The Preface to Darwin’s <Emphasis Type="Italic">Origin of Species</Emphasis>: The Curious History of the “Historical Sketch” *

Almost any modern reader’s first encounter with Darwin’s writing is likely to be the “Historical Sketch,” inserted by Darwin as a preface to an early edition of the Origin of Species, and having since then appeared as the preface to every edition after the second English edition. The Sketch was intended by him to serve as a short “history of opinion” on the species question before he presented his own theory in the Origin proper. But the provenance of the “Historical Sketch” is somewhat obscure. Some things are known about its production, such as when it first appeared and what changes were made to it between its first appearance in 1860 and its final form, for the fourth English edition, in 1866. But how it evolved in Darwin’s mind, why he wrote it at all, and what he thought he was accomplishing by prefacing it to the Origin remain questions that have not been carefully addressed in the scholarly literature on Darwin. I attempt to show that Darwin’s various statements about the “Historical Sketch,” made primarily to several of his correspondents between 1856 and 1860, are somewhat in conflict with one another, thus making problematic a satisfactory interpretation of how, when, and why the Sketch came to be. I also suggest some probable resolutions to the several difficulties. How Darwin came to settle on the title “Historical Sketch” for the Preface to the Origin is not certain, but a guess may be ventured. When he first submitted the text to Asa Gray in February 1860 he called it simply “Preface Contributed by the Author to this American Edition” (Burkhardt et al., eds., vol. 8, 1993, p. 572; the collected correspondence is hereafter cited as CCD). In fact he had thought of it as being properly called a Preface much earlier, perhaps as early as 1856, as will be seen in what follows. It came to be called “An Historical Sketch of the Recent Progress of Opinion on the Origin of Species” only in the third English edition, April 1861. This is the title it retained thereafter, with the exception of an addition to the title in the sixth English edition, “Previously to the Publication of the First Edition of this Work” (Peckham, 1959, pp. 20, 59). The word “sketch,” on the other hand was one of two words Darwin commonly used in private correspondence to refer to the book that would later become the Origin, the other word being “Abstract,” and both signifying that Darwin thought of the work as being a resume rather than a full-fledged study (e.g., letter to J.D. Hooker, May 9 1856, CCD vol. 6 p. 106; letter to Baden Powell January 18 1860, CCD vol. 8 p. 41; letter to Lyell 25 June 1858, CCD v. 7, 1991, pp. 117–8; letter to Lyell May 1856, CCD, v. 6 p. 100). The most likely source of the title “Historical Sketch” for Darwin’s Preface is Charles Lyell’s Principles of Geology in which, beginning with the third edition (1834), Lyell added titles to his chapters, calling chapters 2–4 “Historical Sketch of the Progress of Geology” (Secord, in Lyell [1997], p. xlvii; for other uses by Lyell of this expression, cf. Porter, 1976, p. 95; idem 1982, p. 38; and Lyell, 1830 [1990], p. 30). Further parallels between Lyell’s Introduction and Darwin’s “Historical Sketch” in terms of content and strategy are suggested below.     

R. A. Fisher, Lancelot Hogben, and the Origin(s) of Genotype–Environment Interaction

This essay examines the origin(s) of genotype–environment interaction, or G × E. “Origin(s)” and not “the origin” because the thesis is that there were actually two distinct concepts of G × E at this beginning: a biometric concept, or G × E_B, and a developmental concept, or G × E_D. R. A. Fisher, one of the founders of population genetics and the creator of the statistical analysis of variance, introduced the biometric concept as he attempted to resolve one of the main problems in the biometric tradition of biology – partitioning the relative contributions of nature and nurture responsible for variation in a population. Lancelot Hogben, an experimental embryologist and also a statistician, introduced the developmental concept as he attempted to resolve one of the main problems in the developmental tradition of biology – determining the role that developmental relationships between genotype and environment played in the generation of variation. To argue for this thesis, I outline Fisher and Hogben’s separate routes to their respective concepts of G × E; then these separate interpretations of G × E are drawn on to explicate a debate between Fisher and Hogben over the importance of G × E, the first installment of a persistent controversy. Finally, Fisher’s G × E_B and Hogben’s G × E_D are traced beyond their own work into mid-20th century population and developmental genetics, and then into the infamous IQ Controversy of the 1970s.     

Separated at Birth: The Interlinked Origins of Darwin’s Unconscious Selection Concept and the Application of Sexual Selection to Race

This essay traces the interlinked origins of two concepts found in Charles Darwin’s writings: “unconscious selection,” and sexual selection as applied to humanity’s anatomical race distinctions. Unconscious selection constituted a significant elaboration of Darwin’s artificial selection analogy. As originally conceived in his theoretical notebooks, that analogy had focused exclusively on what Darwin later would call “methodical selection,” the calculated production of desired changes in domestic breeds. By contrast, unconscious selection produced its results unintentionally and at a much slower pace. Inspiration for this concept likely came from Darwin’s early reading of works on both animal breeding and physical ethnology. Texts in these fields described the slow and unplanned divergence of anatomical types, whether animal or human, under the guidance of contrasting ideals of physical perfection. These readings, it is argued, also led Darwin to his theory of sexual selection as applied to race, a theme he discussed mainly in his book The Descent of Man (1871). There Darwin described how the racial version of sexual selection operated on the same principle as unconscious selection. He thereby effectively reunited these kindred concepts.     

Experimenting with Transmutation: Darwin, the Beagle, and Evolution

Detailed analysis of Darwin’s scientific notes and other writings from the Beagle voyage reveals a focus on endemism and replacement of allied taxa in time and in space that began early in the journey. Though it is impossible to determine exactly when Darwin became a transmutationist, the evidence suggests that he was conversant with the transmutational ideas of Lamarck and others and testing (“experimenting” with) them—before he received a copy of Lyell’s Principles of Geology, vol. 2, in November 1832, in which Lyell describes and disputes Lamarck’s theory. To the two rhea species of Patagonia and the four mockingbird species of the Galapagos, we can now add the living Patagonian cavy (rodent) species, and its extinct putatively related species that Darwin collected at Monte Hermoso (Bahia Blanca) in the Fall of 1832, as a replacement pattern absolutely critical to the development of Darwin’s transmutational thinking. Darwin developed his first transmutational theory by adopting “Brocchi’s analogy” (Rudwick 2008)—i.e. that births and deaths of species are analogous to the births and deaths of individuals. Births and deaths of species, as of individuals, are thus explicable in terms of natural causes. Darwin explored these themes and the replacement of the extinct cavy by the modern species explicitly in his February 1835 essay (Darwin 1835a).

Method as a Function of “Disciplinary Landscape”: C.D. Darlington and Cytology, Genetics and Evolution, 1932–1950

This article considers the reception of British cytogeneticist C.D. Darlington’s controversial 1932 book, Recent Advances in Cytology. Darlington’s cytogenetic work, and the manner in which he made it relevant to evolutionary biology, marked an abrupt shift in the status and role of cytology in the life sciences. By focusing on Darlington’s scientific method – a stark departure from anti-theoretical, empirical reasoning to a theoretical and speculative approach based on deduction from genetic first principles – the article characterises the relationships defining the “disciplinary landscape” of the life sciences of the time, namely those between cytology, genetics, and evolutionary theory.     

Panpsychic Organicism: Sewall Wright’s Philosophy for Understanding Complex Genetic Systems

Sewall Wright first encountered the complex systems characteristic of gene combinations while a graduate student at Harvard’s Bussey Institute from 1912 to 1915. In Mendelian breeding experiments, Wright observed a hierarchical dependence of the organism’s phenotype on dynamic networks of genetic interaction and organization. An animal’s physical traits, and thus its autonomy from surrounding environmental constraints, depended greatly on how genes behaved in certain combinations. Wright recognized that while genes are the material determinants of the animal phenotype, operating with great regularity, the special nature of genetic systems contributes to the animal phenotype a degree of spontaneity and novelty, creating unpredictable trait variations by virtue of gene interactions. As a result of his experimentation, as well as his keen interest in the philosophical literature of his day, Wright was inspired to see genetic systems as conscious, living organisms in their own right. Moreover, he decided that since genetic systems maintain ordered stability and cause unpredictable novelty in their organic wholes (the animal phenotype), it would be necessary for biologists to integrate techniques for studying causally ordered phenomena (experimental method) and chance phenomena (correlation method). From 1914 to 1921 Wright developed his “method of path coefficient” (or “path analysis”), a new procedure drawing from both laboratory experimentation and statistical correlation in order to analyze the relative influence of specific genetic interactions on phenotype variation. In this paper I aim to show how Wright’s philosophy for understanding complex genetic systems (panpsychic organicism) logically motivated his 1914–1921 design of path analysis.     

Marvelling at the Marvel: The Supposed Conversion of A.D. Darbishire to Mendelism

The so-called “biometric-Mendelian controversy” has received much attention from science studies scholars. This paper focuses on one scientist involved in this debate, Arthur Dukinfield Darbishire, who performed a series of hybridization experiments with mice beginning in 1901. Previous historical work on Darbishire’s experiments and his later attempt to reconcile Mendelian and biometric views describe Darbishire as eventually being “converted”' to Mendelism. I provide a new analysis of this episode in the context of Darbishire’s experimental results, his underlying epistemology, and his influence on the broader debate surrounding the rediscovery and acceptance of Mendelism. Iinvestigate various historiographical issues raised by this episode in order to reflect on the idea of “conversion” to a scientific theory. Darbishire was an influential figure who resisted strong forces compelling him to convert prematurely due to his requirements that the new theory account for particularly important anomalous facts and answer the most pressing questions in the field. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Joseph Hooker Takes a “Fixed Post”: Transmutation and the “Present Unsatisfactory State of Systematic Botany”, 1844–1860

Joseph Hooker first learned that Charles Darwin believed in the transmutation of species in 1844. For the next 14 years, Hooker remained a “nonconsenter” to Darwin’s views, resolving to keep the question of species origin “subservient to Botany instead of Botany to it, as must be the true relation”. Hooker placed particular emphasis on the need for any theory of species origin to support the broad taxonomic delimitation of species, a highly contentious issue. His always provisional support for special creation waned during the 1850s as he lost faith in its expediency for coordinating the study of plant geography, systematics and physiology. In 1858, Hooker embraced Darwin’s “considerable revolution in natural history,” but only after Darwin had carefully molded his transmutationism to meet Hooker’s exacting specifications.     

Last judgment: the visionary biology of J.B.S. Haldane

This paper seeks to reinterpret the life and work of J. B. S. Haldane by focusing on an illuminating but largely ignored essay he published in1927, “The Last Judgment” – the sequel to his better known work, Daedalus (1924). This astonishing essay expresses a vision of the human future over the next 40,000,000 years, one that revises and updates Wellsian futurism with the long range implications of the “new biology” for human destiny. That vision served as a kind of lifelong credo, one that infused and informed his diverse scientific work, political activities, and popular writing, and that gave unity and coherence to his remarkable career. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Brocchi,Darwin, and Transmutation: Phylogenetics and Paleontology at the Dawn of Evolutionary Biology

Giambattista Brocchi’s (1814) monograph (see Dominici, Evo Edu Outreach, this issue, 2010) on the Tertiary fossils of the Subappenines in Italy—and their relation to the living molluscan fauna—contains a theoretical, transmutational perspective (“Brocchian transmutation”). Unlike Lamarck (1809), Brocchi saw species as discrete and fundamentally stable entities. Explicitly analogizing the births and deaths of species with those of individual organisms (“Brocchi’s analogy”), Brocchi proposed that species have inherent longevities, eventually dying of old age unless driven to extinction by external forces. As for individuals, births and deaths of species are understood to have natural causes; sequences of births and deaths of species produce genealogical lineages of descent, and faunas become increasingly modernized through time. Brocchi calculated that over 50% of his fossil species are still alive in the modern fauna. Brocchi’s work was reviewed by Horner (1816) in Edinburgh. Brocchi’s influence as a transmutational thinker is clear in Jameson’s (1827) “geological illustrations” in his fifth edition of his translation of Cuvier’s Theory of the Earth (read by his student Charles Darwin) and in the anonymous essays of 1826 and 1827 published in the Edinburgh New Philosophical Journal—which also carried a notice of Brocchi’s death in 1827. The notion that new species replace older, extinct ones—in what today would be called an explicitly phylogenetic context—permeates these essays. Herschel’s (1830) discussion of temporal replacement of species and the modernization of faunas closely mirrors these prior discussions. His book, dedicated to the search for natural causes of natural phenomena, was read by Charles Darwin while a student at Cambridge. Darwin’s work on HMS Beagle was in large measure an exploration of replacement patterns of “allied forms” of endemic species in time and in space. His earliest discussions of transmutation, in his essay February 1835, as well as the Red Notebook and the early pages of Notebook B (the latter two written in 1837 back in England), contain Brocchi’s analogy, including the idea of inherent species longevities. Darwin’s first theory of the origin of species was explicitly saltational, invoking geographic isolation as the main cause of the abrupt appearance of new species. We conclude that Darwin was testing the predicted patterns of both Brocchian and Lamarckian transmutation as early as 1832 at the outset of his work on the Beagle.     

Effects of inbreeding on infant mortality in captive primates

Breeding records for 16 primate colonies representing six families and both suborders were obtained from 10 institutions breeding primates in captivity and from the international studbook on one endangered species. Inbreeding coefficients relative to the founding population were calculated for each individual born. Individuals with an inbreeding coefficient of zero were classified as “noninbred” those with inbreeding coefficients greater than zero, as “inbred.” Infant mortality was defined as all deaths prior to the age of 6 months. Infant mortality of inbred young was higher than that of noninbred young in 15 of the 16 colonies surveyed (P =0.0003, one-tailed sign test). The higher mortality rate of the inbred young was significant by a Fisher’s exact test with a probability less than or equal to 0.05 in five of the individual colonies: Lemur fulvus, Saguinus fuscicollis illigeri, Saguinus fuscicollis, Leontopithecus rosalia,and Mandrillus sphinx.     

Heritage of the Romantic Philosophy in Post-Linnaean Botany Reichenbach’s Reception of Goethe’s Metamorphosis of Plants as a Methodological and Philosophical Framework

This paper demonstrates the importance of the reception and development of Goethe’s metamorphosis of plants as a methodological and philosophical framework in the history of botanical theories. It proposes a focus on the textbooks written by the German botanist Ludwig Reichenbach and his first attempt to use Goethe’s idea of metamorphosis of plants as fundamental to his natural system of plants published under the title ‘Botany for Women’, in German Botanik für Damen (1828). In this book, Reichenbach paid particular attention to Goethe’s sensitive views on the essence of nature; he regarded Goethe’s idea of metamorphosis in the plant kingdom as an ideal model to interpret connections of natural phenomena, in particular as a conceptual frame for a natural system. Furthermore, he aimed to develop the philosophical statement of the metamorphosis, in which he called for nature-philosophical conceptions in order to materialize his representation of plant “affinities,” and of a kind of “ontogeny” of the whole plant kingdom. This paper demonstrates that, between speculative views and empirical attempts, the extent to which Reichenbach actually belonged to a new “school” of thought, which left its mark on the history and philosophy of botany.     

Edward Hitchcock’s Pre-Darwinian (1840) “Tree of Life”

The “tree of life” iconography, representing the history of life, dates from at least the latter half of the 18th century, but evolution as the mechanism providing this bifurcating history of life did not appear until the early 19th century. There was also a shift from the straight line, scala naturae view of change in nature to a more bifurcating or tree-like view. Throughout the 19th century authors presented tree-like diagrams, some regarding the Deity as the mechanism of change while others argued for evolution. Straight-line or anagenetic evolution and bifurcating or cladogenetic evolution are known in biology today, but are often misrepresented in popular culture, especially with anagenesis being confounded with scala naturae. Although well known in the mid 19th century, the geologist Edward Hitchcock has been forgotten as an early, if not the first author to publish a paleontologically based “tree of life” beginning in 1840 in the first edition of his popular general geology text Elementary Geology. At least 31 editions were published and those between 1840 and 1859 had this “paleontological chart” showing two trees, one for fossil and living plants and another for animals set within a context of geological time. Although the chart did not vary in later editions, the text explaining the chart did change to reflect newer ideas in paleontology and geology. Whereas Lamarck, Chambers, Bronn, Darwin, and Haeckel saw some form of transmutation as the mechanism that created their “trees of life,” Hitchcock, like his contemporaries Agassiz and Miller, who also produced “trees of life,” saw a deity as the agent of change. Through each edition of his book Hitchcock denounced the newer transmutationist hypotheses of Lamarck, then Chambers, and finally Darwin in an 1860 edition that no longer presented his tree-like “paleontological chart.”     

Life and death near a windy oasis

We propose a simple experiment to study delocalization and extinction in inhomogeneous biological systems. The nonlinear steady state for, say, a bacteria colony living on and near a patch of nutrient or favorable illumination (“oasis”) in the presence of a drift term (“wind”) is computed. The bacteria, described by a simple generalization of the Fisher equation, diffuse, divide A→A + A, die A→ 0, and annihilate A + A→ 0. At high wind velocities all bacteria are blown into an unfavorable region (“desert”), and the colony dies out. At low velocity a steady state concentration survives near the oasis. In between these two regimes there is a critical velocity at which bacteria first survive. If the “desert” supports a small nonzero population, this extinction transition is replaced by a delocalization transition with increasing velocity. Predictions for the behavior as a function of wind velocity are made for one and two dimensions. Received: 3 August 1998 / Revised version: 17 July 1999 / Published online: 4 July 2000     

Frits Went’s Atomic Age Greenhouse: The Changing Labscape on the Lab-Field Border

In Landscapes and Labscapes Robert Kohler emphasized the separation between laboratory and field cultures and the creation of new “hybrid” or mixed practices as field sciences matured in the early twentieth century. This article explores related changes in laboratory practices, especially novel designs for the analysis of organism–environment relations in the mid-twentieth century. American ecologist Victor Shelford argued in 1929 that technological improvements and indoor climate control should be applied to ecological laboratories, but his recommendations were too ambitious for the time. In the postwar period Frits W. Went, plant physiologist at the California Institute of Technology, created a new high-tech laboratory, dubbed a “phytotron”, in the hope that it would transform plant sciences by allowing for unprecedented control of environmental variables. Went’s aspirations, the research conducted in his laboratory, and its impact in initiating an international movement, are considered. Went’s laboratory can be seen as a “hybrid culture” evolving in the laboratory, complementing and intersecting with some of the field practices that Kohler describes. It was also a countercultural movement against the reductionist trends of molecular biology in the 1950s and 1960s. By considering the history of the laboratory in relation to field sciences, we can explore how new funding sources and cross-disciplinary relations affected the development of field sciences, especially in the postwar period.     

William Bateson from <Emphasis Type="Italic">Balanoglossus</Emphasis> to <Emphasis Type="Italic">Materials for the Study of Variation</Emphasis>: The Transatlantic Roots of Discontinuity and the (un)naturalness of Selection

William Bateson (1861–1926) has long occupied a controversial role in the history of biology at the turn of the twentieth century. For the most part, Bateson has been situated as the British translator of Mendel or as the outspoken antagonist of W.␣F. R. Weldon and Karl Pearson’s biometrics program. Less has been made of Bateson’s transition from embryologist to advocate for discontinuous variation, and the precise role of British and American influences in that transition, in the years leading up to the publication of his massive Materials for the Study of Variation (1894). In this paper, I first attempt to trace Bateson’s development in his early career before turning to search for the development of the moniker “anti-Darwinist” that has been attached to Bateson in well-known histories of the neo-Darwinian Synthesis.     

Traveller or tourist? Jack Kerouac and the commodification of culture

Jack Kerouac, the author of On The Road, was a central figure of the Beat Generation, a generation which rebelled against middle-class conformity in post–World War II America. Kerouac described himself as “a religious wanderer” (Kerouac 2006: 2), but an examination of his texts and life suggest his travels may also be understood as tourism. Viewed through the prism of tourism, this study will argue, for example, that MacCannell’s notion of the tourist’s quest for reality and authenticity (MacCannell 1989: 3) provides some insight into why Kerouac wrote that just south of Macon, Georgia, he and his travelling companion Neal Cassady stopped and got out of the car, “and suddenly both of us were stoned with joy to realize that in the darkness all around us was fragrant green grass and the smell of fresh manure and warm waters” (Kerouac 1957: 115). As Kerouac rebelled against being, as one of his protagonists in The Dharma Bums put it, “imprisoned in a system of work, produce, consume, work, produce, consume” (Kerouac 2006: 73) he travelled across America on a rapidly improving network of highways, turning “mobility into a retreat” (Holladay and Holton 2009: 42). Kerouac alternately identified himself as a hobo (Kerouac 1973: 181) and “not a real hobo” (Kerouac 1973: 173), but this article asks whether Kerouac’s travels were those of the last in a line of wanderers rebelling against conformity and modernization or a precursor of mobile mass tourism in America.     

Are Animals Just Noisy Machines?: Louis Boutan and the Co-invention of Animal and Child Psychology in the French Third Republic

Historians of science have only just begun to sample the wealth of different approaches to the study of animal behavior undertaken in the twentieth century. To date, more attention has been given to Lorenzian ethology and American behaviorism than to other work and traditions, but different approaches are equally worthy of the historian’s attention, reflecting not only the broader range of questions that could be asked about animal behavior and the “animal mind” but also the different contexts in which these questions were important. One such approach is that represented by the work of the French zoologist Louis Boutan (1859–1934). This paper explores the intellectual and cultural history of Boutan’s work on animal language and the animal mind, and contextualizes the place of animal behavior studies within late-nineteenth-and early-twentieth-century French biology. I explore the ways in which Boutan addressed the philosophical issue of whether language was necessary for abstract thought and show how he shifted from the idea that animals were endowed with a purely affective language to the notion that of they were capable of “rudimentary” reasoning. I argue that the scientific and broader socio-cultural contexts in which Boutan operated played a role in this transition. Then I show how Boutan’s linguistic and psychological experiments with a gibbon and children provide insights into his conception of “naturalness.” Although Boutan reared his gibbon at home and studied it in the controlled environment of his laboratory, he continued to identify its behavior as “natural.” I specifically demonstrate the importance of the milieu of the French Third Republic in shaping Boutan’s understanding not only of animal intelligence and child education, but also his definition of nature. Finally, I argue that Boutan’s studies on the primate mind provide us with a lens through which we can examine the co-invention of animal and child psychology in early-twentieth-century France.     

“A Great Complication of Circumstances” – Darwin and the Economy of Nature

In 1749, Linnaeus presided over the dissertation “Oeconomia Naturae,” which argued that each creature plays an important and particular role in nature’s economy. This phrase should be familiar to readers of Darwin, for he claims in the Origin that “all organic beings are striving, it may be said, to seize on each place in the economy of nature.” Many scholars have discussed the influence of political economy on Darwin’s ideas. In this paper, I take a different tack, showing that Darwin’s idea of an economy of nature stemmed from the views of earlier naturalists like Linnaeus and Lyell. I argue, in the first section of the paper, that Linnaeus’ idea of oeconomia naturae is derived from the idea of the animal economy, and that his idea of politia naturae is an extension of the idea of a politia civitatis. In the second part, I explore the use of the concept of stations in the work of De Candolle and Lyell – the precursor to Darwin’s concept of places. I show in the third part of the paper that the idea of places in an economy of nature is employed by Darwin at many key points in his thinking: his discussion of the Galapagos birds, his reading of Malthus, etc. Finally, in the last section, I demonstrate that the idea of a place in nature’s economy is essential to Darwin’s account of divergence. To tell his famous story of divergence and adaptation, Darwin needed the economy of nature.     

Problems with the current deinococcal hypothesis: an alternative theory

All theories related to the evolution of Deinococcus radiodurans have a common denominator: the strong positive correlation between ionizing-radiation resistance and desiccation tolerance. Currently, the widespread hypothesis is that D. radiodurans’ ionizing-radiation resistance is a consequence of this organism’s adaptation to desiccation (desiccation adaptation hypothesis). Here, we draw attention to major discrepancy that has emerged between the “desiccation adaptation hypothesis” and recent findings in computational biology, experimental research, and terrestrial subsurface surveys. We explain why the alternative hypothesis, suggesting that D. radiodurans’ desiccation tolerance could be a consequence of this organism’s adaptation to ionizing radiation (radiation adaptation hypothesis), should be considered on equal basis with the “desiccation adaptation hypothesis”.