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Review
| Evolutionary Theory and Victorian Culture, by Martin Fichman. Amherst, New York: Humanity Books, 2002. 256 pp. $21, paper.
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| Part of the history of science "Control of Nature" series, this book contributes a concise analysis of the reception of evolutionary theory. The author focuses on nineteenth-century Britain and (despite the book title) on twentieth-century America. Fichman synthesizes a large scholarly literature, listed in a nineteen-page bibliography. For him, the story is larger than the ideas of Charles Darwin and more complicated than the warfare between religion and science. A biographer of Alfred Russel Wallace (1981), Fichman makes this relatively obscure naturalist as important, perhaps more so, than Darwin in the cultural history of evolution. By the late 1860s Wallace came to understand evolution as requiring "providential intervention and guidance." (122) In addition, Wallace argued for the importance of female choice of a sexual partner (and not male aggressiveness in seeking a mate) to help explain human evolution. Chapter five—"Wallace and Darwin: The Major Differences" provides only part of Fichman's extensive explanation of how these two scientists differed. |
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The author constructs his book around the role of evolution in "the emergence of science as a political and cultural force" and, more ambitiously and vaguely, around "how the debates on evolution" help answer "questions about humanity's past, present, and future." (10). He insists on the distinction between the general theory of evolution (which the codiscoverers Darwin and Wallace established as a fact) and the more controversial theory of natural selection among biological variations as an explanation of how evolution occurred. Eventually Wallace had second thoughts about the adequacy of natural selection. Until genetics became understood, many scientists preferred neo-Lamarckian hypotheses claiming that acquired characteristics can be transmitted to offspring. "It was only in the 1930s that what is now known as the 'modern evolutionary synthesis' emerged." (55) |
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Fichman dismisses some common textbook assumptions. In his chapter on "Social Darwinism(s)," Fichman emphasizes the importance of the ideology of scientific neutrality, argued by those (such as Huxley) whom he calls the scientific naturalists. Although an ideology and not reality, it furthered the professionalization of science that in turn justified a "fundamental redistribution of cultural authority." (66) In his chapter on "Transatlantic Evolutionism," Fichman draws attention to the theism that permeated the evolutionary thought of prominent American evolutionists such as William James and Charles Sanders Peirce. Fichman suggests "links between evolutionary theory and the origins of American pragmatism." (76) He underscores the importance of Wallace's lectures in the United States in 1885–86. In his discussion of the Scopes trial, Fichman argues, "at the start of the twentieth century it was the secular historians and essayists, rather than theologians and scientists, who were most keen on stirring things up." (181). He identifies the books by the Americans John William Draper (1874) and Andrew Dickson White (1876 and 1896) as the foundation for what became a "grossly simplistic" "conflict thesis." (182) In fact, scientists were not necessarily hostile to religion. According to Fichman, the revived debate had less to do with a conflict between religion and evolution than it did with a shift in cultural authority, a recurring theme in Fichman's book. |
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Many readers will find the most new material in the eighth and final chapter about the "creation science" and "intelligent design" movements in the United States during the second half of the twentieth century. After sketching the internal controversies among the creationists, Fichman looks at "intelligent design," the most recent attempt "to accommodate evolutionary science and religious beliefs." (216) The case for "intelligent design" gained widespread attention after the publication of Michael J. Behe's Darwin's Black Box: The Biochemical Challenge to Evolution (1996). |
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Although not sufficiently lively to appeal to undergraduates, Fichman's book should find readers among history teachers drafting a lecture on evolution and graduate students preparing for a field in intellectual history. It introduces readers to diverse topics that could be books in themselves. For instance, sub-chapters feature such titles as "gender issues in science popularization," "imperialism and the new biogeography," and "ethical hopes and anxieties: Victorian science fiction." |
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| Miami University |
David M. Fahey |
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