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Darwinian Revolution Lectures
Lecture #2: February 5, 2007
Creation Stories
Christian creation story: foundation story for other periods we will talk about
How do we know that the past even exists? How do we know that we aren’t just placed here right now
and the past is something we are not just conditioned to believe?
- Physical remains of people who died in the war (objects: cannons, buttons of uniforms, guns,
etc. in museums)
- Parliamentary papers (written materials)
- Oral histories: stories, songs, tradition accounts
o We all have relatives and the old generation might remember anecdotes from
ancestors.
- Personal memoirs
- Artworks
- Battlefields, real places where events took place
- Focus of today: oral traditions
Example: Aztec community
- monuments, statues of gods that tell us about their past
- inscriptions of belief systems
- documentation relating to this group was made by conquistadores
- represented in pictorial form, Aztec traditions appear to have been Europeanized
- believed in 5 periods of time, each of which had a deity and a different sun (each deity
associated with a different element: earth, fire, wind, etc.)
o each period had different animals
o deities in middle of sun stone
o 4 panels closest to him are the other suns of other eras
o Outer circle represents calendar and on rim there are serpents giving birth to other
gods
- Belief system: fifth era began in complete darkness (2 gods who sacrificed themselves to
provide light: one became sun, other the moon)
o Once established, gods went underground to fetch up mankind
o Everything created by gods (humans only in existence through action of gods)
o Common theme
Creation story part of larger cosmology.
Every culture seeks to know its beginnings and keep a thread going with ancestors.
Today, the stories are called myths, legends, narratives, etc.
Living pasts of a culture
Common Patterns in Creation Stories
- universe created out of chaos
- chaos is usually watery
- 1st event: introduction of light, separation of day and night
- Often a force (breath of life or god) will bring forth animals, man and woman, lust
- As part of this system, good and evil are an integral are a part
- Monsters, trolls, devils
- often based on a dualistic system (day/ night , good/evil, man/woman)
- 1 splits into 2, 2 splits into 4 (reproduction)
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Succession of worlds (trial and error)
Sometimes the creator has to descend to the underworld or be sacrificed and be reborn for the
creation story to be complete.
Sometimes origins are single events (don’t happen again) and they often therefore imply that
there will be an end (Day of Judgment for Christian story)
Not exclusively that stories have beginnings (Buddhists don’t have this… succession of worlds
instead)
Creation Myths
- Ancient Egypt
o Papyrus: represents Memphis variation of story
o Watery chaos out of which primal piece of land (mountain) emerged
o Sun God (Ra) emerged on this land
o He creates 2 children (Shu: god of air and Tefulet: god of moisture)
 Lost in waters and when he found them, his tears of joy created the humans
 Shu and Tefulet separated by sun god into sky and earth
o Sun cycles around through underworld every night (return every day is a symbol of
renewal)
o Ta makes humanity from a ball of clay (God who creates human beings molds them
out of dirt: common theme)
- Hindu
o Illustration of Brahma (hj each thread coming off of his body has a world attached to it)
o Universe that is governed by a triumvirate (Brahma, Shiva, Vishnu, etc.)
o Brahma emerged from golden egg on chaotic, primal waters
o Brahma lives for more than 100 years (each day represents millions of earth years)
o Our world is ruled by one divinity (supported by 8 elephants and snakes and Vishnu)
o Brahma is in charge of creation and men and animals are all rather minor elements.
- Buddhism
o Uninterested in origin of universe
o Wheel of rebirth (doesn’t show origin)
o No creator god
o Humans think they are central to the universe (Buddhists do not think this; we are
simply moving through this world and we cycle on into other states)
o Mandela shows structure of universe: central deity and emanations all around
o Complex world order; when one investigates these images, one gets a sense of being
a part of something much larger (humans are not obvious in the picture: this is the
point)
- Quran
o Word of god revealed to Muhammed
o Creation is never given a continuous story; Muhammed’s words can be isolated and
put together in a sequence that gives you a sense of what may or may not have
happened
o God made heavens and earth in 6 days and ordered their elements and structured
heavens (7 heavens, 7 earths) and created mankind from dust
o Mankind is created from a moist germ at other places in the Quran (damp piece of
earth)
- Central Mexican Shamanism
o Shaman: religious person in tribe
o Makes his way along torturous path to source of creation (takes him through mountains
and under hot sun)
o Arduous journey to recharge energies when he gets to source of it
o Often journeys involved but this isn’t really a creation story
- Australia
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Aboriginals
Landscape contains power of gods
Every meaningful activity leaves presence in earth (plants leave seeds)
Every place is a potent place and carries within it the memory of its origin and what the
humans have felt about it (the dreaming/dream time)
o Animals and plants fashioned from dust (afterwards, they change into the stars and
hills)
o Each circle in picture is a human soul in the earth
Blackfoot
o God floated on log in waters and had 4 animals (fish, frog, lizard, turtle)
o Turtle dove into waters and returned w/ mud in mouth
o The god took the mud and made earth
o God made woman (unique that she is the initial human) then man and then he made
buffalo
o Fashioned and gave bows and arrows and told them to shoot the buffalo to eat
o Cultural and religious origin story
Judeo-Christian
o Genesis in Old Testament
o Original chaos
o Day 1: light separated from dark
o Day 2: Waters which will turn into story of flood
o Day 3: Creation of plants (come first in this story)
o Concrete story: more narrative than any other story
o Story thought to have been dictated by god and brought down by Moses
o God separates day from night, creates firmament (heaven), creates dry land and seas,
puts stars in firmament and gave earth the sun and moon, creates fish/fowl/whales,
creates cattle and creeping animals, creates human beings (Adam)
o Puts Adam in Garden of Eden and gave him the right to name the animals (significant
because god gives power to humans… animals have no identity until Adam gives them
names)
o God makes woman for Adam
o All animals were in Garden of Eden
o God forbid them from eating apple from Tree of Knowledge
o Serpent tempts them
o Once they eat, they understand they are naked
o God expels them from garden and they reproduce
o Names of who begat who is evidence of the existence
o God distressed by how Adam and Eve’s descendants were sinful (destruction by flood
but would save a few good people and some animals)
o Second symbolic watery period
o Flood comes into science later
o Noah and family emerge after flood and repopulate (death and rebirth, repopulation)
o Follows trends: watery chaos at beginning, separation of night and day, deity of some
kind, animals and plants created first then man and woman (also good and evil at the
same time), sacrifice, punishment, death, and renewal
Stories have in them how a society should behave
Gives purpose, morals, strength, and more to that society
Lecture #3: February 7, 2007
A Clockwork Universe
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1730 is where we are starting (approximately)
We are trying to set the stage the century before Darwin
Linnaeus: Swedish naturalist (enlightenment figure)
William Paley: British theological writer (died right at the beginning of the 1800’s, lived
through the French Revolution and many of the turbulent years, wrote Natural Theology in
1802)
Crucial Point: a clockwork universe, to the people using that terminology, meant that there was
a god who created the whole world, gave it laws, gave it rules by which to run, gave it a
mechanism in some cases. God sets the universe into motion, he planned it, designed it. For
people living in 1700’s, if you looked about you at living world and structure of society, you
could see God’s plan unfolding as the universe ran according to its laws. Metaphor of clock is
mechanical but for these people it showed there was a design. There is a god that runs the
mechanism.
Linnaeus
- believed the world around him was an expression of god’s plan
- chose to study natural world principally through classification
- Swedish naturalist
- Felt that god would have made the world perfect so that underneath the complexity and sin
and diversity of existing world, there would be something rational
- Believed in creation story, but modified it slightly (felt that there had been a primitive earth that
had risen up out of the waters on which god puts animals and plants)
- Important: God created animals and plants and they did not change (the ones god himself
fashioned are the ancestral forms of all that Linnaeus could see around him)
o He felt that if they were changing, you couldn’t classify them (he needed things to be
stable, fixed)
- Lived at a time with astonishing geographical exploration (travels across pacific)
o Collections made, specimens brought back to centers of learning, identified and
classified (pragmatic reason for Linnaeus to start his enterprise)
- Devised a scheme that would make it easier to classify
o System of nomenclature and hierarchal way of arranging categories
- Artificial Scheme he uses
o He divides botanical world into 24 orders on basis of male organs in the flowers (all in
latin)… andrea = stamen
o Each order is divided into groups according to the number of female organs; pistils
(gynecious)
- Eventually a professor at Upsalla in Sweden
- Arranged his plants in ordered beds (each had a particular order)
- He liked his names to mean things.
o Gave opportunity to name things after friends (name nice plants after people who were
nice to him)
- He didn’t just classify plants
- Criticism:
o Binomial system: 1st name signified major place in scheme of things, 2nd name was
specific to that species (“the specific name”)
o Criticized for introducing too much structure when life cannot be put into boxes
o He had an important role for bringing in symbols for male, female, and hermaphrodite
(circle with arrow, circle with cross, etc.)
o Criticized for making classification schemes full of innuendo (by dealing with male and
female organs)… encouraging too much sexuality in natural world
o He uses words like marriage, in bed, etc.
- Criticism on dealing with humans
He thought they should be in a category of their own (anthropomorpho: means “like
human”)
o He thought they were NOT animals, but they were LIKE animals
o Not “ass” animals
o He thought there were 5 humankinds: homo sapiens, homo ___, etc.
o Genuine evolutionary connection? He didn’t think so.
o It was weird to include humans in the homo category
Invents category: mammalia (based on mame)
Invents the word “primates”
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Classification
- classification spread through many disciplines in 18th century (a way of ordering the natural
world that would, through the pictures of the order, would show what god had intended)
- example: minerals were classified, airs/gases, structures of society, kinds of political
structures, etc.
- there are lots of ways to classify natural world: according to we hope what may be a natural
scheme (gender, ethnicity, etc) or an artificial scheme (parents whose names begin with M)
- stones, minerals  flames  plants  animals  humans  firmament/stars/cellestium 
angels  God (example: staircase)
o ladder diagram of hierarchy from Raymond Lull
- artificial order of objects on shelves based on uses by humans
o miscellaneous way of dealing with natural world
William Paley
- lived slightly later than Linnaeus
- lived when traumas of 18th century had come to a climax, huge upheaval (Linnaeus lived at a
time of piece, rationality)
- war of independence had impoverished Europe
o European states (UK) had depended on taxes from North America
- French revolution: 1787 – 1799
o Monarchy was destroyed, aristocracy destroyed
o Swept away administrative system, legal system
o Difficult for Paley at the time to see advantages
o Napolean Bonaparte was rising to power
o Became important for English thinkers (particularly theological thinkers) to try and find
stability
o Paley found it in metaphors of clockwork
- Paley is insistent that the existence of a clock, with all its beautiful parts, must logically require
somebody to have made it.
- The existence of these kinds of contrivances requires somebody to have designed it
- Through looking at the natural world, we see perfect contrivance
- “Contrivance” (Darwin calls this “adaptation)
Lecture #4: February 12, 2007
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another line of thought (opposite from Linnaeus):
Paris, France: in time of Enlightenment and in time of French Revolution
o Erasmus Darwin- Charles’ grandfather (picks up some ideas and puts them into
English)
Major intellectual shifts regarding themselves as rational, wished to depend on reason and
logic (did not invoke idea of any kind of supernatural causes for natural world)
o Natural world didn’t depend on God actively intervening
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Buffon
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o Very few were atheists
o Lametri, Didero, etc.
o Deism: opens door for much more secular way of thinking about origins of life
Structure of society under great review
o Democracy, individualism
o Major publishing projects (encyclopedie: great text of enlightenment)
 Reclassified known world according to these principles of reason
o Picture of woman “truth being revealed”
o Big practical shifts that relate directly to world of natural history
o Major institutional centers:
 Only one survived: “King’s Garden”
 Where natural history took place
 Reconstituted during revolution as “natural history” museum
o Corollary: government funding
 Before revolution, funding through __
 After revolution, funding through state (funding for science was a new thing)
o More publications, relaxation of publishing laws, increase in images of specimens,
circulation of images (knowledge more prolific and circulated more widely)
naturalist
pre-revolution (important)
rich French aristocrat
wrote in French (different from Linnaeus)
for most of his thinking life, he regarded himself as in opposition to Linnaeus
o rejected idea of nature being compartmentalized
o expanded time frame of Earth
o purpose of classification not to expose God’s laws, but it was something humans did to
make natural world more understandable (something we impose on nature)
o natural world is actually a continuum of living forms (picks up concept of plenitude:
nature full, there are no gaps, it all blends into each other, no lines you can draw
between species)
idea of great chain of being: animals, plants and humans can be arranged on a scale of
increasing complexity
wrote directly to criticize Linnaeus
superintendent of natural history museum of Paris
he was the king of the natural history world
wrote a huge encyclopedia of natural history (deliberately a parallel to what encyclopedists
were doing in the rest of the intellectual Parisian world)
o ran to 44 volumes in middle years of 18th century
o general and specific volumes
o 1st volume: Put forward theory of the earth that had several significant achievements:
 Follower of Isaac Newton (believed in simply using physics to understand how
the earth appeared out of original chaos)
 Laplace: earth spun off of nebulous cloud of gas and solidified
 Deduced rate of cooling and solidification and suggested from that point of
cooling to the present day, the earth was 73,000 years old (extension of time
frame)
 Linnaus thought there was a constant connection with creation and
world today… nothing had changed (time didn’t matter for him)
 Putting time into the picture, Buffon says the earth has changed over these
thousands of years, that animals and plants were spontaneously generated and
because earth tends to be oval in shape, they were probably generated at the
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north pole and migrated southwards into new lands that were emerging as the
earth cooled and the animals and plants adapted to the new conditions they
were in
 Had an opportunity to show there was change
Now earth is thought to be 4.5 billion yrs old but 73,000 was provocative then
Modern creationists claim the earth is ~10,000 years old
Thinks that species have a real existence but when we give them a name and category, it is a
mere convenience for humans
Illustrated his books; all have momentos of what the animals or plants are useful for (for
humans)
Tries to define what a species really is without using artificials aids Linnaeus introduced
o Says one species is the ability to produce fertile offspring
He ended up thinking that animals and plants were so capable of degenerating that if you
traced them all back to the rich chronological past, there were only 30 basic types of animals
Regards humans as being up above natural world (however, does include monkeys and other
“quadrupeds”)
Lamarck
- protégé of Buffon
- became professor of invertebrates (in his day, it was called “insects and worms”)
o resentful for being on “lower end”
- proposes theory of earth and living beings that is densely packed
- based on idea of cycles and motion of land and sea over a long period of time changing the
climate which allows shift in animal forms
- one of first and most interesting evolutionary thinkers
- he calls his work: transformism
- evolution: word that has become imbedded in Darwinian thought
- began as botanist under Buffon
- lived through most tumultuous years of the day (storming of Bastille, Louis the 16th)
- France declared war on all of Europe and during this period, 1795, we see rise of Napolean
Bonaparte to power
- Educating people in scientific techniques would be an improved, new, French social state
(Lamark is part of this)
- He left very few personal manuscripts but he did live through the revolutionary period and kept
his job
- Produced work in which idea of revolutionary change was an integral part (we can’t directly
connect with the guy)
- Gardens abolished and reconstituted after Buffon died
- Lamark was giving classes on invertebrates during revolution as part of urge to bring science
to the people
- Transformism
o He never sets it out in a comprehensive skin
o Coins word “biology”- science of life
o Life dictated by movement of fluids within a body (no knowledge of cells yet)
 Knows about tissues and fibers of body; imagines of life as being circulation of
fluids through tissues and fibers
o Law 1: More use of an organ will strengthen the organ
 Corollary: disuse (lack of movement of fluid) will lead to deterioration
o Law 2: these traits are inherited
o Scheme of transmutation: animals and plants may find themselves sometimes in a
change of environment so their needs change. That gives rise to an increased
circulation of fluids which leads to the organs changing slightly and a change in habits.
This yields a change in form.
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When world began, organisms that emerged by spontaneous generation were simple;
increased in complexity
o He believes man is part of the scheme
o Does not believe in extinction
 Specialist in mollusks, encountering a lot of extinct mollusks in his time
 Says world is full and rich, no boundaries between species, everything is one
continuous chain (sees no gaps or possibility for extinction)
 Science has just not found the piece that fills a certain gap
o Fossils are remains of a continuum that can be seen today but is more evolved,
transmuted, changed
o Interested in way the oran transformed into humankind
o Makes old great chain of being real
Sent military expedition to Egypt to draw, study antiquities, natural history
As part of the military campaign, the French, English, and German took a lot of the antiquities
back to their countries
French troops brought back a large amount of mummies (humans and animals)
o In Paris, took opportunity to unwrap mummies and look at species
 Lamarck was pleased; 3,000 yr old mummies were exactly same as modern
species (conditions hadn’t changed, no change in need)
 For Lamark, it proved his theory
 For his opponent, the remains said something different (that 3,000 yrs, and no
change, so evolution cannot take place; species are stable)
Erasmus Darwin
- English
- Lived in Lichefield
- Participated in industrial revolution
- Great colleague of Wedgewood, Priestely and interested practicioner in sciences
- Acquaintance of artist, Joseph Wright
o It is thought that one of the characters in his painting is Erasmus Darwin
- Doctor, philosopher
- Wrote most of his ideas in poetry
- One book, in text form, where he talked about transformationism (Zoonomia)
Lecture #5: February 14, 2007
Theme: Animals and plants in the past that do not now live today
A longer time span for earth’s history
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extension of time frame beyond when humans emerged (“deep time”: time before humans
existed)
takes innovation and revised understanding of physics to be able to think like this
Background
- fossils very known in the past, before the times we will talk about today
- fossil: something dug up, taken out of the ground
- in 1660-1670 people realized fossils were remnants of real animals (even though they were
stone)
o why did god make them stone/make them extinct?
o What was his purpose in making them die?
- Role of fossils: stimulating and generated big issues for those investigating them
- Straightforward to suggest fossils were species that died in Noah’s flood
William Smith
- 1815: surveyor and early engineer who went out surveying canal networks (major part of
improvement in transportation in 1800s in Great Britain)
- Canal system required workmen to find appropriate places to run water
- Smith: first to identify particular fossils occurring in particular kinds of deposit (strata,
limestones, sedimentary)
o Hands on understanding on how fossils lie and that they are characteristic of particular
beds
o Didn’t extrapolate this into a major scheme
- Made map of British Isles to show distribution of particular strata
William Buckland
- took Smith’s information and turned it into a philosophy of geology
- felt that the remains of all different kinds indicated the pre-flood world
- sedimented out in particular ways (heaviest to bottom, etc)
- pioneered excavations (went into potholes and cave)
- still working in scheme of natural theology set out by William Paley (world designed by God)
George Cuvier
- contemporary and rival of Lamarck
- Lamarck’s boss
- Many fossils discovered over this 20-40 yr period
- Individuals took trouble trying to imagine world of the animals that were fossils
- Napolean of natural history world
o Most famous figure in natural history in his time at the museum in Paris
- Decided there were 4 types of animals in animal kingdom: CLANS
o Vertebrate
o Molluscan
o Articulates
o Zoophites
o Could not transmute into one another (god given clans in natural world)
- Claimed that from a single bone, he could reconstruct the animal because the bone had
imbedded in it all the keys that gave info about the rest of the animal
- Most of his specimens came from remnants of war
- Mammoth, masterdone, elephant all alike
- His work shows that the African and Indian elephant are not the same species; these modern
animals are not the same as the extinct mammoth
o The conditions of existence of the mammoth changed so much it became extinct
- Felt it was impossible for the living elephants to have evolved from the mammoth or
masterdone
o Put together fine system of the world that integrated all of this info into a scheme where
he felt the world had experienced successive revolutions; each period of time
demarcated by these revolutions had its own population of animals and plants
o Catastrophes wiped out species and others were created
o Biblical flood: separated back time from present (mammoths and masterdones on early
side of flood)… flood creates modern world for Cuvier
- This theory fit well with biblical story and natural evidence: appeared to many people that the
way progress took place was to wipe out what existed before and start anew (like Napolean
times when he was studying)
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excavations in River Ohio: wheel with buckets
Peale put materials together in Philadelphia; bones of mammoth (prized trophies of North
America)
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Mammoth, masterdonn: interchangeable
What was the natural history museum of Harvard College before MCZ took over?
Charles Lyell
- English, Scottish
- Unlike Cuvier, he was not a practiced comparative anatomist
- Not a university professor like Buckland
- Interested in geology and had an urge to reform a geological system that was too biblical
(depended too much on God creating the world)
- Much more scientific to only use knowledge about scientific change that we could see in the
present day
- Applied the processes and rate of geological process that occurred today very consistently to
the past so that he must expand the age of the earth very dramatically
- Mountains: we don’t see them growing overnight in present day nor did they in the past (took
lots of time to emerge)
- Abolish revolutions
o There have been big changes that some people could call revolution but if the time
scale is expanded we see they were not really dramatic in any way
- Argues in Principles of Geology: sets out scheme on how to reason about the past
o We use a lot of his ideas today
o Rejected in his own day (had a particular singularity)… only bits of ideas lasted until
today
- Claims
o Earth almost eternal
o No revolutions; everything proceeds at gentle enough pace
o No purpose for movement towards present day; no direction
o Suggests that time is so long, conditions reoccur, everything in a cycle,
- nobody believed him
- Darwin thought his Principles of Geology were significant
- Lyell important because in his book he directly addresses the question of transmutation
- Gives 4-5 chapters to direct attack on Lamarck
o Summarize Lamarck’s beliefs and go through each concept and systematically
disprove
- He might have been the one to propose evolution but he stepped back from that (privately a
religious man but did not think the bible could be used as scientific evidence)
Take Home Messages
- rise of historical thought about earth is really important
- relaxation of literal interpretation of bible
- increasing acknowledgement of vast periods of time that must have elapsed before humans
appeared
- how did those major changes take place in this short 30-40 year period?
o Understanding of fossils (interest, excavation, research) brings them to this point.
o Specimens create problem that only can be solved by taking oneself out of the current
method of thought and creating a new one.
- Cuvier noted that many of the bones are of animals that no longer exist: pronounced sense
that there is something beyond the present world; the past explains why the present is the way
it is.
Lecture #6: February 21, 2007
Cultural History
- How a poet/scholar might whish to present himself in 1805?
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Might be scientific or natural objects surrounding him
Outside in a natural setting
Small figure in huge landscape, natural looking figure
Example picture: Goethe
 Man with right proportions sitting amidst a natural background
 Shows he was intellectually inclined and poetically and scientifically competent
o Idealism period will be explored today
o Naturphilosophie: understanding the world scientifically, artistically, emotionally to unify
the study of nature
o Alexander von Humboldt
 Represented in a similar way (in nature, one or 2 symbols of academic interest
in natural world, romantic shirt)
 Represents moment in history of natural sciences
 Picture #2 has exploration tools lying near Humboldt
 One of the key features of his work: (tends to form undercurrent for
naturphilosophie): interest in measurement (making sure things were accurately
measured, putting them together in schemes)
 Lavish textbook published in 1805 and onwards through early nineteenth
century: chart that shows heights and measurements of mountain ranges which
have then been inserted into a distorted image of Cordillera
 Integrated collecting info. into one image (plants, etc) with the
measurements of height, angle of sun, etc.
People of this lecture thought the only way to understand the natural world was to seek out the
basic unifying rules or themes running through (these would stretch over so even the plants
and animals could be united by one common theme)
UNIFICATION
Goethe: Vertebrate skull made up of regular number of bones: you can map the different
shapes of the bones in different families of vertebrates (metamorphosis of skull… his
terminology)
o Unity of type
Suggests that the petals of flowers are colored leaves so that leaves were all together in the
same whirl at the top (consistency and unity in botanical world from the suggestion that the
leaves and petals are the same thing)
Comparative anatomy: same part of body expressed in different ways in different species
Etienne Geoffroy St. Hilaire
- began as disciple of Cuvier
- Cuvier suggested revolutions in earth history and said there were only 4 basic types of animal
- St. Hilaire starts off adopting this view and changes under influence of naturphilosophie
- Thinks there is 1 basic type of animal
- Not an evolutionist but a lot of what he writes is very meaningful retrospectively (felt there was
a progressive change through animal kingdom)
- Most of life spent working on “unity of plan”: basic type
- Suggests that flap on gills on fish is derived from other bones in other species (matches
them)… matches earbones in mammals
- Labeled each bone with A,B,C,D and traces the structure in each image
- Goes head to head w/ Cuvier over this
- Geoffrey putting forward a science of pure structure whereas Cuvier was dedicated to pure
function
o Came to a head over skull of crocodile
 arch over upper part of mouth that Cuvier said was special to a crocodile
 Geoffroy argued it was a modification of the same bone in other reptiles
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 Esoteric debate
Both were very knowledgable and had detailed structural information used to argue
their points
Karl von Baer
- wrote mostly in German
- English speaking world, after it was translated, embraced and studied his theories
- Tries to integrate what Cuvier and St. Hiliare were saying
- There are basic major types in the animal world but each type is very similar in its early
embryological stages (perhaps very similar in early fossil stages as well)
- Law: any embryo from any of the major classes of animal life looks pretty much the same in its
early stages.
o as they grow through their developmental stages, they diverge and specialize into what
they will be when they are born
o “development from the general to the specialized”
- Read by contemporaries as a way of representing that god had given to nature basic types
and these types had gradually diverged from the basic type (an intelligent, natural philosopher
could understand the basic type or initial plan)
- No literal connections btw manifestations of ideal types, but the ideal types existed
- Naturphilosphen called this the “divine blueprint”
Richard Owen
- famous for inventing the word “dinosaura” meaning “terrible lizard”
- specialized in big specimens (large reptiles)
- understood the moa was a bird that had recently gone extinct (probably only extinct in the year
1500)
- romantic, Germanic philosopher
- believed in a basic unity of type
- reidentified megalosaurus (gave new descriptions)
- famous through 1840’s and asked to help set up “Great Exhibition”
o this site moved to Sitinum (?) outside London and Owen was invited at base of
exhibition site to recreate world of dinosaur which he did
- dinner inside model dinosaur park
- names around model are the scientists we talked about (Buckland, Cuvier, etc.)
- tries to find unity of type in basic vertebrate form
- thinks there is a particular kind of vertebrate form
o modified in different ways, in different families of animals
- not evolutionary either
- for Owen, shows unity that can be explored through comparative anatomy
- particular tools anatomists can used but not evolutionary
- defines homology and analogy
o homology: same bones found in skeletons but specialized for different ways of life
(human hand can be seen reproduced but modified for different functions in flipper of
seal or wing of bat)
o analogy: an organ (such as a bird’s wing) appears to be repeated in another organ like
a butterfly’s wing (same function but not same structure inside)
- put definitions together in Archetypes and Homology (long article, hard to read)
Louis Agassiz
- Swiss naturalist, became much more famous than any of the other guys talked about today
- Most famous naturalist in middle years of nineteenth century
- Came to US from Switzerland, originally to give a course of lectures
- Persuaded to stay
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First professor of zoology and geology in US
His second wife founded Radcliffe
Famous as scholar on fossil fishes before he came to US
Studied glaciation carefully
1840s: suggested that not just glaciers existed in past, but they extended over mountains so
there was an entire ice age (ice dominated northern hemisphere)
o Many readers could not accept this
o Agassiz felt it was a better way of explaining phenomenon (others suggested flood)
Believed in structured history that Cuvier believed in (different batches of animals and plants
from beginning of time to present)
o Early period: known genera of reptiles, ice age (no life): separates past world from
present world
Works extensively on vertebrates and invertebrates, especially marine animals
Contributions of Natural History to the U.S.
He created Museum of Comparative Zoology
Worked on turtles
From 1859 onwards, raised subscriptions to build himself a museum (MCZ first university
museum and scholarly academic museum)
Puts specimens in MCZ in the way he believes nature’s plan intended
o Not evolutionary: has vestiges of Agassiz’s scheme of how nature should be organized
(believed there were different kinds of plans in natural world… best way to organize
was a geographical mode)
o Animals from certain areas built relatively on same plan
o When we go, we’ll see a geographical arrangement that has meaning for historians of
biology
Believed in abstract
Lecture #7: February 26, 2007
The Evolutionists
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individuals from 1750-1850 were extremely knowledgeable and talented (when taken in their
own time, they were significant in their own field and full of expertise)
the next few lectures; rise of evolutionary thought
o working within the same kind of pattern that Darwin worked in
Elite Science  Popular Science
- first half of nineteenth century: in Britain, time of progress
o technological improvement (roads, canals, bridges, factories, back-to-back housing)
o publishing world advancements (steam presses invented and allowed daily
newspapers, rapid production of books, journals and magazines)  not just the elite
hears information
o Great Exhibition: Crystal Palace
o Educated elite had access to science through
 university libraries
 gentleman’s clubs and societies
 private laboratories
 journals (Westminster Review)
o Public encountered science through
 Local scientific clubs and societies
 Animal and plant shows (philoperisteron society)
 Greenhouses and conservatories (horticultural displays of tropical plants)
 Museums of curiosities
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Lending libraries (great rise occurred at this time)… Mudies Select Library
Shows and exhibitions
Women collectors  women were never part of the elite scientific culture but
were actively involved in the amateur scientific world
Public lectures in the new Mechanic’s Institutes and Halls of Science
Phrenology: science of human progress (understanding the brain by
apportioning different faculties to the substance of the brain… brain could be
topologically subdivided between emotions and behavioral traits)
 Very popular, at first considered pseudoscience
 Developed in Germany by Gall and Spruzheim, then picked up and run
with it by George Combe in Scotland
 Popularized by Fowler brothers in US
 Animal-like propensities at back of brain and intellectual propensities at
front near eyes
 Many people who believed in this were subscribing to an imagery
of human progress; through identifying you own characters and
educating particular parts of you character, you could progress
(science of self improvement of not only an individual, but the
human race)--- ties in w/ technological progress
 Possible research topic*
Herbert Spencer
- philosopher, writer, sociologist who developed an evolutionary theory and applied it throughout
the intellectual domain
o applied to philosophy, psychology and study of society
- 1852: theory spelled out in Leader, a literary review (short article, not very specific, but you
can see he is putting forward an evolutionary science that focuses on the human being, uses
concept of progress)
- Felt like world began in chaos and its overriding tendency obliged chaos to move into some
kind of order
- Nonbeliever, atheist
- Puts yearning for faith into an evolution
- Thought the evolution was from simple, undifferentiated stuff to complex, specialized stuff
- Produces complex phrase: “incoherent homogeneity to coherent heterogeneity”
o Progressive advance and diversification
- Views were widely circulated
- Member of avant garde literary set in London
- In world not of the elite
- Comes up later as man who suggests that Darwin uses phrase “survival of the fittest”
- Continues publishing about evolutionary thought long after Darwin finishes
- Becomes hugely influential in North America
- Social Darwinism largely based on Spencer’s work
Robert Chambers
- pre-Darwinian evolutionary text: Vestiges (**anonymous**)
o goes from beginning of time when universe was created
o tiny globules of matter gradually take on shape of animals and plants that match those
seen in early geological records
o progressive change, history of changes of animals in fossil record
o doctrine of phrenology supports that humans may not be changing physically but our
minds are still progressing (self improvement)
o we could even turn into a new super race
o
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a little bit of theological window dressing (at the beginning he says God certainly
begins the system and god has given laws to world)
o last chapter: many books would talk about human’s place in modern world; he does the
same thing but asks, how does a good god create all of the bad things in the world?
Claim: the God that has created the world as we know it has intended that there be
some kind of pain for the benefit of the masses
 utilitarian
 some gain even though some have to die
fabulous response to book (very popular)… 8 editions in 1st year
Churchill: publisher, became rich
Possibilities for why the author felt it would be anonymous:
o Protect family (theological impropriety of writing something like this)
o He wasn’t a famous person so his name couldn’t carry the book.
o Didn’t want to muddy his reputation
o People could encounter the book without bias
o Popular trend to publish anonymously
o People were afraid to write killer reviews in case the author was a very famous,
respected person
Revealed identity of author after death
Scottish, self-taught
Most of his writing were in journal he and his brother published
o Journal for the public (non-elite natural history)
o Composed in secrecy
Went to St. Andrews to write the journal
When the book became successful and he received royalty checks, it went through an
intermediary so no one knew the author
Hostile reviews from elite scientists (one was Adam Sedgewick: professor of geology at
Cambridge… equivalent of Butler)
o Criticism: Such an evolutionary world removed moral of physical world (no role for
god)… moral sense (human characters)  no god given sense of morality in the story
Lecture #8: February 28, 2007
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many people thinking about evolution before Darwin and at the same time as him
how Darwin became successful: encouraged the public to take the ideas seriously (key issue)
debates about the way that individuals generate new ideas:
o does hard work contribute to the reformation of thought?
o Need a prepared mind to come to new ideas?
o Is a trigger or stimulus needed for someone researching in a particular area?
o Cultural context must have an important role
 Context supplies elements of solution
How do people come up with new ideas? (important question)
o Darwin: combination of “hammer on head” and thought and effort (plus context)
Charles Darwin
- came from professional middle class family (father: doctor who worked from family home),
lived in Shrewsbury
- 2 famous grandfathers; Erasmus (poet, evolutionary thinker) and Josiah Wedgewood (china
merchant, chemist, Wedgewood china)
o Cousins to Wedgewood family
- Prosperous, financially secure family
- Older brother: doctor
- Sent to Edinburgh University to train as a doctor (went at age 16)
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o
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Experience w/ surgery caused him to not be able to stomach medicine
Stayed for 2 years; went to natural history lectures and worked w/ Robert Grant
(evolutionary thinker, Lamarckian)
 One day, Grant burst out in praise of Lamarck
 Darwin’s first encounter w/ evolutionary thought with someone he respected
greatly (inclined to think well of it)
o Went to geology lectures
o His father thought he was wasting time (father pulled him out and sent him to
Cambridge University)
o Joined Christ’s College at Cambridge where training meant to give a general degree in
career choice to become parson
o Darwin had reservations about church but felt comfortable w/ notion of becoming
parson (later laughed about it)
o Took botany classes
o Most time spent on ad hoc natural history pursuits (favorite: beetle collecting)
o Read Humbolt’s narrative of travels in central America; inspired by idea of traveling to
tropics (yearned to travel)
If not for beagle invitation, probably would have become a parson and would have written
some books on natural history
Beagle Voyage
- professor at Cambridge heard about the opportunity and asked Darwin
- his father objected to the voyage
- he went to his uncle, Josiah Wedgewood the 2nd, and he talked to the father and Dr. Darwin
said he could go
- 2 year voyage extended to 5 years (his father paid)
- Robert FitzRoy- captain of voyage
o Came through admiralty training school, no university training
o Passion for accuracy (useful surveying results came at end of voyage… maps, etc)
- Small boat, went individually even though most boats at the time went in 2’s
- 80 men, 1 captain, 1 guest (Darwin). rowboats for surveying
- Crowded under decks
- Darwin brought Beagle notebooks with him
o took Lyell’s Principles of Geology: Darwin adopted the idea of gradualism from this
book (small changes will turn into a big effect)
- ship stayed in South American waters
- did mostly geological work on the voyage
- FitzRoy renamed many geographical features w/ names of people on boat (Mount Darwin,
lake FitzRoy, etc.)
- Collected rhea- identified later on
- Crossed mountains on foot, saw volcano, felt earthquake (first time European traveler
recorded event, brought it back so it became part of science)
- Worked w/ 3 Fuegians on ship to work on a religious mission
o Brought back and anglosized
o Darwin’s response: struck by difference between these people and their brothers and
sisters and other members of indigenous community
 Had fire, canoes, ate raw fish: very primitive
 Civilization is just a venire: every human is the same (drew this from the 3
angosized Fuegians on the trip)
- Galapagos islands
o Darwin struck by nature of tortoises (each had a different shaped shell)
o Beagle voyagers ate tortoise
o Reptiles, finches
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o
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Finches pictured more glamorous in books
Darwin collected finches, didn’t label which islands they came from
 When examined, surprise to Darwin that they were all different species and it
was likely the species were confined to separate islands
Well-qualified to think about the natural history and geological world after coming back from
voyage
Wrote journal of researches and technical treatises after he got back
When he returns, he thinks of the evolutionary theory
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exploring Lamarck’s, his grandfather’s, radicals’ view
wrote for 2 yrs. full of significant material but didn’t have workable mechanism
read book by Thomas Robert Malthus  led to evolutionary theory
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Thomas Robert Malthus
- Essay on the Principle of Population 1789
- Much older than Darwin
- Book to explain rise and fall in population size
- Suggested in essay: if population left alone in completely new area (example: New England)
then populations tend to double in size in 20 yrs.
o We could take this as a mathematical rule about populations (geometric growth)
o There are checks everywhere (sometimes those that humans have created for
themselves or that God gives to human race … famine, war, disease, infanticide,
contraception, abortion)
- Powerful political piece taken up by politicians of day (this is probably why he read it)
o Darwin saw in checks that natural balance btw population struggling to increase
numbers mechanism he could use for his theory
 Pulls from political economy and translates to biological framework
(overproduction of offspring which leads to competition and struggle and
only a few will get through the struggle and they will then live to
reproduce and contribute to the next generation)
 If checks could be circumvented, next generation will be better adapted
(Lyell’s small changes: if this happens repeatedly, there will be noticeable
effects in structure of the species)
- Darwin works intensively with this
- Material we read: when Darwin reaches an idea, he has all the elements of his theory
o Why did he hang on for so long and not publish Origin of Species for another 20 years?
o He was working it through, it was provocative and non-theological (he was aware how
radical it was)
o Keeps quiet, explores in private, doesn’t write it up until years later
o Wanted to make theory fool-proof (explores every element of view so that he doesn’t
look foolish when it is published and so he can give it as much support as possible)
o “thinker” side (delay in publication) and “hammer on head” side (Malthus) and
context (Beagle voyage, early background, training)
Lecture #9: March 5, 2007
AR Wallace
- very similar idea to Darwin’s
- independent idea to the same principle at roughly the same time
- as a man: different from Darwin but similar to Chambers
o self-educated (left high school at 14)
o self-made man microcosm of what Victorians thought characterized the period
- Early life
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Born in Wales, moved around a lot
Left school early and took up trade as an apprentice surveyor of railway system
Became surveyor, became bored, and turned to teaching (math)
Met important individuals and began self-ed. Program
Attended Mechanics’ Institutes: way of education people like surveyors (middle class
enterprises for education young professionals)
 Mechanics’ Institutes became Halls of Science (offered courses, etc.)
o Public libraries: important for self education
 Unlike Darwin: no personal library, he borrowed from library
 Reads Lyell & Malthus (like Darwin), Darwin, socialist tracks, Paine
Mesmerism: sciences of the mind (phrenology, etc).
o Fascinated by human mind (did not think in evolutionary terms early on but he was
interested in the mind)
o Tried out mesmerism on his math students
Robert Owen: great utopian socialist thinker
o Wallace listened to his lectures
o Opposed to state religion, thought their could be a cooperative financial economy
o Founded New Lanark, Scotland (created socialist community based on cotton mills)
o Decided to bring socialist experiment to U.S.  city of New Harmony purchased in
1895 on Wabash River
 Tried to set up same economy… failed for him but not for the groups who
worked there
 Ran for 3-4 years, abandoned it, returned home and gave lectures on socialism
and cooperative endeavor
o Wallace committed to these principles of utopian socialism
 Wallace abandoned traces of religious belief, did not believe in race, wanted
abolishment of slavery
Henry Walter Bates: cotton apprentice, uneducated, participated in local natural history work
o Wallace became friends with him
o Together, in 1848, decided to go to Brazils together to collect natural history specimens
in order to sell in Britain to museum collectors
o Had both read Humboldt and Darwin’s accounts of voyages
o Tragedy of voyage: shipwrecked, everything went down (papers, boxes, specimens
lost)
 Retrieved monkey, parrot, woodcreeper
o Wrote 2 books in London about trip completely constructed off of memory (great
failures)
o Bates wrote a book about the voyage which was a success: Naturalist on the River
Amazons 1863
o Together, the 2 were interested in butterflies
 Observation: 1 species usually had varieties on the other side of the river
 Traced changes in color patterns across the river boundaries
 Began to wonder… something here helping the butterflies to diversify?
 What he knew in theory about evolution: Vestiges and Darwin
 Mimicry- one species is distasteful to birds (safety mechanism) and others
change to mimic the distasteful one
 Idea not published until after Origin of Species; Darwin uses it as a
piece of evidence to support his ideas
In 1854, went to Indonesia
o Self-financing in an adhoc, adventurous fashion
o Collecting exhibition
o Came up with idea of natural selection here
o How could he have come up with this idea considering his background?
o
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Appears to have been involved in geographical patterns of species and humans
Attempted to collect bird of paradise
 Rarity, beauty, adaptations, etc.
o Collected beetles (like Darwin)
o Interested in orangutans (one lived w/ him for a while: his “baby”)
 He anthropomorphizes it, believes it is a vestigial evolutionary ancestor
On island of Gilolo, thinking about anthropology of area: ”Malthusian moment”
o He had malaria and during one of his fever fits he says he asked himself, why are
some human populations tending toward extinction and why are some so successful?
o Thought of Malthus: the most successful individuals will be the ones who survive all the
checks and problems of existence
o This leap leads to thinking about animal and plant world; those who can survive,
complete, and struggle for existence will be the ones who can reproduce and
contribute to the next generation.
o Writes the idea up in a short essay in a few days (much clearer than Darwin’s writings)
o Sent a copy to Darwin who receives it in June 1858 (we’re not sure exactly when)
 Perhaps Darwin received it earlier and stole ideas
 In a panic, Darwin wrote to someone saying that Wallace had his exact idea
o Darwin asks Lyell and Hooker what to do
o Lyell suggests they publish together (got Darwin’s essay and Mrs. Hooker sends parts
of both to be read at Linnean Society of London) in 1858
 1st announcement of evolution by natural selection
How 2 people could come up with the same idea: historical repercussions
- commonalities:
o traveled
o took themselves out of Victorian cultural context and experienced other worlds and
other kinds of life; met other people, exposed to other ways of thought and traditions
o believed in 1 kind of human species
o concerned with understanding geographical distribution of animals and plants
o interested in varieties and the relationship btw varieties and species
o read Lyell, Chambers, Malthus
o both take Malthus as the mechanism for their theories
- differences
o social worlds
 Darwin’s ship: British navy frigate (80 people)
 Wallace’s ship: perahu (on his own)
 Darwin’s home: Down House in Kent
 Wallace’s home: little hut in Aru Islands
 Darwin’s household staff: many assistants, colleagues who could answer his
questions, supply him with info, networking
 Wallace’s staff: one man Ali
- Knew each other later in life but from different worlds
- Wallace never going to be part of the establishment
Wallace Coming Back to Britain
- Wallace: prolific author when he came back to Britain (could have become a mini-Darwin if he
wanted, but remained slightly separate)
o Unique view on human evolution
 Thought they had physically evolved up to a certain point and then a
supernatural force causes the human mind to take over
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Became spiritualist: not believing in God but believing in some other world (the world of
spirits)… when they die, humans turn into spirits and they could be called back in order to ask
questions
o “psychic realm”- what we would call it today
o Different from usual scientific realm
Suggested to Darwin that the words natural selection were not always helpful
o Suggested to call it “survival of the fittest” (expression from Herbert Spencer)
o In Wallace’s copy of Origin of Species, he crosses out “natural selection” and writes in
“survival of the fittest”
o Insistence tends to separate him from Darwinians (who pushed Darwin’s theory
forward)
Darwin became famous one and Wallace not talked about much; Darwin painted endlessly
and hangs in Linnean Society
o Wallace did not hang there until 1998
Lecture #10: March 7, 2007
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Trends in images found
o deal with sequence
o they include humans
o dwell on transitions between apes and humans
o physical, secular process
o address, indirectly, the implications evolution has for society
Origin of Species
- readers understood there were big implications for society
- Darwin called it the chief work of his life (nearly 20 years spent applying evidence to his
theory)
- Darwin became known for this book
- published Nov. 24, 1859
- after short paper by Wallace published, Darwin wrote Origin of Species
o abstracted long manuscript to yield O of S
- no footnotes, bibliography
- written in a relatively non-scientific style for the day
o ideas complex, writing style straightforward (all kinds of people read it)
- first global public engagement w/ science
- in 1859, circulated in bookshops & libraries, presentation copies (Darwin sent these to friends
and people he wanted to influence), reviews, gossip
- 1250 copies published (not a lot)
- as a book:
o manuscript no longer exists
o sometimes gave sheets of original long manuscript to people as gifts
o John Murray criticized original title for being too long
o his credentials are all on the front page
o Darwin thought Vestiges was his primary competition
 difference: anonymity versus credentials
 famous publisher versus normal publisher
 Origin of Species overtakes sales of Vestiges eventually; Origin of Species has
been selling since its original publication
- Darwin:
o prosperous man
o lived in country so he could devote himself to intellectual endeavor if he wished (not an
academic professor)
o
o
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obsessed with getting details right (experimented for many years)
kept pigeons in house (cross bred them)
 saw that young chicks of different breeds were similar
 tried to make new breeds
o studied barnacles
o interested in sequences of evolution (experiments w/ plants)
o “thinking path”
o Darwin did a lot of hands on, experimental work
o his undertaking relied extensively on correspondences through letters (from age 21?)… innovative global network
 about 6-7 letters/day
 existing # of letters is nearly 14,000 (total was possibly 30,000 letters over a
period of 60 years)
The Book & Its Argument
o attempts to explain the design in the world that Paley wrote about in completely non
divine ways
o modification and descent are part of natural world (doesn’t use the word “evolution”)
 “evolution” not used until Darwin’s theory is well accepted
 Darwin uses “descent with modification” or “natural selection”
o Argument: present natural selection as method for change
o book build on analogy: what happens in domesticated world and what he thinks
happens in the wild
 Wallace does not believe in the analogy
o his principle is based in idea of gradualism (things happen slowly and in little steps)
o overall shape of animal and plant kingdoms can be represented as branching tree (not
a new idea but gives it new meaning)
 Darwin is the first to put real connections into the tree
o All these changes take place without any divine action… entirely natural process
o no necessary progress in sequence of changes
 if changes occur, animals and plants will be selected
 takes out inner striving of Chambers, etc.
o each chapter serves a purpose
o gives evidence for variation
o Chapter 4: talks about struggle for existence, Malthus and checks, gives own theory of
natural selection
o last few chapters: explores advantages of thinking about the world in this way
o only picture: divergence tree
Not in book
o origin of life (different from Chambers and from a lot of scientists at that time)
o no humans in book: does say its relevant but he won’t talk about it in his book
 however, everyone talks about this after reading the book… even though it is
not present in the book
o doesn’t look forward or mention where evolution may go
o no divine
MIDTERM EXAM
Lecture #11: March 12, 2007
Controversy- UK
Methodology of History
- shouldn’t label concepts as right or wrong
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historical way: try to understand individuals as intelligent; they bring to their resolutions every
possible aid available at the time
our views shouldn’t influence how we write about these people/ideas
think about history of biology without making progressive story to today (retrospective view of
past)
before Darwin, evolution was called transmutation (should be separate terms when studying
past people)
don’t use the term “pre-Darwinian”- makes it seem their purpose was to lead up to Darwin
many people look at history from winner’s point of view in terms of a controversy: theme for
today
Controversy- first half 19th cent.
- natural selection removed creation
- removed human purpose
- did not suggest heaven and hell
- said humans were just animals
- everyone was making these remarks: not just theologians
- if natural world and humans are thought of as changing, where does that leave understanding
of social/class structure? could it break down? what happens to wealth distribution in a
country?
- fragmentation and re-examination of role of church in England at this time
- Darwin’s book didn’t revolutionize the way people thought about God; it contributed to a
movement that was already underway with people moving away from the faith of Anglicanism
o atheists
o others moving to Roman Catholicism
o Unitarians rejected the Anglican trinity
o non-conformists
o fragmenting society even before publishing (Origins important element but not the start
of the movement)
- famous clash between religion and science (bishop and scientist)
o audience felt there had been a symbolic airing of issues; Darwin’s Origin was an
occasion for the airing (thoughts crystallized)
o possible that bishop was as successful as getting his thoughts through as the scientist;
however, we tend to think of this as being a victory for science
 video clip
 symbolic crisis
- not just critical response for Origin of Species
o Kingsley and Powell supported the ideas
o could God have initiated natural selection?
o not a strict theologians vs. scientists war (this clip fails us in this fashion)
 we tend to think this was the reaction but it is wrong
- Huxley’s career is made on the fact that he was in defense of Darwin (huge moment was
fighting for it in the video… his first win in public speaking)
- Fitzroy tells people to believe in the bible
- meeting hosted by Oxford University
o public lectures at British Association for Advancement of Science
o science brought to ordinary public
o Samuel Wilberforce- bishop at Oxford
o Thomas Henry Huxley
o mtg took place in Oxford U. Natural History Museum
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less talked about part of debate
o Paul Du Chaillu’s lectures and books on gorillas 1861
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o
o
o
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gorillas depicted as fierce
fear that underneath human civilization, we are just beasts (in Chaillu’s writings,
gorillas depicted as fiercest beasts)
Punch magazine 1861: cartoon of gorilla w/ sign that says, “Am I a man or a brother?”
 plays on old anti-slavery campains in UK (“Am I not a man and a brother?”
displayed as aggressive animals (think of pose at MCZ)
Richard Owen: engaged in controversy w/ Huxley over brain
 Huxley said the primate brain and human brain were very similar
 Owen staked entire classification scheme on the basis that there were many
differences between the brains
 this was part of the talk at the meeting: what’s in a brain?
 not resolvable by what people saw: it is a belief system
 Huxley’s Man’s Place in Nature
 uses the first image of “evolutionary sequence” that we always see; this
is the source
 visually presents evolution
 this is after the controversy we were discussing before (this is 1868)
Take Home:
Controversy is a real thing. It deliberately exaggerates in makes things into a symbol when they were
actually a wide range of discussions and belief systems. It involved verbal attacks.
Lecture #12: March 19, 2007
Controversy: USA
Recap
- responses to Origin of Species: what it is that makes a book controversial
- the essence of a controversy lies in the fact that it is not a black and white issue (many kinds
of commitment get pulled into the controversy)
o documents that we read make it seem clear who was defending who; however, it is
more complex than this (it is never as straightforward as it seems)
o many people were involved spectrum of views wrapped up in social standing,
patriotism, academic background (or lack thereof) and financial standing
 not just religious views came into debates
USA
- striking that first responses to Darwin in USA were on the east coast (showed how US
developed academically, intellectually)
- Darwinism possibly the first international public debate about science (1859-1900)
o Newton generated debate but not to as great of an extent
- range of views in North America same as those found in other nations
o most people felt they needed a view of some sort
o some held onto old religious beliefs (Darwin not a part of their lives; Darwin not
consciously rejected but just ignored)
 Ex: William Dawson
o some accommodated Darwin’s views into their religious beliefs
 Ex: Asa Gray
o some were very torn
 Ex: James Dwight _____ from Yale
o some decisively opted for one theory or another (choice between evolution or faith);
either kept the 2 separate in their own lives or adopt one and reject the other
 Ex: Louis Agassiz rejects Darwinism and retains faith in Divine force
 Ex: William Barton Rogers rejects faith and adopts Darwinism (founds MIT)
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John William Draper (chem. professor at NYU, founder of NYU med school) and Andrew
Dickson White (co-founder of Cornell, first president of Cornell) wrote books at end of
nineteenth century
o intended to bring science to forefront of American educational system
o leave religion outside educational system
o idea of warfare and conflict draws from these 2 books
Asa Gray
- professor of botany at Harvard University
- came to US in 1842 and built up botany to become the “big science” of 19th cent. America
- instrumental in organizing exploratory expeditions
- specimens collected and categorized
- built up classes & laboratories, published textbooks
- botanic garden at Harvard off Linnean Street
- man of considerable impact at Harvard University (like Agassiz)
- strong defender of Darwin’s theories in Boston
o controversy between Gray and Agassiz, teaching close by
- one of the extracts that Darwin put into paper to be read at Linnean Society is an excerpt from
a letter from Darwin to Asa Gray
o he was part of Darwin’s network
- brought English edition of Origin of Species to Cambridge in December 1859 (very quickly)
o negotiated w/ publishing house in Boston
o pirated in New York; Gray rushed to NY so that they would take on the contract as well
o he was the gatekeeper to bring Darwin to America in this way
Jeffries Wyman
- professor of Comparative Anatomy at Harvard University while Asa Gray was there
- photo of his pre-meds
- his museum in Boylston Hall was the precursor to the MCZ
- pro-Darwinian
Louis Agassiz
- against Darwinism
- engaged in controversy w/ William Barton Rogers (geologist, founder of MIT) and his brother,
Henry Darwin Rogers (confirmed evolutionist even before Darwin’s publication)
- natural world was an expression of the divine plan (each species created as a representative
of a sequence of divine thoughts)
- most significant figure in North American natural history
- gaining lots of power in university with museum building program
- instrumental in setting up National Academy of Sciences in Washington
- liberal unitarian
- felt that Darwinism would excite too much extremism (dangerous materialism)
o best way: remain hand-in-hand with theology
- when Gray and 2 Rogers brothers adopted Darwinism, Agassiz felt there should be public
statements made in defense of his own project
o debates in and around Harvard (each professor taught their own view)
o equivalent of Wilberforce-Huxley debate but less personally vindictive
- issues over who would teach, who would get MIT land
- Gray: abolitionist
- 1864: Agassiz and Gray refused to speak; took place on argument on a train from New Haven
to Cambridge
-
Gray wrote article about Darwinism; not suggesting rejection of Divine (accomodationist)
o
o
o
says Darwinism is great, natural selection should work
attempts to put back divine in Darwin’s work; variations are probably given to animals
and plants by God
 Natural Theology not Inconsistent with Natural Selection
writes Darwinia: talks about Darwin’s views (Wallace wrote one like this as well:
Darwinism)
Henry Ward Beecher
- preacher, social reformer, evolutionist
- famous abolitionist
- most active congregation in New York
- adopts evolutionary theory; says that the animal side of human nature is a reflection of the
original sin in the theological world
o good for humans to struggle against sin within them to become better people
o found no problem with accepting evolutionary theory
Charles Hodge
- well known thinker and head of Princeton Theological Seminary
- Calvinist
- many students went on to become Calvinists and Evangelical theologians
- did not accept Darwinism
o wrote a book about it (What is Darwinism?), explaining it and addressing the central
issues
o said the views should be kept very separate from faith
o acknowledged Darwin had every right to address these issues
o at the end of the book: turns to theological issues; says it is not good theology to
believe in this theory
o “What is Darwinism? It is Atheism,”
o presented Darwin as a thinking, rational person even though he rejects the conclusions
Summary
- by the end of the century in North America, Darwinism had been distributed widely.
- Most of the scientific community accepted evolution (not all comfortable with natural
selection).
- Lots of dispute, like in Britain, about mechanism
- general community response
o at least half accommodated idea of great age of earth and that not all species were
introduced at once (introduced successively)
 many of these people were Evangelical Christians
 why important: no one was questioning Darwin with a literal interpretation of the
bible
 anti-Evolution, against “false science”
 aim: eliminate evolution but not in order to promote creationism
 this movement becomes significant in 20th century and comes to a head in the
Scopes’ Trial
o few people who were complete literalists
 believed in recent introduction of life and the flood
 7th day advantists
Lecture #13: March 21, 2007
Controversy – France, Germany, Russia
Don’t worry about detail in readings.
Background
Germany
- Evolutionary thought not new to thinkers in these areas
- thought that things could change was commonplace in Germany
- even w/o evolutionary thought, notion of change is present
- Vestiges translated into German: big success, fell into tradition of thinking about animal and
plant change/metamorphoses
France
- Lamarck: leading scholar at end of 18th century
o even though many of his views rejected
o when Darwin’s views came into France, they said they already had Lamarck
Russia
- intellectual elite interested in Chambers’ Vestiges (translated but mostly read in German)
- strong political census: no need for Malthusian struggle
- Darwin w/o Malthus: very different
- By 1860’s other evolutionary books commonplace as well: Thomas Henry Huxley’s Man’s Place in
Nature, Lyell’s account of Darwin’s theory
Responses to Darwin
Germany
- Ernst Haeckel
o younger than Darwin
o many positive responses to Darwin were from younger generations
o dedicated naturalist, did a lot of marine biology
 used evolutionary theory to show that differences in sea animals were due to
adaptation and natural selection
o lived in Jena
o dedicated life to bringing Darwinism to German speaking world
o after becoming committed Darwinist, began to think concretely about history of life
 gives modern biology the sense of trees of life; fossil record is the prehistory of
the forms that exist today
 visualizes Darwin’s theoretical concept of tree (Haeckel talks about phylogeny,
especially that of the human)
 provocative image
 makes the metaphor real by drawing a picture of a tree; exists on front cover of
sourcebook
 ape  ape-man  human
 particular interested in missing links, especially that between apes and
humans
 no fossil evidence of this link but he gives ape-men an official Linnean
label
 criticized for tree-like trees so he made them more “toothbrush-like”… very
conceptually different
o Haeckel’s image of evolutionary development: that which we used for von Baer’s law
o “Embryogeny recapitulates phylogeny”: in development, embryos become more
specialized and this is also what happens in evolution
- Rudolf Virchow- against evolution
- Karl von Baer- against evolution
-
-
-
Karl Vogt
o went to Geneva, which was committed to intellectual pursuit
o translator of Vestiges: he was liberal and provocative
o lived in an intellectual community of ex-patriots of France in Geneva
 talked about ape ancestry
o interesting views about race
Ludwig Buchner- modern man
o younger than Darwin
o like Haeckel, believed in god-less, natural world
o atheist, documented material to support this
o tries to push Darwin to become an atheist as well but Darwin says he is an agnostic
o represents shift in views as to what Darwin was coming to represent (materialism:
rejection of divine existence)
When books are translated, difficult to find the right words to convey the meanings of the
author being translated.
o Darwin is tricky to translate
o German translator: wanted to translate “natural selection” to “choice of lifestyle” but the
German translation eventually became “natural breeding”
France
- Clemence Royer- Darwin’s first French translator (first woman discussed in this class as well)
o left Paris to live in Geneva with the ex-patriot group
o anti-Clerical
o went through same difficulties in translation: used the words “natural election” which
gave animals more choice than the passive selection Darwin talks about
 both translations gave organisms a more active role in how they were to adapt
o had trouble w/ expression “struggle for existence”  became “community of life”
o French readers encountered slightly different kind of Darwinism
o based herself in social sciences
o adds long preface to Origin of Species: attacks religion, marriage, men; suggests this
book should be seen as a transformation into modern world of materialist, positivist
beliefs
 says Darwin is a form of Lamarckism
 humans are able to transform themselves and leave behind old structures of
French society without restrictions she did not like
o importance: translator can change the way a book is read
- Paul Broca
o ex-patriot in Geneva
o evolutionary sequence from apes and humans scholars should look here to see
origin of human races
- people began to think backwards to Lamarck after reading Darwin’s work
o direct impact of environment on organism and organism has the power to strive to
change it
- centralized French societal structure
- Auguste Compte- condemned all kinds of evolutionary thought, especially Lamarck
- Louis Pasteur- refutes spontaneous generation, established that every living takes its origin
from another living thing
o disregarded Darwin
- Flourens- says Darwinism is not relevant to what French scientists were doing
- positivists thought Darwin had a lot to offer but was co-opted into other causes
- images
- in Feb. 2007, 10,000+ French schools given free copy of Atlas of Creation which is a
creationist textbook by Harun Yahya
o
completely ignored because of strong centralization
Russia
- saw no relevance of Malthus to Russian society in 1830’s and 1840’s (thinly populated, plenty of
food)
- how was Darwin received in a place that would not have seen struggle?
- Tolstoy
- Petr Kropotkin- prince, landowner
- joined anarchist movement: progressive, liberalizing, anti-state but not violent
- no need for struggle in Darwinian world
- Darwinist, one of few in Russian states
- lectured in England on anarchy
- wrote Mutual Aid in 1903: there may be struggle and Darwin might be right when he talks about
this aspect of the natural world but there is also cooperation (he reformulates Darwin’s theory as a
proposal of cooperation)
- those organisms that cooperate the best will be the most adapted (1st social statement
about cooperation…. the fittest are those who cooperate)
-
-
Karl Marx
o says in letters that he understands Darwin to be saying that, here in the natural world
you can see the same kind of struggle between organisms that is seen between
humans (class struggle in British society)
o sees Darwin’s book as part of the cultural shift in British life towards an industrialized,
divided society
o Origin of Species will provide background for Social Darwinism
o wants to dedicate a version of Das Capital to Darwin
Engels
Tolstoy- intellectual writer/reader living in Moscow
o rejected Darwinism completely
o rejected Malthus
o puts Darwin into one of his books, Anakorenina
 what is a world without morals?
 defender of Darwinism responded to the book
Lecture #14: April 2, 2007
Race and Gender
-
race in a historical sense
How much do we think the racial idea for humans is simply an expression of prejudice that is
given a scientific structure?
What was biology doing for this pre-existing prejudice? It firms up the prejudice. It gives the
pre-existing structures a kind of truth. (evolution “naturalizes” the systems of prejudice… gives
them real biological meaning)
Ways of Thinking About Human Difference
- racial hierarchies in human beings
- long before evolutionary theory was proposed, there were collectors who were interested in
human diversity (museums of skulls)
o most museums have these collections stored away but don’t know what to do with
them
o the most “perfect” human skull is in the middle of the image
o measuring devices for skull study (Craniometry)
o implication in image that chimpanzee  negro  Greek (progressive hierarchy)
Louis Agassiz
- his view was unusual in his day; represents an extreme
- believes all animals, plants, and humans were created by god in different geographical regions
(the geographical area was intrinsic in the living thing)
- 12 different regions which determined different races of the human
- races could not interbreed (yielded a sterile hybrid)
- turns it into an anti-evolutionary view
- ethnology- geographical and physical understanding of world which we speak of
Wallace
- Wallace’s Line: divided 2 basic types of human being and 2 basic types of flora and faunas
(Oriental and Australian)
- believed humans all came from one source
- some kind of ape-like ancestor differentiated into human being (that human being
differentiated into the types of human beings we see today)
- all races could be connected back to one ancestral form (Darwin thought this as well)
- decided the mind’s potential was so enormous and un-explored that simple physical natural
selection could not have produced the human mind
o natural selection take the human body so far and then there is some other supernatural
force (doesn’t call it God) that pulls the human mind in different directions
- Darwin, at that point, hopes Wallace has not murdered their child (they put forward natural
selection)
Monogenism vs. Polygenism
- polygenism took away from evolution
- Karl Vogt
o wrote Lectures on Man and in it talks about hierarchies of human species
o 3 human types: white, black, and yellow
o because of the geographical structures, the humans of yellow variety are descendants
of orangs, blacks are descendants of chimpanzee specific to African region, and whites
descendants of lemur and gibbon (frightening text)
- Monogenists
o all human beings come from one source
o many anti-evolutionary because they are Biblicists
 all descend from Noah (genealogical tree is in Genesis)
o believers in unity of mankind
o often missionaries, philanthropists
o believed in abolition
o still believed in hierarchy of humanity (just came from one source)
Ernst Haeckel
- Parallel to ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny
- development of a race parallels the development of a species
- puts evolutionary ideas into an image of a tree
Darwin
- Descent of Man, 1871
- invents “sexual selection”: governed by human/animal choice
o traits selected don’t have survival value but not of adaptive purpose so they are not
naturally selected
- darkness of skin could be a criteria for sexual selection which could lead to the darkening of
skin color of a group (this is out of human choice, not biological necessity)
-
-
many people have the notion that there are primitive human beings and that the process of
evolution and civilization is one of increasing complexification coupled with an increasing
whitening of the skin
hierarchical scale: black and primitive at bottom, white and civilized at top
Physical Anthropology
- believed that primitive races had smaller brain cases and were intellectually and physically
inferior
- inferior races left behind in evolution
- strong tendency to demonize the “other” (not what you are)
- image: Irish anarchist demonized by British
- Africans and slavery
o inferior race almost thought of as animals
o Emancipation: do we evolve?
- as part of demonisation of “other”, an example of criminal anthropology is shown
o physical signs that will help police identify a criminal (physical traits a criminal will have)
o Gould reproduces an image relating to women and prostitutes (they carried stigmata
and certain traits of criminals as well)
Sexual Selection
- men choose women for particular characteristics
- for Darwin, this signified the representation of the highest point of civilization (where women
could still choose)
- the book he writes is one in which the female had a particular gender role (making oneself
available to be chosen)
- females were physically evolutionarily lesser forms than men (more primitive in aspirations,
more emotional)
- white male in developed world, for Darwin and for many others, becomes the top point of the
evolutionary sequence
Scientific Racism
- not white races considered primitive (relics of ancestral stages of evolution)
- if this is turned into an ideology, it becomes possible for people to characterize particular races
as undesirable
- retrospective analysis that police would actually look for stigmata
- when Hitler was thinking about the structure of Germany, he saw particular individuals as
being identifiable and holding back the development of Germany (writes Meinkamp using
terminology of Darwin… the title means “The Struggle”)
o gives biological backing
o mentions Haeckel
o the war he began involved racial ideas (wouldn’t go far to say it involved evolution)
Lecture #15: April 4, 2007
Social Darwinism
-
it is possible that Social Darwinism is a way to justify human behavior by giving it a Darwinian
backing
economic structures, imperialism, socialism, warfare can be given a biological substructure to
justify the endeavors
putting biology into social realm- trend at this time
also, individuals were seeking alternatives
latter half of nineteenth cent. and beginning of twentieth cent.: Social Darwinism
o
o
o
-
-
-
would these social movements have occurred w/o Darwin? probably
is it Darwinism? no
biology seemed to be of great significance and was thought to have social importance
(this inter-weaving is significant for us)
some tried to keep Darwin separate from Social Darwinism
o Darwin’s writings has these structures imbedded in it (we are going a step beyond the
literature we have)
Key terms: individualism, survival of the fittest, competition, struggle
Types:
o liberal/individualist wing of Social Darwinism (freedom of individual is the
motivating factor, individuals struggle and should be kept free to struggle to become
successful)
o group related wing of Social Darwinism (emphasizes struggle between groups of
different ethnic origin)
don’t read notions of women and birth control (for next class)
Herbert Spencer
- coined expression “survival of the fittest”
- he uses the expression but is not the classic Social Darwinist
- ambivalent relationship w/ Darwin’s theory
o he put up his own theory of development
- Malthusian
o felt population pressure was the stimulus for creating individual advancement
o different from Darwin: thinks survivors of Malthusian checks were intelligent & skillful
(brings into Darwinism a different sense that when natural selection is applied to
humans, it is the brain and behavioral attributes that contribute to advancement)
 others thought humans were overgrown animals; Spencer is different
 not a hardcore Social Darwinist like we would think
- believed in altruism and that evolution of humans: barbarous  civilized state
- the more barbarous, the more militaristic: less individualized government which would
eventually yield a release from government control to allow for more individualized struggle
and effort
- Spencer had 2 devoted colleagues: William Graham Sumner and Andrew Carnegie
- talks about war
o says it is the age of railway models
o unethical procedure
William Graham Sumner
- “What is a government for?”
o his answer: to defend individual’s rights and allow freedom
o not to support the unfit
o not to inject cash into cities
o not to provide charity to those who didn’t work
- blends philosophy with eugenics and gender issues
- believed firmly that laissez- faire (freedom of individual) was the only true concept of
economics and government
o opposed anything that would attempt to relieve struggle
o government should not intervene in economics
o no financial protectionism
o strongly against socialism (would encourage proliferation of unfit)
- taught at Yale: thought none of the students should be given any help (fittest were the
cleverest who would get through the exams and graduate)… his method of creating the “elite”
- Natural Selection for him: process to eliminate the weak (should be allowed to flourish)
-
he is speaking about mental fitness, not physical fitness
Andrew Carnegie
- writes Gospel of Wealth
- Scottish laborer (emigrated to make fortune in U.S.)
- made lots of money from commercial activities and gave it away
o created foundations through which he could funnel his money for exercise that would
allow for education and self-help
o foundations encouraged excellence
- equated rules of political economy with God’s rules
- individual self-interest was beneficial
- free competition necessary law of economics
- profit law: profit motive that is the only real root towards prosperity, economic growth,
increased jobs, and for national advancement (different from Sumner)
o education rather than charity will improve society
- “Millionaires are the bees that make the most honey and contribute most to the hive even after
they are full”
o millionaires are a good thing
o everyone should be given the conditions to make themselves millionaires so they can
contribute to the hive (give back to the economy)
James J. Hill
- railroad corporate man
- railroad companies were very active at the time in taking tracks across the nation to open new
areas, bring prosperity to new places
- created enormous wealth for those who owned the companies
Karl Pearson
- statistician, eugenicist, population theorist
- thought about heredity as related to natural selection
- fine thinker with appalling social beliefs
- invents statistical techniques for eugenical understanding of heredity and race
o bell curve is one
o standard deviation
o chai squared test
Imperialism
- also talks about struggle, power, violence
- Social Darwinism: umbrella term that embraces nationalism, imperialism, etc.
- image: British imperialism (England in middle w/ top hat.,. octopus reaching out to other
countries)
- striving for geographical expansion
- European powers at this time discovered Africa: “scramble for Africa”
- imperial imperatives took Europe into war
- World War 1: France and Russia allied before it (tension in Europe between this alliance and
the Germany- Austrian/Hungarian empire alliance)
o imagery throughout war was one of bloodshed
o contrast to World War 2: imagery is one of invasion
- Social Darwinism in 1st World War: fighting, killing, death was a part of human nature (humans
show superiority in this way)
- image: British troops in trenches in France
o represents images shown at time
o heroic self sacrifice
-
o fighting killed a whole generation… people thought this was how progress occurred
World War 2
o motif of invasion more prevalent
o biological justification: animals compete for space
o in political arena, establishing superiority of one nation over another involves
conquering (not just expanding boundaries)
Myth of Superior Race
- many countries felt they were superior for different reasons (not just the Germans)
- German philosophy:
o read Haeckel and his writings about “monism”- mental and physical aspects of human
are together and are one
o Haeckel: in biology, ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny
 applies to human races: some were still primitive and in “infancy”; others were
sophisticated and advanced
 Haeckel said German folk were the more sophisticated of Europe (thought they
had a biological inevitability to triumph)  second type of Social Darwinism
(group related… not individualist)
 felt the state should intervene to keep a state superior (mold individuals through
educational programs)
o Hitler takes this to extremes; writes in his book about the biological necessity to
eliminate the unfit
o turns into a racist philosophy and believes Jews and Communism should be eliminated
Expressions of Social Darwinism that can still be found
- survey of American taxpayers in 1999: 21% American taxpayers believed US should not
provide everyone with a guaranteed basic income
- out of door in image is being kicked refuse of society
-
-
strong wish among historians to think carefully about Social Darwinism
wish in literature to keep Charles Darwin separate from Social Darwinism
application of biology to human realm different from pure biology
why do people want to separate the 2?
not clear that militarism has much to do w/ biology
should these social movements have happened in the same way if Darwin had not published?
o other biological justifications?
o “What if?” history is not good to think about
What did Darwin say?
o in 1881, he said in a letter, “Remember what the risk the nations of Europe ran not so
many centuries ago and how ridiculous that idea is now…. civilized white races,
endless number of lower races will be eliminated by higher races throughout the
world…….. civilized races of man will almost certainly eliminate savage races”
o he DOES have views that we have been talking about today
o why, then, do historians want to keep them separate?
Lecture #16: April 9, 2007
Hybrids and Heredity
Reading alterations: p. 320-329 for Mendel paper (“Division and Arrangement”)
1865: Mendel began his work
through to...
1915: Thomas Hunt Morgan connected idea of gene w/ knowledge of chromosome and
understanding of transmission of traits
(this period is discussed today)
-
period is coupled with
o rise in experimental research
o rise in use of very large samples and statistical work (mathematical rigor)
o development of laboratories (key theme in history of biology at this time… no longer
undertaken in the home)
o laboratory organisms: special organisms that probably couldn’t live outside the lab
(“model organisms”: ex: Drosophilia fly shown in class)
-
plenty of work in the area of inheritance and genetics before Mendel
key idea of these 50 years: individuals progressively came to believe that traits being passed
from one generation to another could be attached to something real and physical inside the
human body
o not called a gene for a long time
o reducing nature’s variety to something real
Francis Galton
- Darwin’s cousin
- interested in applying Darwin’s ideas to human realm
- coins the word “eugenics”
- concerned with identifying those traits that make people (and animals and plants) individual
(what is it that confers individuality? unique for each person?)
- addressed it through complicated lab procedures, photography, comparative measurement
(ratio of forearm to length of leg, etc)
- purpose: put data into statistical chart to identify characteristics of a population
- focus on fingerprints: a science of identity
- one of several people who studied fingerprints
- coins expression “nature vs. nurture” when thinking about eugenics
o are the traits in an individual inherent (part of nature) or developed through the way we
are brought up (society, culture)?
- Left $$ to University College London 1880 for a human laboratory to study human difference
(anthropometric laboratory)
o 1st professor: Karl Pearson (eugenicist, believed in Social Darwinism and hierarchy of
races)
 develops area of biometrics
 works w/ idea of bell curve and shifting means
 median point of bell curve: if it shifts, the whole bell curve will shift with it
(evolutionary movement)
 developed pedigree charts (research idea): chart individuals through lines of
development
Gregor Mendel
- worked in city of Brno in an abbey (Moravia?)
- our knowledge of him has changed recently
o previous conception: thought to be amateur historian who spent his life working in
monastery, ideas ignored and rediscovered
o new idea: incredibly well-trained, his abbey sends him to Vienna for university
education (physics, botany, up-to-date knowledge of fertilization process in plants),
came back to Brno in 1853 and taught in the town

-
-
not trying to do anything more sophisticated than understanding the
transmission of traits in pure lines of fruits and vegetables (how to hybridize to
get a more effective plant)
worked with garden pea; well aware of importance of choosing the right organism to work with
much of success rested on surety that he had pure breeding lines (spent lots of time making
sure)
interested in characteristics that were either green or yellow, smooth or wrinkled (didn’t do
much with flower color: not dualistic)
did work with beans, bees (unsuccessful)
Mendel’s overlooked paper:
o hardly referenced at all after published
o possible he was just an obscure monk so he didn’t have the same kind of networks or
contacts as people like Darwin
o journal he published in might have been obscure
o these are not sufficient answers
o perhaps his work was so far in advance of his time that people didn’t understand it; not
very valid (it was not thought to be relevant because the rest of the western way of
thinking about inheritance had not been thinking in the same way)
o element to focus on: there needs to be some kind of relevance attributed to a
person’s work for it to be widely read and discussed
focused on traits that he called “factors”
o observation: don’t appear in 1st cross but appear in the next generation
o traits occur in pairs
o traits separate in reproductive process
o traits independently assort
o in second generation traits reappear in 3:1 ratio
also an interest in what was going on in the cell… but no obvious evidence that would connect the
ideas of chromosomes to the study of heredity (we have to unthink what we know to study this history)
August Weismann
- proposed that there was a thing in every organism, called the “germplasm” that has everything
in it to convey the traits from one generation to another
- says this “germplasm” is not touched in any way by the environment
- proposes that chromosomes could possibly carry this
Mendel rediscovered in 1900
Carl Correns
Erich von Tschermak
Hugo de Vries
- believed in evolution in jumps and found Mendel because he believed the same thing
- all 3 independently did this
- brought Mendel’s work to the notice of William Bateson at Cambridge University (professor of
biology)
o becomes protagonist for Mendel
o Bateson begins using the term “genetics” (wanted to add position of professor of
genetics)
o believed evolution goes in jumps and starts
o mutation theory: integrates Mendel’s works with this concept
o first usage of Mendel in theory of inheritance: prove something that is not strictly
Darwinian (Darwinian evolution proceeded gradually)
Thomas Hunt Morgan
- Johanssen coins the word “gene”- went straight into the literature once he described it
(“germplasm” was claimed to be too abstract)
o talked about “genotype”- information transferred intact from generation to generation
o “phenotype” – external appearance as determined by genotype
o guessed genes were on the chromosome
- puts these ideas together with work on the Drosophilia
- extraordinary piece of labwork
- had funding to pursue research at lab at Columbia (called the “fly room”)
- one of the earliest scientists to do such elaborate work
- not Darwinian in the natural sense (doesn’t need natural selection)
o not anti-Darwinian either
- tried to mutate the Drosophilia directly (radiation, cross-breeding)
o unsuccessful projects
- by chance, it happened
- usefully large chromosomes (if treated, you could see what was happening under a
microscope)
- his wild collections have red eyes
- proves gene was a thing and that traits were linked individually to a gene
- if you broke chromosomes at certain points and joined them, you could transfer traits to
organisms that didn’t previously have them
- first found that some of the traits in the fly were linked to whether they were male or female
flies (surmised that some genes were on X and Y chromosomes)
o notion that chromosomes determined sexes had been identified years earlier
- Morgan linked sex traits to chromosomes
o so, maybe other traits carried on other chromosomes
- took a long time to work these things out
- received Nobel Prize for the work
- after Morgan, genetics became what we know of today: “Classical genetics”
o controversies between mutations and bio-nutritions faded out
o Mendel brought back into consciousness
Lecture #17: April 11, 2007
Eugenics
-
-
-
new way of trying to do history: scholars try to put a little bit of moral meaning back into
historical research
o “memory studies”
Eugenics was a phenomenon that swept through many countries from the 1890s to 1930s
social/class issues, economic problems, what to do w/ poor and sick, new context of
evolutionary theory, impact of heredity (Mendelian genetics, notion of transmission of
characters from one generation to another)  all come together in this topic
complex problems and concerns interrelated: science was seen as the way to resolve, for
halting decline, for changing economic problem, restore health to a nation, etc.
Eugenics: doctrine of social change based on science
o not racial extermination (genocide)
-
3 international congresses for eugenics
o 1912
o 1921 New York
o 1932 New York
-
Background of Eugenics
o
o
o
o
o
o
o
definition: self direction of human evolution
very utopian in early days
believed knowledge could only come from research
best way to pursue research into human potential was to use numerical data (health
records, public census info, their own collected statistics)
 not appropriate to experiment directly on human beings
 collected family pedigrees: direct access to history of transmission of traits
many public institutions established during this time (see handout)
the people who pursued eugenical philosophies, for the most part came from the
middle classes and brought to the studies that it was people like them (educated) who
were the best stock in any nation’s population
 criticism of upper classes and anxiety and discussion about the proletariat
(laboring classes)
biology involved is often Darwinian and sometimes Lamarckian
UK
-
-
much of the fear of human deterioration expressed in thinking about
o malnutrition
o disease
o mental disorders (inbreeding, incest, overcrowding)
o feeble minded
o death from epidemics
o sin (prostitution, immorality)
o criminality
o degeneration in morals leading to criminality or homosexuality (anthropological or racial
degenerates)
o women: strong suffrage movement… “new woman” was a destabilizing force in society
(asking for the vote, demanding contraception, wanting dress code change, demanding
jobs, education, more rights)
public health interests initiated a lot of this (urban decay, industrialization)
“better babies” contests, rise of scouting movement (give our boys a stronger sense of what it
is to be a man)
leagues for physical improvement (gymnastics)
US
-
-
Charles Davenport
o founder of Eugenics Record Office (1910)
o equivalent of Karl Pearson
o zoology degree from Harvard University
o quantitative study of evolution
o collected family pedigrees
o interested in transmission of Mendelian traits from one generation to another
o did stunning work on showing some medical conditions (like multiple fingers on hand,
webbed fingers) were inherited according to Mendelian laws
o employed many women who had begun to come through female university structure to
catalog the info. he collected (they were called “computers”)
o believed in national “germplasm”
 threatened from without (immigration)
 put forward to government the idea that there should be tighter immigration
controls plus eugenic policies within US
 not necessarily to exclude people but should lead to examination of all people
(unfit immigrants should not be allowed in)
Madison Grant
o
o
o
o
o
o
o
o
-
-
-
pioneer conservationist
believed in saving the bison, redwood
instrumental in founding Yellowstone National Park
Yale grad, law degree at Columbia
famous thinker and government advisor
prominent figure in racialist movement in US
mapped out several immigration restriction acts
famous for Passing of the Great Race
 addresses issue of there being 3 European sub-races
 suggests US should abandon open-door policy
o immigration was the issue for him (should be controlled because the rate of
immigration was exploding during his time); didn’t worry as much about issues w/in US
 concept of melting pot being threatened by too many nations arriving
o drafted Johnson Act of 1924
 quotas in immigration
 should be determined proportionally as by the actual census
 diversity as it was in 1890s taken to be standard for new immigration (reduced
flow considerably)
o him and Laughlin established Eugenics Society
o influential figure in bringing these ideas forward to academic powers (knew Davenport,
Laughin, Goddard)
Laughlin
o superintendent of Eugenics Record Office
o sterilization law
o medical issues thought to be addressed best by sterilization
o felt that socially inadequate should be put away into an institution so as not to
reproduce or should be sterilized
 socially inadequate: feeble minded, insane, alcoholic, blind, deaf, dependant
(too many children), paupers, etc.
o proposed law not adopted in 1914: first adopted in Va in 1924 (public health state-run)
Carrie Buck
o first figure brought to the court as a case to be sterilized under this law
o had been picked up as someone who was thought to be mentally unstable and
promiscuous
o case was won by medicals; sterilized even though she had already had one child
o reinvestigated: Carrie was raped which is why she had a child; the child was not feeble
minded as the court thought
Henry Goddard
o physician in Vineland School in NJ
o set up asylum for feeble minded
o categorized individuals into different levels of feeble-mindedness
o feeble minded  moron  idiot  imbecile (ordered normal to most feeble)
o used IQ tests
o participated in army testing program through WW1
o most famous contribution to eugenical program: discovered family that he named the
“Kallikak family”
 followed through family line
 essence of family: original man had an illegitimate family with a poor person
and a good line with a Quaker woman (Kallikak combines words that mean
good and bad)
o believed strongly in sterilization
o people still come forward and say they think they were sterilized
o restrict immigration
Germany
- improving Nordic race
- rise of fascism: concentrated effort to generate legal framework within which to conduct mercy
killings
- transforms into sterilization laws
- under Hitler, these escalate beyond a eugenical program into something much larger
(deliberate, focuses on one ethnic identity: Jewish identity)
- during Nuremburg trials, Karl Brent (Hitler’s medical professional) cited Madison Grant in his
defense to emphasize that eugenical programs existed all over the world
Lecture #18: April 16, 2007
Scopes Trial
1925
-
-
-
-
test legal case that allowed several protagonists supporting different camps to make a public
stand
more of a publicity statement
expresses clash between fundamentalism and evolutionary caps
crystallizes points of view swirling around in American national life for a few decades
took place in Dayton, Tennessee
o first place to ban evolution and to have this law contested
affected development of constitutional law, religious and scientific view
many subtexts and agendas
in 1920s, there was questioning of the academic freedom of expression
o individuals requesting and fighting for freedom of expression in universities, etc.
o Lafayette: professor fired in 1913 for teaching social evolution as having an important
impact on religious theory
o Vanderbilt fired a professor for teaching evolutionary theory
o civil liberty groups closely watched these situations
o this movement for free expression moves from the universities into secondary schools
o American Civil Liberties Union, based in NY, significant in this move
federal movement to make states take on legislature to require secondary education (states
should support this by taxpayers’ expense)
Tennessee had just passed such legislation and raised taxes in order to pay for it
Dayton businessmen and shop owners were eager to make something more of their tourist
trade (small town not receiving much attention)
o this is a thread that runs through the Scopes’ trial
rise in religious modernism (different faiths gradually accommodating many different elements
of the modern world)
o bible had room for interpretation (metaphorically)
o corresponding rise in liberal theologians accepting evolutionary theory
o scientists becoming secular but not aggressively atheist
corresponding rise from fundamental Protestant thinkers (evangelicals most strongly heard)
distrusting the modernism and beginning to challenge modernism
o want a return to the original values set forth in Christian faith
William Jennings Bryan
- lawyer from Nebraska
- glittering star of political firmament
- defended rural America from exploitation of business
- opposed social Darwinism
-
youngest Democrat nominee to run for president
known as “The Great Commoner”- understood the ordinary person’s wishes and needs
denounced Darwinism
article of his: published before Scopes’ trial (1922) in NY Times
o suggests his first objection to Darwinism is that it is only a guess
objection against Darwin’s guess: not one syllable to support it in the Bible
closing remarks: says the Bible has been excluded from schools on the grounds that it should
not be taught by those paid by taxpayers: what right is there to teach guesses over the Bible?
before the trial began, made public statements criticizing Clarence Darrow (criminal lawyer)
Clarence Darrow
- criminal lawyer
- publicly anti-religious
- pro-evolutionary theory
- most famous trial before Scopes: murder trial in Chicago where a horse riding master had
murdered his wife and had confessed that he had done so
o managed to get his sentence commuted from death to imprisonment on the grounds
that the rider was psychologically disturbed (new idea)
o “we are but puppets in the games we play”
- Bryan attacked this legal judgment: he associated this new psychological
understanding/determinist view of people’s behavior as a prime example of Darwinism run wild
- when the Scopes trial came into being and American Council of Civil Liberties was thinking of
participating in the trial, they thought Darrow was too extreme
o Darrow pushes himself in when he learns that Bryan was going to be the defendant
- both understood they were going to be defending a certain point of view; great public event
- with the entrance of Darrow into the case, the idea of the case was changed
o it turned into a clash between religion and anti-religion
Trial
-
-
some proposals to ban teaching of evolution on the grounds it was inappropriate for tax payers
to pay for irreligion to be taught
most proposals failed to pass through legislature
Tennessee in January, 1925: passed such a law proposed by representative for East
Tennessee, John Butler
o should be a misdemeanor to teach any story that is against the Bible and to teach that
man is descended from a lower order of animal (quote on handout)
things started to gel at this moment
passed in March 1925
it is on a notice board in Dayton, Tennessee (represents what publicity brought to the town: an
identity)
Billy Sunday
- February 1925
- evangelical movement rallied around this Protestant evangelical preacher
- not theologically trained but came from tradition of Vaudeville and public support
- called “gymnast for Jesus”
- believed in redemption through personal faith in Jesus and fidelity to the Bible
- declared he would never believe in evolution until science proved humans emerged from
animals
- characterized evolution as suggesting animals succeeded in progression from savages
- linked evolution w/ social Darwinism, eugenics, lack of free will (determinism)
John Scopes
-
-
-
replacement science teacher at a high school
people were discussing in a store the American Civil Liberties Union offer and asked him to do
this
thought in the beginning it would be a legal case; an exercise in testing a new law (working out
how to operate the law through messages over paper)
Scopes had been using Hunter’s Civic Biology textbook
o not an assertive chapter on evolution, just descriptive
Bryan hears of this and offers to prosecute the man (turns the business into a different
category)
Darrow got wind Bryan was involved and pushed in to the ACLU and demanded he be allowed
to oppose Bryan
led to tremendous amount of public interest
Bryan arguing one side of the case and Darrow trying to maneuver Bryan so that they could
debate merits of Bible vs. Evolution (does manage it for one famous speech but most of the
trial was made up of this maneuvering)
Scopes convicted of the offense
courtroom too small to hold everyone (went from 500 to 3000 people), in the hot month of May
1 debate about case in bible about how god stops sun for Joshua; Bryan conceded that in a
Copernican perhaps God stopped earth, not the sun
other debate: discussed Genesis days (parallel to geological age or were they literal days?)
Darrow: assertive, Bryan: wonderful political orator
great publicity: Dayton businesses did all they could to publicize
H. L. Mencken: became a public voice for the trial
monkeys were at the trial
cartoons and commentaries published (caricatures)
Bryan died a week after the trial finished
o allowed him to be turned into a martyr
o university named after him in Dayton from which many of the images we use come
Scopes convicted: fined and left town (didn’t’ go to jail)
o his fine was paid by the American Civil Liberties Union
o Bryan also offered to pay the fine for him
Afterwards
- 1 year later, there was a legal appeal
o Scopes’ conviction was overturned
- other states began to discuss banning the teaching of evolution
- what emerged afterwards: mish mash of different levels of legislation
o never really came to review until 1960s when another case emerges
- Scopes trial had considerable after effects: other states attempted some kind of legislation
(snow ball of miscellaneous types of legislation)
- biology textbooks were changed
- Darwinism was referred to more and more as a theory
- Bryan university opens
- case was dramatized so it wasn’t just well discussed in the media in 1920s, but was made into
a play in 1955 by Jerome Lawrence and Robert Lee
o names and issues changed but the play had a strong impact in its day because in the
50s it was seen to be addressing other issues like McCarthyism
- “Inherit the Wind” opens at this time too, along with “The Crucible”
o different aims in this movie but still addressing fundamentalism and evolutionism as the
motive forces
o pro-evolution, regarded as a statement for freedom of speech
o movie released in 1960
Lecture #19: April 18, 2007
In Search of Fossil Humans
-
-
-
human skulls and tools being found
objects had no theoretical scheme into which they could be put (proposed they were early
human tools… they are chipped into shape and therefore imply human work)
one of the most famous early skulls: cranium of River Neander (calotte: skullcap)
o Schaffhausen thought it could be a human skull
o interpreted by most of the scholars at the time as belonging to a human of very modern
origin but one that was congenitally deformed (no evolutionary thought)
o thigh bone found as well: deformed as well (person diseased?) interpreted
mechanisms were highly scholarly but used what was available to them to understand
the material
o Schaffhausen thought remains were indicative of an early tribe in Europe
Huxley- did not think the fossil was of an early human
cave paintings- discovered in 1868-1870s
o striking for people still wondering about evolutionary theory to find these paintings
running set of images of what early humans looked like
o “Fossil man” by Pierre Boitard
o Louis Figuier, Appearance of man, 1867
Ernst Haeckel
- produced his book, History of Creation
- keen to show the continuous ancestry between apes and humans
- proposed a name for missing link: pithecanthropus
- set precedent for study
- no evidence there was such a missing link but said there must be on the grounds of all other
evolutionary thought
- “Family of the Ape people” painting by Gabriel von Max 1894 for Haeckel’s book
- were the images more ape-ish or human-ish?
- mural painting for American Museum of Natural History, 1924
- “Family Tree of Man” 1927 American Museum of Natural History
Eugene Dubois
- Dutch medical officer
- commissioned into Dutch East Indies service
- dedicated excavator
- gave much of his time to looking for pithecanthropus
- Java Man: bipedal, very humanized
- extensively criticized because many of the individuals in 1890s-1910s were truly thinking of
ancestral humans necessarily having very large brain cases
o in order to make tools, it was assumed humans must have big brains
o once making tools, they would need to keep their hands free and therefore become
bipedal
o prevailing thought: big brains came first and bipedalism came next
Skulls
- cast of Neander specimen skull (popular to make casts so everyone could study it)
o heavy eyebrow ridges
o very thick: thought too thick to be human
- cast of Dubois’ pithecanthropus
o much smaller
o
o
no big brain case
heavy around the back
Piltdown Man Case
- cast of Piltdown remains
- named after area in Sussox where it was discovered
- discovered by amateur: Charles Dawson
- scholars said it was of an unknown type of human
- however, we now know it is a human skull with an ape jaw
- when humans were really trying to find a missing link, they wanted to see this as the fossil they
were looking for
- Arthur Keefe: key criteria for being human was the upright posture
o then decided maybe it was big brains
o gave name to Piltdown: Eoanthropus dawsoni
o this skull proved to be a straightline succession from apes through an intermediary
form to humans
o knew about Neander skulls
o regarded Neander as a sideshoot from the main line of human development
(unsuccessful and died off)
o Keefe extrapolating social Darwinist views so that he saw the true human line as being
the fittest, going to struggle and exterminate Neanderthal pre-human
o Java Man: cousin of main line of development that was exterminated as well
o single line history was supported through
- this was a hoax; not confirmed for a while
- orangutan jawbone (teeth filed down to make it look like they were human teeth)
-
if political situation had been different after second world war, there would have been just as
many human fossils found in Asia as there were in Africa
Raymond Dart- in 1924 (same time as Piltdown) he discovered very small hominid skull
o juvenile skull
o described it as australipificus
o huge establishment disapproval; not clear if it should be ranked as a human
o the skull looks like a baby chimpanzee skull
o not fully accepted for a long time; human at all?
Louis and Mary Leakey
- Louis never accepted australipificus
- accepted it existed but was not a direct ancestor to the human line
- long, direct line from earliest hominids through to most sophisticated pre-human state
- ability to make tools made something human
- worked in Tanzania w/ his wife from late 1920s onwards
o no flint tools found there; instead they were basaltic rock and obsidian
- both became famous for not only excavating fossils but for finding tools in the same beds; for
linking them together and for identifying the human species as one which works with tools
- spent much of his early career exploring idea of early fossil human he called “zinthanthropus”
o lived in same place and time as australipificus
o proposed zin was the more advanced of the 2 types of humans there; zin used tools to
kill austr and eat them
o straightforward view of a more sophisticated line of human development
- in 1960, their work was transformed through another discovery they made
o found what Leakey came to call homo- something…. advanced pre-human
 handy person
o turned out austr that people thought was an offshoot was correct
o
o
homo- habilus was the ancestral human form
redefined definition of this species so that the brain was large (allowed homo habilus to
make tools… under assumption brain size directly related to sophistication)
Robert Broom
- found an adult skull in the same beds 15 years later and then another adult in the 1940s
- showed that this found skull is close to the hominid line but rejected as a direct ancestor
(regarded as one of these other offshoots that were exterminated)
Donald Johanson
- found skeleton he called “Lucy”
- thought to be homo habilis but much smaller
- the skeleton was a 3 foot tall female
- in the end, it was decided it was a new species
- too primitive to be homo habilis
- actually, it is an australopiithecus
- “Lucy” named after a Beatles’ song
- confirmed by Leakey family who found other versions of this species
- thought to have lived 3.2 million years ago (earlier than any other known hominid other than
the more ape-like ancestors)
- Lucy pushes the time line back and distorts the Leakey’s straight line history (clearly ancestral
to homo habilis but is Australopithecus)
o australo is put back into the frame
Richard Leakey
- son of other Leakeys
- found all these species together in the same deposit in Africa
- habilis and Australopithecus
- progressively, this family has been obliged to abandon the one line from apes to mankind
descent
- there are current controversies over where the lines of ancestry can be drawn
Footprings in Laetoli, Tanzania, 3.5 million years old, excavated by Mary Leakey (1977, 1978)
- disputed by some as to whether they are human, but is accepted they are human
Lecture #20: April 23, 2007
Evolution Evolves
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-
many people were talking about evolutionism when they thought they were talking about
Darwinism as to relate to culture
people believed in evolution; was it Darwinian evolution that was what the people saw?
intellectual climate of developed world was changing: evolutionary theory was part of this
biologists in US felt their areas were becoming more specialized to the point that individuals in
particular fields felt they didn’t have a handle on what was happening in great domain of
biological sciences
75 years of criticism of Darwin’s mechanism
new science of genetics crafted by Thomas Hunt Morgan; not entirely obvious where
Darwinism fit into this science of genetics
o gradual or big quantitative jumps (Morgan’s position)
o not a consensus on shape of fossil record (one continuous line of development in each
branch of fossil tree or a well branched tree as Darwin suggested?)
o
-
Orthogenesis- some plants and animals fell into straight lines of development and
couldn’t escape this linear path
no consensus on mechanism of evolution or definition of species
o in early 1930s, many American biologists attempted to rectify the situation
o progressively created something they saw as the modern synthesis (has a big place
in modern biology)
Sewell Wright
- did work on population genetics
- wasn’t an abstract theoretician but produced abstract and useful ways of thinking about
populations
- famous for introducing the terminology, “adaptive landscapes”
- he thought there would be mountain peaks were a population had a stable genetic constitution
and if the genes moved in one direction or another, it would takes those animals/plants off the
mountain peak into the valleys where they were subject to extreme selective pressures; they
could then move to another place where the genetic composition was stable (another peak)
- based his ideas and formulae on the works of 2 British statisticians: Haldane and Fisher
Theodosius Dobzhansky
- classical geneticist
- Russian, arrived in North America
- worked with Thomas Hunt Morgan
- incredibly famous and wrote a landmark textbook called Genetics and the Origin of Species
o puts genetics into the framework of evolution in an understandable way
- re-writes others’ works in a non-mathematical way
- species can form through a combination of Darwinian selection, genetic drift (no selective
pressure), and geographical isolation
o not a strict Darwinist: adds things
- Wright and Dobzhansky encourage Ernst Mayr, George Simpson, George Stebbins, and
Julian Huxley
Ernst Mayr
- lived until 2 years ago (age 100 and 6 months)
- worked at Harvard University
- represented in the synthesis the field tradition
o animals and plants are biological objects that have a life of their own (not just an
accumulation of genes)
- field naturalist who understood real organisms
- attempted to think seriously about “what is a species?”
- short essay in sourcebook attempting a redefinition of “species”
George Ledyard Stebbins
- represented botanical realm
- exceptionally determined that plants should be included in the discussion
George Gaylord Simpson
- paleontologist
- represented the fossil record in this synthesis
Julian Huxley
- grandson of Henry Huxley
- well known commentator on science
- wrote Science of Life w/ H. G. Wells in 1931
-
-
o public exhibition of biology
noteable for bringing the doctrine of humanism much more to the floor
founded World Wildlife Fund
these 4 people didn’t work together but knew each other and consciously structured their
writings in order to integrate genetics and gene flows of populations with the external
appearance of organisms as seen in the field and with the fossil record
issue: how to link understanding of genetics (Morgan and Dobzhansky) and microshifts in
population with the macro (obvious external world of plants and animals)
did this by saying the gene flows could be gradual and large
had to generate lots of propaganda to keep this show on the road…
o 1959: Panel at University of Chicago: Darwin Centennial
 felt this would be a wonderful moment to present the modern synthesis as a
movement that was already strengthening the biological realm
 image at this Centennial meeting to show unity in biological field
 Dobzhansky, Mayr, Huxley, Stebbins, Wright were there
 meeting brought Darwinism back into modern biology; their modern synthesis
was termed “Darwinism” to cast a link back to Charles Darwin to identify their
sense of the way evolutionary theory embraced everything in the biological
world; Darwin’s theory only needed to be strengthened
 they called themselves neo-Darwinists
 this year brought out analytical books about Darwin himself
 many biologists themselves began to write about Darwin (deliberate connecting
back)
 it was a manufactured Darwin appropriate for 1959 that was then used for the
future
 Huxley made a dramatic statement at this conference: discussed humanism,
declared fervently that very few biologists would be able to believe in a god;
best way forward for intelligent humans is to put faith in humanity and advocate
peace, intellectual advancement, education, and a responsibility to the
environment (no god is going to help us out)
Trofim Lysenko
- worked in 1930s, same time as the 4 others
- images: has in hand blade of wheat and is in a wheat field
- very experienced and good geneticist who lived during the period of Stalin’s reign (Cold War)
- extraordinarily active historical existence
- Lysenko-ism: considered a pseudoscience (Lamarckian evolutionary biology) that was the
state biology; supported by Stalin
- rose to the top of his intellectual tree by putting forward this sort of genetics which encouraged
Stalin and others to oppress other geneticists to the point that they either emigrated from
Russia or were put into camps and were eliminated from Russian historical record
o relations between state policy and science reflected here
- many scholars who are trying to show its more complicated than a simple story
- many individuals in USSR who were consciously adopting Western genetics (interest in
Morgan and Mendel’s works)
o called themselves Morgano Mendelians
- Lysenko adopted Lamarckian genetics that emphasized role of the environment
- first experiments suggested he could modify hybrid plants to adapt them to Russian winters
- from government encouragement, researched “vernalisation” of wheat to adapt wheat seed to
germinate earlier so that short Russian summers could bring a crop to maturity
- he did manage to succeed
- his ideas were adopted by Stalin as state policy
-
-
-
rose quickly to the head of his agricultural institute
there was criticism from the west but he was still very famous and able to issue, in 1948, a
public statement of government policy in relation to genetics (in sourcebook)
o Dobzhansky and others translated his work and published it in the west; it led to people
in Russia beginning to murmur, “can Lysenkoism be correct?”
public lecture that, from now on, Lysenkoism will be the state genetics (Lysenko gives this
speech)
ended terribly; individual suppression and a great deal of literature suppression and direction
o the only things that could be published were those that went through Lysenko approval
criticized by 4-5 physicists during the Christov era
o Sakharov spoke out
by 1965, Lysenko was demoted and sent off to run an experimental farm in the provinces
where he lived on as a normal person
Russians then took an active role in importing Western genetics (had not been studied for 2030 years)
o biologists visited America, learned processes in labs, and took it back to centers in the
USSR
Julian Huxley definitely participated with vigor: became an early director of UNESCO (trying to
make education a force for peace and to promote collaboration)
o part of his wish to use science when he was director to allow collaboration and to help
Russian geneticists and biologists come to the west to learn
2 examples of evolution in action, generated in late 40’s and early 50’s … seem to provide proof for
modern synthesis
David Lack and Darwin’s finches
- have become the classic example of Darwinism in action
- put forward by protégé of Huxley (David Lack)
- went to Galapagos twice to bring back specimens to study
- wrote a book: Darwin’s Finches
his understanding of finches: many species differentiated by beaks which indicated the
foodstuffs that they fed on
- there was an aboriginal population of finches that diversified according to the foodstuffs
because there was no other competition (this is the reason for proliferation of species)
- studied by the Grants
- this isn’t Darwin; it is a product of the 1940s… generates a mythology of Darwin’s finches and
his visit to the Galapagos
Kettlewell’s Peppered moths
- criticized recently for not being successful proof
- British entymologist
- conducted field experiment where he would release equal amounts of black mutants and
normal white ones
o see which were most eaten by birds
o recaptured them every night where the moths go to the light
o extrapolated that they were being destroyed in particular proportions
- you couldn’t see white moths on white tree trunks; black moths were easily seen and would
therefore be eaten first
- if a dark tree, opposite will occur
- Niko Tinbergen
o came to film the birds picking the moths off the trees
o lots of documentation
o pioneer of scientific film
-
it is absolutely an accurate depiction of selection in action
Lecture 21: Guest Lecturer: Professor Everett Mendelsson
- specializes in ways science interacts with society
- established this course
Race for the Double Helix
-
-
opening words of Jim Watson’s Double Helix: “I’ve never seen Francis Crick in a modest
mood”
lots of immodesty in this race
the paper produced in 1953 had remarkably modest language
mentioned that the base pairing explains how copying can occur (heredity)
o recognized the importance of what they were doing… in a few years it would be called
“the secret of life”
in the 2nd paper, they gave a detailed explanation of DNA replication (template or mold copies
itself directly or produces a negative to produce the original positive)
our model is a pair of templates, each of which is complementary to each other (H bonds
broken, strands separate, so we will eventually have 2 pairs of chains)
Nobel Prize: 1962 (only 9 years after the paper was produced)
how did they get where they were?
-
single path from Mendel’s discovery to Morgan’s work on fruit flies to this discovery?
story demands a history
historians often were those involved in making the discoveries (they wanted their versions of
the history, didn’t want to leave it to other people)
o Crick, Watson wrote histories or gave intensive interviews to people they worked with
-
Periodicity (stages of history of genetics)
o Classic 1865 (Mendel’s paper)/1900  1930’s biological
 straightforward explanation of replication
o Romantic 1935 – 1940  information
 separate understanding/description of reproduction and make it seem like the
reproduction of information (not necessarily tied to the organisms… you can
just talk about info and ways of handling info)
o Dogmatic 1953  structure
 Watson and Crick’s paper
 information carried in chemical structures and was able to be reproduced
exactly and new sources could be added to carry this info.
 Dogma: DNA, the carrier of genetic info., replicates itself exactly
 now, how do we go from information to proteins? (in between: RNA which is not
self replicating but was formed from DNA and served as a template for
segments of protein molecules)
 process: simple because few molecules were involved
o Academic 1962  code
 how the DNA molecules code for other activity
 not immediately clear
 development of strong alternate biology
o Commercial 1975  genetic engineering, recombinant DNA
 you could directly change genetic info to meet desires
o Neo-eugenitc ? human genome
 sequence fundamental elements of all of the human genome
 you could restructure the genetic material of human beings
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you could change DNA for those who have genetically based diseases
Migrations
- physics  biology
- where did this migration come from?
- new fields: often multidisciplinary
- establishment of “Central Dogma” (DNA  RNA  protein)
- Reductionism: all organic activities can be understood through chemical and physical laws
Techniques
- X ray crystallography
- partition chromatography
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how did scientists behave?
o emergence of explicit new styles of doing science
o heightened competition
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key element: stability from generation to generation
self reproducing, and heterocatalyic: directs production of other structures (Muller)
protein or nucleic acid? mix of the two?
- protein trail: repeating structures
- Pauling and Dalbruck studied proteins; Pauling delineated the structure and received his first
Nobel Prize
- what could be adduced in these discoveries?
- by 1950, Pauling produces alpha helix structure of proteins
- develops X ray crystallography method
- what does the gene effect biochemically? if changing the structure of an organism means
changing the chemistry, what does the gene effect?
o stronger emergence of reductionist model: master molecule (that which produces all of
the other changes around it)
o genetic diseases had long been known: what do they do? where do they come from?
- 1940: 2 students of Morgan said 1 gene produces 1 enzyme which in turn structures other
proteins (simplifying idea) … remarkably suggestive and effective
- Neils Bohr (in Germany during Nazism, Fascism) stretched from quantum mechanics and
wrote an essay on “Light and Life”
o proposed complementarity for biology
o uncertainty principle
o non-reductionist statement of the problem of life (or anti-reductionist)
- Schrodinger, Sziland, Dalbruck, and Rurigal set the immodest goal of discovering the secrets
of life
o struck by Bohr and the way in which physics and chem. may even learn from finding
new answers in biology
- by 1935, Dalbruck thought the gene was a molecule
o participate catalytically… not changed by chemical reactions
- Schrodinger migrated to Dublin with the German takeover
o in 1943 began a series of lectures, “What is life?”
o he got the title from Thomas Mann’s writings
o challenged by biological problems
o drew parallels between discoveries in quantum mechanics and genetics
o serves as a catalyst for re-thinking how genetic info might be located and how it might
work
- physicists enter the game because they are restless
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post world war 2: rapid rate increase of study; people learned to work collaboratively
Lecture #22: April 30, 2007
Genes in Society
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sociobiology
historians don’t have to take sides: only see why a controversy is taking place
every controversy has a ritual dance: attack, counterattack
the people involved are committed to what they believe
we think through science we are reaching something truthful (science is unique in this aspect)
o so, the commitment is not just a heartfelt thing; for them, science is something about
the truth
on the structure of controversy:
o it is difficult to separate the point of view from the personality of the person putting it
forward
Ed Wilson: keep in mind he has a delightful personality; do we confuse this with the point
being put forward?
theme in history of biology emerging over the past few weeks: many biologists nowadays
believe strongly in the idea of “reductionism”- best way of looking at biology is to go down to
the basic transactions between molecules
o basic method of science to go down through the levels of complexity until you get to
something so basic you feel it must be a building block (physics, chemistry, biology)
o the issue here is whether reductionism is whether it encourages individuals to think of
biological determinism where one might think that some behaviors or topics/areas of
research in biology are natural
 anxiety about determinism
Sociobiology
- Darwinists of a particular kind: neoDarwinists
o believe strongly that selection is the only motor of evolutionary change
o the gene is the fundamental unit of selection
o evolution becomes a statement of a process of how genes become more or less
numerous in a population
- explaining all traits of behavior and social structure of societies/animals in terms of
reproductive advantage
o becomes controversial when these views are applied to the human
o it makes people anxious
Ed Wilson
- professor at Harvard University
- his work was on ant communities
- in 1975, wrote a textbook on Sociobiology: The New Synthesis
o extended views to humankind and opened up a tremendous debate to which he
responded in On Human Nature
- particularly interested in instincts
- writes on role of religion and science
- if everything in world reducible to genes, where is Creator?
- talks clearly about traits in humanity as moral (altruism is his big issue); how do you explain
altruism? gene’s way of ensuring more genes of the same kind in future generations?
o he believes it is self destructive behavior performed for the benefit of the group
o others don’t think it can be explained by genes
- attacked extensively on exactly these grounds that human beings are more than their genes
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this area generated harsh criticism
o most dramatic element of this controversy is that 2 people in the same building as Ed
Wilson (Gould, Lewontin) published a criticism
o unknown to Ed Wilson until 3 days before it was published
o these people all worked together
Richard Dawkins
- published The Selfish Gene in 1976
- has generated a great deal of what the public now understands about genes
- no group selection at all; just the individual that counts (not thinking in terms of populations)
- argues from perspective of genes (Genes- eye view of life)
- selfish gene: metaphor that genes wish to ensure their own survival by enabling the host
organism to survive
o chicken is egg’s way of making another chicken
o organism is gene’s way of making another organism
- calls organisms “survival machines”: only have to survive long enough for genes to reproduce
- says genes don’t work in isolation
- talks about that genes are complex bundles and compete among themselves
- many genes contribute to the external traits of an organism
- genes are like a computer program that sets out a strategy for the organism
- thinks genes have an ability to learn; the organism learns to, for example, get a drink of water
o behavior trait is reprogrammed into gene pool
- genes are instructing us to be selfish but we are not compelled to obey them
- humans have the ability to transcend genes; culture not dominated by genes
- general view: the whole world is made up of genes acting against genes
- nature isn’t cruel; it is merely indifferent (it is the way it is because it is the way it is)
- wrote The Blind Watchmaker employing Paley’s imagery
- this has led to the development of the field of evolutionary psychology (Harvard is a leading
center of this study)
- we has human beings live in the modern age but our brains/genes are still back in prehistory;
we have behavioral traits that were useful in the Stone Age that have not being modified
except by cultural changes
- disturbing side of evolutionary psychology: proposal that some of the darker traits in human
world are genetically determined (genes that will stimulate and continue criminal behavior,
homosexuality, other subversive behavior)
o is behavior like rape genetically determined or is it an act of violence that the human
perpetrator can stop?
- in 2000, A Natural History of Rape was written: sociobiological account, said rape is an act of
violence that needs civil law
o also a biological, gene-related thing
- there have been some extremely well known advocates attacking sociobiology (Lewontin and
Gould)
Dick Lewontin and Steven Jay Gould
- neoDarwinists
- felt that not everything is necessarily adaptive
- “spandrel”- not necessary for the support of a building but put on the top
o apply it to biology to cover those traits that are not necessarily adaptive (trail along in
evolution because they have become attached to something that is adaptive)
- argue the pace of evolutionary change was not steady and gradual as Darwin suggested
o goes in bursts
o “punctuated equilibrium”- stable state until there are big sets of changes/diversification
- committed socialists
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o conscious of keeping science egalitarian
o humanity will not go anywhere if equality is not maintained
question of identifying people as having a low IQ
insists genes make the people (deterministic)
their ideas could make people who are less advantaged into people who have bad genes
(can’t escape their positions)
Gould and Lewontin, and for some time Ed Wilson, belonged to a secret group of prominent
biologists who felt that science was becoming too much populated by great figures
o thinking that science ought to return to a utopian vision of everyone working together to
put together views
o came together as a writing group that submitted articles under pseudonym to various
journals
o pseudonym: “Isidore Nabi”
o there is a fake biography in a biological dictionary
Wilson left the group and one of the most famous productions by Nabi was written by Lewontin
which is another critique of sociobiology (evolutionary interpretation of English sonnet)
Lewontin felt it would be a devastating critique on biology on how a sociobiologist would view
poetry
everything in life, including culture, can be reduced down to genes
Interview w/ E. O. Wilson
- sociobiology: systemic study of biological forms of social behavior in all organisms
- doesn’t mean humans are genetically determined
- many believe the brain is a blank slate
- human nature does have a genetic basis
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separate personality from products
Lecture #23: May 2, 2007
Modern Challenges: Creationism and Intelligent Design
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evolution is not the universally accepted norm today
venn diagram: evolutionists, anti-evolutionists, belief in a creator, scriptural literalists
Why do we think Creationism has had a resurgence in the last 20-30 years?
initially, evangelical movement had always a fundamentalist wing (believed strongly in biblical
Christianity, literal truth of Bible, day of final judgment, miracles)
o these people move into new frame of mind; modern world is rapidly deteriorating
coupled with a rise in science
o out of this concern emerged the new Creationist movement (simplification but
something of the power of this movement rests in a deep concern for the progress of
society, moral values, conventional structures of family life, civic behavior)
o not an expression of dislike of evolution; expression of anxiety about modern society
modern synthesis of evolutionary theory made evolutionary theory much more incompatible
with religious belief
o all of nature could be explained only through selection
many reasons in US for this debate to emerge
Turkey
- in other nations, it is possible that the Creationist movement is addressing other concerns
- (M. R. Long’s ”Apocalyptic Scene”, c. 1963: painting that shows gateway to hell with all of the
philosophers and scientists
o Darwin is there with a monkey)
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Harun Yahya: Atlas of Creation
o name is a pseudonym; put on a great many anti-evolutionary tracts
Turkey is Islamic
evolutionists sued
foundation is issuing texts
reflecting a microcosm of battle in middle east between secularism and Islamic belief
expression of dislike of materialism of modern world (riches, wealth and philosophical sense
that everything can be attributed to the activity of matter alone)
Scientific Creationism
- self identified way of thinking about structure of world by using science
- realigning scientific data in a religious framework
- strength drawn from middle classes
- began with work of George Mccready Price
o literal reading Genesis: believed in literally 7 24 hour days
o “7 day advantist”
o put effort into flood geology; believed in no long time span for the world
- Henry M Morris
o re-wrote books that Price put forward
o turned these books into what he calls Creation Science
o develops Creation Research Society
o set up Institution for Creation Research in San Diego
 has a museum
 have to be a believer to enter
 grand canyon is taken as evidence for biblical story
 Canyon Wall room: explanatory charts, fossils that are re-interpreted
 offshoot: Morris Center for Christian Leadership- offers degrees
- Discovery Institute in Seattle
- themes brought out by creationists invested with culture of academic freedom that why
shouldn’t a nation like America allow a range of opinion?
- at least in the classroom or bookshop, there should be choice
- 6 issues
o 2nd Law of Thermodynamics: on Creationists websites, they talk about how physics
requires a downward trend and that evolution, by definition, requires a complexification
(difficult to correlate physics with bio)
o evolutionary theory very improbable; people in past years have said the same thing
o age of the earth; question radiometric dating processes and say science may not have
it right
o nature of geology (geological record) indicates a great flood
o fossil record: shows no transitional forms
o question of design; world appears to be a designed place; perfection of adaptation
indicates existence of a designer
- rhetoric that surrounds these people is really interesting
o appeal to a sense of fair play and balance
o distrust of modern relativisim; people promoting Creationism would like to have things
very certain (rest of modern world more relative)
o call to allowing freedom
o debate can be polarized into bible vs. evolution (Scopes trial)
o say that evolution is just a theory
3 Important Law Cases
- Kansas and Dover in readings
- Arkansas
- proposal for balanced teachings of both ideas in schools
- local churches wanted to contest the act as well (we wonder whether they thought Creation Science
was gaining too much publicity and losing congregation members and they might have wondered why
this CS would be taught in schools and not other religions)
- case was supported by judge; overturned act in 1982
- experts testified in support of science, to help define science
- who controls the definitions?
- in the end, decided they were best supported by showing Creation Science, without religious part,
was just a collection of unrelated statements or assertions (it had no imbedded theory without
religion)… once God was included, it was religion; so, it was illegal to teach in schools
- Creation attack: science rests on statements and that science is only tentative; it operates through
theories
- Creation had no peer review of statements, no weighing up of alternatives
- difficult to show evolutionary theory was a unified construct; many kinds of Darwinists and variation
(seized upon by Creationists)
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Kansas: movement that evolution should be made optional in teachings (reversed 2 yrs later)
Dover 2004: Judge Jones issued a decision that was an astute account of rise of intelligent
design
o Judge Jones said there was a religious element in intelligent design that made it
inappropriate to teach in American schools
intelligent designers: believe in evolution
o there are 1 or 2 process in biomolecular world that IDers say are too complex to have
emerged through natural selection (need to be initiated by a designer)
o compromising
o “irreducible complexity”
o not biblical literalists
o accept all aspects of modern science
o popular for many people
o Michael Behe: thinks flagella are irreducibly complex
o Francis Collins, director of National Human Genome research Institute
 many scientists think they should come out and declare their religious belief;
Collins is notable for this
 Creationist line makes the issue either, or
 Collins says it is not either or; it is possible for evolutionists to have religious
belief; there is a middle path
much anxiety about relativism
o to think of science as being socially constructed is dangerous; allows for including
other opinions
o in many science departments, thinking about accuracy and firmness about facts (not
allowing too much relativism)
scientists have gone on attack, especially in Science Magazine, to publicize anti-creationist
literature
many large institutions that have issued public statements against creationism (one in reading
from National Academies of Science)
o this statement is going to be translated into Turkish so it has a role in this community
evolutionists use humor; creationists do not use humor
Overview of Course
- historical techniques in history of science
o look at documents very closely, in context
o think of them as evidence
o set your self back from evidence to be impartial to understand material
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Darwinian Revolution is one case study
interplay between intellectual (science), religious, political, institutional factors
Darwinian Revolution was a major transformation that has changed the way western culture
thinks about creation, human beings, nature
we have seen how we go from Michaelangelo’s painting to chromosomes
science has come to provide answers that religion previously supplied
Darwinian Revolution: lots of it can be attributed to things other than Darwin
o not all of it was a revolution
o already there was secularization, industrialization, rise of literacy and science
o Darwin’s work appears in Western Culture at a time when lots of other transformations
were taking place
we have been examining what is called the Darwinian Revolution and have been trying to
establish Darwin’s place
o you can’t attack great big movements like this to one single individual
o combination of long term continuity and change
o all of the people involved were contributing to a big change in understanding the
natural world
evolutionary theory not accepted in total
o all are valid and useful criticisms
we’ve been looking at a case study in history of biology
o one of the essential characteristics of historical study is to look for these continuities
and changes
o duty is not to simplify causes and people’s ideas; it is our duty not to think just of the
great individual figures
o duty not to think as if history progresses step by step (as if it knew where it was going)
o think of activities in their own time without looking forward (without using temiology)
o history opens up for us the knowledge that there are many different ways of doing
things/ points of views; it educates us to think more widely about everything we
encounter (balance in our judgments)