Neo-Darwinism / R.J. Berry.

  • Berry, R. J. (Robert James)
Date:
1982
Catalogue details

Licence: Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0)

Credit: Neo-Darwinism / R.J. Berry. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    2 DARWIN AND WALLACE 1.2 Darwin and Wallace Although Darwinism and evolution are often used as synonyms, they are not the same thing. Darwin himself acknowledged a galaxy of biologists who had believed before him that species were subject to change: Marchant (1719), Montesquieu (1721), Buffon (1749), Maupertuis (1754), Diderot (1764), Erasmus Darwin (1794), St. Hilaire (1795), Goethe (1795), Lamarck (1801), and Moritzi (1842). Robert Chambers in the Vestiges of Creation (first published 1844, tenth edition 1853) had alerted Britain to the idea of evolution maintaining that 'species are not immutable productions . . . (although, animated beings from the simplest and oldest up to the highest and most recent are under the providence of God'. Even Darwin's particular contribution of natural selection was described by Wells in a paper read to the Royal Society of London in 1813 and by Matthew in a book on Naval Timber and Arboriculture in 1831. Notwithstanding it was Charles Darwin's The Origin of Species by means of natural selection or the preservation offavoured races in the struggle for life (first published 1859, sixth and final edition 1872) that started the general acceptance of evolutionary ideas by both the scientific and the general world. The reason for the immediate success of the Origin was Darwin's explanations for the distribution of animals and plants, and his convincing interpretation of the significance of vestigial organs. Other lines of evidence, from fossils, anatomical likenesses and so on were fairly well-known to Darwin's contemporaries but were explained away before an acceptable mechanism of evolution was available. For example, the existence of fossils of extinct species was interpreted as either the remains of former creations destroyed by God as He almost destroyed the present world in Noah's flood, or divinely created artefacts, put in the rocks to confuse godless scientists. In the longer term and much more important, it was Darwin's easily-understood mechanism of evolution which was his most important contribution. The need for a mechanism before a scientific idea is generally accepted also occurred with continental drift, which was put forward in detail by Wegener in 1915, but not commonly accepted until the nature of tectonic plates was described by geophysicists in the 1960s. Darwin's doubts about the immutability of species arose from his study of geographical variation in both fossils and living forms during his time as naturalist on board the survey ship Beagle (1831-6). For example he wrote in his Journal about the Galapagos Islands that 'I never dreamed that islands, about 50 or 60 miles apart, and most of them in sight of each other, formed of precisely the same rocks, placed under a quite similar climate, rising to nearly equal height, would be differently tenanted; but... I obtained sufficient materials to establish this most remarkable fact in the distribution of organic beings'. Back in London, Darwin began in July 1837 to make notes on the transmutation of species. In 1838 he read 'for amusement' Malthus's Essay on the Principle of Population, and 'being well prepared to appreciate the struggle for existence . . . it at once struck me that under these circumstances favourable variations would tend to be preserved, and unfavourable ones to be destroyed. The result of