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.

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    Notes to pp. 6o-y resembles the idea of natural selection (B notebook, p. go). But on closer inspection it proves to include neither struggle, population pressure, nor the differential survival of variant forms. See David Kohn's perceptive analysis: Theories to Work By, pp. 124-5; ^Iso pp. 102, 122, 146-8. In none of the pre-Malthus notebooks is there any more anticipation of natural selection than in the suggestion by Carpenter quoted above (Chapter 1, n. 49). 3 In addition to Kohn, just cited, see Peter Bowler, Malthus, Darwin, and the Concept of Struggle; Barry G. Gale, Darwin and the Concept of a Struggle for Existence; Sandra Herbert, Darwin, Malthus, and Selec¬ tion; Camille Limoges, La Sélection Naturelle, pp. 79-81; Steven Shapin and Barry Barnes, Darwin and Social Darwinism; Peter Vorzimmer, Darwin, Malthus, and the Theory of Natural Selection; Robert Young, Malthus and the Evolutionists; Young, The Historiographie and Ideological Contexts of the Nineteenth-Century Debate on Man's Place in Nature. 4 D notebook, pp. 134-35е. This passage appears to have been written in two sittings between September 28 and October 3, 1838. See Kohn, Theories to Work By, pp. 140-1, 168-9, ^З^- 5 Thomas R. Malthus, An Essay on the Principle of Population (3rd ed.), 2:498-9- 6 See Howard E. Gruber, Darwin on Man, pp. 125-6. The Darwin notes Gruber refers to are in DAR 91:114-8. I am grateful to Nancy Mautner for sending me a copy. 7 William Kirby, On the Power, Wisdom, and Goodness of God, . . . , 1:157-9. 8 Malthus, Essay (3rd ed.), 2:501. That Malthus did not rule out all possibility of progress is insisted on by Samuel M. Levin, Malthus and the Idea of Progress. 9 William Paley, Natural Theology, 2:155-6. 10 Ibid., 2:137-41. 11 Ibid., 2:139-49. 12 Malthus, Essay on the Primiple of Population (ist ed.), pp. 116-30. See Daniel L. Le Mahieu, Malthus and the Theology of Scarcity. 13 Malthus, Essay (3rd ed.), 2:306, 315-16 (in the 6th ed., which Darwin read [London: John Murray, 1826], this passage appears in vol. 2, p. 267). 14 The quoted phrase is from D notebook, p. 74e. Cf. Ernst Mayr, Darwin and Natural Selection, p. 326: the struggle for existence is not a hopeless steady-state condition à la Malthus but the very means by which the harmony of the world is achieved and maintained. Since I wrote this chapter James R. Moore's book has appeared, in which he calls attention to the relationship between Darwin's first statement of his theory and the theodicy of Malthus: The Post-Darwinian Controversies, p. 313. 15 These are some of the principal topics Darwin speculated on in his M and N notebooks (1838-9), which are transcribed and annotated by Paul H. Barrett and published in Gruber, Darwin on Man, pp. 266-305, 329-60. See esp. M notebook, pp. 27-32, 69-70. 16 С notebook, p. 166. See also ibid., pp. 171-3, quoted in Chapter 2, p. 52. 247