William Henry Fox Talbot, The Geologists, c. 1843 (Salt print from calotype photograph)

Robert Farren, Duria Antiquior (An Earlier Dorset), c. 1850

First, forms minute, unseen by spheric glass,Move on the mud, or pierce the watery mass.These as successive generations bloomNew powers acquire and larger limbs

assume Whence countless groups of vegetation

springAnd breathing realms of fin and feet and

wing.

(Erasmus Darwin, Temple of Nature, 1802)

Proto-evolutionary ideas:

There will be a continual and more or less slow progress of all the species toward a superior perfection, with the result that all the degrees of the scale will be continually variable within a determined and constant relation….Man, one transported to an abode more suited to the eminence of his faculties, will leave to the monkey and the elephant that foremost place that he occupied before among the animals of our planet… There will be Newtons among the monkeys and Vaubans among the beavers.

(Charles Bonnet, Palingénésie philosophique, 1769-1770)

Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation (1844)

I must think that such a book, if it does no other good, spreads the taste for Natural Science. But I am perhaps no fair judge, for I am almost as unorthodox about species as the Vestiges itself, though I hope not quite so unphilosophical.

(Darwin, in a letter to T.H. Huxley, 1854)

The Bridgewater Treatises (1833-1840):A series of works commissioned by the Earl of Bridgewater upon his death in 1829 to explore “the Power, Wisdom, and Goodness of God, as manifested in the Creation.”

Natural Theology

The mind rests with equal pleasure and admiration on these beautiful laws, which silently, but unceasingly, work out an expression of the Almighty Will.

(Silliman, First Principles of Chemistry, Philadelphia: 1850)

“Because of its preoccupation with time and with change, evolutionary theory has inherent affinities with the problems and processes of narrative” (Beer 5).

Darwin and Literature

The evolutionary epic is probably the best myth we will ever have.

(E.O. Wilson, On Human Nature, 1978)

Even now, the waters of lakes, seas, and the great ocean, which teem with life, may be said to have no immediate relation to the human race—to be portions of the terrestrial system of which man has never taken, nor ever can take, possession, so that the greater part of the inhabited surface of the planet remains still as insensible to our presence as before any isle or continent was appointed to be our residence.

(Charles Lyell, Principles of Geology)

Plot without man…

Edward Cooke, Triassic Cliffs at Blue Anchor, North Somerset, 1866

Evolutionary trees by Darwin, 1859 (above) and Haeckel, 1891 (left)

The Sick Monkey, by William Henry Simmons after Edwin Landseer, 1875.

Animal Affinities

“This relentless piling, sorting and re-arranging of evidence can make Darwin seem a little OCD, like an intellectual version of Wall-E.”

(John Whitfield, Blogging the Origin, 2/9/09)

Why we’re reading excerpts…

1st edition (1859): “There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed into a few forms or into one”

2nd edition (1860): “…having been originally breathed by the Creator into a few forms or into one”

Origin's Textual History

Again, the doctrine of evolution as applied to organic life…is widely spoken of by the term “Darwinism.” Yet this doctrine is far older than Mr. Darwin, and is held by many who deem that which is truly “Darwinism” (namely a belief in the origin of species by natural selection) to be a crude and utterly untenable hypothesis.

(St. John Mivart, Man and Apes, 1873)

Charles Darwin was not the first to write about evolution:

Darwin becomes the figure for evolution in 1871

The Hornet, March 22, 1871

Fun, Victorian humor magazine, 1871 and 1872

Darwin and the “tree of life”

Illustrations from Le Petite Lune (1870s) and Punch (1875)

Ad from the 1890s

OED: Evolution The process of unrolling, opening out, or revealing (17th c.) The process by which living organisms or their parts

develop from a rudimentary to a mature or complete state [now ontogeny] (17th c.)

A process of gradual change…esp. from a simpler to a more complex or advanced state. Also: a gradual and natural development as opposed to a sudden or instigated change (often in contrast with revolution). (late 18th c.)

The transformation of animals, plants, and other living organisms into different forms by the accumulation of changes over successive generations (early 19th c.)

Fashion

Harper’s Bazaar (1883)

Fashion/Humor

Fun (October 31, 1888)

Visual Humor

Puck, 1907

Social issues

Railroad Democracy (1923)

World War I

Life (1915)

World War II

Chicago Tribune (1937)

Washington Post (1938)

When it is first advanced, theory is at its most fictive. The awkwardness of fit between the natural world as it is currently perceived and as it is hypothetically imagined holds the theory itself for a time within a provisional scope akin to that of fiction (Beer 1).