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14 The Darwinian Revolution: Rethinking Its Meaningand Significance--Michael Ruse
Pages 287-306

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From page 287...
... That is, what was the conceptual nature of what occurred on and around the publication of the Origin? I argue that there was a major change, both scientifically and in a broader metaphysical sense; that Charles Darwin was the major player in the change, although one must qualify the nature and the extent of the change, looking particularly at things in a broader historical context than just as an immediate event; and that the revolution was complex and we need the insights of rather different philoso phies of scientific change to capture the whole phenomenon.
From page 288...
... Dwelling at length on Darwin carries the danger of ignoring the contributions of others in the 19th century, from the Naturphilosophen (people like the German anatomist lorenz oken who saw homologies everywhere) at the beginning to the orthogeneticists (people like the American paleontologist henry Fairfield osborn who thought that evolution has a momentum that carries it beyond adaptive success)
From page 289...
... so if you want to extend the term revolution to science, if it captures something of what goes on, then all power to the use. But now the question is whether the Darwinian revolution merits the use.
From page 290...
... There always have been and there always will be people who think that not only was Alfred russel Wallace, the codiscoverer of natural selection, unappreciated but that Charles Darwin pinched all of the good ideas from the younger evolutionist. it should be called the Wallacean revolution with Charles Darwin but a minor footnote.
From page 291...
... edward Blyth (1835) , with whom Darwin was to have very cordial and helpful correspondence (he actually drew Darwin's attention to an important earlier essay by Wallace)
From page 292...
... Clearly some nuanced thinking is needed, starting with the fact that there was 150 years of evolutionary thinking before Darwin, including speculations by his own grandfather erasmus Darwin. Toward a fuller analysis, divide the history of evolutionary thinking into 3 periods (ruse, 1996)
From page 293...
... William Whewell (1837, 1840) , with rationalist leanings, insisted that we justify the acceptance of our hypothesis through its implying a whole range of empirical evidence, thus manifesting what Whewell called a "consilience of inductions." As in a court of law, where the guilt is ascribed through the wide range of clues that it explains, Darwin set about satisfying both vera causa criteria (ruse, 1975b)
From page 294...
... in Britain you had the incredible paradox that the chief postOrigin evolutionist in the second half of the 19th century, a man deeply involved in and highly influential on postsecondary education, Thomas henry huxley, never taught evolution to his students. he thought they should concentrate on physiology and morphology (ruse, 1996)
From page 295...
... if you are thinking of the first of these claims, if you think of the Darwinian revolution as an attempt to make humans entirely natural, in the sense of produced and working according to the same laws of nature as everyone else, one can truly say that for many people this revolution has succeeded and Darwin played a major role in its success. The Origin put us firmly in the natural picture and then following up the Descent of Man was a major analysis of humankind from a naturalistic perspective, cover
From page 296...
... The human mind is not a tabula rasa but shaped by the forces of natural selection. And many workers in the evolutionary field today would agree, from physical anthropologists through human behavioral ecologists and on to evolutionary psychologists.
From page 297...
... The harvard geneticist richard lewontin, a committed Marxist, is one who denies that evolutionary biology is the key to understanding Homo sapiens. he opts rather for economic and like forces (levins and lewontin, 1985)
From page 298...
... Ultimately, natural selection is not a progress-producing mechanism. so we could say that the Darwinian revolution does prove the nonspecial status of humans, and finally today people recognize the fact.
From page 299...
... WAS THERE A DARWINIAN REVOLUTION? Finally, how does one analyze conceptually what happened because of the Origin of Species?
From page 300...
... The expression of conditions of existence, so often insisted on by the illustrious Cuvier, is fully embraced by the principle of natural selection. For natural selection acts by either now adapting the varying parts of each being to its organic and inorganic conditions of life; or by having adapted them during long-past periods of time: the adaptations being aided in some cases by use and disuse, being slightly affected by the direct action of the external conditions of life, and being in all cases subjected to the several laws of growth.
From page 301...
... that for owen the archetype represents a divine platonic pattern rather than something produced purely by mechanical laws. As it happens, he also claimed correctly that this led owen to see more than was justified, namely that the skull is made from transformed vertebrae, a claim that Darwin had accepted and that he dropped smartly before the Origin appeared.
From page 302...
... . so in the sense that there were differences of that sort, differences where because of rival metaphysical views people talked past each other, one could claim that the Darwinian revolution was Kuhnian.
From page 303...
... in fact, in the past 20 years things have moved, with evolutionary development enthusiasts coming onside in a very strong way for formalism. The homologies they find, for instance between humans' and fruitflies' genetic sequences, strike them as absolutely fundamental and calling for a total revision of evolutionary thinking.
From page 304...
... less paradoxically, let us say that a complex phenomenon like the Darwinian revolution demands many levels of understanding. Blunt instruments will fail us as we try to understand scientific change.
From page 305...
... here, i rest confident that i have shown why, for a philosopher and historian of science, analyzing the Darwinian revolution is such a worthwhile challenge.


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