Documenta Ophthalmologica

, Volume 94, Issue 1–2, pp 101–111 | Cite as

The origin of species, man’s place in nature and the naming of the calcarine sulcus

  • Ronald S. Fishman
Article
  • 65 Downloads

Abstract

InThe Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection of 1859, Charles Darwin provided a detailed, coherent proposal: species changed into new ones by the action over time of natural forces in the environment acting continuously on the variations always present within species. Readers immediately extrapolated Darwin’s argument concerning lower animals to the implications for humans, and its denial of a special creation of humans. In opposition to Darwin’s theory, Britain’s preeminent paleontologist and comparative anatomist, Richard Owen, argued that man was unique among all creation in the possession of a particular structure within the brain, the ‘Hippocampus minor’. Darwin’s great defender, Thomas Huxley, demonstrated that this structure also existed in monkeys and apes, and that it was simply a manifestation of a ‘particular sulcus’ in the posterior cerebral cortex, which he named as the ‘calcarine’ sulcus. The home of the visual striate cortex was thus named as part of the controversy surrounding the birth of evolutionary theory, soon to be accepted as the great unifying concept in all of biology.

Key words

Charles Darwin common descent evolution hippocampus minor Julian Huxley Thomas Huxley natural selection neuroanatomy neuroophthalmology Richard Owen visual cortex visual science 
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Copyright information

© Kluwer Academic Publishers 1997

Authors and Affiliations

  • Ronald S. Fishman
    • 1
  1. 1.Washington Hospital CenterWashington, DCUSA

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