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References
The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, ed. Francis Darwin, 3 vols., 3rd ed. (London: Murray, 1887) II, 116, 117 (emphasis added).
Charles Darwin, The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication (London: Murray, 1868), I, 10 (emphasis added).
Camille Limoges, La Selection naturelle (Paris: Presses Universitaires, 1970), p. 100.
David Kohn, “Theories to Work By: Rejected Theories, Reproduction, and Darwin's Path to Natural Selection,” Stud. Hist. Biol., 4, (1980), 138.
That the practice of breeders played a role in the development has been maintained by Robert Young, “Darwin's Metaphor: Does Nature Select?” Monist, 55 (1971), 442–503; and by Michael Ruse, “Charles Darwin and Artificial Selection,” J. Hist. Ideas, 36 (1975), 339–350. Sylvan Schweber, “The Origin of the Origin Revisited”, J. Hist. Biol., 10 (1977), 229–316, has shown that Darwin was aware of the value of experimental procedures.
Alfred Russel Wallace, Darwinism (London: Macmillan, 1889), p. vi.
A. R. Wallace, “On the Tendency of Varieties to Depart Indefinitely from the Original Type,” in Natural Selection (London: Macmillan, 1870), pp. 40–41 (emphasis added).
Charles Darwin, On the Origin of Species (1st ed., 1859), with an introduction by Ernst Mayr (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1964), pp. 14–15 (emphasis added).
Charles Darwin, The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication (London: Murray, 1868), II, 196.
William Hopkins, “Physical Theories of the Phenomena of Life,” in Darwin and his Critics, ed. David Hull (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1973), pp. 229–275; quotation on p. 232.
William Hopkins, “Physical Theories of the Phenomena of Life,” in Darwin and his Critics, ed. David Hull (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1973), p. 245; A. R. Wallace, “On the Law which has Regulated the Introduction of New Species,” in Wallace, Natural Selection, p. 5.
William Hopkins, “Physical Theories of the Phenomena of Life,” in Darwin and his Critics, ed. David Hull (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1973), p. 258.
William Hopkins, “Physical Theories of the Phenomena of Life,” in Darwin and his Critics, ed. David Hull (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1973), p. 250 (second emphasis added).
William Hopkins, “Physical Theories of the Phenomena of Life,” in Darwin and his Critics, ed. David Hull (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1973) p. 252.
William Hopkins, “Physical Theories of the Phenomena of Life,” in Darwin and his Critics, ed. David Hull (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1973), p. 257.
Darwin wrote to Hooker in 1862: “My enormous difficulty for years was to understand adaptation and this made me, I cannot but think, rightly, insist so much on Natural Selection.” More Letters of Charles Darwin, ed. Francis Darwin and A. C. Seward (London: Murray, 1903) I, 213.
Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species, 6th ed. (New York: Collier, 1901), pt. 2, pp. 7, 42.
William Hopkins, “Physical Theories of the Phenomena of Life,” in Darwin and his Critics, ed. David Hull (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1973), p. 251.
Charles Darwin, On the Origin of Species (1st ed., 1859), with an introduction by Ernst Mayr (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1964), p. 15.
Ilya Prigogine and Isabelle Stengers, La nouvelle Alliance: métamorphose de la science (Paris: Gallimard, 1979), p. 48.
Charles Darwin, The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication (London: Murray, 1868) II, 193–194 (emphasis added).
Charles Darwin, The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication (London: Murray, 1868), I, 6.
Wallace draws just the opposite conclusion. He regards artificial selection as unnatural and the origin of humans as supernatural. He believes that the intellect of human beings raises them out of nature; as breeders they can then subjugate nature to mind. “The inference I would draw from this class of phenomena is, that a superior intelligence has guided the development of man in a definite direction, and for a special purpose, just as man guides the development of many animal and vegetable forms. The laws of evolution alone would, perhaps, never have produced a grain so well adapted to man's use as wheat and maize; such fruits as the seedless banana and bread-fruit; or such animals as the Guernsey milch cow, or the London dray-horse” (“The Limits of Natural Selection as Applied to Man,” in Wallace, Natural Selection, p. 359). He goes on to say elsewhere: “Man has not only escaped ‘natural selection’ himself, but he is actually able to take away some of that power from nature which before his appearance she universally exercised. We can anticipate the time when the earth will produce only cultivated plants and domestic animals; when man's selection shall have supplanted ‘natural selection;’ and when the ocean will be the only domain in which that power can be exerted, which for countless cycles of ages ruled supreme over all the earth” (“The Development of Human Races under the Law of Natural Selection,” in Wallace, Natural Selection, p. 326).
Charles Darwin, The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication (London: Murray, 1868), I, 3 (emphasis added).
Darwin seems at first to have thought that the practice of breeders could be used as a model not just for selection but also for variation. He often attributed variation to changes in the conditions of life, so that domestication could be seen as causing variations in the same way that geological changes might cause them. Even after the Origin such phrases occasionally recur. For Darwin's earlier opinions on variation see Dov Ospovat, The Development of Darwin's Theory: Natural History, Natural Theology, and Natural Selection, 1838–1859, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981).
Charles Darwin, On the Origin of Species (6th ed., 1859), with an introduction by Ernst Mayr (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1964), pt. 1, pp. 113–114 (cf. 1st ed., pp. 73–74).
Charles Darwin, On the Origin of Species (1st ed., 1859), with an introduction by Ernst Mayr (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1964), pp. 115, 116 (cf. 1st ed., pp. 75, 76).
Charles Darwin, On the Origin of Species (1st ed., 1859), with an introduction by Ernst Mayr (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1964), p. 152.
Charles Darwin, The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication (London: Murray, 1868) I, 7.
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Stephen Toulmin, The Philosophy of Science (New York: Harper & Row, 1960), p. 65.
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Th. Dobzhansky, F. J. Ayala, G. L. Stebbins, J. W. Valentine, Evolution (San Francisco: Freeman, 1977), p. 14.
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This is a revised and slightly expanded version of a paper originally published in German under the title “Darwin und das Experiment,” Dialektik, 5 (1982), 27–43.
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Rheinberger, HJ., McLaughlin, P. Darwin's experimental natural history. J Hist Biol 17, 345–368 (1984). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00126368
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00126368