Holterhoff, Kate (Author)
This paper explores Charles Darwin's hypothesis of pangenesis through a popular and professional reception history. First published in The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication (1868), pangenesis stated that inheritance can be explained by sub-cellular “gemmules” which aggregated in the sexual organs during intercourse. Pangenesis thereby accounted for the seemingly arbitrary absence and presence of traits in offspring while also clarifying some botanical and invertebrates' limb regeneration abilities. I argue that critics largely interpreted Variation as an extension of On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection (1859), while pangenesis was an extension of natural selection. Contrary to claims that pangenesis was divorced from natural selection by its reliance on the inheritance of acquired characters, pangenesis's mid nineteenth-century reception suggests that Darwin's hypothesis responded directly to selection's critics. Using Variation's several editions, periodical reviews, and personal correspondence I assess pangenesis popularly, professionally, and biographically to better understand Variation's impact on 1860s and 70s British evolutionism and inheritance.
...More
Article
James G. Lennox;
(2021)
Accentuate the negative: Locating possibility in Darwin’s ‘long argument’
(/isis/citation/CBB202149987/)
Article
Derek Partridge;
(2018)
Darwin’s Two Theories, 1844 and 1859
(/isis/citation/CBB074913080/)
Book
Donohue, Kathleen;
(2011)
Darwin's Finches: Readings in the Evolution of a Scientific Paradigm
(/isis/citation/CBB001033158/)
Article
Theunissen, Bert;
(2012)
Darwin and His Pigeons. The Analogy Between Artificial and Natural Selection Revisited
(/isis/citation/CBB001221001/)
Book
Sober, Elliott;
(2011)
Did Darwin Write the Origin Backwards? Philosophical Essays on Darwin's Theory
(/isis/citation/CBB001230081/)
Article
Travis, Anthony S.;
(2010)
Raphael Meldola and the Nineteenth-Century Neo-Darwinians
(/isis/citation/CBB001230067/)
Book
Gardiner, Brian;
Milner, Richard;
Morris, Mary;
(2008)
Survival of the Fittest: A Special Issue of the Linnean Celebrating the 150th Anniversary of the Darwin-Wallace Theory of Evolution
(/isis/citation/CBB001035140/)
Article
Canseco, Juan;
(2006)
Conflitto e confronto: l'evoluzionismo materialista di Darwin e l'evoluzionismo spiritualista di Wallace
(/isis/citation/CBB001221434/)
Chapter
Engels, Eve-Marie;
(2009)
Charles Darwins geheimnisvolle Revolution
(/isis/citation/CBB001023713/)
Thesis
Pajewski, Alessandro;
(2012)
The Face of Nature: Hume and Darwin on Analogy and Emotion
(/isis/citation/CBB001561023/)
Thesis
Varno, Theodore James;
(2011)
The Nature of Tomorrow: Inbreeding in Industrial Agriculture and Evolutionary Thought in Britain and the United States, 1859--1925
(/isis/citation/CBB001567261/)
Thesis
Jeffrey Thomas Wright;
(2016)
Darwin, Huxley, and the Nineteenth-Century Rhetoric of Science
(/isis/citation/CBB948034428/)
Article
Haufe, Chris;
(2012)
Darwin's Laws
(/isis/citation/CBB001221610/)
Book
Glaubrecht, Matthias;
(2009)
“Es ist, als ob man einen Mord gesteht”: Ein Tag im Leben des Charles Darwin; Ein biografisches Portrait
(/isis/citation/CBB001031447/)
Thesis
Feller, D A;
(cited 2011)
The Hunter's Gaze: Charles Darwin and the Role of Dogs and Sport in Nineteenth Century Natural History
(/isis/citation/CBB001567341/)
Article
Smith, Charles H.;
(2005)
Alfred Russel Wallace, Past and Future
(/isis/citation/CBB001035141/)
Article
Richards, Robert J.;
(2012)
Darwin's Principles of Divergence and Natural Selection: Why Fodor Was Almost Right
(/isis/citation/CBB001221609/)
Article
Deichmann, Ute;
(2010)
Gemmules and Elements: On Darwin's and Mendel's Concepts and Methods in Heredity
(/isis/citation/CBB001230066/)
Book
Costa, James T.;
(2014)
Wallace, Darwin, and the Origin of Species
(/isis/citation/CBB001422067/)
Article
Polizello, Andreza;
Pereira Martins, Lilian Al-Chueyr;
(2012)
Modelos microscópicos de herança no século XIX
(/isis/citation/CBB001212015/)
Be the first to comment!