Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Dedication
- Preface
- PREFACE TO THE PAPERBACK IMPRESSION
- Introduction: the terrain of revision
- PART I HISTORIANS AND HISTORIOGRAPHY
- PART II DARWINISM AND EVOLUTIONARY THOUGHT
- 5 Darwinism in transition
- 6 The challenge of Lamarckian evolution
- 7 The vogue of Herbert Spencer
- 8 Darwinism and Neo-Darwinism
- PART III THEOLOGY AND EVOLUTION
- Conclusion: on coming to terms with Darwin
- Dedication
- Notes to the text
- Bibliography
- Index
8 - Darwinism and Neo-Darwinism
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 22 January 2010
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Dedication
- Preface
- PREFACE TO THE PAPERBACK IMPRESSION
- Introduction: the terrain of revision
- PART I HISTORIANS AND HISTORIOGRAPHY
- PART II DARWINISM AND EVOLUTIONARY THOUGHT
- 5 Darwinism in transition
- 6 The challenge of Lamarckian evolution
- 7 The vogue of Herbert Spencer
- 8 Darwinism and Neo-Darwinism
- PART III THEOLOGY AND EVOLUTION
- Conclusion: on coming to terms with Darwin
- Dedication
- Notes to the text
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
Species have been modified, during a long course of descent, … chiefly through the natural selection of numerous successive, slight, favourable variations; aided in an important manner by the inherited effects of the use and disuse of parts; and in an unimportant manner, that is in relation to adaptive structures, whether past or present, by the direct action of external conditions, and by variations which seem to us in our ignorance to arise spontaneously. It appears that I formerly underrated the frequency and value of these latter forms of variation, as leading to permanent modifications of structure independently of natural selection. But as my conclusions have lately been much misrepresented, and it has been stated that I attribute the modification of species exclusively to natural selection, I may be permitted to remark that in the first edition of this work, and subsequently, I placed in a most conspicuous position – namely, at the close of the Introduction – the following words: ‘I am convinced that natural selection has been the main but not the exclusive means of modification.’ This has been of no avail. Great is the power of steady misrepresentation; but the history of science shows that fortunately this power does not long endure.
Charles DarwinIf there is but one passage in all Darwin's publications that set the stage for the discussion of evolutionary theory in the closing decades of the nineteenth century, it is this paragraph from the conclusion to the last edition of the Origin of Species (1872).
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- Chapter
- Information
- The Post-Darwinian ControversiesA Study of the Protestant Struggle to Come to Terms with Darwin in Great Britain and America, 1870-1900, pp. 174 - 190Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1979