IsisCB Explore

Article ID: CBB001022379

“A Great Complication of Circumstances”---Darwin and the Economy of Nature (2010)

Pearce, Trevor Richard (Author)

Journal of the History of Biology
Volume: 43
Pages: 493--528

Outside Links

WorldCat

Google Scholar

JSTOR

Academia.edu

Nature Ecology Economy of nature 18th century 19th century Lyell, Charles Linnaeus, Carolus Darwin, Charles Robert Candolle, Augustin Pyramus de

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.

...More

Citation URI

https://data.isiscb.org/isis/citation/CBB001022379/

Citations Indexes

Similar Citations

Article Aaron Wells; (2020)
Kant, Linnaeus, and the economy of nature (/isis/citation/CBB872058525/)

Article Guerrero, Ricardo; Margulis, Lynn; Fet, Victor; (2010)
Darwin--Wallace Paradigm Shift: Ten Days That Failed to Shake the World (/isis/citation/CBB001421109/)

Thesis Sponsel, Alistair William; (2009)
Coral Reef Formation and the Sciences of Earth, Life, and Sea, c. 1770--1952 (/isis/citation/CBB001561159/)

Article Dena Goodman; (2020)
What It Meant to Be Linnaean in Revolutionary France (/isis/citation/CBB717509066/)

Chapter Rupke, Nicolaas; (2008)
The Origin of Species from Linnaeus to Darwin (/isis/citation/CBB000953673/)

Article Dolores Martín Moruno; (2014)
Feeling Nature: Emotions and Ecology. The Legacy of Romanticism (/isis/citation/CBB230032156/)

Book Anderson, John G. T.; (2013)
Deep Things out of Darkness: A History of Natural History (/isis/citation/CBB001321144/)

Article Pareti, Germana; (2020)
Landscape and Biophilia (/isis/citation/CBB540118213/)

Thesis Oscarson, Christopher Paul; (2006)
Landscape and the Entangled Bird's Eye View: Turn-of-the-Twentieth CenturySwedish Culture and the Ecological Imaginary (/isis/citation/CBB001561540/)

Thesis Roedell, Christopher Andrew; (2005)
The Beasts that Perish: The Problem of Evil and the Contemplation of theAnimal Kingdom in English Thought, c. 1660--1839 (/isis/citation/CBB001561579/)

Article Müller-Wille, S.; (2013)
Systems and How Linnaeus Looked at Them in Retrospect (/isis/citation/CBB001320280/)

Book Linné, Carl von; Petry, M. J.; (2001)
Nemesis Divina (/isis/citation/CBB000101541/)

Article Laurent, Goulven; (1995)
Lamarck, Lyell et Darwin (/isis/citation/CBB000037863/)

Article Amy Way; (2021)
Natural selection and the ‘antiquity of man’: Intellectual impacts in the Australian colonies (/isis/citation/CBB758799279/)

Article González Recio, José Luis; (2011)
Entre John Herschel y Charles Lyell: los compromisos metodológicos y teóricos en la geología de Darwin (/isis/citation/CBB001220802/)

Book Rudwick, Martin J. S.; (2005)
Lyell and Darwin, Geologists: Studies in the Earth Sciences in the Age of Reform (/isis/citation/CBB000501484/)

Article Ulrich Kutschera; Tina Roth; (2008)
Darwin's Hypotheses on the Origin of Domestic Animals and the History of German Shepherd Dogs (/isis/citation/CBB171217921/)

Article Gohau, Gabriel; (2014)
Darwin and the Geological Controversies over the Steady-State Worldview in the 1830s (/isis/citation/CBB001500026/)

Article Stoddart, D. R.; (1976)
Darwin, Lyell, and the geological significance of coral reefs (/isis/citation/CBB000014957/)

Article John van Wyhe; (2016)
The impact of A. R. Wallace's Sarawak Law paper reassessed (/isis/citation/CBB120840296/)

Comments

{{ comment.created_by.username }} on {{ comment.created_on | date:'medium' }}