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211Understanding Purpose: Kant and the Philosophy of BiologyBoydell & Brewer. 2007.A collection of essays investigating key historical and scientific questions relating to the concept of natural purpose in Kant's philosophy of biology.
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140The innate and the learned: The evolution of Konrad Lorenz's theory of instinctPhilosophy of the Social Sciences 4 (2): 111-133. 1974.
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161Though not the first to use the term "psychology" (psychologia), ' Christian Wolff did give it currency in the mid-eighteenth century. He was the first to mark off the discipline of empirical psychology and to distinguish it from rational, or theoretical, psychology. This distinction and his conception of the two corresponding methods of conducting psychological inquiry, especially his emphasis on the use of introspection, profoundly inffuenced the course of psychological..
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48Historians, the good ones, mark a century by intellectual and social boundaries rather than by the turn of the calendar page. Only through fortuitous accident might occasions of consequence occur at the very beginning of a century. Imaginative historians do tend, however, to invest a date like 1800 with powers that attract events of significance. It is thus both fortunate and condign that Abiology@ came to linguistic and conceptual birth with the new century. Precisely in 1800, Karl Friedrich Bu…Read more
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30Darwin's Romantic Biology. The Foundation of His Evolutionary Ethics'In Jane Maienschein & Michael Ruse (eds.), Biology and the foundation of ethics, Cambridge University Press. pp. 113--53. 1999.
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32Origin’s Chapter III: The Two Faces of Natural SelectionIn Maria Elice Brzezinski Prestes (ed.), Understanding Evolution in Darwin's “Origin”: The Emerging Context of Evolutionary Thinking, Springer Verlag. pp. 237-244. 2023.Chapter III contains several puzzles and unexpected features. The first puzzle regards the chapter’s relationship to Chapter IV: Natural Selection. Both chapters treat of natural selection, so what distinguishes them? Is it that Chapter IV indicates the intelligence behind nature’s selections and Chapter III introduces the analog of intelligence? And is it that Chapter III suggests that natural selection performs an eliminative function, while Chapter IV shows the positive impact of selection? I…Read more
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25A Defense of Evolutionary EthicsIn Michael Ruse (ed.), Philosophy After Darwin: Classic and Contemporary Readings, Princeton University Press. pp. 388-410. 2009.
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73The Emergence of Evolutionary Biology of Behaviour in the Early Nineteenth CenturyBritish Journal for the History of Science 15 (3): 241-280. 1982.The sciences of ethology and sociobiology have as premisses that certain dispositions and behavioural patterns have evolved with species and, therefore, that the acts of individual animals and men must be viewed in light of innate determinates. These ideas are much older than the now burgeoning disciplines of the biology of behaviour. Their elements were fused in the early constructions of evolutionary theory, and they became integral parts of the developing conception. Historians, however, have…Read more
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136A Defense of Evolutionary EthicsBiology and Philosophy 1 (3): 265-293. 1986.From Charles Darwin to Edward Wilson, evolutionary biologists have attempted to construct systems of evolutionary ethics. These attempts have been roundly criticized, most often for having committed the naturalistic fallacy. In this essay, I review the history of previous efforts at formulating an evolutionary ethics, focusing on the proposals of Darwin and Wilson. I then advance and defend a proposal of my own. In the last part of the essay, I try to demonstrate that my revised version of evolu…Read more
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21Was Hitler a Darwinian?: disputed questions in the history of evolutionary theoryUniversity of Chicago Press. 2013.Darwin's theory of natural selection and its moral purpose -- Appendix 1: the logic of Darwin's long argument -- Appendix 2: the historical ontology and location of scientific theories -- Darwin's principle of divergence: why Fodor was almost right -- Darwin's romantic quest: mind, morals, and emotions -- Appendix: assessment of Darwin's moral theory -- The relation of Spencer's evolutionary theory to Darwin's -- Ernst Haeckel's scientific and artistic struggles -- Haeckel's embryos: fraud not p…Read more
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122Alan C. LoveDarwinian calisthenicsAn athlete engages in calisthenics as part of basic training and as a preliminary to more advanced or intense activity. Whether it is stretching, lunges, crunches, or push-ups, routine calisthenics provide a baseline of strength and flexibility that prevent a variety of injuries that might otherwise be incurred. Peter Bowler has spent 40 years doing Darwinian calisthenics, researching and writing on the development of evolutionary ideas with special attention to…Read more
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53The Romantic Conception of Life: Science and Philosophy in the Age of GoetheUniversity of Chicago Press. 2002."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 th…Read more
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102The Cambridge Handbook of Evolutionary Ethics (edited book)Cambridge University Press. 2017.Evolutionary ethics - the application of evolutionary ideas to moral thinking and justification - began in the nineteenth century with the work of Charles Darwin and Herbert Spencer, but was subsequently criticized as an example of the naturalistic fallacy. In recent decades, however, evolutionary ethics has found new support among both the Darwinian and the Spencerian traditions. This accessible volume looks at the history of thought about evolutionary ethics as well as current debates in the s…Read more
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32The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex (review)British Journal for the History of Science 39 (4): 615-617. 2006.
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The Meaning of Evolution: The Morphological Construction and Ideological Reconstruction of Darwin's TheoryPhilosophy of Science 61 (4): 672. 1994.
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39In a late reminiscence, Goethe recalled that during his close association with the poet Friedrich Schiller, he was constantly defending “the rights of nature" against his friend's “gospel of freedom.”1 Goethe’s characterization of his own view was artfully ironic, alluding as it did to the French Revolution's proclamation of the "Rights of Man." His remark implied that values lay within nature, values that had authority comparable to those ascribed to human beings by the architects of the Revolu…Read more
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148In 1971, Daniel Gasman saw published his Scientific Origins of National Socialism: Social Darwinism in Ernst Haeckel and the German Monist League, the dissertation he had produced at the University of Chicago two years before. That book argued that Ernst Haeckel (1834–1919), the great champion of Darwinism in Germany, had special responsibility for contributing to Nazi extermination biology. Gasman stacked up the evidence: that Haeckel’s Darwinian monism (which held that no metaphysical distinct…Read more
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57accepted without a compelling materialistic mechnot add that some books might give you terminal anism. Charles Darwin provided this mechanism in..
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106Our image of Herbert Spencer is that of a bald, dyspeptic bachelor, spending his days in rooming houses, and fussing about government interference with individual liberties. Beatrice Webb, who knew him as a girl and young woman recalls for us just this picture. In her diary for January 4, 1885, she writes: Royal Academy private view with Herbert Spencer. His criticisms on art dreary, all bound down by the “possible” if not probable. That poor old man would miss me on the whole more than any othe…Read more
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121When Charles Darwin (1859, 482) wrote in the Origin of Species that he looked to the “young and rising naturalists” to heed the message of his book, he likely had in mind individuals like Ernst Haeckel (1834-1919), who responded warmly to the invitation (Haeckel, 1862, 1: 231-32n). Haeckel became part of the vanguard of young scientists who plowed through the yielding turf to plant the seed of Darwinism deep into the intellectual soil of Germany. As Haeckel would later observe, the seed flourish…Read more
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84Though Darwin had formulated his theory of evolution by natural selection by early fall of 1837, he did not publish it until 1859 in the Origin ofSpecies. Darwin thus delayed publicly revealing his theory for some twenty years, Why did he wait so long'? Initially this may not seem an important or interesting question, but many historians have so regarded it, They have developed a variety of historiographically different explanations. This essay considers these several explanations, though with a…Read more
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147Darwin's theory of natural selection and its moral purposeIn Michael Ruse & Robert J. Richards (eds.), The Cambridge companion to the "Origin of species", Cambridge University Press. 2009.Thomas Henry Huxley recalled that after he had read Darwin’s Origin of Species, he had exclaimed to himself: “How extremely stupid not to have thought of that!” (Huxley,1900, 1: 183). It is a famous but puzzling remark. In his contribution to Francis Darwin’s Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Huxley rehearsed the history of his engagement with the idea of transmutation of species. He mentioned the views of Robert Grant, an advocate of Lamarck, and Robert Chambers, who anonymously published Ves…Read more
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159The natural selection model of conceptual evolutionPhilosophy of Science 44 (3): 494-501. 1977.
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101In 1853, two decades after Goethe’s death, Hermann von Helmholtz, who had just become professor of anatomy at Königsberg, delivered an evaluation of the poet=s contributions to science.1 The young Helmholtz lamented Goethe=s stubborn rejection of Newton =s prism experiments. Goethe=s theory of light and color simply broke on the rocks of his poetic genius. The tragedy, though, was not repeated in biological science. In Helmholtz=s estimation, Goethe had advanced in this area two singular and “un…Read more
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118Instinct and intelligence in British natural theology: Some contributions to Darwin's theory of the evolution of behaviorJournal of the History of Biology 14 (2): 193-230. 1981.In late September 1838, Darwin read Malthus's Essay on Population, which left him with “a theory by which to work.”115 Yet he waited some twenty years to publish his discovery in the Origin of Species. Those interested in the fine grain of Darwin's development have been curious about this delay. One recent explanation has his hand stayed by fear of reaction to the materialist implications of linking man with animals. “Darwin sensed,” according to Howard Gruber, “that some would object to seeing …Read more
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122Dutch objections to evolutionary ethicsBiology and Philosophy 4 (3): 331-343. 1989.While strolling the streets of Amsterdam, Sidney Smith, the renowned editor of the Edinburgh Review, called the attention of his companion to two Dutch housewives who were leaning out of their windows and arguing with one another across the narrow alley that separated their houses. Smith remarked to his companion that the two women would never agree. His friend thought the seasoned editor had in mind the stubborn Dutch character. No, said Smith. Rather it was because they were arguing from diffe…Read more
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226Several scholars and many religiously conservative thinkers have recently charged that Hitler’s ideas about race and racial struggle derived from the theories of Charles Darwin (1809-1882), either directly or through intermediate sources. So, for example, the historian Richard Weikart, in his book From Darwin to Hitler , maintains: “No matter how crooked the road was from Darwin to Hitler, clearly Darwinism and eugenics smoothed the path for Nazi ideology, especially for the Nazi stress on expan…Read more
Chicago, Illinois, United States of America
Areas of Interest
| Aesthetics |
| Philosophy of Biology |
| 19th Century Philosophy |