Lack of consideration of the complex European scientific scene from the late 18th century to the mid-decades of the 19th century has produced partial and often biased reconstructions of priorities, worries, implicit and explicit philosophical and at times political agendas characterizing the early debates on species. It is the purpose of this paper firstly to critically assess some significant attempts at broadening the historiographic horizon concerning the immediate context to Darwin's intellectual enterprise, and to devote the second part to arguing (...) that a multi-faceted European debate on the transformation of life forms had already occurred in Europe around 1800. Of this debate, contrary to long cherished views, Lamarck's was only one voice, amongst many. Naturalists active in different national contexts elaborated solutions and proposed doctrines that shared several viewpoints, yet clearly stemmed from a variety of disciplinary traditions and problematic contexts. (shrink)

Myths, misunderstanding and neglect have combined to obscure our understanding of the relationship between left-wing politics and Darwinian science. This article seeks to redress the balance by studying how radical and socialist thinkers of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, desperate to legitimate their work with scientific authority, wrestled with the paradoxical challenges Darwinism posed for their politics. By studying eight leading radical and socialist thinkers — ranging from the co-founder of the theory of evolution by natural selection, Alfred (...) Russel Wallace, through to Britain's first Labour Prime Minister, J. Ramsay MacDonald — this article analyses the often tortuous relationship between Darwinism and the left, as well as providing fresh insights into the historiographical debate over ‘continuity’ in radicalism and socialism. A strict definition of ‘Darwinian’ is adopted throughout, in order to help us delineate what was specifically ‘Darwinian’ from what merely reflected the general evolutionary ethos of the age, in left-wing thought, and to move us beyond the sensational and distorting focus on eugenics which has characterized previous studies. (shrink)

French science of the period between 1793 and 1830 is now a major focus of study. The large body of work produced since the nineteenth century, particularly in the field of institutional history, has provided the background for important attempts in the last ten or fifteen years to apply tools of sociological analysis to this field of enquiry. Particularly important have been theories of professionalization and institutionalization. It is the purpose of this paper to examine the consequences of the use (...) of such models in relation to this specific historical context. In particular, I shall suggest that such questions as the importance of institutions in the conduct of science, and the extent to which science became a profession or remained a vocation, may be better understood once the world of French science has been situated in a wider political and intellectual context. An article, however, can do no more than suggest new perspectives, and must leave to more extended treatments the work of amplification and correction. Briefly, however, this paper will argue for a view of science at this period as locked in a conflict between the ambiguous demands of the political world on the one hand, and on the other pressures on individuals and groups within the vocation of science to conform to an ideology which viewed science as completelynon-political. (shrink)

Recently there has been considerable revaluation of the development of natural sciences in the early nineteenth century, dealing among other things with the works and ideas of Charles Lyell. The task of interpreting Lyell in balanced terms is extremely complex because his activities covered many fields of research, and because his views have been unwarrantably distorted in order to make him the precursor of various modern scientific positions. Martin Rudwick in particular has contributed several papers relating to Lyell's Principles of (...) geology, and has repeatedly stressed the need for a comprehensive evaluation of Lyell's scientific proposals, and of his position in the culture of his time. In the present paper I hope to contribute to the reassessment of Lyell's work by concentrating on his discussion of transformism, which constituted the central theme of the second volume of the Principles of geology: the very length of Lyell's detailed and critical analysis of Lamarck's theories reveals the importance he attributed to the question of transformism in the contemporary natural sciences. (shrink)