Deconstructing Darwin: Evolutionary Theory in Context

Author(s): David L. Hull

Source: Journal of the History of Biology, Vol. 38, No. 1, The "Darwinian Revolution":
Whether, What and Whose? (Spring, 2005), pp. 137-152
Published by: Springer
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4331924 .
Accessed: 21/07/2014 16:29
Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .
http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

.
JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of
content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms
of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.

Springer is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Journal of the History of
Biology.

http://www.jstor.org

This content downloaded from 142.51.1.212 on Mon, 21 Jul 2014 16:29:13 PM

All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

Journal of the History of Biology (2005) 38: 137-152

DOI 10.1007/s 10739-004-6514-1

? Springer 2005

Deconstructing Darwin: Evolutionary Theory in Context

DAVID L. HULL
Department of Philosophy
Northwestern University
Evanston, IL 60208-1315
USA
E-mail. d-hull@anorthwestern.edu
Abstract. The topic of this paper is external versus internal explanations, first, of the
genesis of evolutionary theory and, second, its reception. Victorian England was highly
competitive and individualistic. So was the view of society promulgated by Malthus and
the theory of evolution set out by Charles Darwin and A.R. Wallace. The fact that
Darwin and Wallace independently produced a theory of evolution that was just as
competitive and individualistic as the society in which they lived is taken as evidence for
the impact that society has on science. The same conclusion is reached with respect to
the reception of evolutionary theory. Because Darwin's contemporaries lived in such a
competitive and individualistic society, they were prone to accept a theory that exhibited
these same characteristics. The trouble is that Darwin and Wallace did not live in
anything like the same society and did not formulate the same theory. Although the
character of Victorian society may have influenced the acceptance of evolutionary
theory, it was not the competitive, individualistic theory that Darwin and Wallace set
out but a warmer, more comforting theory.
Keywords: Darwin, evolutionary theory, externalism, internalism, natural selection,
Robert Young, Victorian society, Wallace

Introduction
For almost a half-century students of science have disagreed fundamentally about what influences science. Put too crudely this controversy
is between "internalists" and "externalists."' The traditional internalist
view is that reason, argument and evidence play the major role in science. Other factors at times also enter into science, but the influence of
these factors is treated as being extraneous if not downright detrimental.
' In 1969 Robert young complained that the terms "internalist" and "externalist"
were too crude, referringto a hodgepodge of positions. In addition, the distinction is not
a matter of either/or. Later, externalists urged that this terminology be jettisoned
altogether because it was working against them; see Ruse this volume. For reviews of
the influence that Malthus had on Darwin, see Hodge, 1974, Hodge and Kohn, 1985,
Bowler, 1988, and Radick, 2003.

This content downloaded from 142.51.1.212 on Mon, 21 Jul 2014 16:29:13 PM

All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

138

DAVID L. HULL

Chief among these ".other factors" are sociopolitical factors.2 Darwin

lived in a competitive, individualistic, dog-eat-dog society. So the story
goes, Darwin came up with a scientific theory that was just as competitive, individualistic and dog-eat-dog as Victorian society because of
his experience in Victorian England. When A.R. Wallace, another Brit,
came up with the same theory under the same conditions, the die was
cast. Socio-economic factors determine the course of science. What is
more, Darwin's contemporaries accepted Darwin's theory because it fit
in so nicely with this very same view of society. For example, according
to Alexander Vucinich, Karl von Baer thought that the "Darwinian
theory was popular not because of its scientific merits but because it was
in full harmony with the materialist bent of modern ideologues."3
Central to the internalist-externalist dispute is the commonplace
distinction between causes, on the one hand, and reasons, views and
ideas, on the other hand. When Darwin returned from his voyage, two
million people lived in London and its immediate environs. Before
Darwin died, the population had grown to four million. Living in such a
huge, overcrowded megalopolis may cause one to have views about
over-population. Reading the works of Adam Smith and Robert Malthus might also lead one to worry about over-population. But internalists treat these two "factors" differently. The first is simply a
reaction. More is needed for it to count as science. The situation with
respect to the internalist triumvirate is also problematic. There are no
such things as good causes and bad causes, but there are good reasons
and bad reasons, relevant arguments and irrelevant arguments, ample
evidence and insufficient evidence. If one reads the work of such
economists as Smith and Malthus, one might become convinced that
over-population does pose a problem. These reasons may turn out to be
mistaken, but appealing to reasons is, according to internalists, the right
sort of thing for scientists to do.

Just-So Stories
For the past 25 years evolutionary biologists have debated the issue of
the legitimacy of the sorts of Just-So stories that some evolutionary
2

In this literature the term "factor" serves as a generic term to refer to all sorts of
causes, reasons, arguments and evidence. The rise of the mercantile middle class counts
as a factor. So does the reading of Malthus or the argument from artificial selection to
natural selection. "Student of science" is also a generic euphemism, standing for anyone
who studies science and scientists no matter the methods used.
3 Vucinich, 1974, p. 253; see other papers in Glick, 1974.

This content downloaded from 142.51.1.212 on Mon, 21 Jul 2014 16:29:13 PM

All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

DECONSTRUCTING DARWIN

139

biologists tell.4 I happen to think that adaptive scenarios are among the
most fascinating parts of evolutionary biology. Of course, some of these
stories are a good deal better supported than are others, but they should
not be discarded out of hand. The same observations hold for the sorts
of stories that students of science tell about science. Internalists in their
narratives concentrate on reason, argument and evidence, while externalists explain the course of science in terms of such sociopolitical forces
as the rise of the mercantile middle class.
Are these narratives simply one more example of Just-So stories? I
don't think so. There is no way to know in advance the relative impact
of the various factors that influence science. Perhaps all of the data that
Darwin collected on artificial selection really did influence his views on
the evolution of species. Perhaps it was just so much mythical behavior
designed to camouflage the effects of his daily experience in Victorian
England. I think that both sorts of factors influence the course of science, and it is our task to find out in particular cases which factors are
operative and which not. In this paper I take seriously clams about what
influenced Darwin and later Wallace in the formulation of their theories
of evolution. Casual Just-So stories are not good enough, whether
external or internal.
In evaluating the effects of both internal and external influences on
Darwin and his contemporaries, I had to decide which methods to
adopt in my own work. To be sure I discuss all sorts of possible "factors," but the methods I use are those common in the internalist camp;
e.g., finding evidence to show how competitive and individualistic Victorian England actually was at the time. In short, I use internalist
methods to evaluate the role of both internal and external explanations.
This might seem somewhat unfair, but those externalist students of
science who have addressed the issue of the formulation and acceptance
of Darwin's theory do the same. Even though they think that evidence
does not play as major of a role in the decisions that scientists make as
internalists do, they propose to convince their readers about the overwhelming influence of factors other than evidence by presenting evidence.5
Another difference between internalists and externalists is that
internalists do not limit themselves just to what does influence the
course of science but include reference to what should influence it. Such
normative claims made by internalists separate them from externalists
4 Gould and Lewontin, 1979.
5

Bohlin, 1991, pp. 600-603 for a discussion of reflexive relativism; see also Hull,
1988.

This content downloaded from 142.51.1.212 on Mon, 21 Jul 2014 16:29:13 PM

All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

140

DAVID L. HULL

more than any other feature of their views. In my own work I have tried
to present the full panoply of views and causes that influence science,
and on occasion I have not limited myself just to descriptions. Not only
does the social structure of science influence science, but also it should.
For example, not only do scientists use each other's work, but also they
should. Paying attention to data contributes to the results of scientific
research being trustworthy but so does mutual use. "Social" is not
equivalent to "mistaken."

Externalist Positions
In Darwin's own day, students of science saw an interplay between
Darwin's theory and politico-economical theories. For example, Charles
Sanders Peirce claimed that the. "Origin of Species of Darwin merely
extends politico-economical views of progress to the entire realm of
animals and vegetable life." It is the "Gospel of Greed."6 Here Peirce is
explicit with respect to politico-economical views. They are views, not
causes. The second half of the equation could refer either to causes or to
views. Applied socio-political views can influence plants and animals;
e.g., with respect to conservation, but this does not seem to be what
Peirce had in mind. Instead he is referring to how politico-economical
views can influence our beliefs about plants and animals. Views are
influencing views.
Numerous authors since have repeated Peirce's claim about the
connection between evolutionary theory and politico-economic views.
Robert Young, however, has been the most vocal, declaring that Darwin's theory is an "extension of laisse-faire economic theory from social
science to biology."7 Periodically he has voiced views that are more
measured, but in 1985 he is so confident about the implications of
Malthus for Darwinism that he declared that, "Except for scientific
positivists and religious fundamentalists, then, the connection between
Darwinism and society is acknowledged."8
Both Darwin and Wallace acknowledged the role that Robert Malthus's famous Essay played in their stumbling onto the principle of
natural selection.9 Even so they make almost no reference to Malthus in
their early publications. The three papers published in the Journal of the
Linnean Society are a good case in point. Darwin opened the first of
6

Peirce, 1893, vol. 6, p. 196.

Young, 1969, p. 15.
8 Young, 1985, p. 609.
9 Malthus, 1803; Darwin read the 6th edition of 1926.
7

This content downloaded from 142.51.1.212 on Mon, 21 Jul 2014 16:29:13 PM

All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

DECONSTRUCTING DARWIN

141

these papers, his Extract, with a reference to Malthus, but he does not
mention Malthus in the second of his papers, the Abstract of his letter to
Asa Gray. And then Wallace does not mention Malthus at all in his
Linnean paper.'0
When one turns to the first seven volumes of Darwin's collected
correspondence, one discovers only two references to Malthus."1
Finally, in the Origin of Species Darwin cites Malthus but again only
twice.'2 Stumbling across Malthus may well have generated "wow"
feelings of discovery in both Darwin and Wallace, but in the early years
little in the way of textual evidence can be found of its significance. We
do not find extensive references in the writings of Darwin and Wallace
to the details of Malthus's theory.
The familiar claim is that Darwin and later Wallace read the socioeconomic views of Malthus into their biological theories. What is
rarely, if ever, mentioned is that Malthus himself begins his treatise by
reasoning from biology to human beings.13 In the opening pages of the
1803 edition of his famous book, Malthus begins by noting the
fecundity of plants and animals and then goes on to apply these
observations to human beings. For example, if all the people in the
world except Englishmen were removed from the face of the earth,
within a few ages it would become completely replenished.'4 Darwin in
his Extract also begins by referring to Augustin Pyrame De Candolle's
observation that all of nature is at war and only then turns to Malthus
on man. '5 To be sure, Darwin and Wallace reasoned from economic
theory to biology, but the prior inference was from biology to economics, the sort of inferential feedback loops common in science.
Externalist students of science, however, find this reciprocal inference
somehow suspect.
In the rest of this paper, I look at such claims much more carefully.
In particular, we need to distinguish between causes (such as the rise of
capitalism in Great Britain) and views or beliefs (such as the belief that
science is progressive). The rise of capitalism may well have influenced
both the generation and the reception of natural selection, but the
opposite claim provides an excellent example of a tail wagging a dog. If
no one had ever come up with natural selection, I doubt that the rise of
capitalism would have skipped a beat.
10
12

13
14
5

Darwin, 1859a; Wallace, 1859.

Correspondence of Charles Darwin, 1989, vol. 5, p. 416; 1991, vol. 7, p. 279.
Darwin, 1859b, pp. 5, 63.
Himmelfarb, 1959, p. 133.
Malthus, 1803, p. 14.
Darwin, 1859a, pp. 4-5.

This content downloaded from 142.51.1.212 on Mon, 21 Jul 2014 16:29:13 PM

All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

142

DAVID L. HULL

In this paper I begin by investigating how capitalist Great Britain

influenced the views that Darwin and Wallace had about biological
evolution, in particular natural selection. I then turn to the influence
that the beliefs that Darwin and Wallace held on a variety of issues
influenced their beliefs about biological evolution, in particular natural
selection. I do not discuss two well-worn topics - the role of metaphors
in general and religious beliefs in particular in the genesis and reception
of evolutionary theory.

Victorian Society
The social constructivists are certainly right about Victorian society
being dog-eat-dog. All you have to do is read Dickens to get a feel for
exactly how brutal the early years of capitalism were in England. The
data on the period are staggering. Of the children put in work houses,
85% died before they were old enough to leave. But Victorians could
also be extreme maudlin, especially when it came to faithful dogs and
little match girls, but not sufficiently concerned to do much about these
conditions. Instead they introduced Poor Laws that were so harsh that
one might suspect that they were devised to make poor people strive
even harder to free themselves from poverty. Herbert Spencer for one
thought that these laws were not stringent enough.
How much of this society did Darwin himself experience - not just be
aware of but actually experience? The answer is not much. Except for
the years on the Beagle, Darwin lived quite comfortably on his father's
wealth, his own investments and his wife's dowry. She was, after all, a
Wedgwood. Darwin was not royalty, but he was a gentleman. He could
be accepted in polite company. That is how he was able to obtain his
position on the Beagle as a companion to Captain Fitz-Roy. Darwin in
turn brought along his own valet - Syms Covington. Covington no
doubt knew quite a bit about his master. If Darwin's correspondence is
any indication, Darwin knew very little about his servant.
Wallace started out life in comfortable circumstances, but while he was
still a child, his father lost his money. Thereafter Wallace was raised in
what was known at the time as "genteel poverty." 16 Darwin continued his
education in Edinburgh and Cambridge, while at fourteen Wallace had to
leave school and start to earn a living. He ended up taking two voyages of
discovery, not as a gentleman's companion but as a naturalist. He hoped
to be able to sell his collections when he returnedto England. Throughout
16

Endersby, 2003.

This content downloaded from 142.51.1.212 on Mon, 21 Jul 2014 16:29:13 PM

All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

DECONSTRUCTING DARWIN

143

his life Wallace was short of money and had to earn a living however he
could. Perhaps, in his early years, he was prepared for the life of a gentleman, but the need to earn money counted very strongly against him. He
did not simply observe a life of poverty at a distance, nor just read about it.
He experienced it. While Darwin was living high on the hog, Wallace was
experiencing the dark underbelly of Victorian society, perhaps not as bad
as T.H. Huxley experienced it, but still bad enough.
Of course, one can define "society" and "same" so broadly that
everyone living in England at the time belonged to the same society,
whether a chimney sweep, a beadle, an upstairs parlor maid or even
Queen Victoria herself, but on any reasonable definition of "society"
and "'same," people in England belonged to very different societies.
They were also aware to varying degrees of the existence of segments of
Victorian society other than their own. Perhaps the social gap between
Darwin and Wallace was not as extreme as between Queen Victoria and
a chimney sweep, but it was fairly substantial. At most Wallace became
a peripheral member of the Darwinians. Darwin himself never became
social friends with Wallace in the same way that he did with Huxley.'7
However, the social experiences of Darwin and Wallace were so different that it is difficult to see how they can contribute much to
explaining how the two men came up with the same theory.

Reason, Argument and Evidence

Experience is one thing; knowledge is quite another. Wallace was not
ignorant. He had been schooled enough for him to value education, but
he was largely self-taught. Even before Wallace took his voyages, he had
already adopted the radical social views of Robert Owen, social views
much more radical than those Darwin ever held. How much social
causes had on Wallace's social beliefs is hard to say, but they clearly
were different from those that can be attributed to Darwin. Wallace had
also been sufficiently impressed by Robert Chambers' Vestiges to accept
the evolution of species prior to leaving on his voyages.'8 Once again,
17 T.H. Huxley came from much further down on the social ladder than did Wallace
but rather rapidly became "clubbable." Wallace never did (Endersby, 2003). Lady Lyell
for one found Wallace too gauche for her tastes (Wallace, 1905, p. 220). Of course,
Darwin was not all that impressed with Sir. John Herschel's manners when they first
met, and yet Herschel did quite well for himself in Victorian Society. Also, even though
Darwin was a gentleman and Wallace somewhat less so, both men produced very
ungentlemanly theories (Bohlin, 1994).

'9 Chambers,

1844.

This content downloaded from 142.51.1.212 on Mon, 21 Jul 2014 16:29:13 PM

All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

144

DAVID L. HULL

parsing these causes and their effects is not easy. Beliefs about societies
are still beliefs. Reasoning from beliefs about living creatures in general
to beliefs about human beings and vice versa is not inherently mistaken.
When one compares Darwin and Wallace in 1858 with respect to
their status as scientists, only a couple of similarities leap to mind. Both
Darwin and Wallace took voyages of discovery and were influenced by
Malthus at crucial times in their intellectual development. Darwin had
been working on his Big Book for over 20 years when he got Wallace's
"bolt from the blue." He had been collecting massive amounts of data
and in recent years had tried out his theory on some of the brightest men
of his day. He began working largely alone but eventually began to
collaborate with other scientists. One needs only to read the first seven
volumes of Darwin's correspondence to see the huge numbers of letters
to and from Darwin that dealt with narrowly scientific issues. Letter
after letter concerned such things as the effects of cutting Hyacinth
bulbs in half and dorkings having two or three toes.
Internalists students of science take evidence very seriously. With
respect to evidence in 1858, the status of Darwin and Wallace was quite
different. For 28 years Darwin collected data, and once he came to
accept evolution and natural selection, this data was converted into
evidence for and against these views. For 10 years during his voyages
Wallace collected the same sort of data as Darwin, all of it aimed at the
evolution of species. In 1858 Wallace possessed a significant amount of
data supporting the evolution of species, but almost none for natural
selection. After all, it had only just burst upon him as he recovered from
a sickness. When Wallace was up to it, he wrote his paper and sent off a
copy to Darwin. He knew no one else to whom he might send it.
In sum, in 1858 Darwin and Wallace had collected some of the same
sorts of evidence for the evolution of species, but the amounts differed
markedly. A more significant difference between Darwin and Wallace
was that Darwin had also collected an appreciable albeit impressionistic
amount of evidence for natural selection; Wallace had collected almost
none. Instead of the same evidence influencing these two men to develop
the same theory, the more accurate description is that these two men
may have developed the same theory, but they did so on the basis of
very different evidence.

Two Scientists and the Same Theory

Until now I have argued that neither internal nor external factors go
very far in explaining why Darwin and Wallace produced the same

This content downloaded from 142.51.1.212 on Mon, 21 Jul 2014 16:29:13 PM

All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

DECONSTRUCTING DARWIN

145

theory of evolution. How come two scientists who had such different
scientific and social backgrounds were led to come up with the same
theory? However, on closer inspection, the theories that these two men
set out were quite different. Thus the question becomes what differences
in the scientific and social background of Darwin and Wallace led them
to come up with such different theories. However, sustaining such a
position, given what Darwin and Wallace had to say on the subject, is
quite a difficult task. Darwin says that he and Wallace arrived at the
same theory, and he should know. In his autobiography Darwin
remarked that Wallace's Linnean paper "icontained exactly the same
theory as mine,"'9 and later in a paper celebrating the publication of the
Linnean papers, Wallace claimed that he and Darwin had reached
"identically the same theory."20 After all, if Darwin had not thought
that Wallace's paper was so similar in content to his own, he would not
have worried about getting scooped.
In 1855 Wallace published a paper in the Annals and Magazine of
Natural History in which he argued that new species come into existence
coincident in both time and space with a pre-existing, closely allied
species.21 He did not openly proclaim that species evolve, but he came
very close, close enough that Charles Lyell warned Darwin that he
might be forestalled if he did not publish his own ideas - and soon. That
same year Darwin wrote to Wallace to request some specimens of
domesticated and wild fowl but did not mention Wallace's 1855 paper.
However, in their next exchange of letters, Darwin says: "By your letter
& even still more by your paper in Annals, a year or more ago, I can
plainly see that we have thought much alike & to a certain extent have
come to similar conclusions. In regard to the paper in the Annals, I
agree to the truth of almost every word of your paper; & I daresay that
you will agree with me that it is very rare to find oneself agreeing pretty
closely with any theoretical paper; for it is lamentable how each man
draws his own different conclusions from the very same fact."22
Then Darwin received Wallace's paper. Lyell had been right. Darwin
had been forestalled. I will not discuss the huge literature on who
supposedly stole what from whom because it is not relevant to the
argument in this paper. The issue is the similarity between the views of
the two men in 1858. Upon receipt of Wallace's paper, Darwin wrote
Lyell a letter, a letter that has probably been reprinted more frequently
than any other in Darwin's correspondence:
19
20
21
22

Darwin, 1889, vol. 1, p. 69.

Shermer, 2002, p. 302.
Wallace, 1855.
Correspondence of Charles Darwin, 1990, vol. 6, p. 387.

This content downloaded from 142.51.1.212 on Mon, 21 Jul 2014 16:29:13 PM

All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

146

DAVID L. HULL

Some years or so ago, you recommended me to read a paper by

Wallace in the Annals, which had interested you & and as I was
writing to him, I knew this would please him much, so I told him.
He has to day sent me the enclosed & asked me to forward it to
you. It seems to me well worth reading. Your words have come true
with a vengeance that I should be forestalled. You said this when I
explained to you here very briefly my views of "Natural Selection"
depending on the Struggle for existence. - I never saw a more
striking coincidence. If Wallace had my M.S. sketch written out in
1842 he could not have made a better short extract! Even his terms
now stand as Heads of my Chapters.23
After much soul searching, Lyell and Hooker arranged to have the
papers by Darwin and Wallace presented at the Linnean Society of
London and later published in the Journal of the Linnean Society
(Zoology). In retrospect 1858 is an artificial cutoff point. For 20 years
prior to 1858 Darwin had been working on the transmutation of
species, natural selection and a host of other issues. As Hodge and
Kohn24 have shown Darwin reworked his views throughout these
20 years, and if Wallace's paper had not appeared, he would have
continued this process, eventually publishing when he thought the time
was right. As it is, he was to forced to curtail his studies until the
Origin of Species appeared. Thereafter he continued to work on these
and other issues, both in subsequent editions of the Origin and in later
books.
Time and again Darwin scholars have noted how different the views
presented in the Linnean papers by Darwin and Wallace actually were
from each other,25 but these observations seem not to have had much
of an impact. The fact that a book on economics influenced Darwin
and Wallace to come up with the same biological theory is cited over
and over again as evidence for the impact that social beliefs have on
biological beliefs - social beliefs, not social causes. The basic principle
seems to be that the same social views produced the same biological
theories. I do not intend to challenge the claim that the same social
theory - Malthus's theory - influenced both Darwin and Wallace, but

I do intend to reject the view that the impact of this coincidence

resulted in Darwin and Wallace formulating the same scientific
theories.
23
24

Correspondence of Charles Darwin, 1991, vol. 7, p. 107.

Hodge and Kohn, 1985.

25

Osborn, 1984, Nicholson, 1960, Ghiselin, 1969, Young, 1971, Kottler, 1985,
Bowler, 1988, Desmond and Moore, 1991, and Radick, 2003.

This content downloaded from 142.51.1.212 on Mon, 21 Jul 2014 16:29:13 PM

All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

DECONSTRUCTING DARWIN

147

Before the Origin

The most striking feature of the Linnean papers was how strongly
Wallace rejected Darwin's argument from domestication to natural
selection. Darwin reasoned that, if plant and animal breeders could
produce so much change in so little time, one can only imagine how
much modification could be produced by natural selection in a state of
nature. In his paper, however, Wallace proclaimed, "It will be observed
that this argument rests entirely on the assumption, that varieties
occurring in a state of nature are in all respects analogous to or even
identical with those of domestic animals, and are governed by the same
laws as regards their permanence or further variation. But it is the object
of the present paper to show that this assumption is altogether false."26
Without realizing it at the time, Wallace was rejecting the primary
argument in Darwin's two papers and later in the Origin.
Although Darwin does not mention Lamarck in his Linnean papers, he
does refer to him once in the Origin but only to note that neuter insects
count "against the well-known doctrine of Lamarck."27 Later Darwin
grew increasingly unhappy with Lyell for his constantly conjoining his
name with that of Lamarck. Even so, Darwin grudgingly admitted that
Lamarckian inheritance might have some effect on evolution. In his
Linnean paper Wallace remarked that the hypothesis of Lamarck had
been "repeatedlyand easily refuted by all writerson the subject of varieties
and species," and as the years went by, he did not change his mind.28
The preceding differences between Darwin and Wallace are so
apparent that anyone who reads the three Linnean papers might well
have noticed them, but there was also a more fundamental and abstruse
difference between Darwin and Wallace that might go unnoticed.
Darwin thought that selection occurred in two ways - organisms confronting their non-living environment and organisms competing with
other organisms in both their own and other species. Wallace concentrated on environmental selection to the neglect of organismic selection.
Finally, in his Extract Darwin mentioned a second, weaker form of
selection - sexual selection - the struggle of males for females. Wallace
did not discuss sexual selection in his Linnean paper and later disagreed
with Darwin over the role of female choice.
As time went by, these differences only multiplied. Wallace never
liked the term "inatural selection." It was too metaphorical, and its
26
27
28

Wallace, 1859, p. 66.

Darwin, 1859b, p. 242.
Wallace, 1859, p. 78.

This content downloaded from 142.51.1.212 on Mon, 21 Jul 2014 16:29:13 PM

All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

148

DAVID L. HULL

metaphorical implications seemed to personify nature. Even so, he

deferred to Darwin and used this offensive term. In addition, Wallace
began by thinking that natural selection was all-powerful, while Darwin
thought that it was the main but not the only directive force in evolution. Later Wallace had his doubts about natural selection, in particular
with respect to three different sorts of phenomena - the origin of crossand hybrid sterility, sexual dimorphism and last but certainly not least human beings. Wallace eventually came to have his doubts about the
human mind. He could not see how it could evolve by entirely naturalistic causes. Darwin remained a thoroughgoing naturalist. If he had
to introduce miracles, he would toss out his theory as so much rubbish at least so he says.
As much as Wallace disagreed with Darwin on a host of counts, he
insisted that he did not differ from Darwin with respect to the "overwhelming importance of Natural Selection over all other agencies in the
production of new species."29 But if one looks closer at this great principle, Darwin and Wallace can be seen to differ with respect both to its
content and to its scope. I am not claiming that these two men did not
understand each other, even though they did have trouble with respect to
how they conceived varieties and individual differences. I am claiming
that they held very different theories about the evolution of species. Of
course, such claims depend on our having some sort of objective criteria
for individuating scientific theories - criteria that we currently lack.

The Reception of Evolution and Natural Selection

Numerous scholars have complained that Wallace did not get the credit
he deserved for the genesis of evolutionary theory. This tradition has
been continued with respect to the reception of evolutionary theory.
Wallace gets even less credit - and for good reason. The papers by
Darwin and Wallace appeared in 1859 and caused hardly a ripple. It
was Darwin's Origin of Species that raised all the hubbub. If Wallace
had returned to England immediately upon discovering the fate of his
paper and started publishing on the evolution of species, we might today
refer to the Darwin-Wallace Theory. As it was, Wallace did not return
to England until 1862 and did not publish his Contributions to the
Theory of Natural Selection until 1870.30Whatever the early reception
of evolutionary theory, Wallace did not play much of a role in it.
29
30

Wallace, 1889, p. iv; see also Shermer, 2002, pp. 149, 21.
Wallace, 1870.

This content downloaded from 142.51.1.212 on Mon, 21 Jul 2014 16:29:13 PM

All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

DECONSTRUCTING DARWIN

149

All of the preceding largely concerns two men - Darwin and Wallace.
What did they know and when did they know it? The reception of
evolutionary theory concerns numerous people. Narratives are no
longer good enough. Statistical studies are required. In 1958 Alvar
Elleg'ard published the first book that supplies the sort of evidence
needed to make general claims about Darwinism and the Darwinians.31
Elleg'ard studied 115 British newspapers, magazines, and journals for
12 years after the publication of the Origin of Species. He found several
trends. One was that the evolution of species was widely accepted but
not the other parts of Darwin's theory. Variations could not possibly be
a matter of "chance," and natural selection could not possibly do all the
things that Darwin claimed for it. One of the paradoxes of Darwin
studies is that neither scientists nor the general public would have taken
Darwin's theory so seriously if Darwin had not provided a detailed
specification of his mechanism, but then they rejected the mechanism.
According to the externalists, Darwin's contemporaries accepted his
theory so readily because it scratched their socio-cultural itches. Because
Darwin's theory was so competitive and individualistic and the society
in which Darwin and his contemporaries lived was also competitive and
individualistic, Darwin's contemporaries accepted his theory. Victorian
England was certainly competitive and individualistic, and eventually a
significant percentage of the intellectuals in Darwin's day came to
accept that species evolve - on my estimation 75% by 1869 - but they
rejected just about every other aspect of Darwin's theory. They would
accept evolutionary theory just so long as certain offensive parts were
removed - just the parts that externalists cite as reasons for Darwin's
contemporaries accepting his theory.
In short, the problem that needs solving is not why Darwin succeeded
in getting his contemporaries to adopt his theory, but why he failed so
miserably.32 Various theories of evolution became popular after 1859,
but none of them were all that similar to Darwin's theory. In reaction to
the papers in Thomas Glick's The Comparative Reception of Darwinism (1972), Leeds was struck by how few of the figures discussed in this
volume "held a Darwinian view at all. Mostly they assimilated a phrase
or an aspect of Darwin's expression of his thought to their own
understanding and thought, then, that they were Darwinians."33
Supposedly, the competitive and individualist character of Darwin's
theory explains why his contemporaries accepted Darwin's theory when
31 Ellegard, 1985, reissued 1990; see also van Wyhe.
Hull, 2000.

33

Leeds, 1972, p. 439.

This content downloaded from 142.51.1.212 on Mon, 21 Jul 2014 16:29:13 PM

All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

150

DAVID L. HULL

these were the parts that had to be expunged if it was to be accepted.

Some people surely adopted Darwin's theory because it was so competitive and individualistic, but probably not many. In 1871 in a letter to
Huxley, Darwin remarks that the "pendulum is now swinging against
our side, but I feel positive it will soon swing the other way...it will be a
long battle, after we are dead and gone."34 Darwin did not know how
prescient he was.

The Entangled Bank of Science

Darwin ended his Origin of Species by referring to nature as forming an
entangled bank. As evolutionary biologists have continued to study the
evolution of species, they have discovered precisely how entangled such
banks are. The same can be said with respect to science itself. It too forms
an entangled bank. Both internalists and externalists have set forth
certain claims about science. At first these explanations may sound
plausible. Characteristicsof the societies in which scientist live might well
influence the science that they produce. But so can reason, argument and
evidence. The trouble is that both sorts of explanation turn out to be very
complicated. Students of science need to take both internal and external
explanations more seriously. Just-So stories are not good enough.

References
Bohlin, Ingemar. 1991. "Robert M. Young and Darwin Historiography." Social Studies
of Science 21: 597-648.
1994. "Popularizing Darwin." Science as Culture 4: 425-439.
Bowler, Peter. 1988. The Non-Darwinian Revolution. Baltimore, MD: The Johns
Hopkins Press.
Chambers, Robert. 1844. Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation. London: John
Churchill.
Darwin, Charles. 1859a. "Extract from an Unpublished Work on Species" and an
"Abstract of a Letter from C. Darwin, Esq., to Prof. Asa Gray." J. Loewenberg
(ed.), Darwin, Wallace and the Theory of Natural Selection. Cambridge: Arlington
Books.
1859b. The Origin of Species. London: Murray.
1899, The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, vol. 2 New York: D. Appleton.
1989, 1990, 1991. The Correspondenceof Charles Darwin. F. Burkhardt and
S. Smith (eds.), Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Desmond, Adrian and Moore, James. 1991. Darwin. New York: W.W. Norton.
3

Darwin, 1899, vol. 2, p. 328.

This content downloaded from 142.51.1.212 on Mon, 21 Jul 2014 16:29:13 PM

All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

DECONSTRUCTING DARWIN

151

Ellegard, Alvar. 1985. Darwin and the General Reader. Chicago: University of Chicago
Press.
Endersby, Jim. 2003. "Escaping Darwin's Shadow." Journal of the History of Biology
367: 385-403.
Ghiselin, Michael. 1969. The Triumphof the Darwinian Method. Chicago: University of
Chicago Press.
Glick, Thomas F. (ed.). 1974. The ComparativeReception of Darwinism. Austin, TX and
London: University of Texas Press.
Gould, Stephan Jay and Lewontin, Richard. 1979. "The Spandrels of San Marco and
the Panglossian Paradigm: A Critique of the Adaptationist Programme." Proceedings of the Royal Society of London B 205: 581-598.
Himmelfarb, Gertrude. 1959. Darwin and the Darwinian Revolution. London: Chatto &
Windus.
Hodge, Michael Jonathan. 1974. "England" T.F. Glick (ed.), The Comparative
Reception of Darwinism. Austin and London: University of Texas Press.
and Kohn, David. 1985. "The Immediate Origins of Natural Selection."
D. Kohn (ed.), The Darwinian Heritage. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Hull, David L. 1988. Science as a Process: An Evolutionary Account of the Social and
Conceptual Development of Science. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.
2000. "Why did Darwin Fail? The Role of John Stuart Mill." R. Creath and
J. Maienschein (eds.), Biology and Epistemology. Cambridge: University of
Cambridge Press.
Kottler, Malcom. 1985. "Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace: Two Decades of
Debate Over Natural Selection." D. Kohn (ed.), The Darwinian Heritage. Princeton:
Princeton University Press.
Leeds, Anthony. 1974. "Darwinian and 'Darwinian' Evolutionism in the Study of
Society and Culture," T.F. Glick (ed.), The Comparative Reception of Darwinism.
Austin and London: University of Texas Press.
Malthus, Robert. 1803. An Essay on the Principle of Population 1826 ed., Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.
Nicholson, A.J. 1960. "The Role of Population Dynamics in Natural Selection," S. Tax
(ed.), Evolution after Darwin. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Osborn, Henry Fairfield. 1894. From the Greeks to Darwin: An Outline of the Development of the Evolution Idea. New York: Columbia University Press.
Peirce, Charles Sanders. 1893. "Evolutionary Love." The Monist 3: 176-200.
Radick, Gregory. 2003. "Is the Theory of Natural Selection Independent of its History?" J. Hodge and G. Radick (eds.), The Cambridge Companion to Darwin.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Shermer, Michael. 2002. In Darwin's Shadow. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
van Wyhe, John. 2004. Phrenology and the Origins of Victorian Scientific Naturalism.
Hants, England: Ashgate Press.
Vucinich, Alexander. 1974. "Russia: Biological Sciences," T.F. Glick (ed.), The
Comparative Reception of Darwinism. Austin and London: University of Texas
Press.
Wallace, Alfred Russel. 1855. "On the Law which has Regulated the Introduction of
New Species." Annals and Magazine of Natural History 16: 184-196.
1859. "On the Tendency of Varieties to Depart Indefinitely from the Original
Type" L. Loewenberg (ed.), Darwin, Wallace and the Theory of Natural Selection.
Cambridge: Arlington Books.

This content downloaded from 142.51.1.212 on Mon, 21 Jul 2014 16:29:13 PM

All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

152

DAVID L. HULL

Wallace, Alfred Russel. 1870. Contributionsto the Theory of Natural Selection. London
and New York: Macmillan.
1889. Darwinism: An Exposition of the Theory of Natural Selection 2nd ed.,
London and New York: Macmillan.
1905. My Life: A Record of Events and Opinions, vol. 2 London: Chapman Hall.
Young, Robert. 1969. "Malthus and the Evolutionists: The Common Context of Biological and Social Theory." Past and Present 43: 109-145.
1971. "Darwin's Metaphor: Does Nature Select?" The Monist 55: 442-503.
1985. "Darwinism is Social." David Kohn (ed.), The Darwinian Heritage.
Princeton: Princeton University Press.

This content downloaded from 142.51.1.212 on Mon, 21 Jul 2014 16:29:13 PM

All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions