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It is a widely held view that the inheritance of acquired characteristics plays an important role in Lamarck's ideas about evolution, and there are some counter-instances against it. As a result, his theory is called into question. This article explains that contrary to this view, the inheritance of acquired characteristics is a common ground between Lamarck and Darwin. And the contradictions could probably be resolved, as we shall see. The study shows that the main differences between the views of the two founders of evolutionary theory lie in their claims about the speed of evolution and the adoption of an individual or population approach to evolution and its purposiveness or randomness. In this commentary, we use these similarities and differences to discuss how not only is the quasi-scientific nature of Lamarck's theories unacceptable, but that maintaining Lamarck's explanatory framework is essential for a more accurate understanding of the evolutionary process. And it can in some ways complement the Darwinian and neo-Darwinian views of evolution. Therefore, using these two theoretical systems as complements will increase the explanatory power of evolutionary theories

Walter Pater's engagement with nineteenth-century science has long been acknowledged, but critics have often characterized it in negative terms. This essay demonstrates that while Pater viewed Darwinian evolutionary theory negatively, insisting that it 'stealthily withdraws the apparently solid earth itself from beneath one's feet' (Plato and Platonism , 1893), he embraced non-Darwinian theories of development. Peter J. Bowler has argued that an 'eclipse of Darwinism' or 'non-Darwinian revolution' took place in the second half of the nineteenth century, in which there was widespread public acceptance of the transmutation of species but not of the mechanism of adaptation and natural selection proposed by Darwin. Instead, as Bowler demonstrates, the prevailing understanding of evolution was of a non-Darwinian variety that emphasized form over function and design over random chance. I suggest that within these theories, such as the transcendental morphology propounded by Richard Owen, Pater finds a physical manifestation of his own particular philosophic blend of materialism and idealism. Viewed through this lens, many of Pater's theories in art and philosophy become clearer, such as his belief in the 'limitations' of sculpture, discussed in Studies in the History of the Renaissance. Instead of viewing this as a denigration of sculpture as the art form furthest from the ideal, this essay demonstrates that Pater viewed sculpture in terms of the archetype of transcendental morphology: something both material and immaterial, simple and yet also ideal. Far from retreating from the spectre of contemporary science, as many critics suggest Pater does, Pater views science and the humanities as complementary disciplines, or homologues, sharing an underlying structure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Evolutionary aesthetics (EA) is often associated with the rise of evolutionary psychology, from roughly the 1980s until the 2010s. Yet that was neither the beginning nor the end of the field but rather a middle wave after the first and before the third. How has the field evolved? What are the epistemic and methodological problems it has addressed, and how? What is the field heading towards in the current scholarly environment? A self-reflexive conception of the history of EA is still lacking, although EA research is acquiring more and more perspectives from different disciplinary viewpoints. I will present a bird’s-eye view of EA by identifying and positioning three of its major currents in relation to each other. This state-of-the-art article also serves as an up-to-date introduction to the field for the non-initiated.

This paper is addressed Franco Moretti’s provocative application of the Darwinian evolutionary model based on the divergence of biological species and their survival through natural selection to literary history. This approach was juxtaposed against the ideas of two leading Russian Formalists, Iurii Tynianov and Roman Jakobson, whose explanation of linguistic/literary change was programmatically anti-Darwinian, making conversion (conceived, though, in a particular way) the cornerstone of their respective historiographies. In doing so, they were reacting to the project of historical poetics advanced by the 19th-century Russian Positivist philologist Aleksandr Veselovskii, whose stated goal was to trace the morphological divergences of texts across time and space. The dichotomy “conversion-diversion,” my paper illustrated, is not limited to criticism alone. The same frame of reference was invoked in the late 1950s in a famous dispute between the behavioral psychologist B. F. Skinner and the father of the transformational generative grammar, Noam Chomsky, about language acquisition and subsequently in their heated polemics about the human subject’s autonomy triggered by the publication of Skinner’s book Beyond Freedom and Dignity (1971). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An atheist named Richard Dawkins like many others came up with certain arguments questioning the existence of God in his book "The God Delusion". His highlighted arguments revolved around the theory of Darwinism meaning that everything in this universe is a result of natural selection and evolution. He says that immoral contradictions in the old and new testaments are proof of the nonexistence of a sacred force. Another theory he presented was that if everything is created by God, then who created God in the 1st place? He also put emphasis on the idea that religion is a self-serving motivation, and it does not come from a divine origin. Although he talked about a worldwide topic, yet he failed to quote even a single reference from the world's fastest-growing religion; Islam and presented his ideologies from a Christian perspective. Since the Old and New Testaments are the tempered scriptures that Richard Dawkins agrees to as well, his arguments cannot be considered valid considering these scriptures. Also, the theory he presented about the nonexistence of God goes against the basic principles of modern science as well. His key ideas are viewed and analyzed carefully and critically here considering the only non-tempered and original text, The Holy Quran. As a result, his work doesn't have actual academic support from anyone who studies religion from any angle, whether they be atheist or theist, liberal or fundamentalist. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines Spengler's references to Darwinism from his corpus. Therein is an initial reconstruction of his metaphysics on History and Nature, simultaneously demarcating the foregrounds required for the comprehension of and reasoning for his critique of Darwinism. Spengler's deconstruction of and pivoting against Darwinism is a problematic of method, due to a conflation of historical and scientific claims that are in part entailed by interpretations of Goethean morphology. A biological conception of race is then discussed through examining the conception of a Darwinian from Spengler's milieu, and then Spengler's own, which provides a resulting nuanced perspective on race. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The goal of this programmatic paper is to highlight a close connection between the core problem in the philosophy of medicine, i.e. the concept of health, and the core problem of the philosophy of mind, i.e. the concept of consciousness. I show when we look at these phenomena together, taking the evolutionary perspective of modern state-based behavioural and life-history theory used as the teleonomic tool to Darwinize the agent- and subject-side of organisms, we will be in a better position to make sense of them both as natural phenomena. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Denis Alexander, David Glass, Peter Jeavons, Meghan Page, Bethany Sollereder, and Mats Wahlberg have offered interpretations, critique, and defenses of E. V. R. Kojonen's book The Compatibility of Evolution and Design. Here, Kojonen responds to their comments on wideranging issues related to the teleology and evolution, from models of God as Creator to the meaning of randomness and design. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

M. P. Shiel's post-apocalyptic novel, The Purple Cloud (1901), offers Darwinian commentary on the suitability of upper-class socio-political rule, depicting the aristocracy's struggles for basic survival despite their privilege and supposedly superior breeding. Through characters' recreational use of narcotics, Shiel interrogates "survival of the fittest," adaptability, sexual selection, and hierarchies in the animal world as they are perverted by human class structures. For Shiel, class is a product of luck or chance: aristocracy largely results from the right bodies existing in the right environment at the right time. This discussion triangulates Shiel's thorny points of substance abuse, survival, and class and, in that triangulation, finds a more cohesive if pessimistic argument regarding the role of luck in the origins and future of humanity, and in the class structures that organize society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

St. George Jackson Mivart is mostly remembered as a cautionary tale. If Mivart is mentioned at all in modern debates, it is to offer an example of how not to do biology and theology. However, in this paper I argue that, ongoing developments in evolutionary biology have produced genuine alternatives to strict neo-Darwinism that not only seek to downplay the role of natural selection, but do so in ways that are strikingly reminiscent of Mivart's unpopular theory. Similarly, modern Thomists are also taking an approach to science and religion that mirrors Mivarts own approach. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The author of this publication undertook the task of analyzing the interpretations of the “eclipse of Darwinism” proposed so far in order to determine to what extent they correspond to reality. Having made his findings in this regard, he concluded that none of them adequately accounted for the collapse that struck Darwin’s theory during that period. Therefore, he decided to propose his own interpretation of the “eclipse of Darwinism,” he refers mainly to philosophical determinants of the Darwinian theory of evolution.

Bu makalede, İkbal’in modern evrim teorisini kendine özgü yorumlaması, bu teorinin onun düşünce sistemindeki etkileri, inanç ve ahlâkî değerlerin bu teoriyle nasıl uzlaştırılmaya çalışıldığı ve bütün bunların arasında İkbal’in tutarlılığı sağlayıp sağlayamadığı ele alınmaya çalışılacaktır. İkbal’in yaratıcı evrim teorisi eleştirel bir açıdan irdelenmektedir. İkbal’in geçmişteki Müslüman düşünürlerden ve modern dönem Batılı düşünürlerden hangi ölçüde etkilenmiş olduğu yine onun eserlerinden yola çıkılarak karşılaştırmalı olarak ele alınmaktadır. Din-bilim krizinin belirgin bir şekilde görüldüğü evrim teorisi konusunda İkbal’in tercihleri ve yapmaya çalıştığı sentezci düşünceye dikkat çekilmekte, İkbal’in bu teori bağlamında inanç konularında getirmiş olduğu yeni yorumlar üzerinde durulmakta, İkbal’in ahlâk felsefesinin de yine bu teori bağlamında nasıl şekillendiği gösterilmeye çalışılmaktadır. İkbal’in metafizik bir içerikle modern evrim teorisini kendine özgü yorumlamasının etkileri, onun bütün düşüncelerine sirayet etmiştir. Düşünür evrim teorisinden kaynaklanan bu düşünceleri dolayısıyla eleştirilmektedir. Onun görüşlerinde kendi döneminin bilimsel ve felsefî gelişmelerin etkisi olduğu gibi Müslüman coğrafyanın içinde bulunduğu durumun da etkisi vardır. Yaratıcı evrim teorisinin yaşama uyarlanmasında pratik faydalar görmekte ve bu teorinin Müslüman toplumları uyandırıcı etkisinin olduğuna inanmaktadır. Söz konusu evrim teorisi güce ve mücadeleci yaşam felsefesine yaptığı güçlü vurguyla İkbal’in ilgisini çekmiş olmalıdır. İkbal için yaşam bir mücadele olarak görüldüğünden insanın başarı ve mutluluğu da bu hayat mücadelesindeki sertliğine bağlanmakta ve bu vurgu, değişik vesilelerle ve farklı bağlamlarla sürekli tekrar edilmektedir. Ona göre hayat bir kavgadır ve bu yaşam kavgasında başarılı olanlar bu kurallara riayet edenlerdir. Evrim teorisine uygun olacak şekilde düşünür, hak ve bâtılı dahi güce göre ayırmakta ve güçle haklılığı eşit görmektedir. Evrimsel sürecin ebedî hayat için de geçerli olan bir kanun olarak görülmesiyle bu teoriye metafizik bir anlam yüklenmekte ve bilimsel tartışmalara girilmemektedir. Evrim teorisi, İkbal’in ego felsefesinin, Tanrı-âlem-insan görüşünün de bilimsel ve felsefî temelini oluşturmaktadır. Ahiret hayatı, nübüvvet, irade özgürlüğü gibi birçok teolojik mesele bu teori bağlamında yorumlanmaya çalışılmaktadır. İkbal, evrim teorisiyle dini uzlaştırmak adına bazen dinî nasları te’vil etmekte, bazen de evrim teorisine metafizik bir anlam yükleyerek yeniden yorumlamaktadır. Evrim teorisini düşüncelerine bilimsel bir zemin olarak koyan düşünürün tutarsızlıklarının en önemli nedenlerinden birisi de onun yapmaya çalıştığı bu sentezci çabadır. İkbal, evrim teorisi konusunda geçmişteki Müslüman bilginlerden İbn Miskeveyh ve Mevlânâ’dan; modern dönem Batılı bilginlerinden ise özellikle Bergson ve Nietzsche’den etkilenmiştir. Onun modern evrim teorisine en temel itirazı ise bu kuramın hükmünün yaşamla sınırlı olması ve ölüm sonrasına aksetmemesidir.

Helmuth Plessner, beside Max Scheler and Arnold Gehlen, is known as one of the great founders of new philosophical anthropology movement. From among new anthropological theories, however, perhaps none has recently come to the center of attention and begun to flourish more than Plessner’s, not only in the field of philosophical anthropology, but also in science and technology. The ground for such a so-called “Plessner Renaissance” shall be immediately known in this article, once the special place Plessner’s theory occupies in both the prominent contemporary explanatory paradigms, in general, and philosophical-anthropological theories, in particular, is specified. In doing so, Plessner’s philosophical contribution is determined as: A non-reductive naturalistic explanatory paradigm as a middle ground between new Darwinism, social-cultural-historical constructivism, and naive transcendentalism. A phenomenological-hermeneutical account of the biological life, in general. A biological-based transformational philosophical anthropology, in particular. The focus of the present article is on Plessner’s contribution to the philosophy of biology as well as philosophical anthropology.

Batı dünyasında bilim ve felsefe alanındaki gelişmeler inanç karşıtı akımların ortaya çıkmasına neden olmuş, 19. yüzyılın ikinci yarısından itibaren İslâm dünyası ve Osmanlı coğrafyasını da etkisi altına almaya başlamıştır. Bu bağlamda din karşıtı akımlarla mücadelede daha güncel ve etkili yöntemlerin gerekliliği ifade edilmiş, çağın getirdiği şüpheler karşısında yeni bilim ve felsefenin öğrenilmesi ve kelâm disiplinine uyarlanması zorunlu hale gelmiştir. Yeni İlm-i Kelâm olarak isimlendirilen bu dönemde Ömer Nasûhi Bilmen de inanç karşıtı akımlarla mücadelede güncel bir söylem geliştirmiş, durgun bir kelâm anlayışından ziyade daha canlı ve işlevsel bir yöntem benimsemiştir. Geleneksel kültürü özümsemiş bir âlim olarak çağının farklı düşünce sorunlarına kullandığı kelâm yöntemiyle güncel cevaplar vermesi kendi dönemine yaptığı katkılar açısından oldukça önemlidir. Bilmen’in mekanizm fikrinin temelsizliğinden hareketle materyalizmi, bilimsel temeli olmadığı için evrim teorisini ve insanların dine olan ihtiyacından hareketle pozitivizmi eleştirmesi onun özgün yönünü göstermektedir. Bu açıdan çalışmamızda özellikle Materyalizm, Pozitivizm ve Darwinizm gibi din karşıtı felsefelere getirmiş olduğu eleştiriler üzerinde durulmuştur. Zira dönemin dinsizlik akımlarıyla mücadelede izlemiş olduğu yöntemin ortaya konması, günümüzde de geçerli olan seküler düşünceye karşı mücadelede yeni yöntemlerin geliştirilmesine ışık tutması açısından önemlidir. Bilmen materyalizmi eleştirirken öncelikle bunun bilimsellik görünümü altında bir metafizik olduğunu söyleyerek deney ve gözlemle doğrulanması mümkün olmayan öznel yargılar olduğunu ifade etmiştir. Materyalistlerin madde ve enerjinin ezelî olduğu, atomların tesadüfen birleşerek maddeyi oluşturduğu iddiaları bilimsel bir temelden uzak test edilemeyen metafiziksel iddialardır. Zira Bilmen’e göre kozmolojik teoriler sürekli değiştiği için bu teorilerden genel hükümler çıkarmak güncel bilimsel gelişmeler ışığında mümkün görünmemektedir. Sürekli değişen bilimsel teoriler dikkate alındığında pozitivizmin tüm bilimleri fizik bilimine indirgemesi de ilmi yöntem açısından tutarsızdır. Bu dönemde makro düzeyde izafiyet teorisi, mikro düzeyde ise kuantum teorisiyle elde edilen yeni bulgular teizm açısından oldukça güçlü kanıtlar sunmaktadır. Böylece Bilmen’in dini düşünceyi dışlayan teorileri, evren hakkındaki verilerin değişkenliği üzerinden bilimsel bir temelde eleştirdiği görülmektedir. Materyalist felsefenin eleştirisi bağlamında ele alınan konulardan birisi de ruh-beden ilişkisidir. Yapılan nöro-fizyolojik çalışmalar bilincin beyinden ayrılamayacağını, beyindeki biyokimyasal, fizyolojik ve sinirsel süreçlerin bilinçle ilişkili olduğunu göstermektedir. Dönemin diğer düşünürleri gibi Bilmen’in de insanı tümüyle maddi bedene indirgeyen materyalist iddialara karşı koymak için fiziksel/bedensel temelli açıklamalardan ziyade ruhçuluk görüşünü esas aldığı görülmektedir. Konunun bilimsel gelişmeler dışında spiritüalizm ekseninde ele alınmasının karşı düşünceyle mücadele etme imkânını zayıflattığı söylenebilir. Bu nedenle zihin beden ilişkisine dair ortaya çıkan güncel bilimsel veriler kelâm açısından tekrar yeniden ele alınmalı, insanın biyolojik yapısı ile bilişsel/ruhî yapısı arasındaki ilişkiye dair veriler analiz edilmelidir. Bilmen’in evrim teorisini tümüyle reddetmek yerine yaratılış düşüncesiyle uzlaştırmaya çalıştığı görülmektedir. Bu bağlamda kâinatta genel bir tekâmülün olduğunu kabul etmekle birlikte, insanın başka bir türden var olduğu şeklindeki bir evrim düşüncesini reddetmiştir. Kabul etmiş olduğu bu sınırlı evrim anlayışı bir Yaratıcı'yı ve kontrol mekanizmasını gerekli kıldığı için canlılar dünyasındaki işleyiş, plansız ve amaçsız değildir. Bu açıdan Bilmen’e göre, her canlının genetik yapısının tümüyle kendi türüne özgü bir sisteme sahip olduğu dikkate alındığında böyle bir iddianın bilimsel dayanaktan yoksun olduğu açıktır. Bu nedenle söz konusu teorileri karşı tarafın delilleri üzerinden eleştirerek gözlem ve deneyden uzak bilimsellik görünümü altında bir felsefe olarak nitelemesi, yeni yöntemlerin geliştirilmesi açısından günümüze de ışık tutmaktadır. Böylece Bilmen’in, din karşıtı akımlara modern bilimsel gelişmeler ışığında yaptığı eleştirilerin, günümüz açısından da geçerli olduğunu söylemek mümkündür.

John Lubbock (1834–1913) was born to social and scientific status. His father was a wealthy banker and a respected astronomer. Lubbock's youthful enthusiasm for insects was encouraged by Charles Darwin who lived only two miles from the Lubbock family estate, and Darwin mentored him as his interest in natural history developed. My focus is Lubbock's contemporary reputation, over many different areas of science and over time. In comparing Lubbock's reputation across scientific specialities, John Clark's thesis, that Lubbock's entomology was considered more important than his archaeology and anthropology is confirmed; his botany and geology shown to be less respected. A second consideration, alluded to by "gentleman" in the title, is the extent to which Lubbock's success and reputation was due to his high social position – he was Sir John, fourth baronet, from 1865 and Lord Avebury from 1900. Third, the ways in which Lubbock was "Darwinian" or "non-Darwinian" by both contemporary and modern criteria are analysed. Fourth, in following the course of Lubbock's career, contradictory assessments of the significance of his research appear which involve diverse valuations of specialist/popular, theoretical/experimental and original/synthesizing scientific work. Countering the many derogatory associations of "popular science," his lectures and books on topics of "general interest" for "general" readers were widely praised. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The contemporary creation–evolution debate has become so polarized (over the issue of either Genesis or evolutionary science) as to obscure the more nuanced questions that have arisen in the historical and theological reception of Darwinism. Edinburgh's New College has been the academic home to some prominent scientists and theologians who have grappled with these questions since the early days of evolutionary science in the first half of the nineteenth century. Most obviously, this activity was focused on the decision to create a Chair in Natural Science in 1845, which would be occupied by a recognized scientist. The Chair became "extinct" in the 1930s, but in between times, its holders made important theological assessments of evolution along the way. This article outlines the contributions made by the individuals who occupied this Chair, as well as more recent figures in the evolution of science and theology at New College. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the late 1940s in Spain, a group of young scholars, most of them newly appointed university lecturers, gained control of Arbor, the promotional journal of the Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas (CSIC: The Spanish National Research Council), the institution that General Franco had founded after the Spanish Civil War (1936–9) to organize Spanish science. This group constituted the intellectual core of the more reactionary, Catholic traditionalist faction of Franco's regime, and they coveted greater political power, in competition with other factions of the regime. Lacking the opportunity to launch an overt political campaign within a dictatorship, the group started a fight for the cultural conquest of Spain. In this cultural struggle for hegemony, journals, magazines, cultural associations, publishing houses, newspapers, and cultural centers became their weapons. By analyzing this faction's views on and activities within the popularization of science, particularly regarding theories of evolution, this article argues that popular discourse on science played a critical role in the cultural struggle both as a "safe" channel in which to forward their claims and as a tool to gather popular attention through topics of general interest. A covert political campaign was conducted through the popularization of science and this, in turn, fueled the construction of a public sphere for science in a dictatorial context. Scientific popularization became a much-appreciated tool to achieve cultural hegemony and, as such, it also became a central element in constructing and legitimating the ideological foundations of Franco's regime. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Natural selection is the main mechanism that drives the evolution of species, including human societies. Under natural selection, human species responds through genetic and cultural adaptations to internal and external selection pressures for survival and reproductive success. However, this theory is ineffective in explaining human societal evolution in the Holocene and a cultural selection argument has been made to remedy the theory. The present article provides a critique of the cultural selection argument and proposes an alternative conception that treats human self-selection as an emergent mechanism of human societal evolution characterized by a new type of selection pressure and a separate fitness criterion. Specifically, the evolution of human societies is divided into two major periods, each driven by a different mode of selection: natural selection acting on genes and cultures for survival and reproductive success prior to the Neolithic Revolution, and human self-selection acting on cultures – and potentially genes as well – for thrival and prosperous living after the Neolithic Revolution. The conditions for the transition from the first mode of selection to the second and the implications of this transition for social research are also discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

David Elliott Loye was a pioneer in our modern understanding of the Darwinian evolutionary paradigm. His contributions are discussed in the context of the most current evolutionary and cosmological views of science.

This entry offers a history of the different ways in which the formal study of the natural world has been related to theological considerations in the Western Christian tradition. Because what counts as science and what counts as theology has changed over time, it begins with a history of the concepts ‘theology’ and ‘science’ and the bearing of these conceptual shifts on their relationship. This is followed by a general account of the kinds of relations obtained between science and theology in different periods from antiquity to the present. A final section deals with three recurring issues that also exemplify some general principles.

An important aspect of the nineteenth century debate on the relationship between science and religion concerned the popularity of deterministic views among scientists. An integral part of Comte's positivism, the idea of immutable laws that determined natural and social phenomena became an increasingly prevalent component of scientific perspectives in the Darwinian era. Referring to this tendency as 'scientific fatalism,' critics likened it to Calvinist predestination, which transformed the debate into one involving polemics about different branches of Christianity as well. This paper focuses on a neglected aspect of this debate, namely, the role that references to Islam and Turks played in it. 'Mohammedan fatalism,' already a common theme in justifications of colonialism, promptly became a tool with which to condemn new scientific views. Comparing French, British, and American writings on the topic, the paper illustrates that while there emerged approaches that praised the fatalism of Muslims while making a case for scientific determinism, most scientists and thinkers resorted to condemning the fatalism of Muslims in order to distinguish their views from it. In this respect, the paper demonstrates how political and religious discourses played a significant part in the shaping of scientific discourse in the Victorian era. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the 1940s, the 'modern synthesis' (MS) of Darwinism and genetics cast genetic mutation and recombination as the source of variability from which environmental events naturally select the fittest, such 'natural selection' constituting the cause of evolution. Recent biology increasingly challenges this view by casting genes as followers and awarding the leading role in the genesis of adaptations to the agency and plasticity of developing phenotypes—making natural selection a consequence of other causal processes. Both views of natural selection claim to capture the core of Darwin's arguments in On the Origin of Species. Today, historians largely concur with the MS's reading of Origin as a book aimed to prove natural selection the cause (vera causa) of adaptive change. This paper finds the evidence for that conclusion wanting. I undertake to examine the context and meaning of all Darwin's known uses of the phrase vera causa, documenting in particular Darwin's resistance to the pressure to prove natural selection a vera causa in letters written early in 1860. His resistance underlines the logical dependence of natural selection, an unobservable phenomenon, on the causal processes producing the observable events captured by the laws of inheritance, variation, and the struggle for existence, established in Chapters 1–3 of Origin. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Between the 1930s and the mid 1970s, it was commonly believed that in 1880 Karl Marx had proposed to dedicate to Charles Darwin a volume or translation of Capital but that Darwin had refused. The detail was often interpreted by scholars as having larger significance for the question of the relationship between Darwinian evolutionary biology and Marxist political economy. In 1973–4, two scholars working independently—Lewis Feuer, professor of sociology at Toronto, and Margaret Fay, a graduate student at Berkeley—determined simultaneously that the traditional story of the proposed dedication was untrue, being based on a long-standing misinterpretation of the relevant correspondence. Between the two, and among several other scholars who became their respective allies, there developed a contest of authority and priority over the discovery. From 1975 to 1982, the controversy generated a considerable volume of spilled ink in both scholarly and popular publications. Drawing on previously unexamined archival resources, this article revisits the 'case' of the so-called 'Darwin–Marx correspondence' as an instance of the phenomenon of 'multiple discovery'. A familiar occurrence in the natural sciences, multiple discovery is rarer in the humanities and social sciences. The present case of a priority dispute in the history of ideas followed patterns familiar from such disputes in the natural sciences, while also diverging from them in ways that shed light on the significance of disciplinary norms and research infrastructures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Historiography is becoming more critical of the typology/population dichotomy introduced by Ernst Mayr. Therefore, one should look again at the problem of species in non-Darwinian theories: neo-Lamarckism and orthogenesis, and consider the possibility that this problem was overly simplified. What can be seen in both of them is the existence of a tension between the idea of evolution and the essence of species. In neo-Lamarckism, this tension was resolved by recognizing species as static entities which changed only when triggered by external stimulus. In orthogenesis, evolution was seen as constant phenomena and species - as naturally changeable entities. However, orthogeneticists assumed that not only species, but also whole phyletic lines had essences that constrained their further evolution. Thus, in both cases we can see interpretation of species in tune with essentialism, but essentialism is widely differently integrated with each of these concepts of evolution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: This research note addresses a gap in the public administration literature by arguing that a political Darwinism was present in the intellectual origins of American administrative theory. By examining the arguments of Woodrow Wilson, this article demonstrates that Darwinism complemented the German political thought that contributed to the establishment of America's administrative state. The application of Darwinian evolutionary biology to politics was a vital element of Wilson's reconceptualization of the state as a living organism. Darwinism was a key rhetorical tool employed by Wilson in his argument against the Constitution's separation of powers. This note finds that Darwinism was present in the early stages of public administration theory in Wilson's argumentation and persists today in the public administration literature. It concludes by sketching out an agenda for further research on Darwinism's influence on public administration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, I critique the prevalent notion that only in the abyss can one emerge to be the Übermensch, or to use Hollingdale’s term, the Superman. To support this, I will first expound on the notion of the abyss as ethical nihilism from the perspective of the death of God to Nietzsche’s critique of morality. I argue that ethical nihilism as an abyss is insufficient in constituting Nietzsche’s Superman. I will then set how the Superman emerges through counter-stages. The paradox is that such tragic an abyss that serves as conditio sine qua non for the Superman falls flat when looked at in the perspective of life. There underlies a fundamental difficulty in simply accepting the proposals of acknowledging the abyss or ‘becoming what one is.’ Later, Nietzsche’s anti-romanticism and anti-Darwinism are explored to support such difficulty.

In this essay, I will analyze how “animalismo” became a crucial concept, intersecting the debates about race and gender which inspired the ideas of Spanish American intellectuals during the last quarter of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth. I will start by explaining how this concept became associated with scientific debates related to Darwinian evolutionism, and how the derived ideas fueled a new gendered racial normativity that gave rise to a crisis by the 1900s. In the second part, I will analyze how race, gender and sexuality became intrinsically related to animalism, and the problems that the association between humans and animals posed for political ideas about the nation.

The police incarceration for petty offences like intoxication includes many instances where missed medical conditions have resulted in unexpected deaths. I argue through exploratory research Indigenous cases, primarily from no-fault, no-blame Canadian and Australian Inquests that the attribution of the ‘drunken Indian’ trope results in cursory inspections of prisoners that is structurally differential care than mainstream society. This is only preliminary inductive logic. I treat these cases as latent structural violence. I peel away the layers of the onion to posit how colonial reasoning such as the ‘drunk Indian’, the ‘noble savage’, Said’s Orientalism, social Darwinism, and Eugenics have a role in police inhumanity. These assimilationist colonial constructs are confounded by police work’s normal stresses. Police officers should help facilitate individual and community Indigenous self-determination in order to break these cycles.