Darwin's Precursors and Influences

Historiography and sources

by John Wilkins

Copyright © 1996-2003

[Last Update: 21 February 2003]

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Those who are not familiar with historical methods and debates should be aware that there are many different agendas in historical writings. As examples, take Himmelfarb (1959) and Eiseley (1961). The former writes from a strong historical materialist (i.e., Marxist) perspectives, and she aims to show that Darwin was strongly influenced by laissez faire capitalism and that his science is a mere reflection of these political views. Eiseley is a modernist, meaning that he is of the view that Darwinism represents the inevitable achievement of the modern era, and that Darwin himself was relatively incidental. Both extremes are inevitably skewed and probably false, as are their antitheses. While the victors may write history, there are enough dissenters to open up avenues if you go looking. Writing history to suit preconceived ideas is known as revisionism, but it happens nevertheless. Creationist and anti-Darwinian attacks are inevitably revisionist, but so are hagiographical accounts. Darwin was no saint, but, I consider, neither was he a non-entity or a fraud. He was indeed one of the focal scientists of all time, but one who made mistakes and depended upon the work of others.

Ernst Mayr, the great 20th century orthnithologist, is also erudite in the history of biology, and published the most useful single review (1982). However, it is always dangerous in history to rely on a single source. Mayr is concerned to show how modern biological views arose, and he does that clearly, but he is therefore not concerned to show how views that were once influential but fell out of favour developed. So I also make extensive use of the following sources: Peter Bowler, an Irish historian of biology who has studied the non-Darwinian views of the 19th century (1982, 1988, 1989), Adrian Desmond and James Moore, two historians with a strong tendency to look at social influences (Desmond and Moore 1991, Desmond 1985, 1989), Michael Ruse (1979), a philosopher, Stephen J Gould, a biologist whose views, although often partisan, are always scrupulously researched and referenced (Gould 1977, 1996), and Robert Richards (1992), a historian who opposes the social contructionist views of Desmond and Moore and the "neo-Darwinian revisionism" of Gould (!), Bowler and Ruse. A non-Darwinian view is found in Løvtrup 1987, but apart from emphasis, I do not think he brings any new evidence to the fore.

Older histories of biology, such as Nördenskiold 1928 and Singer 1959 are often more detailed than the modern sources, particularly for the Greeks and the middle ages, but they can be some distance behind the modern state of the science. Nördenskiold's wonderful book, for example, was written just before the flowering of Darwinian biology we know as the Modern Synthesis, at which time a good many biologists mistakenly thought that the Darwinian view was dead, although there were plenty of evolutionary theories in the air. Singer's book has one of the best introductions to Aristotle's detailed theories, but for anyone who wants to follow this marvellous thinker, who is not at all the stolid and blind thinker sometimes portrayed, further, they would be well advised to read Pellegrin 1986 and Lennox 2001. It is worth bearing in mind that Darwin is usually called the successor to Aristotle, not Aristotle the precursor to Darwin.

Darwin himself listed some predecessors and precursors in the essay "An Historical Sketch" added to the third edition of the Origin in 1861, after criticism for failing to acknowledge his supposed sources, although he claimed (honestly, in my opinion) not to have known of them before publication. Darwin scrupulously acknowledged debts to other workers, even farmers and pigeon fanciers (in, for example, responses to his requests for information in such journals as the Gardener's Chronicle), and it is a long bow to draw to claim that he would not cite major influences deliberately.

In this sketch, Darwin says that only two previous authors (Wells and Matthew) had previously developed ideas of natural selection, but that scientific writers since Buffon had occasionally treated of the transformation of species. He claims they had no influence on his own views, and in a letter dated 21 April 1860 in the Gardener's Chronicle¹ he notes that Matthew's views, particularly, were published in such an out of the way place that Darwin had not seen them.

Recent publication of Darwin's notebooks makes clear what he was reading and roughly when, and from this a good number of claims by writers like Eiseley that Darwin had stolen ideas from precursors like Blyth can be shown to have no warrant². Some of Darwin's favourite works are well known. They include White's Natural History of Selbourne, Humboldt's Personal Narrative and Herschel's Introduction to the Study of Natural Philosophy, both of which Darwin said triggered a "burning zeal to add even the most humble contribution to the structure of Natural Science"³ in his last year at Cambridge, Milton's Paradise Lost, and Lyell's Principles of Geology.

Darwin's writings can be found at this site, and Wallace's at this site, if you want to read the originals.

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