Bowler, Peter J. (Author)
Isis: International Review Devoted to the History of Science and Its Cultural Influences
Volume: 99
Pages: 560--567
Edition Details: Part of Focus Section “Counterfactuals and the Historian of Science”
Language: English
The launch of a revolutionary new scientific theory represents a rare occasion on which the apparently cumulative development of science might be influenced by particular events. Yet in the case of the Darwinian revolution it is often claimed that the theory of evolution by natural selection would have emerged more or less inevitably, given the scientific and cultural circumstances prevailing in mid-Victorian Britain. This essay challenges that claim by arguing that if Darwin had not been there to write his Origin of Species the subsequent development of biology would have occurred along a line that steadily diverged from the sequence of events we actually experienced. There would certainly have been an evolutionary movement in the late nineteenth century, but there would have been no selection theory to disturb the progressionist assumptions of the time. A totally non-Darwinian evolutionism might not have generated the challenges that led to the emergence of modern genetics in the early twentieth century, resulting in a very different understanding of the relationship between development, heredity, and environment.
...MoreDescription Argues that the lack of Darwinian natural selection might have significantly altered the development of evolutionary science in the 19th and 20th centuries.
Article Radick, Gregory (2008) Introduction: Why What If?. Isis: International Review Devoted to the History of Science and Its Cultural Influences (p. 547).
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