1794: Scottish Scientist Developed Evolution Theory Before Darwin...
Rich Travsky
Welsh academic uncovers 'new' Darwin
Oct 15 2003
A Welsh professor has bought to light new evidence suggesting that a
Scottish geologist came up with the theory of natural selection long
before Charles Darwin.
Dr James Hutton is said to have developed an almost identical explanation
for evolution 65 years before The Origin of the Species was published in
1859.
Professor Paul Pearson, from the University of Cardiff, uncovered a whole
chapter on selection theory in a rare 1794 publication by Dr Hutton.
The find supplements a similar but briefer account in an unpublished
manuscript by the geologist entitled Elements of Agriculture, which dates
from about the same time.
Professor Pearson located the new work, which runs to three volumes and
more than 2,000 pages, in the National Library of Scotland.
Writing in the journal Nature, he explained how Dr Hutton's experiments in
animal and plant breeding led him to observe new traits arising with every
generation.
Dr Hutton argued that this 'seminal variation' was passed on to offspring
by individuals who adapted and survived.
He wrote that "those which depart most from the best-adapted constitution
will be most liable to perish".
Species would be continually adapting to local conditions, and meeting the
demands of a changing environment.
"Although he never used the term, Hutton clearly articulated the principle
of evolution by natural selection," said Professor Pearson.
...
John Wilkins
>
http://icwales.icnetwork.co.uk/0100news/0200wales/content_objectid=13518
472_method=full_siteid=50082_headline=-Welsh-academic-uncovers--new--Dar
As Gould notes in his Brick, almost *everybody* was publishing some form
of selectionist theory - it was in the air due to the influence of Adam
Smith's hidden hand economics (also at Edinburgh, right?). But the first
person to argue that selection would cause change rather than inhibit it
was Patrick Mathew, and the first person to suggest this would explain
new species was Charles Darwin. Nearly everyone else held that selection
would maintain species at their "type".
--
John Wilkins wilkins.id.au
For long you live and high you fly,
and smiles you'll give and tears you'll cry
and all you touch and all you see is all your life will ever be
Dave Eadsforth
<wil...@wehi.edu.au> writes
Did not one ancient Greek - and I cannot remember which, conclude that
mankind must have developed from more primitive types of human because
of the time it took parents to bring up a helpless new born baby,
whereas the offspring of 'simpler' animals could fend for themselves
soon after birth?
Cheers,
Dave
--
Dave Eadsforth
John Wilkins
Anaximander, and he supposed men sprang from fishlike creatures. Mayr
thinks this is not evolution, but it is clearly a transmutationist
account of the human species. But there are many precursors of these
ideas. Few of them had any lasting influence or led in any way to
further research.
In the 1890s, Henry Osborne, the neo-Lamarckian, published
Osborn, Henry Fairfield. 1894. From the Greeks to Darwin: An outline of
the development of the evolution idea, Columbia University Biological
Series. I. New York: Macmillan.
It is this that is the basis for the continuing tradition of trying to
show how others pre-empted Darwin. But few of these ideas were much like
Darwin's evolutionary theory - it is more a case that there are
recurring themes that Darwin independently in most cases reformulated
into a single set of inter-dependent hypotheses. None of them actually
formulated what *we* would think of as evolution. Most of these supposed
precursors were, in fact, merely reprising the Great Chain of Being -
the eclectic mix of Plato and Aristotle that ruled medieval thinking on
natural history right up until Leibniz and Kant.
I have a FAQ at the Talk.Origins Archive <http://www.talkorigins.org> on
"Darwin's Precursors and Influences" if you want to go further - I give
refs. Also, the Gould ref is
Gould, Stephen Jay. 2002. The structure of evolutionary theory.
Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, page 137.
Dave Eadsforth
<wil...@wehi.edu.au> writes
>Dave Eadsforth <da...@magnum.demon.co.uk> wrote:
>
SNIP
>> >
>> >As Gould notes in his Brick, almost *everybody* was publishing some form
>> >of selectionist theory - it was in the air due to the influence of Adam
>> >Smith's hidden hand economics (also at Edinburgh, right?). But the first
>> >person to argue that selection would cause change rather than inhibit it
>> >was Patrick Mathew, and the first person to suggest this would explain
>> >new species was Charles Darwin. Nearly everyone else held that selection
>> >would maintain species at their "type".
>>
>> Did not one ancient Greek - and I cannot remember which, conclude that
>> mankind must have developed from more primitive types of human because
>> of the time it took parents to bring up a helpless new born baby,
>> whereas the offspring of 'simpler' animals could fend for themselves
>> soon after birth?
>>
>Anaximander, and he supposed men sprang from fishlike creatures. Mayr
>thinks this is not evolution, but it is clearly a transmutationist
>account of the human species. But there are many precursors of these
>ideas. Few of them had any lasting influence or led in any way to
>further research.
>
Thanks for reminding me of this worthy gentleman's most memorable name
:-)
>
>I have a FAQ at the Talk.Origins Archive <http://www.talkorigins.org> on
>"Darwin's Precursors and Influences" if you want to go further - I give
>refs. Also, the Gould ref is
>
>Gould, Stephen Jay. 2002. The structure of evolutionary theory.
>Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, page 137.
Thanks for refs.