The development of Darwin's theory : natural history, natural theology, and natural selection, 1838-1859 / Dov Ospovat.

  • Dov Ospovat
Date:
1995, ©1981
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Licence: Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0)

Credit: The development of Darwin's theory : natural history, natural theology, and natural selection, 1838-1859 / Dov Ospovat. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    Notes to pp. 16-21 combination of the known laws of physiology and physics, [and] in part according to laws which appear to relate to the origin of things and which are unknown to us (p. 6i). 35 Wilson, ed., Lyell's Scientific Journals, p. 5. Lyell, Primiples, 1:123. This point is discussed more fully in Ospovat, Lyell's Theory of Climate. Camille Limoges has also discussed, in somewhat different terms, the distinction between De Candolle's views of nature and views such as Lyell's: La Sélection Naturelle, esp. pp. 59-69. 36 See Martin J. S. Rudwick, Uniformity and Progression; R. Hooykaas, Catastrophism in Geology; Philip Lawrence, Charles Lyell versus the Theory of Central Heat. 37 Principles, 1:123. 38 Martin Rudwick has called this complex of ideas the directionalist synthesis. See his Uniformity and Progression, pp. 213-17. 39 Henry T. De la Beche, Researches in Theoretical Geology, p. 240; William Buckland, Geology and Mineralogy Considered with Reference to Natural Theology, 1:107; Adam Sedgwick, Discourse on the Studies of the University of Cambridge, pp. Iv-lvi. 40 Carpenter, Physiology (ist ed., 1839), p. 177. 41 A still useful discussion of this and other ideas of a parallel between geology and biology is R. Hooykaas, The Parallel between the History of the Earth and the History of the Animal World. 42 Louis Agassiz, Essay on Classification, pp. 91-94. 43 Ibid., pp. 15-23, 140-52, 199-206. Similar arguments against environ¬ mental determinism were used by James C. Prichard, Researches into the Physical History of Mankind, pp. 50-1. 44 Owen, On the Nature of Limbs, p. 86; [Richard Owen], Generalizations of Comparative Anatomy (by relationship he meant structural similarity). 45 Sedgwick, Discourse, pp. ccxiii-ccxiv. See John H. Brooke, Natural Theology of the Geologists, pp. 45-7. 46 Agassiz, Essay on Classification, pp. 12, 17. 47 Owen, On the Nature of Limbs, p. 86. 48 Carpenter, Physiology (ist ed., 1839), pp. 463-4. 49 Carpenter, Physiology (2nd ed., 1841), p. 192: If any number of living beings had come into existence, without that adaptation to their condi¬ tions of existence which we observe in those now living, they would long ago have disappeared from the surface of the globe. In fact, it has been from changes in the external conditions to which they had not the power of conforming, that many races have become extinct. It might be argued, then, that the cases in which we observe this adaptation are only those in which it chanced to exist, out of a much larger number in which it was deficient; and, however improbable such a supposition may be, it would not be easy to prove its impossibility. (Carpenter of course did not call this natural selection.) 50 Richard Owen MSS, Hunterian Lectures for 1838, Royal College of Surgeons. 51 Owen, On the Nature of Limbs, pp. 84-6. 240