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Thomas S. Kuhn's The Structure of Scientific Revolutions was a
watershed event when it was published in 1962, upending the
previous understanding of science as a slow, logical accumulation
of facts and introducing, with the concept of the "paradigm shift,"
social and psychological considerations into the heart of the
scientific process. More than fifty years after its publication,
Kuhn's work continues to influence thinkers in a wide range of
fields, including scientists, historians, and sociologists. It is
clear that The Structure of Scientific Revolutions itself marks no
less of a paradigm shift than those it describes. In Kuhn's
"Structure of Scientific Revolutions" at Fifty, leading social
scientists and philosophers explore the origins of Kuhn's
masterwork and its legacy fifty years on. These essays exhume
important historical context for Kuhn's work, critically analyzing
its foundations in twentieth-century science, politics, and Kuhn's
own intellectual biography: his experiences as a physics graduate
student, his close relationship with psychologists before and after
the publication of Structure, and the Cold War framework of terms
such as "world view" and "paradigm."
Charles Darwin is easily the most famous scientist of the modern
age, and his theory of evolution is constantly referenced in many
contexts by scientists and nonscientist alike. And yet, despite how
frequently his ideas are evoked, there remains a surprising amount
we don't know about the father of modern evolutionary thinking, his
intellectual roots, and the science he produced. Debating Darwin
seeks to change that, bringing together two leading Darwin scholars
Robert J. Richards and Michael Ruse to engage in a spirited and
insightful dialogue, offering their interpretations of Darwin and
their critiques of each other's thinking. Examining key
disagreements about Darwin that continue to confound even committed
Darwinists, Richards and Ruse offer divergent views on the origins
and nature of Darwin and his ideas. Ruse argues that Darwin was
quintessentially British and that the roots of his thought can be
traced back to the eighteenth century, particularly to the
Industrial Revolution and thinkers such as Adam Smith and Thomas
Robert Malthus. Ruse argues that when these influences are
appreciated, we can see how Darwin's work in biology is an
extension of their theories. In contrast, Richards presents Darwin
as a more cosmopolitan, self-educated man, influenced as much by
French and particularly German thinkers. Above all, argues
Richards, it was Alexander von Humboldt who both inspired Darwin
and gave him the conceptual tools that he needed to find and
formulate his evolutionary hypotheses. Together, the authors show
how the reverberations of the contrasting views on Darwin's
influences can be felt in theories about the nature of natural
selection, the role of metaphor in science, and the place of God in
Darwin's thought. Revealing how much there still is to investigate
and interrogate about Darwin's ideas, Debating Darwin contributes
to our understanding of evolution itself. The book concludes with a
jointly authored chapter that brings this debate into the present,
focusing on human evolution, consciousness, religion, and morality.
This will be powerful, essential reading for anyone seeking a
comprehensive understanding of modern-day evolutionary science and
philosophy.
Did Darwin see evolution as progressive, directed toward producing
ever more advanced forms of life? Most contemporary scholars say
no. In this challenge to prevailing views, Robert J. Richards says
yes--and argues that current perspectives on Darwin and his theory
are both ideologically motivated and scientifically unsound.
This provocative new reading of Darwin goes directly to the origins
of evolutionary theory. Unlike most contemporary biologists or
historians and philosophers of science, Richards holds that Darwin
did concern himself with the idea of progress, or telos, as he
constructed his theory. Richards maintains that Darwin drew on the
traditional embryological meanings of the terms "evolution" and
"descent with modification." In the 1600s and 1700s, "evolution"
referred to the embryological theory of preformation, the idea that
the embryo exists as a miniature adult of its own species that
simply grows, or evolves, during gestation. By the early 1800s,
however, the idea of preformation had become the concept of
evolutionary recapitulation, the idea that during its development
an embryo passes through a series of stages, each the adult form of
an ancestor species.
Richards demonstrates that, for Darwin, embryological
recapitulation provided a graphic model of how species evolve. If
an embryo could be seen as successively taking the structures and
forms of its ancestral species, then one could see the evolution of
life itself as a succession of species, each transformed from its
ancestor. Richards works with the "Origin" and other published and
archival material to show that these embryological models were much
on Darwin's mind as he considered the evidence for descentwith
modification.
Why do so many modern researchers find these embryological roots of
Darwin's theory so problematic? Richards argues that the current
tendency to see evolution as a process that is not progressive and
not teleological imposes perspectives on Darwin that incorrectly
deny the clearly progressive heart of his embryological models and
his evolutionary theory.
A collection of essays investigating key historical and scientific
questions relating to the concept of natural purpose in Kant's
philosophy of biology. Understanding Purpose is an exploration of
the central concept of natural purpose [Naturzweck] in Kant's
philosophy of biology. Kant's work in this area is marked by a
strong teleological concern: living organisms, in his view, are
qualitatively different from mechanistic devices, and as a result
they cannot be understood by means of the same principles. At the
same time, Kant's own use of the concept of purpose does not
presuppose any theological commitments, and is merely "regulative";
that is, it is employed as a heuristic device. The contributors to
this volume also investigate the following key historical questions
relating to Kant's philosophy of biology: How does it relate to
European work in the life sciences that was done before Kant
arrived on the scene? How did Kant's unique approach to the
philosophy of biology in turn influence later work in this area?
The issues explored in this volume are as pertinent to the history
of philosophy as they are to the history of science -- it is
precisely the blurred boundaries between these two disciplines that
allows for new perspectives on Kantianism and early
nineteenth-century German biology to emerge. Contributors:
Jean-Claude Dupont, Mark Fisher, Philippe Huneman, Robert J.
Richards, Phillip R. Sloan, Stephane Schmitt, and John Zammito.
Philippe Huneman is researcher at the Centre National de la
Recherche Scientifique Unit of the Universite Paris.
In tracing the history of DarwinOCOs accomplishment and the
trajectory of evolutionary theory during the late nineteenth and
early twentieth centuries, most scholars agree that Darwin
introduced blind mechanism into biology, thus banishing moral
values from the understanding of nature. According to the standard
interpretation, the principle of survival of the fittest has
rendered human behavior, including moral behavior, ultimately
selfish. Few doubt that Darwinian theory, especially as construed
by the masterOCOs German disciple, Ernst Haeckel, inspired Hitler
and led to Nazi atrocities.aaaaaaaaaaaIn this collection of essays,
Robert J. Richards argues that this orthodox view is wrongheaded. A
close historical examination reveals that Darwin, in more
traditional fashion, constructed nature with a moral spine and
provided it with a goal: man as a moral creature. The book takes up
many other topicsOCoincluding the character of DarwinOCOs chief
principles of natural selection and divergence, his dispute with
Alfred Russel Wallace over manOCOs big brain, the role of language
in human development, his relationship to Herbert Spencer, how much
his views had in common with HaeckelOCOs, and the general problem
of progress in evolution. Moreover, Richards takes a forceful stand
on the timely issue of whether Darwin is to blame for HitlerOCOs
atrocities. "Was Hitler a Darwinian? "is intellectual history at
its boldest.
"
"All art should become science and all science art; poetry and
philosophy should be made one." Friedrich Schlegel's words
perfectly capture the project of the German Romantics, who believed
that the aesthetic approaches of art and literature could reveal
patterns and meaning in nature that couldn't be uncovered through
rationalistic philosophy and science alone. In this wide-ranging
work, Robert J. Richards shows how the Romantic conception of the
world influenced (and was influenced by) both the lives of the
people who held it and the development of nineteenth-century
science.
Integrating Romantic literature, science, and philosophy with an
intimate knowledge of the individuals involved--from Goethe and the
brothers Schlegel to Humboldt and Friedrich and Caroline
Schelling--Richards demonstrates how their tempestuous lives shaped
their ideas as profoundly as their intellectual and cultural
heritage. He focuses especially on how Romantic concepts of the
self, as well as aesthetic and moral considerations--all tempered
by personal relationships--altered scientific representations of
nature. Although historians have long considered Romanticism at
best a minor tributary to scientific thought, Richards moves it to
the center of the main currents of nineteenth-century biology,
culminating in the conception of nature that underlies Darwin's
evolutionary theory.
Uniting the personal and poetic aspects of philosophy and science
in a way that the German Romantics themselves would have honored,
"The Romantic Conception of Life" alters how we look at Romanticism
and nineteenth-century biology.
With insight and wit, Robert J. Richards focuses on the development
of evolutionary theories of mind and behavior from their first
distinct appearance in the eighteenth century to their
controversial state today. Particularly important in the nineteenth
century were Charles Darwin's ideas about instinct, reason, and
morality, which Richards considers against the background of
Darwin's personality, training, scientific and cultural concerns,
and intellectual community. Many critics have argued that the
Darwinian revolution stripped nature of moral purpose and ethically
neutered the human animal. Richards contends, however, that Darwin,
Herbert Spencer, and their disciples attempted to reanimate moral
life, believing that the evolutionary process gave heart to
unselfish, altruistic behavior.
Richards's book is now the obvious introduction to the history of
ideas about mind and behavior in the nineteenth century.--Mark
Ridley, Times Literary Supplement
Not since the publication of Michael Ghiselin's The Triumph of the
Darwinian Method has there been such an ambitious, challenging, and
methodologically self-conscious interpretation of the rise and
development and evolutionary theories and Darwin's role
therein.--John C. Greene, Science
His book . . . triumphantly achieves the goal of all great
scholarship: it not only informs us, but shows us why becoming thus
informed is essential to understanding our own issues and
projects.--Daniel C. Dennett, Philosophy of Science
Thomas S. Kuhn's The Structure of Scientific Revolutions was a
watershed event when it was published in 1962, upending the
previous understanding of science as a slow, logical accumulation
of facts and introducing, with the concept of the "paradigm shift,"
social and psychological considerations into the heart of the
scientific process. More than fifty years after its publication,
Kuhn's work continues to influence thinkers in a wide range of
fields, including scientists, historians, and sociologists. It is
clear that The Structure of Scientific Revolutions itself marks no
less of a paradigm shift than those it describes. In Kuhn's
"Structure of Scientific Revolutions" at Fifty, leading social
scientists and philosophers explore the origins of Kuhn's
masterwork and its legacy fifty years on. These essays exhume
important historical context for Kuhn's work, critically analyzing
its foundations in twentieth-century science, politics, and Kuhn's
own intellectual biography: his experiences as a physics graduate
student, his close relationship with psychologists before and after
the publication of Structure, and the Cold War framework of terms
such as "world view" and "paradigm."
In Darwinian Heresies, which was originally published in 2004,
prominent historians and philosophers of science trace the history
of evolutionary thought, and challenge many of the assumptions that
have built up over the years. Covering a wide range of issues
starting in the eighteenth century, Darwinian Heresies brings us
through the time of Charles Darwin and the Origin, and then through
the twentieth century to the present. It is suggested that Darwin's
true roots lie in Germany, not his native England, that Russian
evolutionism is more significant than many are prepared to allow,
and that the true influence on twentieth-century evolution biology
was not Charles Darwin at all, but his often-despised contemporary,
Herbert Spencer. The collection was intended to interest, to
excite, to infuriate, and to stimulate further work.
The Origin of Species by Charles Darwin is universally recognized
as one of the most important science books ever written. Published
in 1859, it was here that Darwin argued for both the fact of
evolution and the mechanism of natural section. The Origin of
Species is also a work of great cultural and religious
significance, in that Darwin maintained that all organisms,
including humans, are part of a natural process of growth from
simple forms. This Companion commemorates the 150th anniversary of
the publication of the Origin of Species and examines its main
arguments. Drawing on the expertise of leading authorities in the
field, it also provides the contexts - religious, social,
political, literary, and philosophical - in which the Origin was
composed. Written in a clear and friendly yet authoritative manner,
this volume will be essential reading for both scholars and
students More broadly, it will appeal to general readers who want
to learn more about one of the most important and controversial
books of modern times.
The Origin of Species by Charles Darwin is universally recognized
as one of the most important science books ever written. Published
in 1859, it was here that Darwin argued for both the fact of
evolution and the mechanism of natural section. The Origin of
Species is also a work of great cultural and religious
significance, in that Darwin maintained that all organisms,
including humans, are part of a natural process of growth from
simple forms. This Companion commemorates the 150th anniversary of
the publication of the Origin of Species and examines its main
arguments. Drawing on the expertise of leading authorities in the
field, it also provides the contexts - religious, social,
political, literary, and philosophical - in which the Origin was
composed. Written in a clear and friendly yet authoritative manner,
this volume will be essential reading for both scholars and
students More broadly, it will appeal to general readers who want
to learn more about one of the most important and controversial
books of modern times.
In tracing the history of Darwin's accomplishment and the
trajectory of evolutionary theory during the late nineteenth and
early twentieth centuries, most scholars agree that Darwin
introduced blind mechanism into biology, thus banishing moral
values from the understanding of nature. According to the standard
interpretation, the principle of survival of the fittest has
rendered human behavior, including moral behavior, ultimately
selfish. Few doubt that Darwinian theory, especially as construed
by the master's German disciple, Ernst Haeckel, inspired Hitler and
led to Nazi atrocities. In this collection of essays, Robert J.
Richards argues that this orthodox view is wrongheaded. A close
historical examination reveals that Darwin, in more traditional
fashion, constructed nature with a moral spine and provided it with
a goal: man as a moral creature. The book takes up many
topics-including the character of Darwin's chief principles of
natural selection and divergence, his dispute with Alfred Russel
Wallace over man's big brain, the role of language in human
development, his relationship to Herbert Spencer, how much his
views had in common with Haeckel's, and the general problem of
progress in evolution. Moreover, Richards takes a forceful stand on
the timely issue of whether Darwin is to blame for Hitler's
atrocities. Was Hitler a Darwinian? is intellectual history at its
boldest.
In Darwinian Heresies, which was originally published in 2004,
prominent historians and philosophers of science trace the history
of evolutionary thought, and challenge many of the assumptions that
have built up over the years. Covering a wide range of issues
starting in the eighteenth century, Darwinian Heresies brings us
through the time of Charles Darwin and the Origin, and then through
the twentieth century to the present. It is suggested that Darwin's
true roots lie in Germany, not his native England, that Russian
evolutionism is more significant than many are prepared to allow,
and that the true influence on twentieth-century evolution biology
was not Charles Darwin at all, but his often-despised contemporary,
Herbert Spencer. The collection was intended to interest, to
excite, to infuriate, and to stimulate further work.
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