Journal of the History of Biology (2005) 38: 137152 DOI 10.

1007/s10739-004-6514-1

Springer 2005

Deconstructing Darwin: Evolutionary Theory in Context

DAVID L. HULL
Department of Philosophy Northwestern University Evanston, IL 60208-1315 USA E-mail: d-hull@northwestern.edu Abstract. The topic of this paper is external versus internal explanations, rst, of the genesis of evolutionary theory and, second, its reception. Victorian England was highly competitive and individualistic. So was the view of society promulgated by Malthus and the theory of evolution set out by Charles Darwin and A.R. Wallace. The fact that Darwin and Wallace independently produced a theory of evolution that was just as competitive and individualistic as the society in which they lived is taken as evidence for the impact that society has on science. The same conclusion is reached with respect to the reception of evolutionary theory. Because Darwins contemporaries lived in such a competitive and individualistic society, they were prone to accept a theory that exhibited these same characteristics. The trouble is that Darwin and Wallace did not live in anything like the same society and did not formulate the same theory. Although the character of Victorian society may have inuenced the acceptance of evolutionary theory, it was not the competitive, individualistic theory that Darwin and Wallace set out but a warmer, more comforting theory. Keywords: Darwin, evolutionary theory, externalism, internalism, natural selection, Robert Young, Victorian society, Wallace

Introduction For almost a half-century students of science have disagreed fundamentally about what inuences science. Put too crudely this controversy is between internalists and externalists.1 The traditional internalist view is that reason, argument and evidence play the major role in science. Other factors at times also enter into science, but the inuence of these factors is treated as being extraneous if not downright detrimental.
In 1969 Robert young complained that the terms internalist and externalist were too crude, referring to a hodgepodge of positions. In addition, the distinction is not a matter of either/or. Later, externalists urged that this terminology be jettisoned altogether because it was working against them; see Ruse this volume. For reviews of the inuence that Malthus had on Darwin, see Hodge, 1974, Hodge and Kohn, 1985, Bowler, 1988, and Radick, 2003.
1

138

DAVID L. HULL

Chief among these other factors are sociopolitical factors.2 Darwin lived in a competitive, individualistic, dog-eat-dog society. So the story goes, Darwin came up with a scientic theory that was just as competitive, individualistic and dog-eat-dog as Victorian society because of his experience in Victorian England. When A.R. Wallace, another Brit, came up with the same theory under the same conditions, the die was cast. Socio-economic factors determine the course of science. What is more, Darwins contemporaries accepted Darwins theory because it t in so nicely with this very same view of society. For example, according to Alexander Vucinich, Karl von Baer thought that the Darwinian theory was popular not because of its scientic merits but because it was in full harmony with the materialist bent of modern ideologues.3 Central to the internalistexternalist dispute is the commonplace distinction between causes, on the one hand, and reasons, views and ideas, on the other hand. When Darwin returned from his voyage, two million people lived in London and its immediate environs. Before Darwin died, the population had grown to four million. Living in such a huge, overcrowded megalopolis may cause one to have views about over-population. Reading the works of Adam Smith and Robert Malthus might also lead one to worry about over-population. But internalists treat these two factors dierently. The rst is simply a reaction. More is needed for it to count as science. The situation with respect to the internalist triumvirate is also problematic. There are no such things as good causes and bad causes, but there are good reasons and bad reasons, relevant arguments and irrelevant arguments, ample evidence and insucient evidence. If one reads the work of such economists as Smith and Malthus, one might become convinced that over-population does pose a problem. These reasons may turn out to be mistaken, but appealing to reasons is, according to internalists, the right sort of thing for scientists to do.

Just-So Stories For the past 25 years evolutionary biologists have debated the issue of the legitimacy of the sorts of Just-So stories that some evolutionary
In this literature the term factor serves as a generic term to refer to all sorts of causes, reasons, arguments and evidence. The rise of the mercantile middle class counts as a factor. So does the reading of Malthus or the argument from articial selection to natural selection. Student of science is also a generic euphemism, standing for anyone who studies science and scientists no matter the methods used. 3 Vucinich, 1974, p. 253; see other papers in Glick, 1974.
2

DECONSTRUCTING DARWIN

139

biologists tell.4 I happen to think that adaptive scenarios are among the most fascinating parts of evolutionary biology. Of course, some of these stories are a good deal better supported than are others, but they should not be discarded out of hand. The same observations hold for the sorts of stories that students of science tell about science. Internalists in their narratives concentrate on reason, argument and evidence, while externalists explain the course of science in terms of such sociopolitical forces as the rise of the mercantile middle class. Are these narratives simply one more example of Just-So stories? I dont think so. There is no way to know in advance the relative impact of the various factors that inuence science. Perhaps all of the data that Darwin collected on articial selection really did inuence his views on the evolution of species. Perhaps it was just so much mythical behavior designed to camouage the eects of his daily experience in Victorian England. I think that both sorts of factors inuence the course of science, and it is our task to nd out in particular cases which factors are operative and which not. In this paper I take seriously clams about what inuenced Darwin and later Wallace in the formulation of their theories of evolution. Casual Just-So stories are not good enough, whether external or internal. In evaluating the eects of both internal and external inuences on Darwin and his contemporaries, I had to decide which methods to adopt in my own work. To be sure I discuss all sorts of possible factors, but the methods I use are those common in the internalist camp; e.g., nding evidence to show how competitive and individualistic Victorian England actually was at the time. In short, I use internalist methods to evaluate the role of both internal and external explanations. This might seem somewhat unfair, but those externalist students of science who have addressed the issue of the formulation and acceptance of Darwins theory do the same. Even though they think that evidence does not play as major of a role in the decisions that scientists make as internalists do, they propose to convince their readers about the overwhelming inuence of factors other than evidence by presenting evidence.5 Another dierence between internalists and externalists is that internalists do not limit themselves just to what does inuence the course of science but include reference to what should inuence it. Such normative claims made by internalists separate them from externalists
Gould and Lewontin, 1979. Bohlin, 1991, pp. 600603 for a discussion of reexive relativism; see also Hull, 1988.
5 4

140

DAVID L. HULL

more than any other feature of their views. In my own work I have tried to present the full panoply of views and causes that inuence science, and on occasion I have not limited myself just to descriptions. Not only does the social structure of science inuence science, but also it should. For example, not only do scientists use each others work, but also they should. Paying attention to data contributes to the results of scientic research being trustworthy but so does mutual use. Social is not equivalent to mistaken.

Externalist Positions In Darwins own day, students of science saw an interplay between Darwins theory and politico-economical theories. For example, Charles Sanders Peirce claimed that the Origin of Species of Darwin merely extends politico-economical views of progress to the entire realm of animals and vegetable life. It is the Gospel of Greed.6 Here Peirce is explicit with respect to politico-economical views. They are views, not causes. The second half of the equation could refer either to causes or to views. Applied socio-political views can inuence plants and animals; e.g., with respect to conservation, but this does not seem to be what Peirce had in mind. Instead he is referring to how politico-economical views can inuence our beliefs about plants and animals. Views are inuencing views. Numerous authors since have repeated Peirces claim about the connection between evolutionary theory and politico-economic views. Robert Young, however, has been the most vocal, declaring that Darwins theory is an extension of laisse-faire economic theory from social science to biology.7 Periodically he has voiced views that are more measured, but in 1985 he is so condent about the implications of Malthus for Darwinism that he declared that, Except for scientic positivists and religious fundamentalists, then, the connection between Darwinism and society is acknowledged.8 Both Darwin and Wallace acknowledged the role that Robert Malthuss famous Essay played in their stumbling onto the principle of natural selection.9 Even so they make almost no reference to Malthus in their early publications. The three papers published in the Journal of the Linnean Society are a good case in point. Darwin opened the rst of
6 7 8 9

Peirce, 1893, vol. 6, p. 196. Young, 1969, p. 15. Young, 1985, p. 609. Malthus, 1803; Darwin read the 6th edition of 1926.

DECONSTRUCTING DARWIN

141

these papers, his Extract, with a reference to Malthus, but he does not mention Malthus in the second of his papers, the Abstract of his letter to Asa Gray. And then Wallace does not mention Malthus at all in his Linnean paper.10 When one turns to the rst seven volumes of Darwins collected correspondence, one discovers only two references to Malthus.11 Finally, in the Origin of Species Darwin cites Malthus but again only twice.12 Stumbling across Malthus may well have generated wow feelings of discovery in both Darwin and Wallace, but in the early years little in the way of textual evidence can be found of its signicance. We do not nd extensive references in the writings of Darwin and Wallace to the details of Malthuss theory. The familiar claim is that Darwin and later Wallace read the socioeconomic views of Malthus into their biological theories. What is rarely, if ever, mentioned is that Malthus himself begins his treatise by reasoning from biology to human beings.13 In the opening pages of the 1803 edition of his famous book, Malthus begins by noting the fecundity of plants and animals and then goes on to apply these observations to human beings. For example, if all the people in the world except Englishmen were removed from the face of the earth, within a few ages it would become completely replenished.14 Darwin in his Extract also begins by referring to Augustin Pyrame De Candolles observation that all of nature is at war and only then turns to Malthus on man.15 To be sure, Darwin and Wallace reasoned from economic theory to biology, but the prior inference was from biology to economics, the sort of inferential feedback loops common in science. Externalist students of science, however, nd this reciprocal inference somehow suspect. In the rest of this paper, I look at such claims much more carefully. In particular, we need to distinguish between causes (such as the rise of capitalism in Great Britain) and views or beliefs (such as the belief that science is progressive). The rise of capitalism may well have inuenced both the generation and the reception of natural selection, but the opposite claim provides an excellent example of a tail wagging a dog. If no one had ever come up with natural selection, I doubt that the rise of capitalism would have skipped a beat.
10 11 12 13 14 15

Darwin, 1859a; Wallace, 1859. Correspondence of Charles Darwin, 1989, vol. 5, p. 416; 1991, vol. 7, p. 279. Darwin, 1859b, pp. 5, 63. Himmelfarb, 1959, p. 133. Malthus, 1803, p. 14. Darwin, 1859a, pp. 45.

142

DAVID L. HULL

In this paper I begin by investigating how capitalist Great Britain inuenced the views that Darwin and Wallace had about biological evolution, in particular natural selection. I then turn to the inuence that the beliefs that Darwin and Wallace held on a variety of issues inuenced their beliefs about biological evolution, in particular natural selection. I do not discuss two well-worn topics the role of metaphors in general and religious beliefs in particular in the genesis and reception of evolutionary theory.

Victorian Society The social constructivists are certainly right about Victorian society being dog-eat-dog. All you have to do is read Dickens to get a feel for exactly how brutal the early years of capitalism were in England. The data on the period are staggering. Of the children put in work houses, 85% died before they were old enough to leave. But Victorians could also be extreme maudlin, especially when it came to faithful dogs and little match girls, but not suciently concerned to do much about these conditions. Instead they introduced Poor Laws that were so harsh that one might suspect that they were devised to make poor people strive even harder to free themselves from poverty. Herbert Spencer for one thought that these laws were not stringent enough. How much of this society did Darwin himself experience not just be aware of but actually experience? The answer is not much. Except for the years on the Beagle, Darwin lived quite comfortably on his fathers wealth, his own investments and his wifes dowry. She was, after all, a Wedgwood. Darwin was not royalty, but he was a gentleman. He could be accepted in polite company. That is how he was able to obtain his position on the Beagle as a companion to Captain Fitz-Roy. Darwin in turn brought along his own valet Syms Covington. Covington no doubt knew quite a bit about his master. If Darwins correspondence is any indication, Darwin knew very little about his servant. Wallace started out life in comfortable circumstances, but while he was still a child, his father lost his money. Thereafter Wallace was raised in what was known at the time as genteel poverty.16 Darwin continued his education in Edinburgh and Cambridge, while at fourteen Wallace had to leave school and start to earn a living. He ended up taking two voyages of discovery, not as a gentlemans companion but as a naturalist. He hoped to be able to sell his collections when he returned to England. Throughout
16

Endersby, 2003.

DECONSTRUCTING DARWIN

143

his life Wallace was short of money and had to earn a living however he could. Perhaps, in his early years, he was prepared for the life of a gentleman, but the need to earn money counted very strongly against him. He did not simply observe a life of poverty at a distance, nor just read about it. He experienced it. While Darwin was living high on the hog, Wallace was experiencing the dark underbelly of Victorian society, perhaps not as bad as T.H. Huxley experienced it, but still bad enough. Of course, one can dene society and same so broadly that everyone living in England at the time belonged to the same society, whether a chimney sweep, a beadle, an upstairs parlor maid or even Queen Victoria herself, but on any reasonable denition of society and same, people in England belonged to very dierent societies. They were also aware to varying degrees of the existence of segments of Victorian society other than their own. Perhaps the social gap between Darwin and Wallace was not as extreme as between Queen Victoria and a chimney sweep, but it was fairly substantial. At most Wallace became a peripheral member of the Darwinians. Darwin himself never became social friends with Wallace in the same way that he did with Huxley.17 However, the social experiences of Darwin and Wallace were so different that it is dicult to see how they can contribute much to explaining how the two men came up with the same theory.

Reason, Argument and Evidence Experience is one thing; knowledge is quite another. Wallace was not ignorant. He had been schooled enough for him to value education, but he was largely self-taught. Even before Wallace took his voyages, he had already adopted the radical social views of Robert Owen, social views much more radical than those Darwin ever held. How much social causes had on Wallaces social beliefs is hard to say, but they clearly were dierent from those that can be attributed to Darwin. Wallace had also been suciently impressed by Robert Chambers Vestiges to accept the evolution of species prior to leaving on his voyages.18 Once again,
T.H. Huxley came from much further down on the social ladder than did Wallace but rather rapidly became clubbable. Wallace never did (Endersby, 2003). Lady Lyell for one found Wallace too gauche for her tastes (Wallace, 1905, p. 220). Of course, Darwin was not all that impressed with Sir. John Herschels manners when they rst met, and yet Herschel did quite well for himself in Victorian Society. Also, even though Darwin was a gentleman and Wallace somewhat less so, both men produced very ungentlemanly theories (Bohlin, 1994). 18 Chambers, 1844.
17

144

DAVID L. HULL

parsing these causes and their eects is not easy. Beliefs about societies are still beliefs. Reasoning from beliefs about living creatures in general to beliefs about human beings and vice versa is not inherently mistaken. When one compares Darwin and Wallace in 1858 with respect to their status as scientists, only a couple of similarities leap to mind. Both Darwin and Wallace took voyages of discovery and were inuenced by Malthus at crucial times in their intellectual development. Darwin had been working on his Big Book for over 20 years when he got Wallaces bolt from the blue. He had been collecting massive amounts of data and in recent years had tried out his theory on some of the brightest men of his day. He began working largely alone but eventually began to collaborate with other scientists. One needs only to read the rst seven volumes of Darwins correspondence to see the huge numbers of letters to and from Darwin that dealt with narrowly scientic issues. Letter after letter concerned such things as the eects of cutting Hyacinth bulbs in half and dorkings having two or three toes. Internalists students of science take evidence very seriously. With respect to evidence in 1858, the status of Darwin and Wallace was quite dierent. For 28 years Darwin collected data, and once he came to accept evolution and natural selection, this data was converted into evidence for and against these views. For 10 years during his voyages Wallace collected the same sort of data as Darwin, all of it aimed at the evolution of species. In 1858 Wallace possessed a signicant amount of data supporting the evolution of species, but almost none for natural selection. After all, it had only just burst upon him as he recovered from a sickness. When Wallace was up to it, he wrote his paper and sent o a copy to Darwin. He knew no one else to whom he might send it. In sum, in 1858 Darwin and Wallace had collected some of the same sorts of evidence for the evolution of species, but the amounts diered markedly. A more signicant dierence between Darwin and Wallace was that Darwin had also collected an appreciable albeit impressionistic amount of evidence for natural selection; Wallace had collected almost none. Instead of the same evidence inuencing these two men to develop the same theory, the more accurate description is that these two men may have developed the same theory, but they did so on the basis of very dierent evidence.

Two Scientists and the Same Theory Until now I have argued that neither internal nor external factors go very far in explaining why Darwin and Wallace produced the same

DECONSTRUCTING DARWIN

145

theory of evolution. How come two scientists who had such dierent scientic and social backgrounds were led to come up with the same theory? However, on closer inspection, the theories that these two men set out were quite dierent. Thus the question becomes what dierences in the scientic and social background of Darwin and Wallace led them to come up with such dierent theories. However, sustaining such a position, given what Darwin and Wallace had to say on the subject, is quite a dicult task. Darwin says that he and Wallace arrived at the same theory, and he should know. In his autobiography Darwin remarked that Wallaces Linnean paper contained exactly the same theory as mine,19 and later in a paper celebrating the publication of the Linnean papers, Wallace claimed that he and Darwin had reached identically the same theory.20 After all, if Darwin had not thought that Wallaces paper was so similar in content to his own, he would not have worried about getting scooped. In 1855 Wallace published a paper in the Annals and Magazine of Natural History in which he argued that new species come into existence coincident in both time and space with a pre-existing, closely allied species.21 He did not openly proclaim that species evolve, but he came very close, close enough that Charles Lyell warned Darwin that he might be forestalled if he did not publish his own ideas and soon. That same year Darwin wrote to Wallace to request some specimens of domesticated and wild fowl but did not mention Wallaces 1855 paper. However, in their next exchange of letters, Darwin says: By your letter & even still more by your paper in Annals, a year or more ago, I can plainly see that we have thought much alike & to a certain extent have come to similar conclusions. In regard to the paper in the Annals, I agree to the truth of almost every word of your paper; & I daresay that you will agree with me that it is very rare to nd oneself agreeing pretty closely with any theoretical paper; for it is lamentable how each man draws his own dierent conclusions from the very same fact.22 Then Darwin received Wallaces paper. Lyell had been right. Darwin had been forestalled. I will not discuss the huge literature on who supposedly stole what from whom because it is not relevant to the argument in this paper. The issue is the similarity between the views of the two men in 1858. Upon receipt of Wallaces paper, Darwin wrote Lyell a letter, a letter that has probably been reprinted more frequently than any other in Darwins correspondence:
19 20 21 22

Darwin, 1889, vol. 1, p. 69. Shermer, 2002, p. 302. Wallace, 1855. Correspondence of Charles Darwin, 1990, vol. 6, p. 387.

146

DAVID L. HULL

Some years or so ago, you recommended me to read a paper by Wallace in the Annals, which had interested you & and as I was writing to him, I knew this would please him much, so I told him. He has to day sent me the enclosed & asked me to forward it to you. It seems to me well worth reading. Your words have come true with a vengeance that I should be forestalled. You said this when I explained to you here very briey my views of Natural Selection depending on the Struggle for existence. I never saw a more striking coincidence. If Wallace had my M.S. sketch written out in 1842 he could not have made a better short extract! Even his terms now stand as Heads of my Chapters.23 After much soul searching, Lyell and Hooker arranged to have the papers by Darwin and Wallace presented at the Linnean Society of London and later published in the Journal of the Linnean Society (Zoology). In retrospect 1858 is an articial cuto point. For 20 years prior to 1858 Darwin had been working on the transmutation of species, natural selection and a host of other issues. As Hodge and Kohn24 have shown Darwin reworked his views throughout these 20 years, and if Wallaces paper had not appeared, he would have continued this process, eventually publishing when he thought the time was right. As it is, he was to forced to curtail his studies until the Origin of Species appeared. Thereafter he continued to work on these and other issues, both in subsequent editions of the Origin and in later books. Time and again Darwin scholars have noted how dierent the views presented in the Linnean papers by Darwin and Wallace actually were from each other,25 but these observations seem not to have had much of an impact. The fact that a book on economics inuenced Darwin and Wallace to come up with the same biological theory is cited over and over again as evidence for the impact that social beliefs have on biological beliefs social beliefs, not social causes. The basic principle seems to be that the same social views produced the same biological theories. I do not intend to challenge the claim that the same social theory Malthuss theory inuenced both Darwin and Wallace, but I do intend to reject the view that the impact of this coincidence resulted in Darwin and Wallace formulating the same scientic theories.
Correspondence of Charles Darwin, 1991, vol. 7, p. 107. Hodge and Kohn, 1985. 25 Osborn, 1984, Nicholson, 1960, Ghiselin, 1969, Young, 1971, Kottler, 1985, Bowler, 1988, Desmond and Moore, 1991, and Radick, 2003.
24 23

DECONSTRUCTING DARWIN

147

Before the Origin The most striking feature of the Linnean papers was how strongly Wallace rejected Darwins argument from domestication to natural selection. Darwin reasoned that, if plant and animal breeders could produce so much change in so little time, one can only imagine how much modication could be produced by natural selection in a state of nature. In his paper, however, Wallace proclaimed, It will be observed that this argument rests entirely on the assumption, that varieties occurring in a state of nature are in all respects analogous to or even identical with those of domestic animals, and are governed by the same laws as regards their permanence or further variation. But it is the object of the present paper to show that this assumption is altogether false.26 Without realizing it at the time, Wallace was rejecting the primary argument in Darwins two papers and later in the Origin. Although Darwin does not mention Lamarck in his Linnean papers, he does refer to him once in the Origin but only to note that neuter insects count against the well-known doctrine of Lamarck.27 Later Darwin grew increasingly unhappy with Lyell for his constantly conjoining his name with that of Lamarck. Even so, Darwin grudgingly admitted that Lamarckian inheritance might have some eect on evolution. In his Linnean paper Wallace remarked that the hypothesis of Lamarck had been repeatedly and easily refuted by all writers on the subject of varieties and species, and as the years went by, he did not change his mind.28 The preceding dierences between Darwin and Wallace are so apparent that anyone who reads the three Linnean papers might well have noticed them, but there was also a more fundamental and abstruse dierence between Darwin and Wallace that might go unnoticed. Darwin thought that selection occurred in two ways organisms confronting their non-living environment and organisms competing with other organisms in both their own and other species. Wallace concentrated on environmental selection to the neglect of organismic selection. Finally, in his Extract Darwin mentioned a second, weaker form of selection sexual selection the struggle of males for females. Wallace did not discuss sexual selection in his Linnean paper and later disagreed with Darwin over the role of female choice. As time went by, these dierences only multiplied. Wallace never liked the term natural selection. It was too metaphorical, and its
26 27 28

Wallace, 1859, p. 66. Darwin, 1859b, p. 242. Wallace, 1859, p. 78.

148

DAVID L. HULL

metaphorical implications seemed to personify nature. Even so, he deferred to Darwin and used this oensive term. In addition, Wallace began by thinking that natural selection was all-powerful, while Darwin thought that it was the main but not the only directive force in evolution. Later Wallace had his doubts about natural selection, in particular with respect to three dierent sorts of phenomena the origin of crossand hybrid sterility, sexual dimorphism and last but certainly not least human beings. Wallace eventually came to have his doubts about the human mind. He could not see how it could evolve by entirely naturalistic causes. Darwin remained a thoroughgoing naturalist. If he had to introduce miracles, he would toss out his theory as so much rubbish at least so he says. As much as Wallace disagreed with Darwin on a host of counts, he insisted that he did not dier from Darwin with respect to the overwhelming importance of Natural Selection over all other agencies in the production of new species.29 But if one looks closer at this great principle, Darwin and Wallace can be seen to dier with respect both to its content and to its scope. I am not claiming that these two men did not understand each other, even though they did have trouble with respect to how they conceived varieties and individual dierences. I am claiming that they held very dierent theories about the evolution of species. Of course, such claims depend on our having some sort of objective criteria for individuating scientic theories criteria that we currently lack.

The Reception of Evolution and Natural Selection Numerous scholars have complained that Wallace did not get the credit he deserved for the genesis of evolutionary theory. This tradition has been continued with respect to the reception of evolutionary theory. Wallace gets even less credit and for good reason. The papers by Darwin and Wallace appeared in 1859 and caused hardly a ripple. It was Darwins Origin of Species that raised all the hubbub. If Wallace had returned to England immediately upon discovering the fate of his paper and started publishing on the evolution of species, we might today refer to the DarwinWallace Theory. As it was, Wallace did not return to England until 1862 and did not publish his Contributions to the Theory of Natural Selection until 1870.30 Whatever the early reception of evolutionary theory, Wallace did not play much of a role in it.
29 30

Wallace, 1889, p. iv; see also Shermer, 2002, pp. 149, 21. Wallace, 1870.

DECONSTRUCTING DARWIN

149

All of the preceding largely concerns two men Darwin and Wallace. What did they know and when did they know it? The reception of evolutionary theory concerns numerous people. Narratives are no longer good enough. Statistical studies are required. In 1958 Alvar rd published the rst book that supplies the sort of evidence Ellega needed to make general claims about Darwinism and the Darwinians.31 rd studied 115 British newspapers, magazines, and journals for Ellega 12 years after the publication of the Origin of Species. He found several trends. One was that the evolution of species was widely accepted but not the other parts of Darwins theory. Variations could not possibly be a matter of chance, and natural selection could not possibly do all the things that Darwin claimed for it. One of the paradoxes of Darwin studies is that neither scientists nor the general public would have taken Darwins theory so seriously if Darwin had not provided a detailed specication of his mechanism, but then they rejected the mechanism. According to the externalists, Darwins contemporaries accepted his theory so readily because it scratched their socio-cultural itches. Because Darwins theory was so competitive and individualistic and the society in which Darwin and his contemporaries lived was also competitive and individualistic, Darwins contemporaries accepted his theory. Victorian England was certainly competitive and individualistic, and eventually a signicant percentage of the intellectuals in Darwins day came to accept that species evolve on my estimation 75% by 1869 but they rejected just about every other aspect of Darwins theory. They would accept evolutionary theory just so long as certain oensive parts were removed just the parts that externalists cite as reasons for Darwins contemporaries accepting his theory. In short, the problem that needs solving is not why Darwin succeeded in getting his contemporaries to adopt his theory, but why he failed so miserably.32 Various theories of evolution became popular after 1859, but none of them were all that similar to Darwins theory. In reaction to the papers in Thomas Glicks The Comparative Reception of Darwinism (1972), Leeds was struck by how few of the gures discussed in this volume held a Darwinian view at all. Mostly they assimilated a phrase or an aspect of Darwins expression of his thought to their own understanding and thought, then, that they were Darwinians.33 Supposedly, the competitive and individualist character of Darwins theory explains why his contemporaries accepted Darwins theory when
31 32 33

rd, 1985, reissued 1990; see also van Wyhe. Ellega Hull, 2000. Leeds, 1972, p. 439.

150

DAVID L. HULL

these were the parts that had to be expunged if it was to be accepted. Some people surely adopted Darwins theory because it was so competitive and individualistic, but probably not many. In 1871 in a letter to Huxley, Darwin remarks that the pendulum is now swinging against our side, but I feel positive it will soon swing the other wayit will be a long battle, after we are dead and gone.34 Darwin did not know how prescient he was.

The Entangled Bank of Science Darwin ended his Origin of Species by referring to nature as forming an entangled bank. As evolutionary biologists have continued to study the evolution of species, they have discovered precisely how entangled such banks are. The same can be said with respect to science itself. It too forms an entangled bank. Both internalists and externalists have set forth certain claims about science. At rst these explanations may sound plausible. Characteristics of the societies in which scientist live might well inuence the science that they produce. But so can reason, argument and evidence. The trouble is that both sorts of explanation turn out to be very complicated. Students of science need to take both internal and external explanations more seriously. Just-So stories are not good enough.

References
Bohlin, Ingemar. 1991. Robert M. Young and Darwin Historiography. Social Studies of Science 21: 597648. 1994. Popularizing Darwin. Science as Culture 4: 425439. Bowler, Peter. 1988. The Non-Darwinian Revolution. Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins Press. Chambers, Robert. 1844. Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation. London: John Churchill. Darwin, Charles. 1859a. Extract from an Unpublished Work on Species and an Abstract of a Letter from C. Darwin, Esq., to Prof. Asa Gray. J. Loewenberg (ed.), Darwin, Wallace and the Theory of Natural Selection. Cambridge: Arlington Books. 1859b. The Origin of Species. London: Murray. 1899, The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, vol. 2 New York: D. Appleton. 1989, 1990, 1991. The Correspondence of Charles Darwin. F. Burkhardt and S. Smith (eds.), Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Desmond, Adrian and Moore, James. 1991. Darwin. New York: W.W. Norton.
34

Darwin, 1899, vol. 2, p. 328.

DECONSTRUCTING DARWIN

151

rd, Alvar. 1985. Darwin and the General Reader. Chicago: University of Chicago Ellega Press. Endersby, Jim. 2003. Escaping Darwins Shadow. Journal of the History of Biology 367: 385403. Ghiselin, Michael. 1969. The Triumph of the Darwinian Method. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Glick, Thomas F. (ed.). 1974. The Comparative Reception of Darwinism. Austin, TX and London: University of Texas Press. Gould, Stephan Jay and Lewontin, Richard. 1979. The Spandrels of San Marco and the Panglossian Paradigm: A Critique of the Adaptationist Programme. Proceedings of the Royal Society of London B 205: 581598. Himmelfarb, Gertrude. 1959. Darwin and the Darwinian Revolution. London: Chatto & Windus. Hodge, Michael Jonathan. 1974. England T.F. Glick (ed.), The Comparative Reception of Darwinism. Austin and London: University of Texas Press. and Kohn, David. 1985. The Immediate Origins of Natural Selection. D. Kohn (ed.), The Darwinian Heritage. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Hull, David L. 1988. Science as a Process: An Evolutionary Account of the Social and Conceptual Development of Science. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. 2000. Why did Darwin Fail? The Role of John Stuart Mill. R. Creath and J. Maienschein (eds.), Biology and Epistemology. Cambridge: University of Cambridge Press. Kottler, Malcom. 1985. Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace: Two Decades of Debate Over Natural Selection. D. Kohn (ed.), The Darwinian Heritage. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Leeds, Anthony. 1974. Darwinian and Darwinian Evolutionism in the Study of Society and Culture, T.F. Glick (ed.), The Comparative Reception of Darwinism. Austin and London: University of Texas Press. Malthus, Robert. 1803. An Essay on the Principle of Population 1826 ed., Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Nicholson, A.J. 1960. The Role of Population Dynamics in Natural Selection, S. Tax (ed.), Evolution after Darwin. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Osborn, Henry Faireld. 1894. From the Greeks to Darwin: An Outline of the Development of the Evolution Idea. New York: Columbia University Press. Peirce, Charles Sanders. 1893. Evolutionary Love. The Monist 3: 176200. Radick, Gregory. 2003. Is the Theory of Natural Selection Independent of its History? J. Hodge and G. Radick (eds.), The Cambridge Companion to Darwin. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Shermer, Michael. 2002. In Darwins Shadow. Oxford: Oxford University Press. van Wyhe, John. 2004. Phrenology and the Origins of Victorian Scientic Naturalism. Hants, England: Ashgate Press. Vucinich, Alexander. 1974. Russia: Biological Sciences, T.F. Glick (ed.), The Comparative Reception of Darwinism. Austin and London: University of Texas Press. Wallace, Alfred Russel. 1855. On the Law which has Regulated the Introduction of New Species. Annals and Magazine of Natural History 16: 184196. 1859. On the Tendency of Varieties to Depart Indenitely from the Original Type L. Loewenberg (ed.), Darwin, Wallace and the Theory of Natural Selection. Cambridge: Arlington Books.

152

DAVID L. HULL

Wallace, Alfred Russel. 1870. Contributions to the Theory of Natural Selection. London and New York: Macmillan. 1889. Darwinism: An Exposition of the Theory of Natural Selection 2nd ed., London and New York: Macmillan. 1905. My Life: A Record of Events and Opinions, vol. 2 London: Chapman Hall. Young, Robert. 1969. Malthus and the Evolutionists: The Common Context of Biological and Social Theory. Past and Present 43: 109145. 1971. Darwins Metaphor: Does Nature Select? The Monist 55: 442503. 1985. Darwinism is Social. David Kohn (ed.), The Darwinian Heritage. Princeton: Princeton University Press.