Darwinian Heresies

Description

In Darwinian Heresies, some of today's leading 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 is guaranteed to interest, to excite, to infuriate, and to stimulate further work.

Abigail Lustig is a postdoctoral fellow at the Dibner Institute for the History of Science and Technology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She has previously held fellowships at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, Berlin, the SNRS, Paris, and the Universitat Aut-noma, Barcelona. Michael Ruse is Lucyle T. Werkmeister Professor of Philosophy at Florida State University. He is the author of many books, including The Darwinian Revolution: Science Red in Tooth and Claw (1999), Monad to Man: The Concept of Progress in Evolutionary Biology (1997), and Can a Darwinian be a Christian?: The Relationship between Science and Religion (Cambridge 2000). Robert J. Richards is professor of History and Philosophy, and director of the Fishbein Center for History of Science at the University of Chicago. He is the author of Darwin and the Emergence of Evolutionary Theories of Mind and Behavior (1987), The Meaning of Evolution (1992), and The Romantic Conception of Life: Science and Philosophy in the Age of Goethe (2002).

"A provocative analysis of evolutionary concepts for those engaged in the history of ideas." J.S. Schwartz, CUNY College of Staten Island, CHOICE "This collection of essays is really fun." New Biological Books "As this volume well demonstrates, questioning the existence, source, and nature of heresy in science can not only be highly profitable but also thought-provoking." Journal of the History of Biology