America’s wilderness. Romantic
writers and painters glorified upland and mountain scenes, places of boundless
horizon and natural vitality. Writer
and naturalist Henry David Thoreau was the earliest proponent of wilderness
protection, claiming that “useless” mountains and swamps were in fact cultural
treasures that should be left undisturbed.
“In Wildness is the preservation of the World,” he wrote, basing that
belief on his study of the works of British scientist Charles Darwin whose
theory of evolution
described nature not as an orderly and fixed structure, but one of dynamic, seething
change.
Social Sensitivity: “The Yellow Wallpaper” was written and
published in 1892. The last three
decades of the 19th century comprised a period of growth, development, and
expansion for the United States.
Following the Civil War, which ended in 1865, the United States entered
the era of Reconstruction, which lasted until 1877. There were many social and cultural changes during this
time. Charles Darwin’s Origin of
Species (1859) expounded his theory of evolution, and further incited controversy
over women’s roles and issues.
His theory of evolution flouted conventional wisdom, contending
that women were actually more hardy and therefore more necessary than males
because they were able to preserve the species. Because women were mothers, they were vital to survival. Darwin’s
theory was used to promote both sides of
what came to be known as the “Woman Question.”
Some scientists argued that because women were physiologically robust,
they were capable of being both mothers and professionals. Others contended that Darwin’s theory proved
that motherhood was necessary to women, and that it should retain a supreme
priority in a woman’s life.
Behaviorism: A movement in psychology that advocates the use of strict
experimental procedures to study observable behavior (or responses) in relation
to the environment (or stimuli). The
behavioristic view of psychology has its roots in the writings of the British
associationist philosophers, as well as in the American functionalist school of
psychology and the Darwinian theory of evolution, both of which emphasize the
way that individuals adapt and adjust to the environment.
Utilitarianism: Other notable exponents were the British jurist John Austin and
the British philosophers James Mill and John Stuart Mill. Austin set forth a strong defense of the
utilitarian theory in his Province of Jurisprudence Determined (1832). James Mill interpreted and popularized the
theory in a number of articles contributed for the most part to the Westminster
Review, a periodical founded by Bentham and others to promote the spread of the
utilitarian philosophy.
John Stuart Mill, who made utilitarianism the subject of one of
his philosophical treatises (Utilitarianism,1863), is the ablest champion of
the doctrine after Bentham. His
contribution to the theory consists of his recognition of distinctions in
quality, in addition to those of intensity and pleasure. Thus, whereas Bentham maintained that the
“quality of pleasure being equal, push-pin [a child's game] is as good as
poetry,” Mill contended that “it is better to be a human being dissatisfied
than a pig satisfied,” that is, human discontent is better than animal
fulfillment. By this statement Mill
seems to have rejected the identification of the concept “happiness” with
“pleasure and the absence of pain” and the concept “unhappiness” with “pain and the absence of pleasure,” as found in
Bentham's works and in his own earlier formulations.
The British philosopher Henry Sidgwick, a contemporary disciple of
Mill, gave a comprehensive presentation of Mill's utilitarianism in his Methods
of Ethics (1874). Somewhat later, the British philosophers Herbert Spencer and
Sir Leslie Stephen, the former in his Data of Ethics (1879), the latter in his
Science of Ethics (1882), sought to synthesize the utilitarian theory with the
principles of biological evolution as expounded in the works of Charles
Darwin. Both the American philosopher
and psychologist William James and the American philosopher, psychologist, and
educator John Dewey were influenced by utilitarianism. Dewey substituted intelligence for pleasure,
or happiness, both as the supreme value and as the most reliable method of achieving other desirable values.
Darwin's Frog: Most amphibians that lay their eggs in water leave them
unattended, but in species that deposit their eggs on land, a parent commonly
guards the eggs to prevent hungry predators from stealing them. Many species of frogs show remarkable forms
of parental care. For instance, the male Darwin’s frog in Chile picks up the eggs
deposited on the ground by its partner and carries them in his vocal sac until
they develop into adults.
Volcano Darwin: There
is a volcano named after Darwin in the center of the Galapagos Islands,
Ecuador, South America.
Origin of Disease: Evolutionary biology is, of course, the
scientific foundation for all biology, and biology is the foundation for all
medicine. To a surprising degree,
however, evolutionary biology is just now being recognized as a basic medical
science. The enterprise of studying
medical problems in an evolutionary context
has been termed Darwinian medicine.
Most medical research tries to explain the cause of an individual's
disease and seek therapy to cure or relieve deleterious conditions. These efforts are traditionally based on
consideration of proximate issues, the straightforward study of the body's
anatomic and physiological mechanisms as they currently exist. In contrast, Darwinian medicine asks why the
body is designed in a way that makes us all
vulnerable to problems like cancer, atherosclerosis, depression and choking, thus offering a broader context in which to conduct
research.
Immune System Linked to the Darwin Theory: The somatic theory does not accept this
approach. It is argued that the immune
system needs millions of different antibodies for epitope recognition. Individual mice of an inbred strain, all
having the same germ-line genes, have been shown to make use of entirely
different sets of antibody molecules.
The germline theory implies that the set of all these sets is
represented in the genes of every single mouse of that strain. In that case, however, many of the genes
would seem to have no survival value for the mouse, so that such a large number
of genes cannot arise or be maintained in Darwinian evolution. Most antibody genes must therefore have
arisen in the course of the somatic development of the individual by
modification of a smaller number of germ-line genes. That is the point of departure for several variants of the
somatic theory.
Darwin Under Fire: The publication of Charles Darwin's Origin
of Species was the most controversial biological event of the 19th
century. Now, almost 100 years after
Darwin's death, his theory of evolution by natural selection is again at the
center of fierce scientific debate.
Biologists explain the diversity of modern organisms by the control of
the environment exerts on their survival and breeding success (natural
selection). Normal populations are
never genetically uniform; they vary slightly in many attributes, such as size
or color. Individuals best suited to
their environment are more likely to survive and breed, passing on their favorable genes to the next generation. Less suitable genes are eliminated.
Over long periods the character of a species can change, or two
species may emerge from a common ancestor. The chief alternative theory of
evolution, opposed to natural selection, was formulated by French biologist
Jean Lamarck in the early 19th century.
He suggested that environmental influences were passed on by direct
transmission to offspring of characteristics acquired by the parents during
their lifetime, rather than by selective mortality among a varied stock of
potential parents. An anteater, trying
to feed in deeper holes, develops a longer tongue. Lamarck predicted that its offspring would possess a longer
tongue at birth. This theory is simple
and attractive, but it has not been borne out by experiment, and it runs
counter to all known genetics.
Understanding Gaia Theory: For most of the 20th century scientists held
that conditions on Earth are comfortable for life because, by good fortune, the
chemical composition of our planet and its distance from the Sun are exactly
right. If the Earth were closer to the
Sun, conditions on Earth would be too hot, and if the Sun were farther away,
the Earth would be too cold. Biologists
since Charles Darwin’s day in the 19th century have taught that living
organisms adapt to Earth’s conditions, and Earth scientists have long taught
that geological forces alone determine conditions on the Earth.
Emotional Display in Dog and Cat: British naturalist Charles Darwin was one of
the first scientists to study emotion.
In “The Expression of Emotion in Man and Animals (1872),” Darwin
observed that dogs growl and draw back their ears and lips as a sign of
savageness. When cats are terrified,
they hiss or growl, arch their back, draw back their ears, and expose their
teeth, and their hair becomes erect.
Darwin believed that some of these expressions evolved from movements
originally associated with fighting and gradually came to be used in any
threatening situation.
Charles Darwin Influenced by Adam Sedgwick: Charles Darwin was
greatly influenced by the geologist Adam Sedgwick and naturalist John Henslow
in his development of the theory of natural selection, which was to become the
foundation concept supporting the theory of evolution. Darwin’s theory holds that environmental
effects lead to varying degrees of reproductive success in individuals and
groups of organisms. Natural selection
tends to promote adaptation in organisms when necessary for survival. This revolutionary theory was published in
1859 in Darwin’s now famous treatise, “On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural
Selection.”
18th Century Political and Cultural Realignment: During
the second half of the 19th century, two philosophies reacted to the exaltation
and emotional and idealistic excesses of romanticism: positivism and
determinism. Positivism focused not on
the individual as challenger of the status quo, as romanticism had, but rather
on the place of the individual within society.
Positivists believed that progress and knowledge came from observation
and experience of the world.
Determinism
gave little credit to the individual as a shaper of his or her life. Instead, it stressed the importance of
outside forces and events over which the individual has little or no control. Determinism was reinforced by the theories
of British
scientist Charles Darwin and Austrian physician Sigmund Freud. Darwin’s theories of evolution and survival
of the fittest and Freud’s theory of the unconscious suggested that externally
and internally human beings were driven by a set of circumstances outside their
control.
Evolutionary Mechanisms in Pollination: H. G. Baker of the University of California
recently reopened a field of study in evolution that was first investigated by
Charles Darwin in 1862. Darwin noted
the close relationship between the copulatory habits of certain
insects and the form of certain orchid flowers. He observed that the orchids had evolved an intricate floral form
that has an insect like appearance and hairiness, which attract and stimulate
the male bee to attempt copulation with the flower. In the process the insect transfers pollen to the flower, picks
up the flower's pollen, and carries it to other flowers.
Since Darwin's study little work on the
evolution of the special mechanisms of plants and their animal pollen vectors
had been accomplished. Several
investigators observed close relationships for pollination between particular
flowering plant species and certain insects, hummingbirds, and bats, but little
consistent effort was made to determine the true evolutionary relationships in
this complicated interplay. Baker, in a
summary report, "Evolutionary Mechanisms in Pollination Biology," in
Science, and in a talk given at a symposium sponsored by the Missouri Botanical
Garden, St. Louis, Mo., showed that the evolution of the flower
has not been as strictly dependent upon a specific animal vector as was
previously thought. He did indicate,
however, that pollinating mechanisms have a much more intricate
interrelationship than was formerly believed.
Mythology: Later in the 19th century the theory of evolution put forward by
English naturalist Charles Darwin heavily influenced the study of
mythology. Scholars excavated the
history of mythology, much as they would
excavate fossil-bearing geological formations, for relics from the distant
past. This approach can be seen in the
work of British anthropologist Edward Burnett Tylor.
In “Primitive Culture,” (1871) Tylor organized the religious and
philosophical development of humanity into separate and distinct evolutionary
stages. Similarly, British
anthropologist Sir James George Frazer proposed a three-stage evolutionary
scheme in The Golden Bough (3rd edition, 1912–1915). According to Frazer’s scheme, human beings first attributed natural phenomena to arbitrary supernatural forces (magic), later
explaining them as the will of the gods (religion), and finally subjecting them
to rational investigation (science).
Aristúbulo Isturiz became the first black mayor of the Federal
District of Caracas, Venezuela, in 1992 and served in the post until 1995. Clarin Racism in Venezuela was especially
apparent from the 1890s to the 1930s.
During that period white elites openly subscribed to white supremacist
theories, such as British philosopher Herbert Spencer’s version of social
Darwinism (see Eugenics). They called
for the regeneration of the Venezuelan “race” by whitening the population. This they hoped to accomplish by overwhelming
the nation’s black population with European immigrants. Using Venezuelan historian and writer José
Gil Fortoul’s definition of race as a social or cultural phenomenon, they
believed they could incorporate nonwhites, through mestizaje, into a
predominantly white race within a few generations.
During this period, Venezuela’s elites equated whiteness with what
they called “civilization,” or a modern European culture. In any number of ways they discriminated
against blacks, whom they satirized in cartoons, magazine articles and
advertisements, theater, and fiction.
Nowhere did positive images of blacks appear to offset the widely held
notion of black inferiority and backwardness.
Creationism: Orthodoxy, at least as it is defined by fundamentalist Christians, did make itself felt on the legislative front in several states this year. The fundamentalist belief that Charles Darwin's theory of the evolution of species contradicts the biblical doctrine of divine creation has prompted a number of organizations to campaign with some success against the teaching of evolution in the classroom and in textbooks. Increasingly pressured by these "creationists" in recent years, over 20 state legislatures have considered bills requiring public schools to give equal treatment to "scientific creationism," which the creationists claim is scientific evidence that the world was literally created by God in six days as described in the book of Genesis. In March, Arkansas became the first state to pass such legislation, followed by Louisiana in July. In both states, however, coalitions of educational, religious, and civil liberties groups sued to have the laws declared unconstitutional.
Humans First Evolved in Africa: Nineteenth-century naturalist Charles Darwin pointed out that tropical Africa held the greatest diversity of apes, including the chimpanzee, the closest living primate relative of humans. He argued that human evolution therefore had its origins in Africa. Since then, scientists have confirmed that the earliest hominid fossils come from Africa, including the first toolmakers 2.5 million years ago. Nowhere else does the fossil record go back so far, so Darwin was almost certainly correct.
Prejudice Against Blacks: The
rise of pseudoscientific racism and the popularity of social-engineering ideas
among Latin American white elites militated against
the social acceptance of the black population.
The positivist followers of the French philosopher Auguste Comte thought
Africans were far from ready for the stage of technical modernity and neglected
them. Adherents of social Darwinism considered
the African dimension of the pluralistic society a sign of fundamental weakness
because they assumed the natural superiority of the white race. The preoccupation of Marxists with class
conditions dulled their awareness of the problems of race and color.
Thus, the Latin American elites of the 19th century refused to
accept cultural pluralism because they feared sharing power with the domestic
black populations. Several Latin
American nations adopted laws prohibiting black immigration during the 19th
century. In most areas, the economic
situation has not yet diversified or expanded sufficiently to allow blacks to
move out of menial occupations. Most of
them, therefore, remain in the lowest economic and social strata.
1928 Arkansas Law: Church-state relations and schools. In March, Arkansas adopted a law requiring public schools to teach "creation science" or "creationism" along with the Darwinian theory of evolution. A 1928 Arkansas law banning the teaching of evolution had been struck down by the Supreme Court in 1968. In July, Louisiana became the second state to require the teaching of evolution and creationism equally in science classes. The Arkansas statute was challenged in court.
Monkey Trial: On August 20, U.S. District Judge Frank Gray, Jr., declared unconstitutional a 1973 state law requiring that public school textbooks give equal representation to the Biblical account of creation. The decision, which coincided with a similar ruling by the state supreme court, came just over 50 years after the "monkey trial" conviction of John Scopes, a Tennessee schoolteacher who defied state law by teaching Darwinian theories of evolution to his high school class.
Tennessee's Second Big Censorship Trial of the Century: Tennessee's second big
censorship trial of the century, dubbed the Scopes trial of the '80's, was
argued this year in federal district court in Greeneville. In a celebrated 1925 case, John T. Scopes
was tried in Dayton for teaching Charles Darwin's theory of evolution in a state-supported
school. In the Greeneville case,
fundamentalist parents contended that their children were being exposed in the
public schools to books that had feminist leanings, promoted the concept of
evolution, and exemplified "secular humanism." Arguing that they should be able to choose
alternative texts for their children, the parents sued the Hawkins County
school board over a Holt, Rinehart & Winston basic reading series and other
books.
Concerned Women for America, an ultraconservative group, helped
fund the parents' suit, and People for the American Way, a civil liberties
group founded by television producer Norman Lear, helped defend the case. Judge Thomas Hull had dismissed the parents'
case in December 1983, but the Sixth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals ordered him
to try the case. In late October, after a no jury trial held in July, he ruled that the
plaintiffs' children could be excused from class while the offending books were
used and be taught to read at home. An
appeal was filed by the school board.
Pope John Paul Reviewing Evolution: In October, in a statement to the Pontifical Academy of
Sciences, Pope John Paul aligned papal authority more firmly behind the theory
of evolution, saying, "fresh knowledge leads to recognition of the theory
of evolution as more than just a hypothesis." Pope Pius XII had allowed in 1950 that evolution was a
"serious hypothesis." But the
pope did not mention Darwin by name nor allude to views of humans evolving from
other species, such as from apes. He
also contended that human beings have a dimension beyond the physical and that
the spiritual aspect of human life cannot be explained scientifically.
Westminster Abbey: English monarchs since William the Conqueror in 1066 have been crowned in the abbey, and many from Edward's time until 1760 (George II) are buried in its chapels. The tombs of famous citizens—among them the poet Geoffrey Chaucer, the physicist Isaac Newton, and the naturalist Charles Darwin—are located in the main church of the abbey. The abbey also contains monuments to prominent political figures and, in the four bays and aisles comprising the Poets' Corner, tributes to Shakespeare and other outstanding literary personages.
Wedding between Thomas Jefferson and Charles R. Darwin: The
outcome of the situation was a wedding between Thomas Jefferson and Charles
Darwin, the truism of the household thus formed being, "All men are
created equal, but the fittest survive."
In order to dislodge their former field hands who were sitting in the seats
formerly occupied by Thomas Jefferson and John C. Calhoun, the more scrupulous
among the whites were allowed to take back seats, while the less scrupulous
resorted to violence and fraud to restore the government to the hands of its
former rulers, a result well pleasing to all of them.
Communication Among Animals: Expand
Humans are not the only creatures that communicate; many other animals exchange
signals and signs that help them find food, migrate, or reproduce. The 19th-century biologist Charles Darwin
showed that the ability of a species to exchange information or signals about
its environment is an important factor in its biological survival. For example, honeybees dance in specific
patterns that tell other members of the hive where to find food. Insects regularly use pheromones, a special
kind of hormone, to attract mates.
Elephants emit very low-pitched sounds, below the level of human
hearing, that call other members of the herd over many miles. Chimpanzees use
facial expressions and body language to express dominance or affection with
each other. Whales and dolphins make
vocal clicks, squeals, or sing songs to exchange information about feeding and
migration, and to locate each other.
Quotes:
Charles Galton Darwin: "But in science the credit goes to the
man who convinces the world, not to the man to whom the idea first
occurs."
Francis Darwin: "Old ideas give way slowly; for they are more
than abstract logical forms and categories.
They are habits, predispositions, deeply engrained attitudes of aversion
and preference."
John Dewey: "We do not solve them: we get over them."
John Dewey: "The
evolution of the human race will not be accomplished in the ten thousand years
of tame animals, but in the million years of wild animals, because man is and
will always be a wild animal."
Charles Galton Darwin:
"But in science the credit goes to the man who convinces the world,
not to the man to whom the idea first occurs."
Francis Darwin: " Science...commits suicide when it adopts a
creed."
T. H. Huxley: "Old ideas give way slowly; for they are more
than abstract logical forms and categories.
They are habits, predispositions, deeply engrained attitudes of aversion
and preference."
John Dewey: “The
chairman doesn't want someone under him who is a threat, so he picks someone a
little less capable. It's like an anti-Darwinian theory—the survival of the
unfittest.”
Carl
Icahn: "What Galileo and Newton were to the seventeenth
century, Darwin was to the nineteenth."
Bertrand Russell: "One of the lessons from the Darwinian
world is that the excellence of an organism's nervous system helps determine
its ability to sense change and quickly respond, thereby surviving or even
thriving".
Bill Gates: "Just as Darwin discovered the law of the
evolution of organic matter, so Marx discovered the law of the evolution of
human history".
Friedrich Engels: "I
never know whether to be more surprised at Darwin himself for making so much of
natural selection, or at his opponents for making so little of it."
Robert Louis Stevenson:
"It is no secret that...there are many to whom Mr. Darwin's death
is a wholly irreparable loss. And this not merely because of his wonderfully
genial, simple, and generous nature; his cheerful and animated conversation,
and the infinite variety and accuracy of his information; but because the more
one knew of him, the more he seemed the incorporated ideal of a man of
science."
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Huxley, Thomas Henry Bibliography, Microsoft ® Encarta ® Reference
Library 2004. © 1993-2003 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.
Education History of Darwin , Microsoft ® Encarta ® Reference
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The Age of the Earth Debate, Microsoft ® Encarta ® Reference
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Heredity, Microsoft ® Encarta ® Reference Library 2004. ©
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Eugenics, Contributed by: Peter Hudson, Microsoft ® Encarta ® Reference Library 2004. © 1993-2003 Microsoft
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Hegelian Ethics, Microsoft ® Encarta ® Reference Library 2004. ©
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Friedrich Nietzsche’s Theory of the Übermensch, by Spake
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Classification, Microsoft ® Encarta ® Reference Library 2004. ©
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Psychology, Microsoft ® Encarta ® Reference Library 2004. ©
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Ecology, Microsoft ® Encarta ® Reference Library 2004. © 1993-2003
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Spencer, Herbert, First Principles, 1862; Principles of Biology (2
volumes, 1864-1867), Principles of Sociology (3 volumes, 1876-1896), and
Principles of Ethics (2 volumes, 1892-1893).
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Charles Darwin, “On the Origin of Species,” 1859, Microsoft ®
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Stratigraphy, Contributed by: Martin Gregg Miller, Microsoft ®
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Race Without Color, Microsoft ® Encarta ® Reference Library 2004.
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Comparative Anatomy, Microsoft ® Encarta ® Reference Library 2004.
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Homo Erectus Discovery, Dorling Kindersley, Microsoft ® Encarta ®
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Darwin's Hawk Moth, Microsoft ® Encarta ® Reference Library 2004.
© 1993-2003 Microsoft Corporation. All
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Race, Microsoft ® Encarta ® Reference Library 2004. © 1993-2003
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Child Development, Microsoft ® Encarta ® Reference Library 2004. ©
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Aristotle, Microsoft ® Encarta ® Reference Library 2004. ©
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Agassiz, (Jean) Louis Rodolphe, Contributed by: Newton E. Morton,
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Entomology, Microsoft ® Encarta ® Reference Library 2004. ©
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Darwin’s Cousin Measure Intelligence, Microsoft ® Encarta ®
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Pragmatism, Microsoft ® Encarta ® Reference Library 2004. ©
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Oparin, Aleksandr Ivanovich, Microsoft ® Encarta ® Reference
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Teleology, Microsoft ® Encarta ® Reference Library 2004. ©
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Plant Tropism, Microsoft ® Encarta ® Reference Library 2004. ©
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Photo Researchers, Inc./R.J. Erwin, Microsoft ® Encarta ®
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Plant Tropism, Microsoft ® Encarta ® Reference Library 2004. ©
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History of Paleontology, Microsoft ® Encarta ® Reference Library
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Darwinian
Insights into Sex and Gender By Helena Cronin, Microsoft ® Encarta ® Reference
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Nina
Rodrigues, Raimundo, Microsoft ® Encarta ® Reference Library 2004. © 1993-2003
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Ari
Atoll, Maldives, Microsoft ® Encarta ® Reference Library 2004. © 1993-2003
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Understanding
Gaia Theory, By James Lovelock, 1993-2003 Microsoft Corporation. © 1993-2003
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Charles
Darwin, The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals, Third Edition
published by Oxford University Press 1998, Microsoft ® Encarta ® Reference
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Charles
Darwin Influenced by Adam Sedgwick, Microsoft ® Encarta ® Reference Library 2004.
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Griggs
Overshadowed, Microsoft ® Encarta ® Reference Library 2004. © 1993-2003
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Westminster
Abbey, Microsoft ® Encarta ® Reference Library 2004. © 1993-2003 Microsoft
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Utilitarianism,
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Botany,
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Ari Atoll, Maldives, Microsoft ® Encarta ® Reference Library 2004.
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The
Synthetic Theory, Owen, Richard, Microsoft ® Encarta ®
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Darwinian Insights into Sex and Gender By Helena Cronin, Microsoft
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Charles Galton Darwin (1887 - 1962) British physicist, The Next
Ten Million Years,
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Francis Darwin (1848 - 1925) British Scientist, Eugenics Review,
First Galton Lecture before the Eugenics Society, Microsoft ® Encarta ®
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John Dewey (1859 - 1952) U.S. Philosopher and Educator, "The
Influence of Darwinism on Philosophy," Microsoft ® Encarta ® Reference
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John Dewey, referring to dealing with philosophical, and other
questions. "The Influence of
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Charles Galton Darwin (1887 - 1962) British Physicist, The Next
Ten Million Years
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Francis Darwin (1848 - 1925) British Scientist, Eugenics Review,
First Galton Lecture
Before the Eugenics Society, Microsoft ® Encarta ® Reference
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T. H. Huxley (1825 - 1895) British Biologist, Darwiniana,
"The Darwin Memorial,"
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John Dewey (1859 - 1952) U.S. Philosopher and Educator, "The
Influence of Darwinism on Philosophy," Microsoft ® Encarta ® Reference
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Carl
Icahn (1936 -) U.S. Financier and Business Executive, referring to
American boardrooms, Fortune,
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Bertrand Russell (1872 -
1970), British philosopher and mathematician, A History of Western Philosophy,
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Bill Gates (1955 -), U.S.
Business Executive, The New York Times, "Leaders Must be Candid,
Consistent", Microsoft ® Encarta ® Reference Library 2004. © 1993-2003
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Friedrich Engels (1820 -
1895), German socialist. Said at the funeral of Karl Marx.
Remark, Microsoft ® Encarta ® Reference Library 2004. © 1993-2003
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Wallace, Alfred Russel, Contributed By: Christopher King,
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Haeckel, Ernst Heinrich, Contributed By: Carol Grant Gould and
James L. Gould,
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Eldredge is the author of more than 160 publications, including
The Monkey Business: A Scientist Looks at Creationism (1982), Time Frames
(1985), Fossils: The Evolution and Extinction of Species (1991), The Miner's
Canary (1991), Reinventing Darwin (1995), and Dominion (1995). Microsoft ® Encarta ® Reference Library
2004. © 1993-2003 Microsoft Corporation.
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Owen, Richard, Contributed By: William A. S. Sarjeant, Microsoft ® Encarta ® Reference Library 2004. © 1993-2003 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.
Louis Leakey Speaks on Evolution, Microsoft ® Encarta ® Reference
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Crowther, Samuel Ajayi (1806-1891), the first African Anglican
Bishop, Contributed By: Robert Fay, Microsoft ® Encarta ® Reference Library
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Vries, Hugo Marie de, Contributed By: Garland E. Allen and Randy
Bird, Microsoft ® Encarta ® Reference Library 2004. © 1993-2003 Microsoft
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Sir Richard Owen, Microsoft ® Encarta ® Reference Library 2004. ©
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Ari Atoll, Maldives, Microsoft ® Encarta ® Reference Library 2004.
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rights reserved.
Understanding Gaia Theory, by James Lovelock, 1993-2003 Microsoft Corporation.
©1993-2003, Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.
Charles Darwin, The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals,
Third Edition published by Oxford University Press 1998, Microsoft ® Encarta ®
Reference Library 2004. © 1993-2003 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.
Charles Darwin Influenced by Adam Sedgwick, Microsoft ® Encarta ®
Reference Library 2004. © 1993-2003 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.
Botany,
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Nina Rodrigues, Raimundo, Microsoft ® Encarta ® Reference Library
2004. © 1993-2003 Microsoft Corporation. All rights reserved.