Search Results - The Complete Work of Charles Darwin Online

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A179 Book: Ward, Henshaw. 1927. Charles Darwin: The man and his warfare. London: John Murray. Text Image

through Volume II he found the following phrases applied to the Lamarckian views: the notion of a gradual transformation; Lamarck appears to have speculated; Lamarck imagined that species are endowed with indefinite powers of modifying their organization; the pretended metamorphosis of one species into another; the fancied evolution of one species out of another; the dreams of those who have fancied that the orang-outang might have been transmuted into the human race. One of Lyell's sarcasms

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A179 Book: Ward, Henshaw. 1927. Charles Darwin: The man and his warfare. London: John Murray. Text Image

would like to describe to a congregation in a church? No scientist has ever seen, not for one moment of his life, anything that could conceivably be interpreted as a part of any step in a creation of a species. It is extraordinary that Darwin left no record of how Lyell's creation affected him then or later. It is much more extraordinary that Professor Judd should speak of the teaching of Lyell as identical with evolution. Darwin could not have found a sentence in Volume II that tolerated

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A179 Book: Ward, Henshaw. 1927. Charles Darwin: The man and his warfare. London: John Murray. Text Image

be destroyed. This was, already, a well-developed embryo of an evolution theory. But Darwin would not hurry the growth of this embryo. He let it incubate very slowly, for he dreaded speculation. One of his 1837 jottings had been: If we choose to let conjecture run wild, then animals may partake our origin in one common ancestor we may be all melted together. He would keep such conjecture tied fast: We are led to endeavor to discover causes of change. He would keep searching for facts. Not till

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A179 Book: Ward, Henshaw. 1927. Charles Darwin: The man and his warfare. London: John Murray. Text Image

theorizers; let me alone to fight Cuvier's humbug of archetypes. The only sympathy Darwin could have had was from speculators whose judgment he distrusted. Not one leading scientist in the world had any patience with a theory of an evolution of one species from another. August Weismann (born in 1834) describes the state of mind of the learned world while Darwin was writing the Cirripedia. Lamarck alone had attempted to indicate the forces from which the transmutation of species could have

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A179 Book: Ward, Henshaw. 1927. Charles Darwin: The man and his warfare. London: John Murray. Text Image

he was a complete agnostic about evolution theories before the appearance of the Origin. If creationists asked him to approve one of their theories, he answered, Show me some particle of evidence. I had exactly the same answer to give to the evolutionists of 1851-8. Within the ranks of the biologists, at that time, I met with nobody, except Dr. Grant, of University College, who had a word to say for Evolution and his advocacy was not calculated to advance the cause. Outside these ranks, the only

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A179 Book: Ward, Henshaw. 1927. Charles Darwin: The man and his warfare. London: John Murray. Text Image

not understand, it seems, cannot be made to understand . I should begin to think myself wholly in the wrong, and that I was an utter fool, but then I cannot yet persuade myself that Lyell, and you and Huxley, Carpenter, Asa Gray, and Watson, etc., are all fools together. Well, time will show, and nothing but time. The wail about the hopeless attempt to explain was hardly exaggeration or pessimism. To this day it continues true that learned essayists and editors, even if friendly to evolution

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A179 Book: Ward, Henshaw. 1927. Charles Darwin: The man and his warfare. London: John Murray. Text Image

of Oxford let it be known that he thought the Bishop got no more than he deserved. After his downfall in a scientific session he was free to speak as a churchman against evolution. He had sense enough to his honor be it recorded to be civil to Huxley when they met thereafter. A large body of the clergy continued, as priests, to denounce evolution. That was their right; perhaps it was their duty. But never again in England did a church official attempt to overawe a scientific assembly or to

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A179 Book: Ward, Henshaw. 1927. Charles Darwin: The man and his warfare. London: John Murray. Text Image

approval of the Duke of Argyll's argument against my natural selection. There are only four pages more. Surely Lyell will conclude against me. Not till the two hundred and fifty-second page do I find a brief acknowledgment that Mr. Darwin has made evolution seem highly probable and that the human race can not expect to be exempted from evolution. Why, then, reprint the ancient ridicule of descent from an orang-outang? Why tuck into one paragraph the very brief admission that I have made my

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A179 Book: Ward, Henshaw. 1927. Charles Darwin: The man and his warfare. London: John Murray. Text Image

Natural Selection is pretty much swept away be genetics the study of heredity. The supposition has a good deal of warrant because of the strong indictments made by such scholars as the late William Bateson. It is now regular custom in textbooks of biological subjects to say, Natural Selection may be a factor in evolution, but, etc. I will quote one example of this modern fashion, from Parker's What Evolution Is (1926), page 119. Professor Parker's name is an old and honored one in America; he has been

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A179 Book: Ward, Henshaw. 1927. Charles Darwin: The man and his warfare. London: John Murray. Text Image

alluring in color or odor, would be an advantage to the plant and would be added to the accumulating heritage. A series of new apparatus would evolve. And those insects which happened to have variations of proboscis or feet that made nectar-gathering easier would be aided in the struggle for existence. Their descendants would increase the beneficial variations and finally evolve new adaptations. Sounds very fanciful, doesn't it? If any one had never heard of evolution and if he encountered

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A179 Book: Ward, Henshaw. 1927. Charles Darwin: The man and his warfare. London: John Murray. Text Image

SECTION 5: WITNESSES FOR NATURAL SELECTION EACH of the following scholars is at least as authoritative a witness as Professor Parker; not one of them knows that most modern evolutionists think what Professor Parker says they think. E.B. Wilson (porbably the best-known authority on cells in the world). To such minds [i. e., as his own mind] it will seem that the principle of natural selection, while it may not provide a master key to all the riddles of evolution, still looms up as one of the

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A179 Book: Ward, Henshaw. 1927. Charles Darwin: The man and his warfare. London: John Murray. Text Image

3. Erasmus Darwin's poems: The Botanic Garden, The Temple of Nature. His medical treatise: Zoonomia; or the Laws of Orgainc Life. 4. The Life of Erasmus Darwin, by Ernst Krause, with a Preliminary Notice by Charles Darwin. 5. Lamarck: His life and Work, by A.S. Packard. 6. Evolution Old and New, by Samuel Butler. 7. Vestiges of Creation, by Robert Chambers (first American edition, from the first English edition, 1845). IV. FOR THE HISTORY OF DARWIN'S THEORY 1. Darwin and Modern Science, the

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A179 Book: Ward, Henshaw. 1927. Charles Darwin: The man and his warfare. London: John Murray. Text Image

garded with silent astonishment by young skeptics in 1825. He died in 1829. Through the century since his death there has been magic in his theory of evolution. His teachings have continued to fascinate philosophical minds; even to-day there are zoologists who pair him with Darwin and believe that his theory of evolution contains a great truth. It may be fairly presented by three short quotations from his two-volume Philosophie Zoologique, 1809. In this work as in the works of Buffon and

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A179 Book: Ward, Henshaw. 1927. Charles Darwin: The man and his warfare. London: John Murray. Text Image

The following excerpts from the notes to the poems contain most that is significant for a student of the history of the evolution theory. The notes cover an endless array of topics. They speak of the immortal Franklin, refer frequently to the chemical researches of Priestley, discuss meteors, four times cite Linn us's opinion that all plants may have come from not more than sixty original kinds, argue in favor of spontaneous generation, and refer without disapproval to the theory of Buffon and

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A179 Book: Ward, Henshaw. 1927. Charles Darwin: The man and his warfare. London: John Murray. Text Image

CHARLES DARWIN CHAPTER I WHY DR. GRANT LIKED YOUNG DARWIN DR. GRANT one day, when we were walking together, burst forth in high admiration of Lamarck and his views on evolution. I listened in silent astonishment. So Charles Darwin reports an episode in Edinburgh while he was studying medicine there. The greatest puzzle that ever science grappled with was Dr. Grant's subject what is a species? He favored the brilliant new theory of Lamarck, but young Darwin was so astonished at this judgment

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A179 Book: Ward, Henshaw. 1927. Charles Darwin: The man and his warfare. London: John Murray. Text Image

evolution by natural forces, whose action can be observed, tested, and measured. Darwin's Natural Selection has thus far withstood every succeeding flood of objection. [page] 33

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A179 Book: Ward, Henshaw. 1927. Charles Darwin: The man and his warfare. London: John Murray. Text Image

1839 1841. Edited five Parts of the Zoology of the Voyage, which were monographs by six specialists. 1842. First pencil sketch of an evolution theory. The MS was supposed to have been destroyed and was not found till 1896. 1842 1846. Geological Observations. Part I was Coral-Reefs, 1842; Part II was Volcanic Islands, 1844; Part III was Geological Observations on South America, 1846. Parts II and III were republished as a second edition in one volume, 1876. 1844. Complete sketch of theory of

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A876 Book: Abbott, Lawrence F. 1927. Charles Darwin, the saint. In Ibid. Twelve great modernists. New York: Doubleday. Text Image PDF

or creeds. This, at least, is the sense in which the title of this book is chosen. The modernist believes in life, in progress, in spiritual and intellectual evolution, rather than in tradition and dogma; in the republic of reason rather than the despotism of creeds. He refuses to live in the past, although he gladly gets light from the past to illuminate and make clearer the path toward the future. The conflict between the traditionalist (or, to use the jargon of the day, the fundamentalist

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A876 Book: Abbott, Lawrence F. 1927. Charles Darwin, the saint. In Ibid. Twelve great modernists. New York: Doubleday. Text Image PDF

his doctrine of evolution, was published late in 1859. In June, 1860, a famous meeting at Oxford of the British Association was the arena for a pitched battle over Darwin's new theory quite as exciting and vehement as the recent contest at Dayton, Tennessee, in which the late Mr. Bryan was the most prominent gladiator. About the only difference is that at Oxford the contestants were either educated scientists or University men while at Dayton the stage was occupied largely by ignoramuses. Bishop

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A179 Book: Ward, Henshaw. 1927. Charles Darwin: The man and his warfare. London: John Murray. Text Image

family pride was involved, because he had reason to think that his grandfather's idea had been stolen by Lamarck. More likely he had been used to hearing that the Lamarckian view of evolution was bad form scientifically nothing but a French fancy. The reasons for young Darwin's astonishment will be unfolded in due time. Just now it is more important to know why the dry and formal Dr. Grant has chosen to be walking with a medical freshman and expatiating to him about a matter of biological philosophy