Evolution Before Darwin: Theories of the Transmutation of Species in Edinburgh, 1804–1834 (2019)
Jenkins, Bill (Author)
Edinburgh University Press
Physical Details: 232
Language: English
It was long believed that evolutionary theories received an almost universally cold reception in British natural history circles in the first half of the nineteenth century. However, a relatively recently serious doubt has been cast on this assumption. This book shows that Edinburgh in the late 1820s and early 1830s was witness to a ferment of radical new ideas on the natural world, including speculation on the origin and evolution of life, at just the time when Charles Darwin was a student in the city. Those who were students in Edinburgh at the time could have hardly avoided coming into contact with these new ideas. This book is the first major study of what was probably the most important centre or pre-Darwinian evolutionary thought in the British Isles. It sheds new light on the genesis and development of one of the most important scientific theories in the history of western thought.
...MoreReview Evelleen Richards (2022) Review of "Evolution Before Darwin: Theories of the Transmutation of Species in Edinburgh, 1804–1834". Isis: International Review Devoted to the History of Science and Its Cultural Influences (pp. 450-451).
Review Koen B. Tanghe (2020) Review of "Evolution Before Darwin: Theories of the Transmutation of Species in Edinburgh, 1804–1834". Journal of the History of Biology (pp. 203-207).
Similar Citations
Article
Bill Jenkins;
(2020)
Race Before Darwin: Variation, Adaptation and the Natural History of Man in Post-Enlightenment Edinburgh, 1790–1835
(/isis/citation/CBB902634281/)
Article
Derek Partridge;
(2021)
Mind the step: Did Hooker's judgement clinch Darwin's disenchantment?
(/isis/citation/CBB182749825/)
Article
Duarte, Regina Horta;
(2013)
Between the National and the Universal: Natural History Networks in Latin America in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries
(/isis/citation/CBB001321224/)
Book
Curtis N. Johnson;
(2019)
Darwin's Historical Sketch: An Examination of the 'Preface' to the Origin of Species
(/isis/citation/CBB352478446/)
Book
Hanna Hodacs;
Stéphane Van Damme;
Kenneth Nyberg;
(2018)
Linnaeus, Natural History and the Circulation of Knowledge
(/isis/citation/CBB833759855/)
Article
Peter Harrison;
(2016)
What was historical about natural history? Contingency and explanation in the science of living things
(/isis/citation/CBB972800240/)
Article
Bogdana Stamenković;
(2022)
Humboldt, Darwin, and theory of evolution
(/isis/citation/CBB762773601/)
Article
Wendy McGlashan;
(2022)
John Kay’s The craft in danger (1817): Graphic satire and natural history in nineteenth-century Edinburgh
(/isis/citation/CBB917614120/)
Article
Bill Jenkins;
(2022)
The ‘Stronsay Beast’: Testimony, evidence and authority in early nineteenth-century natural history
(/isis/citation/CBB791076306/)
Article
Peter B. Logan;
Martin A. Sidor;
(2021)
John James Audubon's Overlooked “Great Work”: His Ornithological Biography
(/isis/citation/CBB976769881/)
Article
Swinney, Geoffrey N.;
(2010)
Edward Forbes (1815--1854) and the Exhibition of Natural Order in Edinburgh
(/isis/citation/CBB001031439/)
Article
Bill Jenkins;
(2016)
The Platypus in Edinburgh: Robert Jameson, Robert Knox and the Place of the Ornithorhynchus in Nature, 1821–24
(/isis/citation/CBB879747957/)
Book
Chalmers, J.;
(2003)
Audubon in Edinburgh: The Scottish Associates of John James Audubon
(/isis/citation/CBB000530199/)
Chapter
Lamb, Marion J.;
(2011)
Attitudes to Soft Inheritance in Great Britain, 1930s-1970s
(/isis/citation/CBB001500090/)
Book
Allen, David Elliston;
(2001)
Naturalists and Society: The Culture of Natural History in Britain, 1700-1900
(/isis/citation/CBB000100994/)
Article
Marco Tamborini;
(2020)
Challenging the Adaptationist Paradigm: Morphogenesis, Constraints, and Constructions
(/isis/citation/CBB737891024/)
Book
Maddox, Brenda;
(2007)
Freud's Wizard: Ernest Jones and the Transformation of Psychoanalysis
(/isis/citation/CBB000930471/)
Article
Natalia Gándara-Chacana;
(2022)
Gender, Place and the Validation of Knowledge: The Transnational Debate about the Effects of the Chilean Earthquakes of 1822 and 1835 on Land Elevation
(/isis/citation/CBB706157791/)
Chapter
Gissis, Snait B.;
(2011)
Lamarckian Problematics in Historical Perspective
(/isis/citation/CBB001500082/)
Book
Matthew Wale;
(2022)
Making Entomologists: How Periodicals Shaped Scientific Communities in Nineteenth-Century Britain
(/isis/citation/CBB883076998/)
Notes and Records: The Royal Society Journal of the History of Science
Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences
Journal of the History of Biology
Isis: International Review Devoted to the History of Science and Its Cultural Influences
History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences
Be the first to comment!