There are two main senses of ‘mechanism’, both deriving from the metaphor of nature as a machine. One sense refers to contrivance or design, as in ‘the plant’s mechanism of attracting butterflies’. The other sense refers to cause or law process, as in ‘the mechanism of heredity’. In his work on evolution, Charles Darwin showed that organisms are produced by a mechanism in the second sense, although he never used this language. He also discussed contrivance, where he did use the (...) language of mechanism. This discussion relates metaphor in general and Darwin’s use of the machine metaphor in particular to the problem of the nature of science, concluding that one use of the metaphor reinforces the objective nature of science and the other use reinforces the subjective nature of science. (shrink)

The question of the levels at which natural selection can be said to operate is much discussed by biologists today and is a key factor in the recent controversy about sociobiology. It is shown that this problem is one to which Charles Darwin addressed himself at some length. It is argued that apart from some slight equivocation over man, Darwin opted firmly for hypotheses supposing selection always to work at the level of the individual rather than the group. However, natural (...) selection's co-discoverer, Alfred Russel Wallace, endorsed group selection hypotheses. (shrink)

Generelle Morphologie der Organismen - Allgemeine Grundzuge der organischen Formen-Wissenschaft mechanisch begrundet durch die von Charles Darwin reformierte Deskendenz-Theorie ist ein unveranderter, hochwertiger Nachdruck der Originalausgabe aus dem Jahr 1866. Hansebooks ist Herausgeber von Literatur zu unterschiedlichen Themengebieten wie Forschung und Wissenschaft, Reisen und Expeditionen, Kochen und Ernahrung, Medizin und weiteren Genres.Der Schwerpunkt des Verlages liegt auf dem Erhalt historischer Literatur.Viele Werke historischer Schriftsteller und Wissenschaftler sind heute nur noch als Antiquitaten erhaltlich. Hansebooks verlegt diese Bucher neu und tragt damit (...) zum Erhalt selten gewordener Literatur und historischem Wissen auch fur die Zukunft bei. (shrink)

Those standard historiographic themes of "evolution" and "revolution" need replacing. They perpetuate mid-Victorian scientists' history of science. Historians' history of science does well to take in the long run from the Greek and Hebrew heritages on, and to work at avoiding misleading anachronism and teleology. As an alternative to the usual "evo-revo" themes, a historiography of origins and species, of cosmologies and ontologies, is developed here. The advantages of such a historiography are illustrated by looking briefly at a number of (...) transitions: the transition from Greek and Hebrew doctrines to their integrations by medieval authors; the transition from the Platonist, Aristotelian, Christian Aquinas to the Newtonian Buffon and to the no less Newtonian Lamarck; the departures the early Darwin made away from Lamarck's and from Lyell's views. Issues concerning historical thinking about nature, concerning essentialism and concerning classification are addressed in an attempt to challenge customary stereotypes. Questions about originality and influence are raised, especially concerning Darwin's "tree of life" scheme. The broader historiography of Darwinian science as a social ideology, and as a "worldview," is examined and the scope for revisions emphasised. Throughout, graduate students are encouraged to see this topic area not as worked out, but as full of opportunities for fresh contributions. (shrink)

My book, "The Darwinian Revolution" gives an overview of the revolution as understood at the time of its writing (1979). It shows that many factors were involved, from straight science through philosophical methodology, and on to religious influences and challenges. Also of importance were social factors, not the least of which was the professionalization of science in Britain in the 19th century. Since the appearance of that book, new, significant factors have become apparent, and here I discuss some of the (...) most important -- especially the way in which evolution as an idea came into being as an epiphenomenon of the ideology of cultural progress; the (often tense) interaction between ideas of biological progress and the urge to professionalization, and of how this led to a delay in the full appreciation of what Charles Darwin had done in the "Origin;" and the ongoing divide between biological functionalists and biological formalists, a Kuhnian-type paradigm difference that persists across the Darwinian revolution. (shrink)

The eminent historian and philosopher of biology, Michael Ruse, has written several books that explore the relationship of evolutionary theory to its larger scientific and cultural setting. Among the questions he has investigated are: Is evolution progressive? What is its epistemological status? Most recently, in "Darwin and Design: Does Evolution have a Purpose?," Ruse has provided a history of the concept of teleology in biological thinking, especially in evolutionary theorizing. In his book, he moves quickly from Plato and Aristotle to (...) Kant and such British thinkers as Paley and Whewell. His main focus, though, is on Darwin's theory and its subsequent fate. Ruse rests his history on some shaky historical and philosophic assumptions, particularly the unexamined notion that evolutionary theory is an abstract entity that is unproblematically realized in different historical periods. He also assumes that Darwin conceived nature as if it were a Manchester spinning loom -- a clanking, dispassionate machine. A more subtle analysis, which Ruse eschews, might discover that Darwin's conception of nature owed a strong debt to German Romanticism and that he contrived to infuse nature with moral and aesthetic values, not to suck them from nature. Ruse proves he is a thinker to contend with, and this essay is quite contentious. (shrink)