Abstract
The notion that Charles Darwin embraced the German Romantic tradition seems plausible, given the early influence of Alexander von Humboldt. But this view fails to do justice to other scientific traditions. Darwin was a protégé of the Englishman John Stevens Henslow and was a follower of the Scott Charles Lyell. He had important debts to French scientists, notably Henri Milne-Edwards, Étienne and Isidore Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire, and Alphonse de Candolle. Many Germans were quite supportive of Darwin, but not all of these were encumbered by idealistic metaphysical baggage. Both Darwin and Anton Dohrn treated science as very much a cosmopolitan enterprise.
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Acknowledgments
This essay is of course dedicated to my old friend and longtime collaborator Christiane Groeben. It may seem odd that the first scholarly paper on Italian scientists at the Station was co-authored by a German and an American (Groeben and Ghiselin 2001). Our Italian friends were perhaps too busy, or too modest, to tell the world of their countrymen’s accomplishments. Many thanks for their kind hospitality down the years, and for access to the library and the archives of the Station.
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Ghiselin, M.T. Darwin: German mystic or French rationalist?. HPLS 36, 305–311 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40656-014-0033-y
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s40656-014-0033-y