Abstract
Darwin’s concept of struggle for existence met with a number of different reactions, especially, but not exclusively, with regard to man’s evolution. Reactions ranged from its acceptance as a commonplace to rejecting it as a gloomy denial of the goodness of nature. As a term describing the ecological context of evolution, it suffered from a number of objections levelled against natural selection. As a metaphor, it was difficult to understand in the full range of its meanings. While some authors, popularisers, and scientists took it in a narrowly literal sense, others tried to disentangle it, or to translate it in terms of their own image of nature. Misunderstandings and distortions were not limited to Darwin’s critics, but were also widespread among some of his supporters. Interestingly, and contrary to what might have been expected, misunderstandings, distortions, and more or less creative reinterpretations did not invariably lead to a rejection of Darwin’s theory. On the contrary, in many cases they favoured its acceptance, by adapting it to morally reassuring images of nature. Moral issues, although often implicit, played an important a role in the reception of Darwin’s theory.
Quidquid recipitur ad modum recipientis recipitur
(Whatever is received is received according to the mode of the receiver)
—Thomas Aquinas
L’Arabo, il Parto, il Siro
In suo sermon l’udì
(The Arab, the Parthian, the Syrian,
All understood it in their own language)
—Alessandro Manzoni, La Pentecoste
It is singular how differently one and the same book will impress different minds
—Thomas Henry Huxley
[Darwin’s] watchwords, “natural selection,” “struggle for existence,” “survival of the fittest,” are equally familiar to those who do and those who do not understand them
—Louis Agassiz
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Notes
- 1.
Wallace replied in the same journal, and a debate ensued, which involved other participants.
- 2.
Anticipating a criticism of “survival of the fittest” that would be raised many times over, Stirling says that it is either a false concept or a tautology, the fittest that survive being identified, in a circular way, with those who survive because they are the fittest. Or it is a sheer banality, given that all organisms born with certain characteristics survive (ibid.: 220–222).
- 3.
Stirling repeated his criticism in Philosophy and Theology (1890: 322–400).
- 4.
Darwin never thought himself exempted from the struggle for life. See his letter to Asa Gray of 21 August 1861: “We are a wretched family & ought to be exterminated” (Darwin 1985–, 10: 373).
- 5.
Curiously, another Gray (John Edward, keeper of the zoological collections of the British Museum), made the same mistake that Asa Gray warned Dana against. In a letter to Huxley of 5 December 1860 Darwin wrote of him: “What a fool old Gray is (not but what I like him); he understands my book [the Origin] no more than a pig does. He told me the last time I saw him ‘you see natural selection cannot possibly apply to plants’” (Darwin 1985–, 8: 515). In his review of the Origin the physiologist Carpenter (1860, rept. in Hull ed. 1973) had warned against such misunderstanding. The biologist John Arthur Thomson felt it necessary to point out as late as 1909 that “we might be saved from taking a narrow view of the struggle for existence if we emphasise the fact that the concept must apply to plants as well as to animals” (Thomson 1909a: 75).
- 6.
Crawfurd criticised Darwin’s theory in his review of the Origin (Crawfurd 1859). Among his objections to “the theory of progressive mutation by natural selection”, some were usual (such as the lack of transitional forms in the fossil record, or the similarity of embalmed animals in Egyptian tombs to present organisms), and some were completely stupid. Here are a couple of examples. Darwin would at least have had to assume a progenitor for each existing natural order of animals and plants, which would have dispensed with the need to imagine “such violent and seemingly miraculous transitions as, for example, the growth, in due time, of a mushroom into an oak, or of a sponge into a whale” (Crawfurd 1869: 31). Parasites are “of inferior organisation to the beings on which and through which they live”, but they must have appeared either at the same time as, or after, their victims, then be either equal or superior to them, whereas they are inferior in organisation. Just think, he said, of man’s parasites be (ibid.: 33–34). Crawfurd was a polygenist. Darwin quoted him in The Descent of Man as believing in the existence of sixty races of man. On Crawfurd, who was President of the Ethnological Society from 1861 to 1863 and 1865 to 1868, see Ellingson (2001), Knapman (2016a, b).
- 7.
See, for example, Bowen (1860b: 99). For reasons which are unclear, Bowen thought that the struggle for life only took place between species, whereas selection only between individuals. But to have evolutionary importance, selection should have worked between species (ibid.: 105–106; cf. Bowen 1860a: 480). On Bowen’s attitude towards Darwinism see Bowen (1879).
- 8.
- 9.
- 10.
That “the great von Baer” (the judgement is Darwin’s) could write something as silly as what is cited above in the text, is perhaps less odd than it may seem: as well as invoking disciplinary traditions and ways of thinking, historians would do well to keep in mind Carlo Cipolla’s “second basic law of stupidity”, to wit, “The probability that a certain person is stupid is independent of any other characteristic of that person” (Cipolla 1988: 48). One can be both a Nobel Prize winner and stupid, and, for instance, offer one’s sperm for experiments on producing particularly intelligent individuals.
- 11.
Von Baer’s teleological philosophy of nature is particularly evident in his essays Das allgemeinste Gesetz der Natur in aller Entwicklung (1834), Welche Auffassung der Lebendingen Natur ist die richtige? Und wie ist diese Auffassung auf die Entomologie anzuwenden? (1860), Über den Zweck in den Vorgängen der Natur, Erste Hälfte: Über Zweckmässigkeit oder Zielstrebigkeit überhaupt (1860), and Über Zielstrebigkeit in der organischen Körpern insbesondere (1876), in von Baer (1864–1876, 1: 35–74, 237–284; 2: 49–105, 170–234). These essays are reprinted in von Baer (1983). On von Baer’s philosophy of biology see Lenoir (1982), Kalling and Tammiksaar (2008).
- 12.
Von Hartmann further expounded his views on Darwinism in Darwinismus und Thierproduktion (1876).
- 13.
However, Hartmann preferred the explanation of the psychology and physiology of sense organs offered by Lamarck over the Darwinian one (ibid.: 120, 138). Following Schopenhauer (see Chap. 3.8) to some extent, he interpreted Lamarck’s theory in terms of “unconscious teleology”.
- 14.
Darwin read the first article and found it “clever & dead against me”, but the “monster tentative attempts” argument “funny”: “A very clear view this writer had of the Struggle for existence!”, he commented to Hooker on 18 April 1860 (Darwin 1985–, 8: 162).
- 15.
Writing to Lyell on 11 August 1860, Darwin judged Parsons’ “a speculative paper correcting my notions––worth nothing”. On the same day he wrote to Asa Gray in a more diplomatic way, sending his compliments to Parsons and asking Gray to tell Parsons that “after much labour” the “chance of favourable monstrosities (i.e. great & sudden variation) arising” seemed unlikely to him: “There seems to me in almost every case too much, too complex, & too beautiful adaptation in every structure to believe in its sudden production”. Furthermore, “monsters are apt to be sterile” (Darwin 1985–, 8: 317–318, 319). In his “Big Species Book” Darwin had anticipated and exorcised the return of the “Empedoclean” spectre (Darwin 1975: 174–175).
- 16.
This accusation against Darwin found its pompous expression in the words of Pierre Flourens, Perpetual Secretary of the Paris Académie des sciences: “Ou l’élection naturelle n’est rien, ou c’est la nature: mais la nature douée d’élection, mais la nature personnifiée: dernière erreur du dernier siècle: le XIXe siècle ne fait plus de personnifications […] Que d’idées obscures, que d’idées fausses! Quel jargon métaphysique jeté mal à propos dans l’histoire naturelle, qui tombe dans le galimatias dès qu’elle sort des idées claires, des idées justes. Quel langage prétentieux et vide! Quelles personnifications puériles et surannées! O lucidité! O solidité de l’esprit français, que devenez-vous?” (Flourens 1864: 53, 65).
- 17.
Kölliker’s misunderstandings and his alternative theory of “heterogeneous generation” were demolished by Huxley (1860, 1864). Although Darwin held Kölliker in great esteem, he appreciated Huxley’s review: “If I do not pour out my admiration of your article on Kölliker, I shall explode” (Darwin 1985–, 12: 344).
- 18.
Nägeli argued that Darwinian variations were too little to influence selection. Suppose the neck of the primordial short-necked giraffe, or the trump of the primordial short-trumped elephant, to become 1 mm longer (which, he said, is “too large an assumption”). Then about 1000 generations would have been necessary for the whole transformation to occur by natural selection: too long a time, and too insignificant the change to give the individual any such advantage in the Concurrenz as to prevent crossing with other individuals and regression to the original form (Nägeli 1884: 312). On Nägeli see Mazumdar (1995) and Junker (2011).
- 19.
Huber thought that Moritz Wagner’s theory of migrations and geographical isolation represented a serious challenge to Darwin’s views (Huber 1869).
- 20.
For a pre-Darwinian example see Fischer (1851: 141–142).
- 21.
Lange endorsed Darwinism and thought that the struggle for existence was a demonstrated fact: “by ordering and sifting” it established equilibrium “as the maximum of simultaneously possible life” (Lange 1866: 58). His reconciliation of determinism and teleology did not entail his acceptance of internal tendencies to progressive development, as proposed by Nägeli and Kölliker (ibid.: 52–53).
- 22.
- 23.
Fechner was discussed by Lange (1877–1881, 2: 364–368; 3: 24–25, 43–47).
- 24.
However, also a supporter of transformisme wrote in his geology manual that “the most salient aspect of selection” was “the principle of individualism, of personal struggle for existence” (Dollfus 1874: 157).
- 25.
Boulay (1898: 28). Boulay argued that, since materialistic Darwinism and the idea of the struggle for life had penetrated society, they had ruined the intellectual and moral education in schools and homes. Statistics, Boulay said, demonstrated an increase in adolescent suicide. Darwinism destroyed any value but self-interest and satisfaction of the basest appetites. It was so successful because it seemed to promise victory to whoever felt enterprising enough to have a right to rebel: all young people who were taught Darwinism in school “immediately feel able to come out victorious from the fray in which human life is confusingly engaged” (ibid.: 46). Certainly, the struggle for life was based on an aristocratic principle, and Darwin, as a “rich landowner”, had nothing to fear from it: “he had calculated that all the circumstances were in his favour” (ibid.: 45). But, “as the knowledge and practice of the struggle for life gradually spread in the people, already brutalized by materialistic teaching in school, there swelled the army of fighters resolved to take up the challenge from the aristocrats of Darwinism”. If the principle of struggle for life were to become a rule of behaviour for an entire people it would lead it to “a leveling out in universal misery” (ibid.: 51).
- 26.
Delage (1894; 2nd edn. 1903: 844–845). The same instance of bullets was made by the German psychiatrist Gustav Wolff (1898: 36): “In the struggle for existence among peoples, in war, bullets do not spare the strong to the detriment of the weak, but hit those who happen to be in the most unfavourable position before bullets, independently of their personal characteristics. Likewise, in the struggle for existence in nature those may be preserved that, by their organisation, have the least chances to be preserved, which means that advantages due to organization can be entirely cancelled”. On Delage see Loison (2006).
- 27.
- 28.
In the same letter Hooker wrote that he “was amazed with [Gray’s] insouciant national Egotism”. Gray had misunderstood Hooker’s allusion to war leaning up America’s “mass of scum”: “by George he took me for sympathizer! not seeing that mine was the sympathy of contempt—You [Darwin] and I have always differed a good deal about America. I never could like but ½ a dozen of all the Americans I had seen–but always thought that there was an element of Grays &c &c &c very strong in Boston &c, who, in any emergency would rise superior to the occasion, & by the might of a dignified line of conduct, gradually become the centre of a better state of things & of feelings.” But no “expression of sense of moderation & magnanimity” had come from that “boasted Boston party”. “After all why should we expect better things from a nation of upstarts—Our Aristocracy may have been (& has been) a great drawback to civilization—but on the other hand it has had its advantages—has kept in check the uneducated & unreflecting—& has forced those who have intellect enough to rise to their own level, to use it all in the struggle—There is a deal in breeding & I do not think that any but high bred gentlemen are safe guides in Emergencies such as these”.
- 29.
Needless to say, Hooker was far from being the only naturalist who applied Darwinism to society, nations and races. To mention only one important example, who has not received the attention it deserves from historians, his fellow botanist and biogeographer Alphonse de Candolle (see above, Chap. 7) devoted a large part of his Histoire des sciences et des savants (1873) to struggle and selection in the human species. The book raised Darwin’s interest: see Baehni (1955: 127).
- 30.
As the editors of Darwin’s correspondence explain, “in this context, ‘blunt’ is used to mean ‘ready money’” (Darwin 1985–, 10: 131, note 5).
- 31.
“The better these are blended”, Hooker went on to say, “the better will be your Aristocracy––the more seperated [sic] the worse. & it is hard to say which is worse per se, or which is best when all are mixed. You have an Aristocracy purely of B1 in Germany; of B.2 in America, of B.3 in France, of B.4 everywhere. But of 4B in England only: where indeed we have 4B4 in the highest nobility […] I do maintain that the union of all must be irresistable [sic], in every degree & condition of life, from Fuegia to London” (Darwin 1985–, 10: 127; spelling, capital initials and punctuation are original). It depends on tastes whether one complains or laments the fact that Hooker never wrote his book on “Blood, Blunt, Brains, Beauty”, thus sparing contextualist historians the effort of reading it.
- 32.
Replying to Hooker’s letter of 19 January 1862 quoted above, he wrote “Your notion of the aristocrats being ken-speckle, & the best men of a good lot being thus easily selected is new to me & striking. The Origin having made you, in fact, a jolly old Tory, made us all laugh heartily. I have sometimes speculated on this subject: primogeniture is dreadfully opposed to selection,––suppose the first-born Bull was necessarily made by each farmer the begetter of his stock! On other hand, as you say, ablest men are continually raised to the peerage & get crossed with the older Lord-breeds––& the Lords continually select the most beautiful & charming women out of the lower ranks; so that a good deal of indirect selection improves the Lords. Certainly I agree with you, the present American row [the Civil War] has a very torifying influence on us all.––” (Darwin to Hooker, January 25, 1862, in Darwin 1985–, 10: 48). Darwin decided not to discuss political issues with Gray any longer. Both he and Hooker, however, kept holding Gray in great esteem, both as a scientist and as a person.
- 33.
I have been unable to find the English original, The Darwinian Theory: Its Meaning, Difficulties, Evidence, History. London: Progressive Publishing Company, 1884.
- 34.
On the debate among Marxist socialists, especially in Germany, on whether class struggle was a form of the struggle for life or merely a law of bourgeois society, and on the natural bases of altruism and solidarity, see Benton (1982), Kelly (1981), Weindling (1989, 1991), Rupp-Eisenreich (1992), Weikart (1999). On Kautsky see also La Vergata (1994b).
- 35.
- 36.
Darwin to Lyell, 4 May 1860, in Darwin 1985–, vol. 8: 189. The newspaper was the Manchester Guardian of 20 April 1860, p. 4.
- 37.
Piaget pointed out that his Lamarckism was different from that of Félix Le Dantec (see below). In the latter’s theory of “functional assimilation”, the organism assimilated the environment by struggling with it, which meant making the same mistake as Darwinism, and eventually legitimizing war. It is worth recalling that the title page of Le Dantec’s book La lutte universelle (1906) bore the slogan “Être c’est lutter, vivre c’est vaincre”.
- 38.
Shaw preferred by far “the open-eyed intelligent wanting and trying of Lamarck”. Evolution occurs “without the intervention of any stock-breeder, human or divine, and without will, purpose, design or even consciousness beyond the will to live”, but this “blind will” is “in effect a will to live” (Shaw 1977: 31–32). Shaw’s vitalism combined echoes of Schopenhauer and Nietzsche. See also his “Epistle Dedicatory” and “The Revolutionist’s Handbook” in Shaw (2000).
- 39.
The literature on the subject is obviously vast. Let me just refer to a few important contributions: Moore 1982, Lightman (1987, 2007, 2010, 2019), Helmstadter and Lightman eds. (1990), Lightman ed. (1997), Lightman and Zon eds. (2014). My short discussion of optimism and pessimism in literary authors draws on a larger one in La Vergata 1990a.
- 40.
- 41.
Kessler (1880: 134; cit. in Todes 1989: 112). In his short preface to the German translation of Kessler’s text (1930: 25–34), the German biologist Richard Friedrich Günther attempted to make the law of mutual aid the biological basis of an ethics inspired by humanitarian and Christian principles. But, as Todes (1989: 109–110) remarks, Kessler’s theory of mutual aid “was not based on a benign vision of natural relations in general or of intraspecific relations in particular”. In this and other publications Kessler used such expressions as “a constant and intense struggle for existence” and “a terrible mutual extermination of some species by others, and even of the weakest individuals of a species by the stronger individuals of the same type” (cit. in Todes, ibidem).
- 42.
- 43.
- 44.
Kropotkin seems to have missed the full meaning of Darwin’s concept of spontaneous variation (which he hardly refers to), not to mention the implications of the principle of divergence. He believed that variations were produced mostly, if not only, by the direct influence of the environment (Kropotkin 1918). As we saw in Chap. 7, Darwin devoted much time and effort to reflecting on how struggle and divergence affected the geographical distribution and the variety of forms of life, especially plants, in inhospitable, for instance arctic, regions.
- 45.
Kropotkin does not seem to have considered the analogies between play and fighting.
- 46.
- 47.
On the origin of the term see Bellomy (1984), which is the best critical treatment of social Darwinism. It has the unique merit of also taking into consideration a vast primary literature in other languages than English.
- 48.
- 49.
In 1881 Lanessan entered the Chamber of Deputies representing the Radical Party and enjoyed a successful political career, becoming Governor of Indochina (1891–1894) and Minister for the Navy (1899–1902). A materialist and anti-clerical, he played a role as a politician and a prolific journalist and writer in the abrogation of Napoleon’s Concordat between the French State and the Roman Catholic Church in 1905. On Lanessan see Clark (1984), La Vergata (1992, 1996), Persell (1999: 141–176), Farber (1999).
- 50.
Lanessan (1883: 150, 431, 441, 445, 513; 1903: 513). “We may conclude with Buffon, that the result of this struggle [against the environment] is not the triumph of the strongest species of individuals, but the conservation of the individuals or species that have best adapted themselves to the conditions in which they live” (Lanessan 1918a: 58). Lanessan (1914) credited Buffon, rather than Lamarck, with being the real founder of transformisme and the first to explain the struggle for existence. He edited a reprint of Buffon’s Oeuvres complètes (Paris, 1884–1885).
- 51.
- 52.
See Gillispie’s (1968: 276) vivid image of the Lamarckian organism as engaged in “digesting its environment”.
- 53.
Marcellin Berthelot, chemist and Foreign Minister in the Bourgeois government, made it very clear when he complained that the “plus haute et plus noble” notion of solidarity had long been subsumed under, and “paralysed”, by Christian charity; morals should instead be based on natural and scientific determinism (Berthelot 1897: 28). Lanessan (1918a) declared his faith in the “idéal moral du matérialisme”.
- 54.
As a consequence of this comparative freedom, plastides and mérides, that is, the “individual components of organisms” are also subject to struggle (concurrence vitale) and natural selection (Perrier 1898: xxxii).
- 55.
As was to be expected, Perrier celebrated an official reconciliation of Lamarck and Darwin (with a clear personal preference for the former). Lamarck’s doctrine was “not the rival, but the indispensable basis of Darwin’s”. “The origin of living forms”, Perrier argued, “is no concern for Darwin: whether the living world began in a blob of jelly or the main types of the vegetable and animal kingdoms appeared simultaneously, it does not matter to him. He would equally adjust to Cuvier’s four embranchements and Geoffroy’s [Saint-Hilaire] unity of plan de composition [...] The new doctrine [that of Darwin] tackles other problems than Lamarck’s did; it could be its continuation if the former had achieved its purpose, but it could not replace it. There is, then, no reason, as sometimes occurs, to oppose Darwinism and Lamarckism: they are at the most two doctrines that juxtapose, without there necessarily being opposition or even overlapping between them” (Perrier 1893: 487, 491–492). The emphasis on universal laws of life was a common strategy to deflate the specific elements of Darwinism.
- 56.
Durand de Gros (1867). Perrier acknowledged Durand’s priority at the meeting of Académie des Sciences of 4 March 1895. Durand accused the celebrated physiologist Claude Bernard of plagiarizing his own theory of polyzoism.
- 57.
The writer Alphonse Daudet used it in his play La lutte pour la vie (1889). This typical example of théâtre boulevardier depicted the struggle for life as perceived by his audience: a ready-made formula whereby the “baddie” justifies all sorts of transgressions. One of the characters (not a criminal) aims a pistol at his offender and responds to the latter’s cry for mercy thus: “Je m’en fous, je lutte pour la vie”. On the real events which inspired Daudet, see Clark (1984).
- 58.
Durand attacked Weismann (ibid.: 92, 94, 96), whose name he misspelled, calling him “Weisemann”). Curiously, also Perrier (1893: 507–508) made a similar mistake, and wrote “Weissmann”. One wonders how scientists misspelling their colleagues’ names can be trusted rightly to understand the words in which the latter expound their theories.
- 59.
In his 1871 book L’origine animale de l’homme Durand had argued that species changed and improved not by struggling with other species, but as a result of the courage with which individuals fight with themselves in order to adapt their organs to the adverse conditions of a new environment, under penalty of death if they do not. Durand shared the “rhetoric of effort” which Blanckaert (1979: 370) brilliantly pointed out as a major aspect of Perrier’s Lamarckism. However, the rhetoric of effort was not limited to French Lamarckians (see below, Sects. 10-11).
- 60.
- 61.
Yet, Richet went so far as to say that “the adaptation of an organ to its function is so perfect that the inevitable conclusion is that such adaptation is not fortuitous but intentional (voulue)” (Richet 1902: 7).
- 62.
On moral interpretations of biological parasitism see below, Sect. 9.11, and note 72.
- 63.
- 64.
An entomologist and specialist of the embryology of the invertebrates, Alpheus Spring Packard considered Lamarck the “real founder of organic evolution”. “For over thirty years—he wrote—the Lamarckian factors of evolution have seemed to me to afford the foundation on which natural selection rests, to be the primary and efficient causes of organic change, and thus to account for the origin of variations, which Darwin himself assumed as the starting point or basis of his selection theory” (Packard 1901: v, viii). On Packard see Bocking (1988).
- 65.
When Cope finally read Lamarck, he found no difficulty in reformulating Lamarck’s “laws” in his own language: the law of use and disuse became the “effort hypothesis”; the idea that “animal structures have been produced, directly or indirectly, by animal movements” became the “doctrine of kinetogenesis”; the idea that “animal movements are primitively determined by sensibility, or consciousness,” was renamed “the doctrine of archaeoesthetism” (Cope 1887b: 423). On Cope see Ceccarelli (2019).
- 66.
- 67.
Osborn saw selection as a mainly, if not merely, eliminative agency: “Selection is not a form of energy nor a part of the energy complex; it is an arbiter between different complexes and forms of energy; it antedates the origin of life just as adaptation or fitness antedates the origin of life […] Selection merely determines which one of a combination of energies shall survive and which shall perish” (Osborn 1917: 20).
- 68.
- 69.
Drummond (1894: 43) mentioned Spencer, John Fiske, Émile Littré, George John Romanes, Ludwig Büchner, Kropotkin, Patrick Geddes and John Arthur Thomson as authors who had “expressed themselves partly in the same direction” as his, by discussing the place of altruism in evolution. On Geddes and Thomson see below, Sect. 9.10.
- 70.
Instances (ranging from Dr. Johnson to Rousseau, Lord Kames to Adam Ferguson, Kant to Alexander von Humboldt, and including doctors as well as physiologists, theologians and political writers) are given in La Vergata (1990a, Chapter 2, § 4; 1995a, b). But such rhetoric has also been used in more recent times: “If, say, six million years ago our ancestors could sit back all day and gorge themselves sick on nuts and berries and succulent roots, then we would not be here today pondering on our origins” (Leakey and Lewin 1978: 133). Not to mention such natural theologians as Ronald Reagan, Margaret Thatcher, Donald Trump and their followers.
- 71.
War and industry “in all their forms and ramifications are simply the primitive Struggle continued on the social and political plane. War is not a casual thing like a thunderstorm, nor a specific thing like a battle. It is the ancient Struggle for life carried over from the animal kindgom, which, in the later as in the earlier world, has been so perfect an instrument of evolution. Along with industry, and for a time before it, War was the foster-mother of civilization. The patron of the heroic virtues, the purifier of societies, the solidifier of states, the military form of this Struggle––despite the awful balance on the other side––stands out as the maker and educator of the human race. Industry is but the same Struggle in another disguise” (Drummond 1894: 269).
- 72.
Lankester (1880); see La Vergata (2012). Wallace (1880: 142) wrote that Lankester’s book confirmed his own belief in the morals of exertion and the utility of pain (see above, Chap. 7). On degeneration, Gilman and Chamberlin eds. (1985), Pick (1989), Hale (2014, Chapter 7). Lankester himself applied the concept of degeneration outside the strictly biological field, as did a host of authors of various political tendencies: see for instance the socialists Demoor et al. (1897).
- 73.
Drummond professed admiration for Spencer, but the latter felt both plagiarized and unjustly accused of having neglected altruism as a factor of social evolution. Irritated, he instigated the writer Eliza Lynn Linton to criticize Drummond’s “semi-scientific sentimentalism” in a harsh review (Linton 1894; see Duncan ed. 1908: 363; Moore 1985). On Ritchie see Boucher (1992, 1994), Lombardi (2020), La Vergata (2022b).
- 74.
- 75.
Thomson mentioned Francis Galton, Wilhelm Roux, August Weismann and Il’ia Il’ič Mečnikov. On Mečnikov see below, Sect. 9.15.
- 76.
To indicate the general science of the interactions between organisms Thomson (1899, Chapter 14) used the term “bionomics”, which had been coined by E. Ray Lankester and adopted by Geddes. The only alternative term to it, he said, could be Haeckel’s “ecology”.
- 77.
Durand de Gros (1901: 79–90) criticised Royer’s (1862) choice. After discussing the etymology and the many senses of “struggle” in English, he concluded: “The inability (impuissance) of our vocabulary to provide the exact equivalent of Darwin’s expression may have aggravated in the mind of Frenchmen that which in Darwin’s hypothesis hurts moral sense”. On Royer as a translator see Miles (1989), Harvey (2008). On Royer’s view of Darwinism see Royer (1870), Fraisse (1985), Blanckaert (1996), Harvey (1997).
- 78.
- 79.
Cf. Haeckel (1876, 1: 160–161): “The ‘Struggle for Existence’ has rapidly become a watchword of the day. Yet this designation is, perhaps, in many respects not very happily chosen, and the phenomena might probably have been more accurately described as ‘Competition for the Means of Subsistence.’ For under the name of ‘Struggle for Life,’ many relations are comprehended which properly and strictly speaking do not belong to it.”
- 80.
Darwin was positively impressed by Haeckel’s remarks. In his copy of Haeckel’s book he annotated: “good criticism of my theory of struggle for existence—says ought to be confined to struggle between organisms for same end—all other cases are dependence—misseltoe [sic] depends on apple” (Di Gregorio ed. 1990: 356b-c).
- 81.
- 82.
- 83.
- 84.
Cf. “Bor’ba za suščestvovanie v obširnom smysle” (1878), discussed by Todes (1989: 88–89). Todes’ excellent book provides the best analysis ever made of the concept of “struggle for existence”. Its importance far exceeds the Russian context.
- 85.
I am taking liberal advantage of a striking image in Fleck (1980: 124). As Paolo Rossi (2009: 60) commented, “one could broaden the metaphor by adding that languages are often different and raise no easy problems in translation; that the group is enriched by the presence of more or less legitimate translators; that some dispute over contents while others, in disagreement with each other, announce pretended rules of conversion which, if respected, would make all live harmoniously and happily”.
- 86.
These distinctions were also important from an ideological perspective. The socialist and imperialist Pearson used them to attack the “individualists”, i.e., defenders of laissez-faire, who saw humans as only subject to autogeneric selection. On Pearson see Porter (2004), Gayon (1998: 220, 227–233). On Pearson qua socialist, imperialist and eugenicist, see Semmel (1960), Hale (2014). MacKenzie (1979) is an interesting discussion of Pearson as a representative of the professional middle class.
- 87.
Romanes’ “additional suggestion on the origin of species” opened a long debate with Wallace, who defended the all-sufficiency of natural selection: see Romanes (1886a, b, c, 1887), Wallace (1886, 1890), and many other articles, all listed in Richards (1987: 408). On Romanes’ physiological selection see de Andrade Martins (2006).
- 88.
Morgan (1891: 79) subdivided natural selection under “two heads”: “natural elimination, of widespread occurrence throughout the animal world; and selection proper, involving the element of individual or special [i.e. of the species] choice”. Selection properly so called was a “selection of the fit” (ibid. 92–93).
- 89.
Weismann (1909: 41) claimed he had anticipated organic selection in 1894, but Baldwin (1909: 17, note 2) vindicated his priority, as well as that of Lloyd Morgan and Osborn, who had both independently formulated the same idea in 1896 (Osborn 1896a, b; Morgan 1896a, b; Osborn and Poulton 1897). He added that Morgan and E.B. Poulton preferred to call it “indirect selection”. The original papers of Baldwin, Morgan and Osborn, together with expositions by Poulton and others, were collected in Baldwin (1902c), where Baldwin discussed his differences from Morgan and Osborn. As Ceccarelli (2021a, b) remarks, Osborn lost his interest in organic selection very soon (Osborn 1897). On organic selection in Baldwin, Morgan and others I can simply refer to the excellent treatment in Richards (1987). Raymond Hovasse (1950: 12–13) proposed an “improved reformulation” of Baldwin’s organic selection (the term “organic” being “imprecise”) and of the Baldwin effect: better to say “selection of parallel mutations, or, more simply, parallel selection”. On the Baldwin effect see Continenza (1984, 1986), Weber and Depew eds. (2003), and Ceccarelli (2019), who rightly argues that the “Baldwin effect” dismantled the neo-Lamarckian bond between habits, efforts and biological change.
- 90.
A remark which, incidentally, applies quite as well to present-day “organic” food and products.
- 91.
However, Baldwin later could not resist pointing out an “intra-group” and an “extra-group” selection, and mentioning a “racial selection” (Baldwin 1909: 44, 71).
- 92.
What was meant then and what is meant now by “social Darwinism” has been the object of a growing body of literature (see Chap. 6, note 70) and cannot be dealt with in detail here. There were so many and contrasting varieties of social Darwinism that some scholars concluded that, having generated confusion from the outset, the expression would better be avoided by historians (La Vergata 1982, 1985: 961; Bowler 1990). There are good reasons for saying that, all in all, the only one who is entitled to be defined a social Darwinist was Darwin himself.
- 93.
There is no need to discuss the flaws in Popper’s and Dawkins’ (1976, 1982) crude applications of biological analogies to cultural evolution here. However different from each other, they share a basically essentialist view of theories (Popper) or ideas (Dawkins) as units or combinations of units, suggesting nothing as to their genesis, formation, combination, and “competition” with others in order to conquer mental and cultural environment. In spite of efforts to save Dawkins from criticisms (for instance, Distin 2005), his “memetic” hypothesis boils down to an updating of late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century extensions of competition from biological evolution to cultural evolution. In both Popper and Dawkins, as well as in Dennett’s (1995, Chapter 12: 343) “exaptation” of Dawkin’s “memes”, the “eco-cultural” environment disappears: it just becomes a virtual space for theories or memes to conquer and defend, as in a computer game. Neither Popper nor Dawkins said anything new, as Haeckel’s and Baldwin’s instances show. If a hunt for precursors makes any sense at all, they were all preceded by the Italian philologist Gaetano Trezza, who wrote: “As those pollens perish that are not adapted to the physical conditions surrounding them, so do those thoughts perish that are not adapted to the psychological temperature of history. They remain as relics disseminated out of time’s path, extinguished before birth, because they do not come out alive, but as pale abortions of a withered uterus. Which, then, of the feelings of an epoch does prevail? That which is better conformed to triumph over the others, which is able to make its way through the obstacles of rival feelings, that is that which better responds to the needs of the moment of its birth, and is therefore the most beautiful, the strongest, and, let us face it, the truest” (Trezza, La scienza delle lettere, in Il Politecnico, 27, 1865, cit. in Canestrini 1887: 370).
- 94.
Baldwin appreciated James’ criticism of Spencer and Wundt’s Lamarckian psychology (Baldwin 1909: 13) but criticised his pragmatism for not being really Darwinian. Pragmatism was a “chameleon-like theory”, and, also in Dewey’s version of it, intrumentalism, “turned into a System of metaphysics” (ibid.: 71–73; cf. Baldwin 1904).
- 95.
Baldwin’s statements are often more convoluted than those examined here. Of one of them Richards (1987: 479, note) says it “has the deep clarity of the Chicago River on St. Patrick’s Day”.
- 96.
“And I suppose that is the reason why even people like Romanes get so hopefully wrong”, Huxley added (letter to Joseph Dalton Hooker, 9 March 1888, in L. Huxley ed. 1900, 2: 192). See Huxley’s letter to Michael Foster, 14 February 1888 (ibid.: 190): “Nothing entertains me more than to hear people call it [the Origin] easy reading”. These statements are in a curious contrast with what Huxley said he had exclaimed to himself when he “first made [him]self master of the central idea of the ‘Origin’”: “How extremely stupid not to have thought of that! I suppose that Columbus’ companions said much the same when he made the egg stand on end” (ibid.: 170; F. Darwin ed. 1887, 2: 197).
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La Vergata, A. (2023). Struggles for Existence. In: Images of the Economy of Nature, 1650-1930. Evolutionary Biology – New Perspectives on Its Development, vol 7. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-31023-2_9
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