The prefatory "Historical Sketch" to Darwin's Origin of Species has traditionally been taken as a later addition that sought to deflect claims by individuals such as mathematician Baden Powell that Darwin plagiarized his ideas. Now, a study by Curtis Johnson of Lewis and Clark College argues that Darwin's personal correspondence
shows that the sketch was actually written prior to the first printing of the book and had actually been begun as early as 1856. As Johnson notes, "Darwin was not reacting to hostile criticism" but why he eventually omitted the preface is a mystery.
Johnson's paper is to appear in the January edition of Journal of the History of Biology (and is not online yet).
- Log in to post comments
More like this
From his instance that human evolution has halted to his rather crummy review of Stephen Jay Gould: Reflections on His View of Life (see my thoughts on the book here), Steve Jones has been raising the hackles of his colleagues more than usual lately. Given that I am not a scientist I cannot count…
(A review from Journal of the History of Biology 2004)
In the years following the publication of Origin of Species, George Romanes developed his theory of physiological selection in which he posited that "physiological peculiarities" lead to hybrid sterility between individuals and thus isolation…
Part 1 / Part 2 / Part 3 / Part 4
English sociologist Herbert Spencer coined the term "survival of the fittest" in 1852.As I pointed out in Deconstructing Social Darwinism, Part I scholars have begun to seriously challenge the usefulness of the term as a political theory. For example, Gregory…
Nearly ten years ago I started a book on Creationist misuse of intellectual history. I never finished it, which is probably for the best. The file is unfortunately MIA and all I have remaining was a section that I turned into a talk that I gave at ASU in 1999. Over the next few days, I'll be…
I'm a little perplexed. A line in the "Historical Sketch" pretty clearly identifies it as having been written (at least that line) after 1859:
Does Johnson argue that last sentence is a later insertion?
Since the paper isn't published yet, I can't definitively comment. However, the article I link to states:
So, I imagine that the reference to Matthews was not in any 1856 version and instead only appeared after 1860.
If Johnson is calling Erasmus Darwin Charles' uncle, there's a problem right there...
John,
I think that is the journalist. I'd imagine the referees for JHB would have picked up that gross an error if it was in the manuscript.