Thomas Dixon
- Published in print:
- 2008
- Published Online:
- January 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780197264263
- eISBN:
- 9780191734816
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- British Academy
- DOI:
- 10.5871/bacad/9780197264263.003.0005
- Subject:
- History, History of Ideas
This chapter retells the story of Darwin, the moral theorist. Although Charles Darwin himself neither used nor explicitly resisted the language of altruism, many others, from the 1870s to the ...
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This chapter retells the story of Darwin, the moral theorist. Although Charles Darwin himself neither used nor explicitly resisted the language of altruism, many others, from the 1870s to the present, have made claims about Darwin as a theorist of altruism and selfishness. Darwin, in fact, saw sympathy and love, alongside selfishness and violence, throughout the natural world. In insect societies as well as human ones, cooperation and benevolence had evolved for good reasons. The theory of the evolution of the moral sense that Darwin developed in The Descent of Man (1871) was complicated and not entirely ‘Darwinian’. It combined ideas from moral philosophy with observations of the instincts of insects, all within a theoretical framework that included a belief in the heritability of acquired characteristics and the ability of nature to select at the level of communities as well as individuals.Less
This chapter retells the story of Darwin, the moral theorist. Although Charles Darwin himself neither used nor explicitly resisted the language of altruism, many others, from the 1870s to the present, have made claims about Darwin as a theorist of altruism and selfishness. Darwin, in fact, saw sympathy and love, alongside selfishness and violence, throughout the natural world. In insect societies as well as human ones, cooperation and benevolence had evolved for good reasons. The theory of the evolution of the moral sense that Darwin developed in The Descent of Man (1871) was complicated and not entirely ‘Darwinian’. It combined ideas from moral philosophy with observations of the instincts of insects, all within a theoretical framework that included a belief in the heritability of acquired characteristics and the ability of nature to select at the level of communities as well as individuals.
Kimberly A. Hamlin
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- September 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780226134611
- eISBN:
- 9780226134758
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226134758.003.0001
- Subject:
- History, History of Science, Technology, and Medicine
“Evolution and the Natural Order” introduces the key themes of the book, notably that evolutionary theory profoundly impacted ideas about gender and sex and that the American reception of Charles ...
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“Evolution and the Natural Order” introduces the key themes of the book, notably that evolutionary theory profoundly impacted ideas about gender and sex and that the American reception of Charles Darwin was often highly gendered. The connections between Darwin and new thinking about gender can especially be seen the American reception of The Descent of Man(1871). This chapter also introduces the Darwinian feminists who are further analyzed in the rest of the book.Less
“Evolution and the Natural Order” introduces the key themes of the book, notably that evolutionary theory profoundly impacted ideas about gender and sex and that the American reception of Charles Darwin was often highly gendered. The connections between Darwin and new thinking about gender can especially be seen the American reception of The Descent of Man(1871). This chapter also introduces the Darwinian feminists who are further analyzed in the rest of the book.
Evelleen Richards
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- September 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780226436906
- eISBN:
- 9780226437064
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226437064.003.0013
- Subject:
- History, History of Science, Technology, and Medicine
Chapter 13 deals with Darwin’s final assembly of the components of sexual selection and human sexual and racial divergence into the Descent of Man. It is argued that the Descent was structured by ...
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Chapter 13 deals with Darwin’s final assembly of the components of sexual selection and human sexual and racial divergence into the Descent of Man. It is argued that the Descent was structured by Darwin’s differences with Alfred Russel Wallace, by his conflicts over the thesis of "primitive promiscuity" adopted by the “new” evolutionary anthropologists, and the enduring resonances of savage encounter. His views on women and differences with John Stuart Mill are assessed. The problems posed by his detailed reconstructions of plumage and attribution of high aesthetic appreciation to female birds, and the contradictions engendered by his key thesis of the primacy of beauty-based male choice as the determinant of human racial divergence are analysed.Less
Chapter 13 deals with Darwin’s final assembly of the components of sexual selection and human sexual and racial divergence into the Descent of Man. It is argued that the Descent was structured by Darwin’s differences with Alfred Russel Wallace, by his conflicts over the thesis of "primitive promiscuity" adopted by the “new” evolutionary anthropologists, and the enduring resonances of savage encounter. His views on women and differences with John Stuart Mill are assessed. The problems posed by his detailed reconstructions of plumage and attribution of high aesthetic appreciation to female birds, and the contradictions engendered by his key thesis of the primacy of beauty-based male choice as the determinant of human racial divergence are analysed.
Robert J. Richards
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- May 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780226058764
- eISBN:
- 9780226059099
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226059099.003.0004
- Subject:
- History, History of Science, Technology, and Medicine
From the beginning of his theorizing, Darwin had human beings in mind. He sought to give an account of their, emotional repertoire, linguistic abilities, and high intelligence; he offered ingenious ...
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From the beginning of his theorizing, Darwin had human beings in mind. He sought to give an account of their, emotional repertoire, linguistic abilities, and high intelligence; he offered ingenious explanations of these traits. The chief human trait of moral capacity did not so easily yield to his analysis. A principle difficult was that natural selection might produce instinctive behaviors that provided benefit to those expressing them, but altruistic behaviors benefited others, not self. Darwin was able to explain the evolution of morality only after he solved a more fundamental problem that arose in the case of the social insects. His solution allowed him to understand how moral behavior might have arisen in proto-human clans. Darwin has provided an explanation of morality that can meet contemporary requirements for normative justification.Less
From the beginning of his theorizing, Darwin had human beings in mind. He sought to give an account of their, emotional repertoire, linguistic abilities, and high intelligence; he offered ingenious explanations of these traits. The chief human trait of moral capacity did not so easily yield to his analysis. A principle difficult was that natural selection might produce instinctive behaviors that provided benefit to those expressing them, but altruistic behaviors benefited others, not self. Darwin was able to explain the evolution of morality only after he solved a more fundamental problem that arose in the case of the social insects. His solution allowed him to understand how moral behavior might have arisen in proto-human clans. Darwin has provided an explanation of morality that can meet contemporary requirements for normative justification.
Evelleen Richards
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- September 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780226436906
- eISBN:
- 9780226437064
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226437064.003.0014
- Subject:
- History, History of Science, Technology, and Medicine
Chapter 14 explores the response to the Descent through Darwin’s late Victorian readership, not simply his scientific readers, but the wider reading public who variously adopted, adapted, or rejected ...
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Chapter 14 explores the response to the Descent through Darwin’s late Victorian readership, not simply his scientific readers, but the wider reading public who variously adopted, adapted, or rejected his theory of sexual selection. The criticisms of its major scientific opponents, St. George Mivart and Alfred Russel Wallace, are assessed. As sexual selection (along with natural selection) went into eclipse, female choice was seized upon by an array of social purists, eugenicists, sexual reformers, birth controllers, feminists and socialists, notably Wallace, who in a volte face in1890 advocated a post socialist world in which free and informed female choice would guide the future direction of humanity. Thomas Henry Huxley’s reaction to all this is analysed through the content and context of his famous Romanes lecture.Less
Chapter 14 explores the response to the Descent through Darwin’s late Victorian readership, not simply his scientific readers, but the wider reading public who variously adopted, adapted, or rejected his theory of sexual selection. The criticisms of its major scientific opponents, St. George Mivart and Alfred Russel Wallace, are assessed. As sexual selection (along with natural selection) went into eclipse, female choice was seized upon by an array of social purists, eugenicists, sexual reformers, birth controllers, feminists and socialists, notably Wallace, who in a volte face in1890 advocated a post socialist world in which free and informed female choice would guide the future direction of humanity. Thomas Henry Huxley’s reaction to all this is analysed through the content and context of his famous Romanes lecture.
Piers J. Hale
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- January 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780226108490
- eISBN:
- 9780226108520
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226108520.003.0005
- Subject:
- History, History of Science, Technology, and Medicine
In ‘The Struggle for Existence’ (1888) Huxley portrayed nature as a Malthusian gladiators arena in which only the strong survived. While this was the context from which humans had evolved, mankind ...
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In ‘The Struggle for Existence’ (1888) Huxley portrayed nature as a Malthusian gladiators arena in which only the strong survived. While this was the context from which humans had evolved, mankind had formed society to oppose these forces. However, anticipating his 1893 essay ‘Evolution and Ethics’, Huxley concluded that although an ethical society would preserve the lives of those that nature would otherwise have destroyed; they would breed and pass on their traits, becoming an ever-greater burden upon the rest. Society would ultimately succumb to struggle once more. The Russian émigré anarchist Peter Kropotkin communicated his vehement disagreement in a series of publications. Mutual aid and cooperation were just as much a factor in evolution as competition, especially among social species. While Huxley based his account of evolution on the competitive ethic that ran throughout Origin, Kropotkin's account was much closer to what Darwin had written in Descent of Man.Less
In ‘The Struggle for Existence’ (1888) Huxley portrayed nature as a Malthusian gladiators arena in which only the strong survived. While this was the context from which humans had evolved, mankind had formed society to oppose these forces. However, anticipating his 1893 essay ‘Evolution and Ethics’, Huxley concluded that although an ethical society would preserve the lives of those that nature would otherwise have destroyed; they would breed and pass on their traits, becoming an ever-greater burden upon the rest. Society would ultimately succumb to struggle once more. The Russian émigré anarchist Peter Kropotkin communicated his vehement disagreement in a series of publications. Mutual aid and cooperation were just as much a factor in evolution as competition, especially among social species. While Huxley based his account of evolution on the competitive ethic that ran throughout Origin, Kropotkin's account was much closer to what Darwin had written in Descent of Man.
Evelleen Richards
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- September 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780226436906
- eISBN:
- 9780226437064
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226437064.003.0012
- Subject:
- History, History of Science, Technology, and Medicine
Chapter 12 picks up the history of sexual selection in the late 1860s as Darwin set about researching and writing the Descent of Man. It analyses Darwin’s prolonged dispute with Wallace over the ...
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Chapter 12 picks up the history of sexual selection in the late 1860s as Darwin set about researching and writing the Descent of Man. It analyses Darwin’s prolonged dispute with Wallace over the issues of female choice, protective colouration and human evolution in the contexts of the Huxley-led drive for Darwinian cognitive and cultural authority, institutional conflict between the Darwinian Ethnological Society and the racialist Anthropological Society of London, the American Civil War, the Eyre affair, the social and professional implications of the “irrepressible” woman question and John Stuart Mill’s championing of women’s rights.Less
Chapter 12 picks up the history of sexual selection in the late 1860s as Darwin set about researching and writing the Descent of Man. It analyses Darwin’s prolonged dispute with Wallace over the issues of female choice, protective colouration and human evolution in the contexts of the Huxley-led drive for Darwinian cognitive and cultural authority, institutional conflict between the Darwinian Ethnological Society and the racialist Anthropological Society of London, the American Civil War, the Eyre affair, the social and professional implications of the “irrepressible” woman question and John Stuart Mill’s championing of women’s rights.
Kimberly A. Hamlin
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- September 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780226134611
- eISBN:
- 9780226134758
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226134758.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, History of Science, Technology, and Medicine
From Eve to Evolution analyzes the U.S. reception of Charles Darwin through the lens of gender and provides the first full-length study of women’s responses to evolutionary theory. Raised on the ...
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From Eve to Evolution analyzes the U.S. reception of Charles Darwin through the lens of gender and provides the first full-length study of women’s responses to evolutionary theory. Raised on the idea that Eve’s sin forever fixed women’s subordinate status, many 19th-century women embraced Darwinian evolution, especially sexual selection theory as explained in The Descent of Man (1871), as an alternative to the Genesis creation story. Darwin also introduced readers to the concept of human-animal kinship, allowing feminist reformers to look to animals for examples of non-patriarchal gender roles, domestic arrangements, and sexual power systems. This book chronicles the lives and writings of the women who combined their enthusiasm for evolutionary science with their commitment to women’s rights, including Antoinette Brown Blackwell, Helen Hamilton Gardener, Eliza Burt Gamble, and Charlotte Perkins Gilman. The Darwinian feminists believed evolutionary science proved that women were not inferior to men, that it was natural for mothers to work outside the home, and that the progress of women went hand-in-hand with that of science. The practical applications of this evolutionary feminism came to fruition in the early thinking and writing of the American birth control pioneer Margaret Sanger. While household names in their day, after 1890, the Darwinian feminists frequently published in small women’s rights periodicals, the freethought press, and socialist publications, and, thus, are not as well-known today. Studying their writings reveals an alternate discourse in the history of U.S. feminist thought and the centrality of evolutionary science within it.Less
From Eve to Evolution analyzes the U.S. reception of Charles Darwin through the lens of gender and provides the first full-length study of women’s responses to evolutionary theory. Raised on the idea that Eve’s sin forever fixed women’s subordinate status, many 19th-century women embraced Darwinian evolution, especially sexual selection theory as explained in The Descent of Man (1871), as an alternative to the Genesis creation story. Darwin also introduced readers to the concept of human-animal kinship, allowing feminist reformers to look to animals for examples of non-patriarchal gender roles, domestic arrangements, and sexual power systems. This book chronicles the lives and writings of the women who combined their enthusiasm for evolutionary science with their commitment to women’s rights, including Antoinette Brown Blackwell, Helen Hamilton Gardener, Eliza Burt Gamble, and Charlotte Perkins Gilman. The Darwinian feminists believed evolutionary science proved that women were not inferior to men, that it was natural for mothers to work outside the home, and that the progress of women went hand-in-hand with that of science. The practical applications of this evolutionary feminism came to fruition in the early thinking and writing of the American birth control pioneer Margaret Sanger. While household names in their day, after 1890, the Darwinian feminists frequently published in small women’s rights periodicals, the freethought press, and socialist publications, and, thus, are not as well-known today. Studying their writings reveals an alternate discourse in the history of U.S. feminist thought and the centrality of evolutionary science within it.
Richard Symonds
- Published in print:
- 1992
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780198203001
- eISBN:
- 9780191675645
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198203001.003.0003
- Subject:
- History, British and Irish Modern History
This chapter examines the influence of the University of Oxford in the kind of imperialism which developed in Britain during the late 19th century. It suggests that imperialism can be best understood ...
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This chapter examines the influence of the University of Oxford in the kind of imperialism which developed in Britain during the late 19th century. It suggests that imperialism can be best understood in light of two earlier events, which many Oxonians considered cataclysmic. These are the birth of the Tractarian or Oxford Movement in the 1830s and 1840s which involved bitter theological feuds and Charles Darwin's publication of the Origin of the Species and the Descent of Man which caused a general questioning of the truths of the Bible. Some Oxonians believed that imperialism has all the depth and significance of a religious faith and its significance was moral to them rather than material.Less
This chapter examines the influence of the University of Oxford in the kind of imperialism which developed in Britain during the late 19th century. It suggests that imperialism can be best understood in light of two earlier events, which many Oxonians considered cataclysmic. These are the birth of the Tractarian or Oxford Movement in the 1830s and 1840s which involved bitter theological feuds and Charles Darwin's publication of the Origin of the Species and the Descent of Man which caused a general questioning of the truths of the Bible. Some Oxonians believed that imperialism has all the depth and significance of a religious faith and its significance was moral to them rather than material.
Paul hurh
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- January 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780804791144
- eISBN:
- 9780804794510
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Stanford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.11126/stanford/9780804791144.003.0004
- Subject:
- Literature, American, 19th Century Literature
The third chapter argues that the analytical method on display in Poe’s detective fiction is drawn from and influential in structuring the dynamics of terror in his confessional and sublime tales. My ...
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The third chapter argues that the analytical method on display in Poe’s detective fiction is drawn from and influential in structuring the dynamics of terror in his confessional and sublime tales. My chapter returns to the poststructuralist readings of Poe’s detective fiction, and recovers in response Poe’s own definition of analysis as a bipartite system of resolution and composition. By ascertaining the shape of analysis responsible, ultimately, for the recursive and uncanny shape of the poststructuralist debate, my chapter shows the continuity between Poe’s seemingly calculated tales of reason’s mastery over nature and his seemingly irrational tales of madness and peril. The second part of the chapter finds and analyzes the same reciprocal dynamic of resolution and composition within his sublime and confessional tales.Less
The third chapter argues that the analytical method on display in Poe’s detective fiction is drawn from and influential in structuring the dynamics of terror in his confessional and sublime tales. My chapter returns to the poststructuralist readings of Poe’s detective fiction, and recovers in response Poe’s own definition of analysis as a bipartite system of resolution and composition. By ascertaining the shape of analysis responsible, ultimately, for the recursive and uncanny shape of the poststructuralist debate, my chapter shows the continuity between Poe’s seemingly calculated tales of reason’s mastery over nature and his seemingly irrational tales of madness and peril. The second part of the chapter finds and analyzes the same reciprocal dynamic of resolution and composition within his sublime and confessional tales.
Emily Coit
- Published in print:
- 2021
- Published Online:
- September 2021
- ISBN:
- 9781474475402
- eISBN:
- 9781474495981
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Edinburgh University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3366/edinburgh/9781474475402.003.0004
- Subject:
- Literature, American, 20th Century Literature
Chapter 3 reads Edith Wharton's Valley of Decision, 'The Vice of Reading' and 'The Descent of Man'. Considering these texts alongside Charles Eliot Norton's writing about reading and education, the ...
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Chapter 3 reads Edith Wharton's Valley of Decision, 'The Vice of Reading' and 'The Descent of Man'. Considering these texts alongside Charles Eliot Norton's writing about reading and education, the chapter argues that Wharton articulates her political thought in conversation with the elderly professor. In these early texts, as in her later commentary on modernism, Wharton expresses a realist conservatism that opposes a liberal idealism committed to democracy. In its reliance on abstraction and theory, Wharton contends, such idealism fails to see clearly the people whom expansions of democracy would enfranchise. Norton imagines a democracy enhanced by broader access to culture and a richly literate electorate; Wharton derides the capacities of the actual reading public, locates the the diffusion of culture in the marketplace rather than the school, and points to the degradation of literature amongst vapid consumers. Her texts satirize and exterminate professorial types, portraying a public that misunderstands or murders the scholars who would teach them. The scholar who gives voice to Norton's liberal idealism in Valley of Decision is a woman who herself embodies an ideal; Wharton's portrayal of her sad fate uses incisive feminist analysis to bolster a conservative case against idealisms of all sorts.Less
Chapter 3 reads Edith Wharton's Valley of Decision, 'The Vice of Reading' and 'The Descent of Man'. Considering these texts alongside Charles Eliot Norton's writing about reading and education, the chapter argues that Wharton articulates her political thought in conversation with the elderly professor. In these early texts, as in her later commentary on modernism, Wharton expresses a realist conservatism that opposes a liberal idealism committed to democracy. In its reliance on abstraction and theory, Wharton contends, such idealism fails to see clearly the people whom expansions of democracy would enfranchise. Norton imagines a democracy enhanced by broader access to culture and a richly literate electorate; Wharton derides the capacities of the actual reading public, locates the the diffusion of culture in the marketplace rather than the school, and points to the degradation of literature amongst vapid consumers. Her texts satirize and exterminate professorial types, portraying a public that misunderstands or murders the scholars who would teach them. The scholar who gives voice to Norton's liberal idealism in Valley of Decision is a woman who herself embodies an ideal; Wharton's portrayal of her sad fate uses incisive feminist analysis to bolster a conservative case against idealisms of all sorts.
Kimberly A. Hamlin
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- September 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780226134611
- eISBN:
- 9780226134758
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226134758.003.0004
- Subject:
- History, History of Science, Technology, and Medicine
Chapter three analyzes how various thinkers applied evolutionary theory to turn-of-the-twentieth century debates about motherhood. Opponents of women’s advancement typically claimed that women’s ...
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Chapter three analyzes how various thinkers applied evolutionary theory to turn-of-the-twentieth century debates about motherhood. Opponents of women’s advancement typically claimed that women’s foremost function was to bear and raise children; any intellectual or professional endeavors detracted from this sacred duty and imperiled the human race. These arguments were often couched in evolutionary discourse, as exemplified by the much-studied “Race Suicide” panic of the early 1900s. Because of the flexibility of Darwinian discourse, however, evolutionary theory also buttressed a feminist redefinition of motherhood– promoted by Antoinette Brown Blackwell, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, and others—which claimed, in part, that it was unnatural for women to be confined to domestic tasks because female domesticity had no precedent in the animal kingdom. Focusing on feminist applications of animal-human kinship, this chapter examines the turn-of-the-century vogue for fit pregnancy and demands for the reapportionment of domestic duties to enable mothers to work outside the home.Less
Chapter three analyzes how various thinkers applied evolutionary theory to turn-of-the-twentieth century debates about motherhood. Opponents of women’s advancement typically claimed that women’s foremost function was to bear and raise children; any intellectual or professional endeavors detracted from this sacred duty and imperiled the human race. These arguments were often couched in evolutionary discourse, as exemplified by the much-studied “Race Suicide” panic of the early 1900s. Because of the flexibility of Darwinian discourse, however, evolutionary theory also buttressed a feminist redefinition of motherhood– promoted by Antoinette Brown Blackwell, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, and others—which claimed, in part, that it was unnatural for women to be confined to domestic tasks because female domesticity had no precedent in the animal kingdom. Focusing on feminist applications of animal-human kinship, this chapter examines the turn-of-the-century vogue for fit pregnancy and demands for the reapportionment of domestic duties to enable mothers to work outside the home.
Evelleen Richards
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- September 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780226436906
- eISBN:
- 9780226437064
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226437064.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, History of Science, Technology, and Medicine
This book offers the first comprehensive history of the formulation of Darwin’s principle of sexual selection. It locates Darwin's sources and conceptual pathways in their social and cultural ...
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This book offers the first comprehensive history of the formulation of Darwin’s principle of sexual selection. It locates Darwin's sources and conceptual pathways in their social and cultural contexts, and disentangles the complexity of theory, practice and analogy that went into the making of sexual selection. It is argued that from an early stage of theory building, Darwin followed a particular guiding strand: his conviction that the different human races had different in-born, heritable standards of beauty or aesthetic taste, the foundation of his theory of the role of aesthetic preference in race formation, a theory that Darwin extended to the whole animal kingdom and reconstituted through the practices of animal breeders and by analogy with the fashion choices of Victorian women. The book details Darwin’s conceptualisation of this aesthetic, the basis of his concept of “female choice”, as naturalistic, sexualized, strongly gendered and race and class specific. It traces its connections with other themes and intellectual concepts, its negotiation and reshaping under social, institutional and peer pressures (notably Darwin’s prolonged conflict with Alfred Russel Wallace, co-founder of natural selection) onto the full-blown elaboration of sexual selection in the Descent of Man. Finally, the response to the Descent is explored through Darwin’s late Victorian readership, not simply his scientific readers, but the wider reading public who variously adopted, adapted, or rejected his theory of sexual selection.Less
This book offers the first comprehensive history of the formulation of Darwin’s principle of sexual selection. It locates Darwin's sources and conceptual pathways in their social and cultural contexts, and disentangles the complexity of theory, practice and analogy that went into the making of sexual selection. It is argued that from an early stage of theory building, Darwin followed a particular guiding strand: his conviction that the different human races had different in-born, heritable standards of beauty or aesthetic taste, the foundation of his theory of the role of aesthetic preference in race formation, a theory that Darwin extended to the whole animal kingdom and reconstituted through the practices of animal breeders and by analogy with the fashion choices of Victorian women. The book details Darwin’s conceptualisation of this aesthetic, the basis of his concept of “female choice”, as naturalistic, sexualized, strongly gendered and race and class specific. It traces its connections with other themes and intellectual concepts, its negotiation and reshaping under social, institutional and peer pressures (notably Darwin’s prolonged conflict with Alfred Russel Wallace, co-founder of natural selection) onto the full-blown elaboration of sexual selection in the Descent of Man. Finally, the response to the Descent is explored through Darwin’s late Victorian readership, not simply his scientific readers, but the wider reading public who variously adopted, adapted, or rejected his theory of sexual selection.
Bettina Bergo
- Published in print:
- 2021
- Published Online:
- December 2020
- ISBN:
- 9780197539712
- eISBN:
- 9780197539743
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780197539712.003.0006
- Subject:
- Philosophy, History of Philosophy
Having adopted Herbert Spencer’s evolutionary mechanism called survival of the fittest in Origin of Species (1859), Darwin turned his attentions to human societies and the remarkable turn entailed ...
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Having adopted Herbert Spencer’s evolutionary mechanism called survival of the fittest in Origin of Species (1859), Darwin turned his attentions to human societies and the remarkable turn entailed “natural selection applying to itself its own selective law.” In this fold in natural selection, human cultures evinced altruistic behaviors as well as egotistical rivalries. With Origin published six years after Adam Smith’s Theory of Moral Sentiments, Darwin would argue in favor of affects like sympathy and compassion. Yet how did such affects come about and how could they be demonstrated empirically? While hesitating over the origin of instincts in selection and habituation, Darwin simultaneously worked on his “demonstration” of the universality of five basic affects (pleasure, fear, suffering or grief, rage, and disgust). Though the mechanism of transmission of moral sentiments might be in doubt, these basic affects could be read on faces, whether sketched, photographed or through epistolary descriptions. One year after the Descent of Man (1871), Darwin published his thirty-year long research as The expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals (1872). In that work, he would argue that human expressions provide us a window into the affective mind, essentially of all human cultures. This was the empirical research needed for supporting the claim for the universality of human emotions. The work inaugurated a debate still current today centered on the role of culture in bodily semiosis. Surprisingly, Darwin aligned anxiety with grief rather than fear and suffering.Less
Having adopted Herbert Spencer’s evolutionary mechanism called survival of the fittest in Origin of Species (1859), Darwin turned his attentions to human societies and the remarkable turn entailed “natural selection applying to itself its own selective law.” In this fold in natural selection, human cultures evinced altruistic behaviors as well as egotistical rivalries. With Origin published six years after Adam Smith’s Theory of Moral Sentiments, Darwin would argue in favor of affects like sympathy and compassion. Yet how did such affects come about and how could they be demonstrated empirically? While hesitating over the origin of instincts in selection and habituation, Darwin simultaneously worked on his “demonstration” of the universality of five basic affects (pleasure, fear, suffering or grief, rage, and disgust). Though the mechanism of transmission of moral sentiments might be in doubt, these basic affects could be read on faces, whether sketched, photographed or through epistolary descriptions. One year after the Descent of Man (1871), Darwin published his thirty-year long research as The expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals (1872). In that work, he would argue that human expressions provide us a window into the affective mind, essentially of all human cultures. This was the empirical research needed for supporting the claim for the universality of human emotions. The work inaugurated a debate still current today centered on the role of culture in bodily semiosis. Surprisingly, Darwin aligned anxiety with grief rather than fear and suffering.
Evelleen Richards
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- September 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780226436906
- eISBN:
- 9780226437064
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226437064.003.0009
- Subject:
- History, History of Science, Technology, and Medicine
Chapter 9 introduces the crucial embryological understandings underpinning Darwin’s threefold analogue, sketches their political and social implications and shows their functioning in Darwin’s ...
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Chapter 9 introduces the crucial embryological understandings underpinning Darwin’s threefold analogue, sketches their political and social implications and shows their functioning in Darwin’s integration of the critical theoretical components of sexual selection: development, inheritance and divergence. It indicates how this developmentally centered understanding confirmed the agency of female choice in animals, powered Darwin’s dispute with Wallace and gave him the confidence and self-belief to write the Descent of Man.Less
Chapter 9 introduces the crucial embryological understandings underpinning Darwin’s threefold analogue, sketches their political and social implications and shows their functioning in Darwin’s integration of the critical theoretical components of sexual selection: development, inheritance and divergence. It indicates how this developmentally centered understanding confirmed the agency of female choice in animals, powered Darwin’s dispute with Wallace and gave him the confidence and self-belief to write the Descent of Man.
Michael Ruse
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- October 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780190241025
- eISBN:
- 9780190241056
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780190241025.003.0003
- Subject:
- Literature, Criticism/Theory, 19th-century and Victorian Literature
Charles Robert Darwin published the Origin of Species in 1859 and then the follow-up book on our species, the Descent of Man, in 1871. He argued not just for the idea of evolution but also for a ...
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Charles Robert Darwin published the Origin of Species in 1859 and then the follow-up book on our species, the Descent of Man, in 1871. He argued not just for the idea of evolution but also for a mechanism, natural selection brought on by a struggle for existence, and a secondary mechanism, sexual selection. At once Darwin’s work was seen as significant and rapidly the idea of evolution was accepted even by Christian believers. Natural selection was more problematic. No one denied its operation, but professional scientists tended to downplay its significance. Yet natural selection (and then sexual selection) was a great success among those (mainly amateurs) collecting and studying fast-breeding organisms like butterflies and also more generally at a popular level. No longer was evolutionary theorizing pseudoscientific, but it tended more to the popular level of science rather than the professional realm.Less
Charles Robert Darwin published the Origin of Species in 1859 and then the follow-up book on our species, the Descent of Man, in 1871. He argued not just for the idea of evolution but also for a mechanism, natural selection brought on by a struggle for existence, and a secondary mechanism, sexual selection. At once Darwin’s work was seen as significant and rapidly the idea of evolution was accepted even by Christian believers. Natural selection was more problematic. No one denied its operation, but professional scientists tended to downplay its significance. Yet natural selection (and then sexual selection) was a great success among those (mainly amateurs) collecting and studying fast-breeding organisms like butterflies and also more generally at a popular level. No longer was evolutionary theorizing pseudoscientific, but it tended more to the popular level of science rather than the professional realm.
Václav Paris
- Published in print:
- 2021
- Published Online:
- May 2021
- ISBN:
- 9780198868217
- eISBN:
- 9780191904738
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780198868217.003.0002
- Subject:
- Literature, 20th-century Literature and Modernism, Criticism/Theory
This chapter offers a revisionary account of the emergence of modernist epic through a detailed reading of Gertrude Stein’s The Making of Americans. In the late-nineteenth-century United States, the ...
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This chapter offers a revisionary account of the emergence of modernist epic through a detailed reading of Gertrude Stein’s The Making of Americans. In the late-nineteenth-century United States, the prevailing paradigm for narrations of national destiny was Darwinian. Mostly written between 1903 and 1911, Stein’s book opens as if it were in agreement with such narrations of the national story. Stein announces it as a developmental narrative of the United States, tracing two families’ progressions and westward movement, from a first generation of immigrants to their children and then grandchildren. The Making of Americans, however, does not fulfil its developmentalist prospects in any straightforward manner. Rather, the book stalls, digresses, and—to use Stein’s words—“begins again and again.” In its second half, the narrative comes to resemble less the work of nineteenth-century historians, and more the extensive later portions of modernist modern epics by Robert Musil, Marcel Proust, or James Joyce. The chapter describes how Stein’s turn to a digressive open-form narrative corresponds to her shifting interests in biological science and experimental writing. Her work, it argues, marks the advent of new kind of modernist epic, motivated by attempts to find a way to represent national life beyond social Darwinism and its heteropatriarchal protocols.Less
This chapter offers a revisionary account of the emergence of modernist epic through a detailed reading of Gertrude Stein’s The Making of Americans. In the late-nineteenth-century United States, the prevailing paradigm for narrations of national destiny was Darwinian. Mostly written between 1903 and 1911, Stein’s book opens as if it were in agreement with such narrations of the national story. Stein announces it as a developmental narrative of the United States, tracing two families’ progressions and westward movement, from a first generation of immigrants to their children and then grandchildren. The Making of Americans, however, does not fulfil its developmentalist prospects in any straightforward manner. Rather, the book stalls, digresses, and—to use Stein’s words—“begins again and again.” In its second half, the narrative comes to resemble less the work of nineteenth-century historians, and more the extensive later portions of modernist modern epics by Robert Musil, Marcel Proust, or James Joyce. The chapter describes how Stein’s turn to a digressive open-form narrative corresponds to her shifting interests in biological science and experimental writing. Her work, it argues, marks the advent of new kind of modernist epic, motivated by attempts to find a way to represent national life beyond social Darwinism and its heteropatriarchal protocols.
Michael Ruse
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- November 2018
- ISBN:
- 9780190867577
- eISBN:
- 9780190867607
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780190867577.003.0001
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Moral Philosophy
Charles Robert Darwin, the English naturalist, published On the Origin of Species in 1859 and the follow-up work The Descent of Man in 1871. In these works, he argued for his theory of evolution ...
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Charles Robert Darwin, the English naturalist, published On the Origin of Species in 1859 and the follow-up work The Descent of Man in 1871. In these works, he argued for his theory of evolution through natural selection, applying it to all organisms, living and dead, including our own species, Homo sapiens. Although controversial from the start, Darwin’s thinking was deeply embedded in the culture of his day, that of a middle-class Englishman. Evolution as such was an immediate success in scientific circles, but although the mechanism of selection had supporters in the scientific community (especially among those working with fast-breeding organisms), its real success was in the popular domain. Natural selection, and particularly the side mechanism of sexual selection, were known to all and popular themes in fiction and elsewhere.Less
Charles Robert Darwin, the English naturalist, published On the Origin of Species in 1859 and the follow-up work The Descent of Man in 1871. In these works, he argued for his theory of evolution through natural selection, applying it to all organisms, living and dead, including our own species, Homo sapiens. Although controversial from the start, Darwin’s thinking was deeply embedded in the culture of his day, that of a middle-class Englishman. Evolution as such was an immediate success in scientific circles, but although the mechanism of selection had supporters in the scientific community (especially among those working with fast-breeding organisms), its real success was in the popular domain. Natural selection, and particularly the side mechanism of sexual selection, were known to all and popular themes in fiction and elsewhere.
Michael Ruse
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- November 2018
- ISBN:
- 9780190867577
- eISBN:
- 9780190867607
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780190867577.003.0003
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Moral Philosophy
Jesus apparently proscribed violence, which meant that—as was understood by early Christians—war is prohibited. As Christianity became the state religion, by focusing on our innate unhappy ...
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Jesus apparently proscribed violence, which meant that—as was understood by early Christians—war is prohibited. As Christianity became the state religion, by focusing on our innate unhappy nature—“original sin”—Augustine devised “just war theory,” legitimizing the Christian use of war and specifying the conditions under which it could be fought. Augustinian philosophy influenced Anglican theology, although, by the nineteenth century, thinking about war was fashioned more to the needs of empire building. Darwin discussed war in detail in the Descent, in respects accepting Augustinian thinking about our original violent nature, but putting this in the context of natural selection making for a progressive climb to humankind. Unlike the Christian who thinks that war will be with us always, Darwin envisioned a war-free future.Less
Jesus apparently proscribed violence, which meant that—as was understood by early Christians—war is prohibited. As Christianity became the state religion, by focusing on our innate unhappy nature—“original sin”—Augustine devised “just war theory,” legitimizing the Christian use of war and specifying the conditions under which it could be fought. Augustinian philosophy influenced Anglican theology, although, by the nineteenth century, thinking about war was fashioned more to the needs of empire building. Darwin discussed war in detail in the Descent, in respects accepting Augustinian thinking about our original violent nature, but putting this in the context of natural selection making for a progressive climb to humankind. Unlike the Christian who thinks that war will be with us always, Darwin envisioned a war-free future.
Michael Ruse
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- November 2018
- ISBN:
- 9780190867577
- eISBN:
- 9780190867607
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780190867577.003.0004
- Subject:
- Philosophy, Moral Philosophy
In the forty-plus years, from the time of the Descent in 1871 to the time of the outbreak of the First World War in 1914, people influenced by or responding to Darwin’s thinking wrote extensively on ...
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In the forty-plus years, from the time of the Descent in 1871 to the time of the outbreak of the First World War in 1914, people influenced by or responding to Darwin’s thinking wrote extensively on the nature of war. Often, religious upbringing—as for Herbert Spencer and Alfred Russel Wallace—infused discussions showing how really the whole debate was as much religious as scientific. Thomas Henry Huxley showed his innate Calvinism and Prince Petr Kropotkin equally showed his Russian roots. American thinkers tended to worry about the eugenical effects of war, and William James proposed a kind of proto Peace Corps to harness the violent tendencies of the young. Across in Germany, Friedrich von Bernhardi was hymning the necessity of war, although in major respects his ideas owed more to Germanic philosophy, especially Hegel, than to anything coming out of England, a country he feared and despised.Less
In the forty-plus years, from the time of the Descent in 1871 to the time of the outbreak of the First World War in 1914, people influenced by or responding to Darwin’s thinking wrote extensively on the nature of war. Often, religious upbringing—as for Herbert Spencer and Alfred Russel Wallace—infused discussions showing how really the whole debate was as much religious as scientific. Thomas Henry Huxley showed his innate Calvinism and Prince Petr Kropotkin equally showed his Russian roots. American thinkers tended to worry about the eugenical effects of war, and William James proposed a kind of proto Peace Corps to harness the violent tendencies of the young. Across in Germany, Friedrich von Bernhardi was hymning the necessity of war, although in major respects his ideas owed more to Germanic philosophy, especially Hegel, than to anything coming out of England, a country he feared and despised.