| Author |
Richards, Robert J. (Robert John), 1942-
|
| Title |
The meaning of evolution : the morphological construction and ideological reconstruction of Darwin's theory / Robert J. Richards. |
| OCLC |
23868205 |
| ISBN |
0226712028 |
|
9780226712024 |
|
0226712036 |
|
9780226712031 |
| Publisher |
Chicago : University of Chicago Press, [1992] |
|
©1992 |
| Description |
xv, 205 pages : illustrations ; 21 cm. |
Other
Subject heading/s |
Darwin, Charles, 1809-1882.
|
| LC Subject heading/s |
Evolution (Biology)
|
| Bibliography |
Includes bibliographical references (pages 181-190) and index. |
| Summary |
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 descent with 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. AnnotationPublished: January 2014. |
| Review |
There is no shortage of books about Charles Darwin that attempt to analyze his motivations and biases as he crafted On the Origin of Species (1860). Adding to this abundance, Richards, in this brief but well written volume, argues that Darwin was at heart teleological and progressive, and that the primary metaphor for his view of evolution was embryology, the progressive development of a creature from a simple to a complex state. Although this book could be read and understood by anyone interested in Darwin, it will be of particular interest to those readers who already have a firm understanding of current views about Darwin. Richards argues that because of present beliefs about nondirectionality and nonprogessiveness of the evolutionary process, scholars have tended to interpret Darwin's opinions as reflecting current orthodoxy, an error in Richards's opinion. Richards believes that Darwin's conceptions about evolution were, in reality, similar to those of Ernst Haeckel, author of the theory that states that "ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny." This book is meant to be argumentative and the views of its author will not be embraced by all readers. It adds to the debates about Darwin and could serve well in seminars that focus on the history of evolutionary biology. Undergraduate; graduate. J. C. Kricher; Wheaton College (MA)--Choice Review. |
| Awards note |
Gordon J. Laing Award. |
|
Pfizer Award. |
|
George Sarton Medal from the History of Science Society. |
|
Laing Prize from the University of Chicago Press. |
|
Earned a Simon Guggenheim Memorial Fellowship. |
|
