The Darwinism Of Darwin And Of The Post Darwinian Schools

The Darwinism Of Darwin, And Of The Post-darwinian Schools

George John Romanes offers a comprehensive analysis of the theory of evolution as proposed by Charles Darwin and the post-Darwinian schools of thought. He grapples with the implications of evolutionary theory for scientific and philosophical questions, and explores the social and cultural impact of Darwinism. This book is a crucial text for anyone interested in the history of science and the enduring debate over the meaning and implications of evolution. This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work is in the "public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant.

The Darwinism of Darwin, and of the Post-Darwinian Schools

The Reception of Darwinian Evolution in Britain, 1859–1909

The Reception of Darwinian Evolution in Britain, 1859-1909: Darwinism's Generations uses the impact of Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species (1859) in the 50 years after its publication to demonstrate the effectiveness of a generational framework for understanding the cultural and intellectual history of Britain in the nineteenth century. It challenges conventional notions of the 'Darwinian Revolution' by examining how people from across all sections of society actually responded to Darwin's writings. Drawing on the opinions and interventions of over 2,000 Victorians, drawn from an exceptionally wide range of archival and printed sources, it argues that the spread of Darwinian belief was slower, more complicated, more stratified by age, and ultimately shaped far more powerfully by divergent generational responses, than has previously been recognised. In doing so, it makes a number of important contributions. It offers by far the richest and most comprehensive account to date of how contemporaries came to terms with the intellectual and emotional shocks of evolutionary theory. It makes a compelling case for taking proper account of age as a fundamental historical dynamic, and for the powerful generational patternings of the effects that age produced. It demonstrates the extent to which the most common sub-periodisation of the Victorian period are best understood not merely as constituted by the exigencies of events, but are also formed by the shifting balance generational influence. Taken together these insights present a significant challenge to the ways historians currently approach the task of describing the nature and experience of historical change, and have fundamental implications for our current conceptions of the shape and pace of historical time.