The discovery of a small collection of Darwin manuscripts at the Whipple Museum of the History of Science has allowed a reconsideration of Darwin’s interest in and knowledge of microscopy. Concentrating on the years between his return from the Beagle voyage and the publication of the major taxonomic work on barnacles, this paper recovers a number of important aspects of Darwin’s intellectual and practical development: on returning from the Beagle voyage he acquainted himself with the work of C. G. Ehrenberg, (...) and this informed both his private and public work; then through the 1840s Darwin transformed himself from a fascinated observer and consumer of others’ work into an expert on microscopy. I characterise this move as a piece of clever manoeuvring, and discuss more generally the kind of scientist—gentlemanly and expert—that Darwin was attempting to become.Keywords: Charles Darwin; Microscopy; Beagle voyage; Classification; Accuracy. (shrink)

There are a number of reasons for doubting the standard view that scientific theories (understood as sets of connected statements) are the best units for investigating scientific continuity and change (that is, research programs continue as long as groups of scientists accept the central tenets of such theories). Here it is argued that one weakness of this approach is that it cannot be used to demarcate adequately scientific communities or conceptual systems (that is, it fails as a classificatory scheme). Recent (...) alternative proposals by Philip Kitcher and David Hull are assessed in terms of their usefulness in demarcating "Darwinism" and the "Darwinians" in the first decade or so after the publication of The Origin of Species, focusing on the case of Charles Lyell. (shrink)

Like other aspiring geologists in the 1830s, Darwin focused heavily on the rising and falling of the earth's crust. I use his time in the Andes to underscore the importance he placed on larger questions of vertical movement, which mountains helped to solidify in his mind. His most impressive ramblings occurred in 1835 on two high passes in the Andes. Prior to his upland journey, he was well prepared to see the gradual movement of the earth's crust, but his time (...) in the mountains honed his vertical vision. His actual travels up and over enabled him to think more clearly about rise and fall, and how corresponding geographies could link the past to the present. Mountains were instructive backdrops to his theorizing, partly because he traveled through them, but also because his time there, linked with other geographies, became a means to foster his thinking both spatially and temporally. He did not think about mountains, but with them and through them. He is a good example of the broader vertical consciousness that directed many sciences at this time. (shrink)

This essay traces the interlinked origins of two concepts found in Charles Darwin's writings: "unconscious selection," and sexual selection as applied to humanity's anatomical race distinctions. Unconscious selection constituted a significant elaboration of Darwin's artificial selection analogy. As originally conceived in his theoretical notebooks, that analogy had focused exclusively on what Darwin later would call "methodical selection," the calculated production of desired changes in domestic breeds. By contrast, unconscious selection produced its results unintentionally and at a much slower pace. Inspiration (...) for this concept likely came from Darwin's early reading of works on both animal breeding and physical ethnology. Texts in these fields described the slow and unplanned divergence of anatomical types, whether animal or human, under the guidance of contrasting ideals of physical perfection. These readings, it is argued, also led Darwin to his theory of sexual selection as applied to race, a theme he discussed mainly in his book The Descent of Man. There Darwin described how the racial version of sexual selection operated on the same principle as unconscious selection. He thereby effectively reunited these kindred concepts. (shrink)

On occasion Charles Darwin can seem our scientific contemporary, for the subjects he engaged remain engaging today, but in his role as author he belongs to the past. It is not customary today for scientists to write book after book, as Darwin did, or for these books to serve as the primary vehicle of scientific communication. For Darwin, however, the book was central. He wrote at least eighteen, depending on what one counts; in hisAutobiographyhe entitled the section describing his most (...) important work ‘An account how several books arose’; and in his personal Journal, begun in August 1838 after he had come to a mature sense of himself, he organized entries around his books. A characteristic entry is that for 1846: ‘Oct. 1st. Finished last proof of my Geolog. Observ. on S. America; This volume, including Paper in Geolog. Journal on the Falkland Islands took me 18 & 1/2 months:–’. Further, almost always he had a book under way: when one was complete, the next was begun. He called them the milestones to his life. (shrink)

1990 marked the 150th anniversary of the publication of Charles Darwin's first major scientific theory. The paper, first presented by Darwin to the Geological Society of London on 7 March 1838, was entitled ‘On the Connexion of Certain Volcanic Phenomena and on the Formation of Mountain-Chains and the Effects of Continental Elevations.’ The paper was a remarkable attempt to develop a global tectonic synthesis. It was the culmination of a period of intensive geological activity by Darwin – then twenty-nine – (...) who had returned from the Beagle voyage only eighteen months previously. The present article reviews the development of Darwin's views, their impact upon his contemporaries, their role in shaping his later views on the origin of species, and their significance in scientific theory-making. It draws, in part, on Darwin's unpublished geological notes and jottings. This paper, and the papers by Sandra Herbert and James Secord that accompany it, were delivered at a symposium which I organized at the Geological Society of London on 31 October 1988 to mark the 150th anniversary of the reading of Darwin's paper. (shrink)

Following Michael Bartholomew's study of ‘Lyell and Evolution’ in 1973, scholars have become increasingly interested in the response of gentlemen geologists to Lamarckism during the reign of William IV (1830–7). Bartholomew contended that Charles Lyell was ‘alone in scenting the danger’ for man of using transmutation to explain fossil progression, and that he reacted to the threat of bestialisation by restructuring palaeontology along safe non-progressionist lines. Like his Anglican contemporaries, Lyell was concerned to prove that man was no transformed ape, (...) and that morals were not the better part of brute instinct. Dov Ospovat has subsequently suggested that Lyell's theory of climate was equally an attempt to thwart the transformists and ‘preserve man's unique status in creation’. In other words, Lyell's biology and geology were inextricably related inPrinciples of Geologyand his ideology affected his science as a whole. Finally, Pietro Corsi has identified the Continental materialists who most probably alerted Lyell to the danger, intimating that a conservative British response became imperative when Lyell ‘saw signs of the diffusion of transformism in England itself, where it could even form an unholy alliance with prevailing progressionist and directionalist interpretations of the history of life on earth’. (shrink)

Letter writing played an especially important role in Charles Darwin's scientific career. Like all scientists, he often needed to communicate with his colleagues, but Darwin's needs were unusual. In the first place, he lived for only short periods in centres where conversation with other scientists was possible. During his student days in Edinburgh and Cambridge he enjoyed personal contacts with university professors and other naturalists associated with the university communities; however, from 1831–1836 he sailed on theBeaglevoyage. After his return he (...) lived in London, the centre of British science, but only until 1842 when, partly due to ill-health, he withdrew to the rural village of Down in nearby Kent where he spent the rest of his life. Darwin was not totally isolated in Down. From time to time friends and colleagues paid visits, often to consult about scientific questions. Furthermore, Darwin travelled to London more frequently than has sometimes been supposed. In addition to occasional lengthier visits recorded in his Diary, he also made one-day trips, carefully recording his expenses in his account book. The record of his account book shows that during the early years in Down, he travelled to London more than a dozen times a year, though as he grew older the number of trips declined. Even during the early years, he still depended on the mail for much of the time to keep him in touch with fellow researchers. (shrink)

Like the constructivist approach to the history of science, the new history of reading has shifted attention from disembodied ideas to the underlying material culture and the localized practices by which it is apprehended. By focusing on the complex embodied processes by which readers make sense of printed objects, historians of reading have provided new insights into the manner in which meaning is both made and contested. In this brief account I argue that these insights are particularly relevant to historians (...) of science, first, because practices of reading, like those of experiment and fieldwork, are constitutive of scientific knowledge, and, second, because attention to the history of reading provides important evidence of the multifaceted and uneven contest for meaning that occurs when science is mobilized in popular culture. The essay concludes by considering some of the surprisingly abundant sources of available evidence from which a history of scientific reading might be constructed for the modern era. (shrink)

This essay traces the interlinked origins of two concepts found in Charles Darwin's writings: "unconscious selection," and sexual selection as applied to humanity's anatomical race distinctions. Unconscious selection constituted a significant elaboration of Darwin's artificial selection analogy. As originally conceived in his theoretical notebooks, that analogy had focused exclusively on what Darwin later would call "methodical selection," the calculated production of desired changes in domestic breeds. By contrast, unconscious selection produced its results unintentionally and at a much slower pace. Inspiration (...) for this concept likely came from Darwin's early reading of works on both animal breeding and physical ethnology. Texts in these fields described the slow and unplanned divergence of anatomical types, whether animal or human, under the guidance of contrasting ideals of physical perfection. These readings, it is argued, also led Darwin to his theory of sexual selection as applied to race, a theme he discussed mainly in his book The Descent of Man (1871). There Darwin described how the racial version of sexual selection operated on the same principle as unconscious selection. He thereby effectively reunited these kindred concepts. (shrink)

The ArgumentIt is not easy to point to the place of knowledge in our culture. More precisely, it is difficult to locate the production of our most valued forms of knowledge, including those of religion, literature and science. A pervasive topos in Western culture, from the Greeks onward, stipulates that the most authentic intellectual agents are the most solitary. The place of knowledge is nowhere in particular and anywhere at all. I sketch some uses of the theme of the solitary (...) philosopher across a broad sweep of history, giving particular attention to its deployment in and around the scientific culture of seventeenth-century England. I argue that the rhetoric of solitude is strongly implicated in individualistic views of society and empiricist portrayals of scientific knowledge. Solitude is a state that symbolically expresses direct engagement with the sources of knowledge – divine and transcendent or natural and empirical. At the same time, solitude publicly expresses disengagement from society, identified as a set of conventions and concerns which act to corrupt knowledge. Hence, the study of the social uses of solitude adds further support to the notion that problems of knowledge and problems of social order are solved together. (shrink)