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3 - The Specter of Darwinism: The Popular Image of Darwinism in Early Twentieth-Century Britain

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 July 2009

Peter J. Bowler
Affiliation:
Professor of History of Science Queen's University, Belfast
Abigail Lustig
Affiliation:
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Robert J. Richards
Affiliation:
University of Chicago
Michael Ruse
Affiliation:
Florida State University
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Summary

It's been a long time now since I borrowed the phrase “the eclipse of Darwinism” from Julian Huxley's 1942 survey Evolution: The Modern Synthesis for the title of my own book on the non-Darwinian evolutionary theories that proliferated around 1900. But even at the time, I was conscious of a problem with Huxley's use of the term “eclipse” to denote the state of Darwinism during the period before the emergence of the genetical theory of natural selection. An eclipse is a temporary diminution of brightness, implying that Darwinism had gained considerable influence in science during the period following the publication of the Origin of Species, before being overtaken by a temporary wave of opposition at the turn of the century. Yet all the work that historians have done on the origins of evolutionism seems to suggest that the theory of natural selection encountered massive opposition from the start, and that Darwin had succeeded in popularizing the basic idea of evolution even though few scientists (or anyone else, for that matter) thought that his explanation of its workings was adequate. Even Julian's grandfather Thomas Henry Huxley, popularly known as “Darwin's bulldog,” turns out on closer inspection to have been lukewarm in his support for the selection theory and inclined to look for alternatives, such as saltationism.

Why, then, did Julian Huxley use a phrase that implied that Darwinism had been popular? One simple answer is that he was exploiting an ambiguity permitted by the changing meaning of the term “Darwinism.”

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Chapter
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Darwinian Heresies , pp. 48 - 68
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2004

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