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. ig8-20i period on geographical distribution (see Natural Selection, pp. 542-3, 548-9. 557-8). 25 DAR 205.3:167, dated January 30, 1855, part quoted in Chapter 7, pp. 180-1. 26 Natural Selection, p. 247. 27 Ibid., pp. 271-2. The expression organic action and reaction is also used in the Origin, p. 408. 28 Natural Selection, pp. 247-8. In the Origin Darwin made no dogmatic assertion that the limits have not been reached (on p. 126 he said it was possible that they were reached long ago). But in Natural Selection he indicated that he thought the number was still increasing (p. 248), and he repeated the same idea to Lyell {I.I Л, 1:531) and to H. C. Watson: I fully . . . admit, that the organic relations will tend, with increase of number of species, to go on getting more & more complex, & thus there will be tendency to increase in number of new species . . . We do not know that full number anywhere arrived at (DAR 47:137V). 29 I suspect it is this that caused Darwin in the second edition of the Origin to drop the wedging metaphor, which he had used since first reading Malthus. The wedging metaphor implied strict limits on the number of places and so was inappropriate given Darwin's new conception of place and his belief that their number may increase indefinitely (Morse Peckham, ed., The Origin of Species by Charles Darwin, p. 150). 30 Essay of 1844, pp. 108-9, 183. 31 Natural Selection, pp. 271, 273. 32 Limoges, Sélection Naturelle, pp. 127-36, 151; and Darwinisme et Adapta¬ tion, pp. 354, 368-9. If we follow Limoges's arguments on the difference between the traditional conception of the economy of nature and Darwin's ecological conception, we must say that the traditional concep¬ tion persisted as the basis for Darwin's thought until the 1850s. I should in fairness note that Limoges seems really to have recognized this (Darwinisme et Adaptation, p. 353), but also to have found it difficult to reconcile with his interpretation of the pre-Malthus notebooks. 33 Natural Selection, p. 254. 34 LLD, 1:397 (June 13, [1849]). 35 Charles Darwin, A Monograph on the Sub-Class Cirripedia, 2:185, 188. 36 DAR 205.6:45, dated February 1852 (my emphasis). 37 See Chapter 7, p. 176. 38 Darwin, Cirripedia, 2: 184-8. In July 1855 Darwin reported to Hooker that he had begun experiments to induce variability in plants by artificially altering their conditions of life (DAR 114:141). 39 It has recently been suggested that Darwin undertook his work on barnacles in order to prove that variation in nature is common, but there is no evidence for this and a great deal against it (Silvan S. Schweber, Essay Review: The Young Darwin, p. 186). The available evidence also seems to me to be incompatible with Janet Browne's brief account of the reasons for, timing of, and consequences of the changes in Darwin's views 270