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.

    293/328 (page 275)
    Notes to pp. 220-4 have altered the sentence about the Eocene fauna being beaten by the recent, thanks to your remark. [He added the phrase under a nearly similar climate; Origin, p. 337 ] But I imagined it would have been clear that I supposed the climate to be nearly similar . . . Not that I think climate nearly so important as most naturalists seem to think. In my opinion no error is more mischievous than this(LLD, 1:523). 33 In his notes on Milne Edwards's Observations sur la Circulation, Darwin remarked that one can see how the physiological division of labour profits in such cases, for digestion can hardly go on so vigorously when mixed with water for äeration: äeration imperfect & the circulation cannot be vigorous without disturbing digestion (DAR 72:129). 34 Natural Selection, pp. 234-5. 35 MLD, 1:115; DAR 205.3:194, undated, headed this will come under Geograph Distrib. 36 Natural Selection, p. 355. See also Darwin's remarks to Lyell regarding the chapter on organic progress in the tenth edition of Lyell's Principles: You do not allude to one very striking point enough, or at all - viz., the classes having been formerly less differentiated than they now are; and this specialisation of classes must, we may conclude, fit them for different general habits of life as well as the specialisation of particular organs {MLD, 1:272). 37 DAR 48:82. See Greene, Darwin as a Social Evolutionist, p. 5. 38 There he insisted only that recent forms must be competitively higher than ancient forms. His belief in progress is suggested primarily in his discussions of embryology and in the conclusion to the book {Origin, pp. 336-8, 449, 490). 39 On Darwin and the reception of Vestiges see Frank N. Egerton, Refuta¬ tion and Conjecture; on Huxley's nonprogressionism see Michael Bartholomew, Huxley's Defence of Darwin. 40 See Dov Ospovat, Lyell's Theory of Climate, p. 336. 41 LLD, 1:528, 530-1; 2:6-7. 42 In the third edition he added further: and consequently, in most cases, to what must be regarded as an advance in organisation (Peckham, ed.. Origin of Species by Darwin, p. 271). 43 Ibid., p. 547. 44 Ibid., p. 222. 45 Ibid., pp. 222-5, 547-51. Even in these remarks, however, Darwin indicated that the presently existing lower forms are probably higher than those that formerly occupied similar places in the economy of nature (ibid., p. 223: MLD, 1:142). 46 MLD, 1:164; Peckham, ed., Origin of Species by Darwin, pp. 224-5; ibid., pp. 548-9, records Darwin's increasing confidence in successive editions. 47 Origin, p. 490. 48 Mandelbaum, History, Man, & Reason, pp. 85-7. Cf. the more subtle argument in James R. Moore, The Post-Darwinian Controversies, pp. 157-61. 49 It should be recalled, however, that Darwin's nature was not (in his view) 275