Species

Anything to like about that book, or all lousy?

Chris,

I'm not sure. He make the distinction between instrumentalism (science as search for ideas that allow us to do things) and natural philosophy (science as search for ideas that reflect reality and explain things) and then spends time arguing that science cannot be both at the same time using historical examples.

It seems to me to be somewhat of a simplistic dichotomy.

I might write something next week, time allowing.

How can a historian, who presumably has read Darwin's published comments on species at least, make such a claim? I mean even if you ignore the correspondence, and the Big Species Book, and the Notebooks, at the very least the Origin gives plenty of discussion about species under evolutionary considerations.

That is so bad it is sheer stupidity. And he gets published, and I can't. Shit.

If you want to show that I'm wrong about Darwin here, give me some evidence from Darwin himself, rather than telling us what biologists and philosophers of biology believe nowadays.

While I calm down about this (I don't care for being accused of "stupidity" or being "so wrong it is not even funny"), I suppose I should point out that even the sentence quoted indicates clearly to the careful reader that the subject is taxonomic practice in Darwin's time; and that neither of the critics on this page (especially Dr. Wilkins) appears actually to have read my chapter on Darwin, or else my point would have been even clearer to them.

I have not read your chapter, as the book is not available in the local library. If you would be so kind as to send me a ms copy, I will post on it, with copious references to Darwin's writings, as I went through everything of his I could find on species. I should be more temperate in my comments, but if John was properly characterising your view, it is simply wrong. Darwin discussed what species were in correspondence, used the term critically even as early as the Journal of Researches, and responded to Agassiz in some detail. He thought very hard about what species were and how evolution affected them, coming up with the opinion that species were (if memory serves) well-marked varieties, which is a very thoughtful position.

His thoughts on speciation were less well received, as they relied on selection (and I'm not sure they were wrong, as even Coyne and Orr think that selection is crucial in the making of new species, if not the making of reproductive isolation). But he thought very hard indeed on what species were.

It's worth noting that in his day, there was no "species problem", only a "species question", the latter being about how species originated. But what came in the early 20th century to be called the species problem was critical in professional taxonomy of the day, as especially gardeners and bird watchers were naming species for every little variant.

Darwin was not a species denier. He thought they were real things, that were explained by evolution. I apologise for being so harsh. It cannot be easy to write the kind of book you have, but this is a detail that is often repeated and completely wrong. Darwin had strong thoughts about the category of species in the light of evolution. And his view is, I think, quite correct.