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

  • Ospovat, Dov.
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.

    264/328 (page 246)
    Notes to pp. 56-60 than oscillating) change could tip the balance in favor of one form or another. Compare Journal of Researches (London: Henry Colburn, 1839 [facs. reprint, New York: Hafner, 1952]), pp. 210-12, written in 1837, with the second (post-Malthus) edition: The Voyage of the Beagle (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1962), pp. 174-7. Darwin's changing views on extinction in the pre-Malthus period are discussed at length in Kohn, Theories to Work By, pp. 74-5, 156, n. 15, 77-9, 82, 96-100, 110-13, 116-17, I have not thought it necessary to repeat here what he has said. 56 В notebook, p. 37. 57 Ibid., p. 170: see also p. 210e. 58 С notebook, p. 60. 59 Charles Lyell, Principles of Geology, 5th ed., 2:81-91 (Bk. 1П, chap. 10). 60 С notebook, p. 153. 61 D notebook, p. 69. 62 Georges Cuvier, Le Règne Animal, 1:18—19. 63 Lyell, Principles (5th ed. [American], 1837), 1:499, 5^7' 5^5' 527-8 (Bk. II chaps. 2-4). In saying this Lyell was merely giving expression to the view of variation that had been most common among naturalists since at least the mid-eighteenth century: except for Hybrids, most variations are caused by and correspond to changes in the external conditions under which a species lives. See Shirley Roe, Rationalism and Embryology, pp. 30-7; Jacques Roger, Les Sciences de la Vie dans la Pensée Française du XVIII' Siècle, p. 568 (with reference to Buffon); Lenoir, Transcendental Naturphilosophie; Nils von Hofsten, Linnaeus's Conception of Na¬ ture, p. 83; James L. Larson, Reason and Experience, p. 114; William Kirby, On the Power, Wisdom, and Goodness of God, . . . , 1:110-11. 64 It has recently been suggested that by July 1838 Darwin considered variations to be indefinite, accidental, chance phenomena and not necessarily adaptive (Schweber, Origin Revisited, pp. 235-6, 264). No evidence is offered in support, nor have I found any supportive evidence in my reading of the notebooks. 65 In Darwin's pre-Malthus notebooks there is a conspicuous absence of any passage even remotely resembling Wallace's retort to Lyell: Where is the balance? (H. Lewis McKinney, Wallace and Natural Selection, p. 38). 66 A similar point was made as long ago as 1961 by Walter F. Cannon, who, however, had chiefly in mind ideas about nature that were held by only a portion of the scientific community, whereas the ideas I see as centrally important, such as perfect adaptation, were more widely shared. The Bases of Darwin's Achievement. For a masterful extension of some aspects of Cannon's interpretation see James R. Moore, The Post- Darwinian Controversies, esp. pp. 307-51. 3. Natural selection and perfect adaptation, 1838-1844 1 D notebook, p. 135e. 2 On a superficial reading, one passage in the pre-Malthus notebooks 246