Search Results - The Complete Work of Charles Darwin Online

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A34 Book: Judd, J. W. 1910. The coming of evolution: The story of a great revolution in science. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Text Image

as revealed truth, but the periods of time necessary for evolution could not be admitted by those who believed the beginning of the world to have been recent, and its end to be imminent. Thus 'Catastrophic' ideas came to be regarded as orthodox, and evolutionary ones as utterly irreligious and damnable. There are few more curious facts in the history of science than the contrast between the reception of the teaching of the Saxon professor Werner, and those of Hutton, the Scotch philosopher

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A34 Book: Judd, J. W. 1910. The coming of evolution: The story of a great revolution in science. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Text Image

Playfair, the brilliant author of the Illustrations of the Huttonian Theory, died in 1819; under happier conditions his able work might have done for Inorganic Evolution what his great master failed to accomplish; but the dead weight of prejudice and the dread of anything that seemed to savour of infidelity was, at the time of the great European struggle against revolutionary France, too great to be removed even by his lucid statements and eloquent advocacy. James Hall and Leonard Horner, two

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A34 Book: Judd, J. W. 1910. The coming of evolution: The story of a great revolution in science. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Text Image

really valuable hypotheses and acute observations which it contained. In the preface, however, the author gives a most striking and complete summary of the doctrine of Evolution as opposed to Catastrophism, in the inorganic world, as will be shown by the following extracts: Geology has for its business a knowledge of the processes which are in continual or occasional operation within the limits of our planet, and the application of these laws to explain the appearances discovered by our

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A34 Book: Judd, J. W. 1910. The coming of evolution: The story of a great revolution in science. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Text Image

been deposited, with excessive slowness, by the action of plant-life37. He was thus enabled to supply a complete refutation of the views put forward by Buckland and Cuvier. Thus while Hutton had been led to his conclusion concerning evolution in the inorganic world, by studying the waste going on in the weathered crags and the flooded rivers of his native land, Lyell's conversion to the same views was mainly brought about by the study of changes due to the action of the sea along the English coasts

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A34 Book: Judd, J. W. 1910. The coming of evolution: The story of a great revolution in science. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Text Image

was published, Lyell undertook the preparation of a review for the Quarterly and this review was a very able and discriminating production. Although Lyell did not derive his views concerning terrestrial evolution directly from Hutton, as is sometimes supposed, there were two respects in which he greatly profited when he came to read Hutton's work at a later date. In the first place, he was very deeply impressed by the necessity of avoiding the odium theologicum, which had been so strongly, if

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A34 Book: Judd, J. W. 1910. The coming of evolution: The story of a great revolution in science. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Text Image

evident, however, that as the work progressed, the interest of the various questions bearing on the origin of species grew in his mind. While Lyell found it impossible to accept the explanation of origin suggested by Lamarck, he was greatly influenced by the arguments in favour of evolution advanced by that naturalist; and as he wrote chapter after chapter on the questions of the modification and variability of [page] 6

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A34 Book: Judd, J. W. 1910. The coming of evolution: The story of a great revolution in science. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Text Image

grateful pleasure, as an acknowledgment that the chief part of whatever scientific merit this Journal and the other works of the author may possess, has been derived from studying the well-known, admirable Principles of Geology.' How Lyell's first volume inspired Darwin with his passion for geological research, and how his second volume was one of the determining causes in turning his mind in the direction of Evolution, we shall [page] 7

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A34 Book: Judd, J. W. 1910. The coming of evolution: The story of a great revolution in science. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Text Image

and his history. It would have been useless and injurious to the success of the book to have paraded, without giving evidence, my conviction with respect to his origin83.' Huxley and Haeckel have both borne testimony to the fact that Lyell, at the time he wrote the Principles, was firmly convinced that new species had originated by evolution from old ones. Indeed in a letter to John Herschel in 1836 he goes very far [page] 8

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A34 Book: Judd, J. W. 1910. The coming of evolution: The story of a great revolution in science. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Text Image

other questions of geological dynamics, however, it must be confessed that Lamarck's views and speculations were rather crude ad unsatisfactory. In his Philosophie Zoologique, published in the same year that Charles Darwin was born (1809), Lamarck brought forward a great body of evidence in favour of evolution, derived from his extensive knowledge of botany, zoology and geology. He showed how complete was the gradation between many forms ranked as species, and how difficult it was to say what

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A34 Book: Judd, J. W. 1910. The coming of evolution: The story of a great revolution in science. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Text Image

also completing the 'first sketch' of the Principles. But it is evident that as the result of continued study of Lamarck's book, Lyell found it, in spite of its fascination, to embody a theory which he could not but regard as unsound and not calculated to prove a solution of the great mystery of evolution. Accordingly when the second volume of the Principles was issued in 1832, it was found to contain in its opening chapters a very trenchant criticism of Lamarck's theory. It is only fair to

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A34 Book: Judd, J. W. 1910. The coming of evolution: The story of a great revolution in science. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Text Image

in this country, such as Dr Wells, Mr Patrick Matthew, Dr Prichard, Professor Grant, Dean Herbert, all expressed views in favour of evolution, even, in some cases, foreshadowing Natural Selection as the method. But these authors attached so little importance to their suggestions, that they did not even take the trouble to place them on permanent record, and it is certain that neither Lyell nor Darwin was acquainted with their writings at the time they were themselves working at the subject

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A34 Book: Judd, J. W. 1910. The coming of evolution: The story of a great revolution in science. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Text Image

'The work from its powerful and brilliant style, though displaying in the earlier editions little accurate knowledge and a great want of scientific caution, immediately had a very wide circulation. In my opinion it has done excellent service in this country in calling attention to the subject, in removing prejudice, and in thus preparing the ground for the reception of analogous views93.' If we enquire what was the attitude of scientific naturalists towards the doctrine of Evolution

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A34 Book: Judd, J. W. 1910. The coming of evolution: The story of a great revolution in science. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Text Image

his friend Robert Grant (afterwards Professor of Zoology in University College, London) as they were walking together 'burst forth in high admiration of Lamarck and his views on Evolution' yet Darwin adds 'I listened in silent astonishment, and as far as I can judge without any effect on my mind103.' [page] 10

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A34 Book: Judd, J. W. 1910. The coming of evolution: The story of a great revolution in science. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Text Image

-existing ones or even that he had been converted to a belief in evolution. Indeed in 1877 he wrote 'When I was on board the Beagle I believed in the permanence of species' yet he adds 'but as far as I can remember vague doubts occasionally flitted across my mind.' Such 'vague doubts' could scarcely have failed to have arisen when, as happened during all his journeys from north to south of the South [page] 10

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A34 Book: Judd, J. W. 1910. The coming of evolution: The story of a great revolution in science. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Text Image

had read and been impressed by reading the Vestiges of Creation, and there can be no doubt that from that period the question of evolution was always more or less distinctly present in his mind. While in Sarawak in the wet season, he tells us, 'I was quite alone with one Malay boy as cook, and during the evenings and wet days I had nothing to do but to look over my books and ponder over the problem which was rarely [page break

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A34 Book: Judd, J. W. 1910. The coming of evolution: The story of a great revolution in science. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Text Image

with a pre-existing closely allied species.' As wallace has himself said, 'This clearly pointed to some kind of evolution but the how was still a secret.' This essay was published in the Annals and Magazine of Natural History in September 1855 It attracted much attention from Lyell and Darwin and later from Huxley. One important result of it was that Darwin and Wallace entered into friendly correspondence. But although Darwin in his letters to Wallace informed him that he had been engaged for a

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A34 Book: Judd, J. W. 1910. The coming of evolution: The story of a great revolution in science. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Text Image

problem of the origin of species, was delayed to a considerably later date, yet I believe that this was only the result of his over-cautious temperament, and we must accept the date named as being that of the real birth of the hypothesis. At this early date, too, it is evident that Darwin conceived the idea that he might accomplish for the principle of evolution in the organic world, what Lyell had done, in the Principles, for the inorganic world. To cite his own words, 'after my return to

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A34 Book: Judd, J. W. 1910. The coming of evolution: The story of a great revolution in science. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Text Image

Hooker and Huxley, in spite of their wide knowledge and long intercourse with Darwin, found the work, so condensed were its reasonings, a 'very hard book' to read, one on which it was difficult to pronounce a judgment till after several perusals! It would be idle to speculate at the present day whether the cause of Evolution would have been better served by the publication, as Darwin at one time proposed, of a 'Preliminary Essay,' like that of 1844, or by the great work, which had been

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A34 Book: Judd, J. W. 1910. The coming of evolution: The story of a great revolution in science. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Text Image

, 'years had to pass away before misrepresentation, ridicule and denunciation, ceased to be the most notable constituents of the multitudinous criticisms of his work which poured from the press.' Among his contemporary men of science Darwin could at first count few converts. Hooker, whose candid and valuable criticisms of his friend's work had been continued up to the very end during its composition, did an eminent service to the cause of Evolution by publishing, almost simultaneously with the

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A34 Book: Judd, J. W. 1910. The coming of evolution: The story of a great revolution in science. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Text Image

declined to adopt the theory of sexual selection, so far as it depends on preferences exhibited by females for beauty in the males. Wallace, however, in some respects has always been disposed to attach more importance to Natural Selection, as the greatest, if not the only factor in evolution, than Darwin himself. It will be seen that although Darwin had in all probability thought out all his important theoretical conclusions before 1869, when he reached the 'fatal age,' yet, owing to various delays