Tuesday January 20th:
The Darwinian Revolution
An introduction to Darwin, evolution by natural selection, and the history of what we call the "Darwinian Revolution."

Tuesday January 27th:
Class cancelled due to inclement weather.

Thursday January 29th:
Before the Origin: Evolution in France.  Jean Baptiste Lamarck.
Contrary to popular belief, the majority of the thinking public did not believe the Genesis story to be literally true prior to the publication of Darwin’s Origin of Species in 1859.  Jean Baptiste Lamarck (1744-1829) is widely credited with originating the first workable theory of evolution a full half-century before the Origin.  A French botanist and Professor of Invertebrate Zoology at the National Museum in Paris, Lamarck argued in his Zoological Philosophy (1809), that organisms could change from generation to generation through the mechanism of the “inheritance of acquired characters”: Abilities or traits that an organism developed during the course of its own lifetime could be passed on to its offspring.  Significantly, Lamarck challenged the belief in the fixity of species – that the groups we call species are inherently fixed and unchanging.            
Reading:
Jean Baptiste Lamarck, Zoological Philosophy [1809], University of Chicago Press, 1984, pp.35-46, 106-113. [pdf]*[Note: Your write up of Lamarck will also need to take into account the relevent aspects of Cuvier's work.]

Tuesday February 3rd:
Dreamcourse Lecturer: Dr. Paul White
Richard Owen, Thomas Huxley, and the Victorian 'Man of Science'
Richard Owen (1804-1892) was the most celebrated British naturalist of the first half of the 19th century. He was a comparative anatomist, and rose to fame through reconstructions of giant extinct mammals and reptiles (the first known 'dinosaurs') from fossil remains. He wielded considerable power as the superintendent of the natural history department of the British Museum, a cathedral of science in which the design of creation was displayed with imperial splendour. Through his fame and institutional success, he helped to shape the public identity of the 'man of science' considerably. From the mid-1850s, he came into conflict with Thomas Huxley, later an ardent supporter of Darwin, who promoted an alternative social and institutional model of science, centered on the laboratory rather than the museum.
Reading:
Paul White, Thomas Huxley. Making the "Man of Science", Cambridge University Press, 2003. Chapter Two: "Gentlemen of Science? Debates over Manners and Institutions", pp. 32-62.

Thursday February 5th:
Before the Origin: The Earth’s History and the History of Life on Earth: Charles Lyell and “Uniformitarianism”
William Whewell (1794-1866) a prominent geologist, minerologist, and longtime Master of Trinity College Cambridge, had named two theoretical explanations of the history of the Earth’s surface, “Catastophism” and “Uniformitarianism”.  The former allowed for significant occasional leaps in explaining the Earth’s natural history, a view associated with Cuvier’s “revolutions”.  Uniformitarianism, however, entailed slow and gradual change.  Cuvier’s Theory of the Earth (1813) (along with William Buckland’s Geology and Minerology (1836)) marked the field until the publication of Charles Lyell’s controversial Principles of Geology (1830-1833).  Lyell (1797-1875), a former student of Buckland, proposed a uniformitarian theory of earth’s development suggesting that the earth was much older than previously assumed.  Lyell argues that the fossil record is a “poor census taker”.
Reading:
Charles Lyell, Principles of Geology [1830-1833].  London: John Murray, Vol.I, pp.1-2, 78-9, 165-6, Vol. II, pp.1-19, 20-21, 124, Vol. III, pp.30-31. [pdf]*

Tuesday February 10th: 
Dreamcourse Lecturer: John M. Lynch
The professionalisation of Victorian Science: The Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation and “Scriptural Geology”
The Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation was published anonymously in 1844, by the Scottish publisher Robert Chambers (1802-1871).  Chambers presented an argument that in society, as in nature, progress was both natural and inevitable.  His book was met with considerable discussion and controversy.  It was, in the words of one historian of science, a Victorian Sensation.  Geologists, and natural scientists attacked the book however.  They believed that Chambers’ goal was not an accurate explanation of nature, but was rather an attempt to use nature to justify a particular political position.
Reading:
Robert Chambers, The Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation [1844], London, George Routledge and Sons, 1887, pp.145-177.[pdf]

Thursday February 12th:
Natural Theology and the "Struggle for Existence," Paley, Malthus, and the "Social Darwinism" of Herbert Spencer.
This class will introduce the intellectual and cultural context of the early-mid nineteenth century, by looking in particlar at the widely popular belief in Natural Theology. Natural Theology is an old philosophy, but during this period was most readily associated with the Cambridge theologian William Paley (1743-1805), who wrote a book on the subject in 1802. Natural Theology argued that we can see evidence both of God's existence, and of his character, in the world around us. Thomas Robert Malthus held what was, a least on the face of things, an altogether different view of life to that portrayed by Paley.  In his Essay On the Principles of Population, which although published in 1798 reached the height of its popularity in this period, Malthus had portrayed a life of struggle amidst scarcity.  This essay not only appeared to endorse nineteenth-century laissez-faire economics, but was also later to provide fruitful food-for-thought for Darwin.  Herbert Spencer (1820-1903), a Radical journalist and philosopher advocated laissez-faire and “the Survival of the Fittest” – (a phrase that he coined, not Darwin) – not only with the aim of gaining for England the economic benefits of competition, but also of gaining the best evolutionary advantage for the English nation over their competitors.  Although we don’t today hear much about Spencer, in his time he was immensely influential – both in England and on this side of the Atlantic.
Reading:
William Paley, Natural Theology: or, Evidences of the Existence and Attributes of the Deity Collected from the Appearances of Nature. Philadelphia: John Morgan, 1802, p.1-6, 13-17, 28-30, 335-6, 339-42, 346-56. [pdf]*
Thomas Robert Malthus, An Essay on the Principle of Population, [1798].  London: John Murray, 1817, [pdf].

Tuesday February 17th:
Before the Origin: Scientific Proof
In this class we consider the philosophy of science, and, in particular, the nature of scientific proof and what made for good science.  Debate on this question in England at this time centred on what it meant to be a good Newtonian.  Arguably the most important writer in this debate was the Cambridge mathematician William Whewell (1794-1866).  It is no exaggeration to call Whewell one of the most influential figures in the history of modern science.  The son of a Carpenter, Whewell was recognised as a superb mathematician by a local parish priest, and arrangements were made for his education.  Through hard work and scholarships he attended Cambridge University and eventually became Professor of Mineralogy and Professor of Moral Philosophy.  He was close to many of the prominent men of science of his day – including Lyell, John Stevens Henslow, Adam Sedgwick and with Darwin during his own student days at Cambridge.  In this section from The Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences (1840), Whewell explained how scientists could best use the inductive method to extrapolate knowledge from collections of observations.  Whewell’s interpretation of induction, which included the imaginative application and testing of hypotheses, was vital to Darwin’s evidences and argument for evolution through natural selection. [Think back to this passage of Whewell’s when we come to read the Origin]
Reading:
William Whewell, The Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences [1840].  London: John W. Parker, Vol. I, pp.iii-iv, 41-48, Vol. II, pp.212-239.[pdf]*

(PART II)

DARWIN AND DARWINISM

Tuesday February 24th:
On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life (1859).
Darwin had formulated the basic outline of his theory of natural selection as early as 1838, but he waited for over two decades to publish it.  Anxieties about the accuracy of his conclusions, concerns about both public and scientific reaction, and the uproar over the Vestiges in 1844 combined to keep Darwin silent.  By the 1850’s, convinced he was correct and both financially and professionally secure, Darwin began discussing his ideas with a close circle of colleagues – among them Charles Lyell and Joseph Dalton Hooker.  In these chapters, Darwin sets out the argument that the natural world is dominated by an incessant struggle for scarce resources.  In light of the fact that far more organisms of any species are born than can possibly survive, only the best fitted to their environment would survive to reproduce, passing on their beneficial traits to the next generation.  The unfit would, he concluded, be dispassionately exterminated by this same mechanism.
Reading:
Charles Darwin, On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life [1859].  Introduction, Chapters 3 and 4.*

Thursday February 26th:
Dreamcourse Lecturer:  Michael Ruse
On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection
Having laid out the mechanism of his theory of the Struggle for Existence and of the Natural Selection that must therefore ensue, Darwin turned to the objections that he anticipated might be raised against his theory.  In chapter six Darwin deals explicitly with the absence of intermediate forms.  He also addresses the seeming unlikelihood that complex organisms and complex organs – such as the eye – could possibly have evolved by such a slow and gradual process as Natural Selection.  In the last chapter, Darwin summarises his argument, in the process giving attention to a number of other difficulties that might be raised against his theory.
Reading:
Charles Darwin, On the Origin of Species. [1859]  Chapters 6 and 14.

Tuesday March 3rd:
The Descent of Man and Sexual Selection.
In the Origin Darwin had carefully skirted the issue of human evolution, however, it was the obvious question that his readers asked, and which many other authors ventured into in light of Darwin’s theory.  Because so many authors, not least Alfred Russel Wallace, had suggested that Darwin's theory of natural selectiono was inadequate to account for human morality and conscience, in 1871 Darwin finally decided to put pen to paper himself on the subject in The Descent of Man (1871).  In this book Darwin not only speculated about the origins of human morality, but also took the opportunity to more fully expound his theory of “sexual selection” a natural force that he saw working sometimes in tandem, and sometimes in opposition to natural selection, and which might account for many characteristics that might not be immediately beneficial in the struggle to procure resources.
Readings:
Charles Darwin, The Descent of Man; and Selection in Relation to Sex, [1872], London: Prometheus 1998, pp.100-102, 111-117, 130-1, also, 149-50.*

Tuesday March 10th :
A Post-Darwinian Natural Theology in England: Charles Kingsley and Water Babies
In England, the Broad-Church Anglican Priest Charles Kingsley similarly received Darwin’s work as consistent with Natural Theology.  As well as a popular author, with a controversial background in political Radicalism, Kingsley had become tutor to the Prince of Wales and Chaplain to the Queen. – he was thus not without influence!  He wrote, spoke, and sermonised (!) extensively on evolution and its religious orthodoxy, but nowhere did he do this more deeply (or more charmingly) than in the fairy tale he wrote in 1862-3, Water Babies. 
Reading:
Excerpts from Charles Kingsley, Water Babies [1863], London: MacMillan & Co. 1885, pp.1-3, 22-31, 55-9, 67-73, 84, 149-161, 193-9, 202-205, 211-8, 228-239, 270-273, 283-6, 299-305, 324-327. [pdf]
John Beatty & Piers J. Hale, “Water Babies: An Evolutionary Fairy Tale.” Endeavour, Vol. 32, No.4, 2008, pp.141-46. co-authored with John Beatty. published online November 7, 2008. [pdf]

Thursday March 12th:
Dreamcourse Lecturer:  John Beatty
A Post-Darwinian Natural Theology in America: Asa Gray and Darwin’s Orchids
Reading:
Asa Gray (1810-1888) was a botanist at Harvard who, following the publication of the Origin, commenced an enthusiastic and a lifelong correspondence with Darwin.  Whereas many people thought that Darwin’s theory refuted Paley’s argument from design, Asa Gray believed that natural selection was the mechanism through which God brought new species into the world.  He was influential in ensuring that the Origin had a ready reception in the United States, and defended the work against the charge of atheism.
Reading:
Asa Gray, “Natural Selection Not Inconsistent with Natural Theology” (1860), reprinted in Asa Gray, Darwiniana, Essays and Reviews Pertaining to Darwinism, New York: D. Appleton & Co., 1876, pp.87-88, 88-93, 96-103, 109, 120-122, 127-128, 175-177.[pdf]
Letter: Charles Darwin to Asa Gray, 22 May 1860, The Correspondence of Charles Darwin, Vol. 8, 1860, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993, pp.223-226.[pdf]

Tuesday March 24th:
"Difficulties on theory..." quesitons on the sufficiency of Natural Selection
Darwin had anticipated that there would be objections to his claims for natural selection, and went out of his way to tackle these in the Origin. If evolution occured by such a gradual mechanism as natural selection, then where were the intermediate species? When we look around us, we see distinct species, not a continual scale of variation. If these intermediates have gone extinct, why is it that neither do we find a gradual scale of morphological development in the fossil record? Again, to use a popular example, how could such a gradual and seemingly random process as natural selection account for the occurance of such perfect organs as the human eye? Or, of apparently simple or useless organs? Arguments such as these are still offerred today, and yet Darwin provided answers even in 1859...and more in subsequent editions...
Reading:
Charles Darwin, Origin of Speices. Read Chapter Seven of the sixth edition of the Origin. [pdf]*

Thursday March 26th:
"Difficulties on Theory..." further questions on the sufficiency of Natural Selection
There were other objections to Darwin’s theory.  Perhaps most notably those made by the Scottish Engineer Henry Charles Fleeming Jenkin (1833-1885), the English Catholic St. George Jackson Mivart (1827-1900), and the Irish physicist William Thompson (1824-1907) (who later became Lord Kelvin).  Fleeming Jenkin pointed out that if those organisms with unusually fit traits bred with the less fit of their population, the result would tend to be an averaging out of that trait, rather than its exaggeration to the point of forming new species.  Mivart, in his book The Genesis of Species (1871) also made problems for Darwin.  Mivart argued that although natural selection might account for the success of well-established adaptations, it couldn’t possibly explain the initial stages of their development – he gave the problematic example of the migration of the flatfish’s eye.  William Thompson also questioned Darwin’s theory.  His calculations of the earth’s age, based upon deductions about the temperature of the Earth’s core suggested that the Earth was nowhere near old enough for sophisticated organisms to have evolved through the slow uniformitarian processes favoured by Darwin.  Darwin took great pains to refute or accommodate these objections in the second and subsequent editions of the Origin. 
Reading:
Henry Charles Fleeming Jenkin, “The Origin of Species” [Review Article] Originally published in North British Review, 1867, 46: 277-318. (edited for this class by P.J. Hale).[pdf]*
St. George Jackson Mivart in the North British Review.

(PART IV)

DARWINISM AND POLITICS

Thursday April 2nd:
Evolution and Ethics: Reform Darwinism.
Thomas Henry Huxley (1825-1895) wrote Evolution and Ethics in 1893-4.  In it he considered the apparent conflict between human civilisation – the ethical treatment of one person by another, and the social provision of aid, and the natural processes of struggle and competition.  Although Huxley believed that ethics were opposed to the operation of the laws of natural selection on an individual, he also believed that they were a product of natural selection on a social level.  Ironically, our ethical nature would ultimately undermine the fitness of our society, as the unfit would tend to survive.  Unlike Spencer and other advocates of Social Darwinism however, Huxley did not see this as a reason to leave the weakest to live or die by their own efforts.
Reading:
Thomas Henry Huxley, “Prologomena” to Evolution and Ethics London: MacMillan & Co.,1894, pp.1-45. [pdf]*

Thursday April 9th: 
Dreamcourse lecturer:  John van Wyhe
“Darwin’s Delay”
It is widely believed that Charles Darwin avoided publishing his theory of evolution for many years. Many explanations have been proposed to identify Darwin's reasons for doing so. Yet 'Darwin's delay' is a recent historiographical theme for which there is no clear evidence. This lecture will argue that Darwin did not conceal or hold back his views but was in fact very busy with earlier scientific publishing projects. This lecture will show that even long-held interpretations, or indeed assumptions, about the history of science can be wrong - and suggests how to watch out for more.
Reading:
John van Wyhe. "Mind the Gap: Did Darwin avoid publishing his theory for many years?" Notes & Records of the Royal Society, (2007), 61, 177-205.[pdf]*

Tuesday April 14th:
Continuous or Discontinuous Evolution?
Hugo de Vries (1848-1935), a Dutch physiologist, was one of three biologists who independently rediscovered the 1865 work of Gregor Mendel on inheritance.  At the time, Mendel’s work was interpreted as an alternative to Darwinian selection.  This was largely because de Vries argued that evolution occurred in “jumps”, as opposed to Darwin’s belief in a uniformitarian gradual and continuous change.  As a result he argued that evolution occurred in fits and starts as new mutations appeared.   William Bateson (1861-1926) was an English biologist and advocate of Mendelism and was the founder of the science of genetics.  In this piece Bateson presented the problems that biologists confronted in explaining the precise mechanisms of evolution.  Bateson certainly believed that evolution occurred, and most other biologists viewed the article as a call to action, but religious critics of evolutionary theory used it to attack the reality of evolutionary change.
Reading:
Hugo de Vries, “The Origin of Species by Mutation” (1902), in Mark Largent, Sourcebook on History of Evolution, Iowa: Kendall Hunt, 2004, pp.217-223.[pdf]*
William Bateson, “Evolutionary Faith and Modern Doubts” (1922), in Largent, Evolution, pp.233-240. [pdf]* (NB: This write up should cover both de Vries and Bateson.)

Thursday April 16th:
Dreamcourse Lecturer: Garland Allen
"Eugenics, the attempt to improve the genetic quality of the human species by 'better breeding', developed as a worldwide movement between 1900 and 1940. It was particularly prominent in the United States, Britain and Germany, where it was based on the then newly-rediscovered work of Gregor Mendel. Eugenicists carried out research on what they thought to be a wide variety of genetically-determined traits: Huntington's chorea, alcoholism, manic depressive insanity, epilepsy, criminality, pauperism, social inadequacy, feeblemindedness, nomadism and many others, all of which they thought were determined by one or a few Mendelian genes. Eugenicists were social and political activists, in the United States lobbying for immigration restriction and compulsory sterilization, and in Britain for incarceration of the genetically "defective". In Germany, after the Nazis came to power in 1933, eugenics became a mainstay of the racial state, where a sterilization law was passed, leading eventually to euthenasia. Eugenics was very much a Progressive Era movement in the United States, with its emphasis on rational planning by trained experts, central control by the state, and efficiency (it was more efficient sterilize the genetically unfit, than to let them multiply and have to deal with the problem of their offspring in future generations). Although a number of geneticists objected to the claims of eugenicists at the time, the movement as a whole only gained  wide public condemnation after the Nürenburg Trials following World War II and the revelations of the Holocaust. With so many claims abounding today about the genetic basis of many behavioral and social traits, we can learn much from the history of eugenics about the difficulties and dangers of simplistic genetic claims.
Reading:
Garland Allen (1997) "The social and economic origins of genetic determinism: a case history of the American Eugenics Movement, 1900–1940 and its lessons for today."Genetica 99: 77-88.[pdf]

(PART VI)

THE MODERN EVOLUTIONARY SYNTHESIS
AND TEACHING EVOLUTION

Tuesday April 21st :
Dreamcourse Lecturer: Dr. Joe Cain.
The Modern Synthesis
Julian Huxley (1887-1975), grandson of Thomas Henry Huxley and brother of the novelist Aldous Huxley, was an important evolutionary biologist in his own right.  In the mid-twentieth century he helped to develop what is now termed the “modern synthesis”, a multi-disciplinary effort to synthesise existing knowledge in biology, and to identify short-comings and agree on the essential elements of evolutionary theory.  In this section Huxley explains the confused state of evolutionary science as it existed in the first half of the twentieth century.  Theodosious Dobzhansky (1900-1975) was a geneticist and another key figure in the Modern Synthesis.  A Russian immigrant, he came to the United States in 1927, and studied genetics and heredity in insects.  In this piece Dobzhansky demonstrated the concern that many American biologists had about widespread public animosity toward evolutionary science and explained why he believed it was so vital to the progress of modern biology.
Reading:
Peter Bowler. 2001. “The History of Evolutionary Ideas: The Modern Synthesis”, Encyclopedia of the Life Sciences, www.els.com, pp.1-5. [pdf]
H.B.D. Kettlewell, "Darwin's Missing Evidence". [pdf]

Thursday April 23rd :
Movie Screening: "Inherit the Wind" (1960)
Inherit the Wind (1960) portrays, in partly fictionalized form, the famous and dramatic courtroom "Monkey Trial" battle (in the sultry summer of 1925 in Dayton, Tennessee) between two famous lawyers (Clarence Darrow and William Jennings Bryan) who volunteered to heatedly argue both sides of the case (over 12 days, including two weekends).

Its story centers around the issue of evolution vs. creationism, in the prosecution of 24 year-old Dayton High School mathematics teacher and sports coach - and substitute science teacher - John T. Scopes for violating state law (the 1925 Butler Act) by teaching the Darwin's theory of evolution in a state-funded school. The film's title was taken from the Biblical book of Proverbs 11:29: "He that troubleth his own house shall inherit the wind."

Thursday April 30th:
Creationism and Intelligent Design: On Teaching the ‘Debate’?
The Scopes Trial was clearly not the end of Creationist attempts to prohibit the teaching of evolution in American classrooms, or indeed, to gain equal time for what they termed “Creation Science” – the argument that there is scientific evidence for the Divine Creation – as an alternative to the scientific evidence for evolution.  Indeed both Arkansas and Louisiana passed legislation to this effect in the late 1970s.  Following the ruling of Judge Overton in January 1982 that the teaching of Creation Science alongside evolutionary explanations of the development of life on earth is unconstitutional, an appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court was made on behalf of the State of Louisiana.  This in turn resulted in the 1987 case Edwards vs. Aguillard – in which the unconstitutionality of teaching Creation Science in public schools was upheld.  More recently Creationism re-emerged in the form of “Intelligent Design” – a similar set of claims, but in which there is no explicit reference to a Christian God as the designer.  However, in Pennsylvania in 2005, in the case of Kitzmiller vs Dover Area School District Judge Jones also ruled the teaching of “Intelligent Design” unconstitutional. – It is unlikely, however, that this will be the end of the matter…
Reading:
Extract from Kitzmiller vs. Dover School Area District, filed December 20th 2005.[pdf]*

Thursday May 7th:
The Search for Purpose in a Darwinian world:
Ever since the publication of Origin people have wresteld with the implications of evolution, and especially of selection, for humanity - both in terms of theology and of politics. In this last class we shall consider the importance of sociobiology, and its more recent offspring evolutionary-psychology. The publication of Sociobiology: The New Synthesis by E.O. Wilson in 1975, and of Richard Dawkins Selfish Gene in 1976 show that evolution continues to be controversial when applied to humans. We shall consider these ideas in light of the reflections of John Maynard Smith (1920-2004) on the cultural importance of “origin stories”.  As well as being one of the finest evolutionary biologists of the twentieth century, Maynard Smith also thought deeply about the social and moral implications of evolution.
Reading:
Selections from E.O. Wilson and Richard Dawkins will be provided in class.

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Page last updated: April 28th 2009