Descent - DCP, Herbert & Barrett 2008, Richards 1987; Browne 2011, Desmond & Moore 1995, Shanahan 2004 Diogo 2024

DCP
  • Fim do Variation. Dá o orgiem ao Descent.
    • The completion of one book marked the beginning of two others, as Darwin decided to exclude the ‘chapter on man’ from the already oversized two-volume Variation and instead write a short (as he then expected) ‘Essay on Man’. The focus of the essay was to be the role of sexual selection in forming human races, and there was also to be a chapter on the meaning and cause of the expression of emotions. The ‘essay’ grew into another two-volume work, The descent of man and selection in relation to sex (Descent), published in 1871, and the chapter on expression into a book, The expression of the emotions in man and animals (Expression), published in 1872. Although Darwin had been collecting material and making observations in these areas for decades, it was only now that he began to work with a view to publishing his observations.
  • Ampla recepção internacional de tudo nessa época. Muitas ofertas de tradução do Var. (Controle dos tradutores. Carus corrige o original). Dallas também corrigiu algumas coisas.
  • Rede de correspondentes
    • As the ‘horrid tedious dull work’ of correcting Variation went on, Darwin was at the same time seeking information for his next project, the ‘essay on man’. One of the first areas he focused on was expression. In fact, Darwin had been interested in the physical nature of the expression of the emotions in humans for a long time. From around 1838, he had begun making observations on expression, noting the difference or similarity between people and particular animals. He also recorded the expressions of some of his children from infancy, and read books on the anatomy of expression by medical experts such as Charles Bell and Guillaume Benjamin Amand Duchenne. Now Darwin was able to mobilise an ever-widening network of correspondents in an attempt to establish through observation the universality of human expressions. As early as January 1860, he had sent a list of specific queries regarding the expression of emotions in the indigenous people of Tierra del Fuego, whom he had first encountered in 1832 while on the Beagle voyage (see Journal of researches, pp. 228–9).
  • To fritz muller: I am thinking of writing a little essay on the origin of Mankind, as I have been taunted with concealing my opinions; & I shd do this immediately after the completion of my present book. In this case I shd add a chapter on the cause or meaning of Expression.’
  • Wallace Darwin: do you think these things are of much importance?’ Further, he wrote, ‘I would rather see your second volume on “The Struggle for Existence &c.” for I doubt if we have a sufficiency of fair & accurate facts to do any thing with Man.’ Darwin replied, not altogether ingenuously, ‘I fully agree with you that the subject is in no way an important one: it is simply a “hobby-horse” with me about 27 years old; & after thinking that I would write an essay on man, it flashed on me that I could work in some “supplemental remarks on expression”’ (letter to A. R. Wallace, [12–17] March [1867]). Darwin’s doggedness in pursuing answers to his queries reveals a different picture about the importance of the subject to him.
  • Querries on expression
  • Sexual selection. Muita pesquisa. Discordância com Wallace:
    • Darwin was obviously dismayed that his theory of sexual selection was being challenged at a fundamental level. In his response to Wallace (letter to A. R. Wallace, 26 February [1867]), Darwin defended his position about colour in adult insects but turned the discussion to the role of sexual selection in humans, remarking, ‘I still strongly think … that sexual selection has been the main agent in forming the races of Man.’ The two debated the matter over the course of several months. In the 1867 correspondence, Wallace steered clear of the issue of formation of human races, but continued to build his argument about the protective function of colour in both insects and birds. Darwin conceded that Wallace had made a convincing argument concerning protective coloration, but continued to emphasise the importance of sexual selection in humans.
  • Muita pesquisa botânica também.
  • Argyll e Jenkin.
  • Carus pede para aquietar Haeckel.
  • Família envolvida. Henrietta corrige provas do Var.
  • Mais cartas do que nunca devido a expression e sel sex.
  • Sempre defendeu a sel sex para o homem. letter to A. R. Wallace, 28 [May 1864]
  • Descent
    • In July 1868 Darwin was still anticipating that his book would take the form of a ‘short essay’ on man (letter to Ernst Haeckel, 3 July 1868). But this work would eventually swell to two separate books, Descent of man and Expression of the emotions in man and animals, the former comprising two volumes, nearly two-thirds of which was devoted to sexual selection in the animal kingdom.
  • Recepção boa do Variation. Muita tradução. Impacto religioso.
  • Sex sel. Poder de escolha ddo macho ou da fêmea em diferentes grupos.
  • Mais um debate com wallace: esterilidade dos híbridos pode ser causada por SN.
  • Wallace contra sex sel: https://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/DCP-LETT-6375
  • Interlúdios botânicos.
  • Worshippers at the shrine of Dr Darwin (including Haeckel and Darwinismus)
  •  Retorno ao trabalho no descent (e no que viria a ser o expression.) após a quinta ed. Muitos correspondentes. His network of contacts and collaborators continued to grow and diversify in 1869
  • Artigo do wallce
  • Many translations spawning from fame
    • The fifth edition of Origin, published in June, formed the basis for a new German edition (Bronn and Carus trans. 1870)
    • Angered by these proceedings, Darwin arranged for another publisher, Charles Reinwald, and another translator, Jean Jacques Moulinié, to bring out a new French edition, incorporating his latest revisions (Moulinié trans. 1873).  Reinwald and Moulinié had been engaged to produce the French edition of Variation (Moulinié trans. 1868), and CD now extended his permission for them to bring out his next book (Descent).
    • But the translation that was dearest to Darwin’s heart was probably the one he commissioned and paid for himself:
      • Darwin was sufficiently impressed by Delpino’s criticism of pangensis, however, to have it translated and published in a British journal. Detailed discussion of pangenesis had been scarce in scientific literature, and the appearance of Delpino’s review in Scientific Opinion allowed Darwin to publicly defend his provisional hypothesis in the form of a letter to the same journal
  • Saúde ruim, acidente de cavalo
  • Darwin e Galton
  • Ano de 1870 inteiro dedicado ao descent
  • Question and questionaires
  • Republicação do artigo de wallace. Bates fica preocupado. I never write reviews
  • Mivart publicou um artigo em favor do design em 1869. Junto com outros ensaios viriam a compor o genesis. my whole time wd be wasted if I once began to answer objectors.
  • Controvérsia na academia francesa e em Oxford > rectorship of the University of Aberdeen, which Darwin gracefully declined on the habitual grounds of ill health (letter from J. S. Craig, 4 November 1872, and letter to J. S. Craig, 7 November 1872). But recognition was far from unwelcome: expressing his gratitude at his election to foreign membership of the Royal Academy of Science of the Netherlands,
  • attention was frequently diverted by correspondents to topics of long-standing interest > Hermann Muller coadaptação; galton herança; bastian e Huxley spontaneous generation; questão do censo;
  • muitas visitas
  • franco-prussian war
  • mesmo após publicação do descent a correpondencia continuou: as he discussed the details of its publication in February, the reprintings at intervals throughout the year, the various translations that were already under way, and the initial reception of the book in the press. Darwin fielded numerous letters from readers who were eager to contribute new facts and observations to his  work, and who occasionally offered sharp criticism or even condemnation.
  • Descent publicado no começo do ano. Expected controversy. Foi principalmente em volta das capacidades mentais
  • expression
  • Casamento de etty
  • Muito sucesso. Três reimpressões ainda em 1871 e várias traduções das proofsheets
    • As usual, Darwin did his best to obtain a wide and favourable reception. He suggested various journals for review, and ordered a large number of presentation copies, sending around eighty books to leading men of science and collaborators who had assisted him, as well as to his extended family and friends (see Correspondence vol. 19, Appendix IV)
  • Montanha de cartas em recepção
  • Trabalhando no expression.
  • Experimentos em plantas e minhocas que virariam o outro livro lá
  • Popular press convinced by murray
  • Ilustrations for expression. Depois de escolhidas ainda tiveram que ser negociadas e produzidas por um processo novo cheio de dificuldades logisticas
  • Relação quente e fria com wallace
    • Indignation on behalf of another friend, although in a rather more self-serving context, led Darwin to a second rare public intervention in August.  Alfred Russel Wallace had been attacked in print for his pro-Darwin review of Charles Robert Bree’s  An exposition of the fallacies in the hypothesis of Mr. Darwin, and Darwin wrote a cutting letter to Nature in Wallace’s defence (letter to Nature , 3 August [1872]). 
    • Although the two men were and remained close friends, differences of opinion between Darwin and Wallace on the relative importance of natural and sexual selection, and in particular on their role in human evolution, continued to widen.  Wallace’s favourable review of the physiologist Henry Charlton Bastian’s recent book on the origin of life (H. C. Bastian 1872; Wallace 1872d) left him sceptical but willing to be convinced. 'How grand is the onward rush of Science,’ he wrote, while still defending his own theory of inheritance against Bastian; 'it is enough to console us for the many errors which we have committed & for our efforts being overlaid & forgotten in the mass of new facts & new views which are daily turning up’ (letter to A. R. Wallace, 28 August [1872]).
  • Darwin encorajava várias pesquisas Wright, airy, leonard, treat,
  • Expression. Vendeu demais 7000 copias faltando 3000 placas
  • Muita correspondência anedotal
  • Mais minhoca e plan
  • Muito dedicado a plantas nesse ano, mas recebeu bastante cartas sobre o Expression (que vendeu mais que a média) e discutiu bastante sobre caracteres adquiridos:
    • Darwin also contributed to discussions in the scientific weekly Nature on the role of inherited and acquired characteristics in animals. The subject was brought closer to home by Francis Galton’s work on inherited talent, which prompted Darwin to reflect on the traits and conditions that had led to his achievement in science.
    • Darwin had occasion to reflect more personally on the power of instinct and inheritance when he was asked by his cousin Francis Galton to participate in a study of English men of science. Galton’s most recent article had called for a national register of talent in order to encourage interbreeding among the “naturally gifted” (Galton 1873a). Darwin was sympathetic to his cousin’s aims but regarded the project as “utopian” (letter to Francis Galton, 4 January [1873]). Continuing the line of research he had begun with Hereditary genius (1869), Galton tried to establish the transmission of various character traits in families, and the comparative role of nature and nurture by gathering statistics through a questionnaire. Darwin answered his cousin’s queries, though he tended to downplay the importance of innate ability. His “special talents”, he wrote, were “none, except for business … being regular in correspondence, and investing money very well” (letter to Francis Galton, 28 May 1873). Among character traits, he listed “Steadiness; great curiosity about facts, and their meaning;  some love of the new and marvellous”. He also noted his passion for collecting, the value of Euclid and William Paley as educational influences, and the uselessness of his Edinburgh and Cambridge courses: “every thing else bosh”. His scientific education, he concluded, began on the Beagle voyage. Suspecting that no one was a good judge of his own character, he asked his sons to complete the list. Francis added to his father’s virtues: “sober, honest & industrious” (letter to Francis Galton, 28 May 1873).
  • Em novemro, Murray pediu revisões do Descent.
    • In Descent, Darwin had argued that language originated from animal sounds, and he had  recently been criticised for this by the philologist Friedrich Max Müller in a series of lectures at the Royal Institution of Great Britain. Max Müller maintained that animal cries and gestures bore little resemblance to human speech, and went so far as to assert that animals, in lacking the power of language, also lacked the ability to form general ideas or concepts. On receiving a copy of the lectures, Darwin was deferential to Max Müller’s expertise, but in the second edition of Descent he expanded his discussion to address his criticisms. “As far as language is concerned I am not worthy to be your adversary”, Darwin conceded, “[but] he who is fully convinced, as I am, that man is descended from some lower animal, is almost forced to believe a priori that articulate language has been developed from inarticulate cries; and he is therefore hardly a fair judge of the arguments opposed to this belief” (letter to Friedrich Max Müller, 3 July 1873). 
    • Darwin began work on the new edition of Descent on 20 November, and soon complained to Hooker, “[it] turns out a truly awful job, from the innumerable criticisms, letters, & new facts which I have to compare & judge of” (letter to J. D. Hooker, 20 December [1873]). Keen to minimise the interruption to his botanical work, he considered employing someone else for the more routine tasks of editing the manuscript. His first choice was Alfred Russel Wallace, since he knew that Wallace sometimes took on such work for pay. Darwin assured his fellow naturalist that the job was “dull & tedious”, and that he did not want criticisms at this stage: “I grieve to know how much we differ on many points; & in my opinion each man must publish the conclusions at which he has arrived & in which he still believes whether or not they are sound” (letter to A. R. Wallace, 17 November 1873). But no sooner had Wallace accepted, than Darwin reconsidered in favour of his son George. Keeping such editorial work in the family followed the pattern that Darwin had used for previous publications, his main assistant in the past having been Henrietta.
  • Cada vez mais celebridade.
1874 
  • The year 1874 was one of consolidation, reflection, and turmoil for Darwin. He spent the early months working on second editions of Coral reefs and Descent of man; the rest of the year was mostly devoted to further research on insectivorous plants. A vicious dispute over an anonymous review that attacked the work of Darwin’s son George dominated the second half of the year.
  • Revisão do Coral e do Descent
    • Alongside his revision of Coral reefs, Darwin went to work on a new edition of Descent. In the preface, he acknowledged his great debt ‘to a large number of correspondents for the communication of a surprising number of new facts and remarks’ (Descent 2d ed., p. v).
    •  Among the many contributors was George Cupples, a Scottish deerhound expert who forwarded Darwin’s queries about the numbers of males and females born into, and preserved in, litters of puppies to other dog breeders (letters from George Cupples, 21 February 1874 and 12 March 1874); the material was summarised in a note about how breeders’ selective practices might influence sex ratios (Descent 2d ed., p. 258 n. 99). The former bishop of Honolulu, Thomas Nettleship Staley, and Titus Munson Coan, a physician in New York whose parents had been missionaries, provided information on female infanticide and disease in the Sandwich Islands (Hawaii; letters from T. N. Staley, 12 February 1874 and 20 February 1874; letters from T. M. Coan, 14 February 1874 and 22 June 1874). A civil servant in the Colonial Office, William Dealtry, also provided information on population numbers and sex ratios among the Pitcairn islanders (letter from William Dealtry, 16 January 1874).
    •  One of the most significant additions to Descent was an eight-page note written by Huxley with the aim of ending a dispute over the structure of ape and human brains that had raged between himself and Richard Owen since the 1860s. Darwin had omitted this controversial topic from the first edition of Descent but, because some still doubted the close similarities between ape and human brains, he asked for a clarifying note from Huxley (Desmond and Moore 2004, pp. xxxv–xxxvi). Huxley obliged with a lengthy ‘screed’, stating: ‘I think you will say that I have pounded the enemy into a jelly’ (letter from T. H. Huxley, 14 April 1874). The technical nature of Huxley’s argument prompted him to add, ‘Put my contribution into the smallest type admissible for it will be read by none but anatomists; and never mind where it goes’ (letter from T. H. Huxley, 16 April 1874). 
    • The second edition of Descent was published in November 1874 (letter from R. F. Cooke, 12 November 1874). Though containing forty extra pages and three new illustrations, it was issued in a single volume at a much reduced price of nine shillings, in line with Charles Lyell’s Student’s elements of geology, and with the cheaper sixth edition of Darwin’s own Origin. (The first edition had been in two volumes and had cost twenty-four shillings.) Murray’s partner, Robert Francis Cooke, informed Darwin that the lower price would bring the profits on the first 2000 copies ‘to almost nil’ but, as the work had been stereotyped, the return on subsequent print runs would be very good (letter from R. F. Cooke, 12 November 1874). 
    • Darwin's son George had laboured hard on the revisions and wrote to his father:  ‘I hope you wo’nt think me bumptious if I say to you that I think it a splendid book & deserving of every inch of its reputation. Your power of marshalling facts under one point of view & the number of facts utterly staggers me; but I’m more struck than anything by the conciseness & clearness of your thought’ (letter from G. H. Darwin, 20 April 1874).
  • Caso Mivart com George.
    • n August 1873, he had published in the Contemporary Review ‘On beneficial restrictions to liberty of marriage’, in which he suggested that modern scientific views of inheritance might lead to restrictions on marriage in order to discourage the spread of various mental and physical disorders (G. H. Darwin 1873b). In July 1874, an anonymous essay appeared in the Quarterly Review discussing works on primitive man by John Lubbock and Edward Burnett Tylor. It included an attack on George’s paper as speaking ‘in an approving strain . . . of the encouragement of vice in order to check population’. 
    • The review was by St George Jackson Mivart, one of the most severe critics of the theory of natural selection, and one who had succeeded in offending the usually generous Darwin by his previous anonymous attacks ([Mivart] 1869; 1871c). In his review, Mivart criticised both son and father, dismissing Darwin’s views on the development of language as ‘nonsense’ and as displaying ‘amazing ignorance’ ([Mivart] 1874b, p. 45). He also circuitously implicated Darwin in the supposed endorsement of immorality, for the link between prostitution and reduced population in various cultures had been made in Descent of man (Descent 1: 134). By interpreting George’s article as a defence of such immoral practices, Mivart was indirectly accusing Darwin himself of supporting the ‘hideous sexual criminality of Pagan days’ ([Mivart] 1874b, p. 70).
    • Darwin considera sucesso. Mas não dá certo. George resolve responder.
      • Mivart’s attack had been published in the Quarterly Review, one of the most prestigious and politically Conservative journals with a long tradition of anonymous reviews. Its proprietor was none other than John Murray, Darwin’s publisher. So incensed was Darwin that he thought it appropriate to apply pressure on Murray to print George’s defence. After re-reading George’s original article he could not see ‘a shadow of foundation for the false, scurrilous accusation of [a] lying scoundrel’ (letter to G. H. Darwin, 1 August [1874]). He drafted a brief statement of denial in the form of a letter to the editor, and sent it to George. Drafts went back and forth in early August, as father and son agonised over the wording of both the letter to the editor and the letter to Murray to accompany it. The depth of Darwin’s feelings can be gauged by his willingness to stake his thirty-year relationship with Murray on the outcome (enclosure to letter from G. H. Darwin, 6 [August] 1874)
      • George não queria afetar a relação dos dois. Darwin diminuiu o tom. Dá certo no final, ams Darwin não fica satisfeito, pois queria desculpas expressas. Huxley foi do deixa disso. Outros queriam atacá-lo de outras formas. Huxley novamente queria deixar as coisas em print. Darwin corta relações de vez em 1875.
  • By 1874, Darwin had resigned himself to the fact that he would not complete all of the more grand theoretical publications that he had once planned: ‘I shall never have strength & life to complete more of the series of books in relation to the Origin, of which I have the M.S. half completed; but I have started the subject & that must be enough for me’ (letter to W. D. Fox, 11 May [1874]).
  • Mais botânica. Recepção do Expression. Friend and Patron. Conhece Romanes.
  • Securing foundations
    • The influence of Darwin’s work was further increased by translations that were published as soon as possible after the publication of the English editions. Darwin’s French publisher, Charles Reinwald, engaged new translators to replace Jean Jacques Moulinié, who had died after a period of ill health in 1873.  Edmond Barbier corrected defects in Moulinié’s translation of Descent and a second French edition was published in January 1875 (letter from C.-F. Reinwald , 4 February 1874). Barbier also translated the second edition of Journal of researches, which was published for the first time in French as Voyage d’un naturaliste autour du monde (Naturalist’s journey on board the Beagle) in December (letter from C.-F. Reinwald , 10 December 1874). Samuel Jean Pozzi and René Benoît produced the first French translation of Expression. 
    • Darwin’s German translator, Julius Victor Carus, and his publisher, Eduard Koch of E. Schweizerbart’sche Verlagsbuchhandlung, proposed to bring out an edition of his collected works in German. Darwin’s books were selling well in Germany and Carus wrote that around 17,000 copies of all the works that had been translated had already been sold (letter from J. V. Carus, 15 March 1874). Darwin was ‘much pleased’ but privately said Carus was ‘like a goose’ for thinking he could not weary the German public (letter to H. E. Litchfield,  21 [March 1874]). 
    • Arrangements were also made for a Serbian translation of Origin (letter from M. M. Radovanović, 17 September 1874), which appeared in 1878. 
    • Books and articles were received from authors around the world, indicating the diverse reception of Darwin’s work. His controversial German admirer, Ernst Haeckel, sent the fifth edition of his Natürliche Schöpfungsgeschichte along with Anthropogenie oder Entwickelungsgeschichte des Mensches. Surprised about receiving two books in quick succession, Darwin wrote back ‘Good Heavens, take care that you do not wear out your brain’ (letter to Ernest Haeckel, 20 September 1874). Haeckel lamented  the hostile reception of his Anthropogenie in religious circles in Britain: ‘Your countrymen specifically do not seem to understand the anti-clerical movement which now governs all truth-loving educated persons here in Germany’ (letter from Ernst Haeckel, 20 December 1874).
  • Impacto na astrofísica, fisionomia, entomologia, relação entre cc e relig, entre outros.
1875 
  •  Ainda muita botânica. Publicação de um dos livros.
  • Mivart
    • In January, the protracted dispute with Mivart came to a close. The final chapter of the controversy involved a slanderous attack upon Darwin’s son George, in an anonymous review in 1874 (see Correspondence vol. 22, Appendix V). Darwin remained bitter and dissatisfied with Mivart’s attempts at conciliation, and spent weeks deliberating how to end the matter to his satisfaction. On 8 January, he told Hooker: ‘I will write a savage letter & that will do me some good, if I do not send it!’ In the end, with much advice and assistance from his family, he sent a curt note to Mivart on 12 January, breaking off all future communication. Darwin had been supported during the affair by the loyalty of his close friends, Hooker and Thomas Henry Huxley. 
    • Because Mivart was a distinguished zoologist, a fellow of the Royal Society of London, and a secretary of the Linnean Society, Darwin’s friends had to find ways of coming to his defence while still respecting codes of conduct and communication in scientific society. Huxley chose journalism, depicting the anonymous reviewer (Mivart) as a blind antagonist of ‘all things Darwinian’ and a mere mouthpiece of ‘Jesuitical Rome’ (Academy, 2 January 1875, pp. 16–17). ‘How grandly you have defended me’, Darwin wrote on 6 January, ‘You have also greatly honoured George. You have indeed been a true friend.’ Hooker was hampered by his position as president of the Royal Society from spurning Mivart in public. ‘Without cutting him direct’, he advised Darwin on 7 January, ‘I should avoid him, & if he speaks to me should let him feel it.’ 
    • Hooker also directed some of his anger toward John Murray, the publisher of the Quarterly Review, in which Mivart’s anonymous essay had appeared. ‘I told him that the Review was disgraced, that I should give the cold shoulder to the Editor … Poor Murray shuddered again & again’ (letter from J. D. Hooker, 16 January 1875). Darwin had also considered taking up the issue with Murray in 1874, even threatening to break off future dealings with the man who had been his publisher for over thirty years. ‘My thirst for vengeance is now quite Satisfied’, he told Hooker on 17 January, ‘I feel now like a pure forgiving Christian!’ 
    • Darwin’s ire was not fully spent, however, for he set about exposing Mivart’s character to other men of science when the chance arose. On 28 January, he sent a note on Royal Society business to Edward Burnett Tylor, whose anthropological work had been reviewed in the same Quarterly article that attacked George. Darwin raised the matter at the end of the note: ‘I know positively that this article was written by Mr Mivart & I wish to take every opportunity of saying how false a man I consider him to be.’
  • Trocou a treta com Mivart pela da vivisecção. Equlíbrio entre crueldade e valor experimental.
  • Testanto a pangênese.
    • Experiments to test Darwin’s pangenesis hypothesis had been performed on animals in previous years by Darwin’s cousin Francis Galton. These had been unsuccessful, and Galton went on to develop his own theory of heredity in a series of articles in 1875 and 1876, based partly on his studies of twins and the inheritance of ‘genius’ in families. Galton came to reject the view that characteristics acquired in an individual’s lifetime could be transmitted to offspring. 
    • According to Galton’s theory, some ‘germs’ developed within the individual, giving rise to characteristics such as hair and eye colour; however, most germs remained dormant and were stored in the reproductive organs in isolation from the effects of environment or habit. He believed that the active germs were rendered ‘sterile’ by their use in the organism, and so exerted little or no influence on offspring; whereas the inactive or ‘residual’ germs were passed to offspring unmodified. Galton shared his views with Darwin in several lengthy letters. ‘I am very glad indeed of your work,’ Darwin replied on 4 November, ‘though I cannot yet follow all your reasoning.’ 
    • Darwin struggled with Galton’s unconventional terminology and with the abstractness of his theory, which Galton was unable to improve upon in letters. ‘Unless you can make several parts clearer,’ Darwin reiterated on 7 November, ‘I believe (though I hope I am altogether wrong) that very few will endeavour or succeed in, fathoming your meaning.’ Darwin remained committed to the importance of conditions of existence, and the effects of changed habits on fertility and the health of offspring. In the previous year, he had expanded his discussion in the second edition of Descent of the causes of extinction in ‘savage races’ when their ways of life were altered by European colonists (Descent 2d ed., pp. 188–90). He drew attention to this discussion in a letter to George Rolleston, remarking on 2 September: ‘the case is strictly parallel to the sterility of many wild animals when made captive. The civilisation of savages & the captivity of wild animals leading to the same result.’
  • Debate sobre a origme de linguagem envolvendo Darwin, George, Max Muller e Ffinden.
  • On women
    • In the wider public sphere and in scientific communities abroad, Darwin’s work continued to elicit strong reactions, both critical and reverential. On 16 July he received a letter from an advocate of women’s rights, Charlotte Papé, questioning his views in Descent on the superiority of male intellect: ‘I myself know so comparatively many striking instances to the contrary, among my friends and my own family, that it seems highly improbable to me. At any rate, every woman ought to try to ascertain as much of the truth in respect to it as she can; for apart from the interest of the question in itself, it is most important for the future of women.’ Papé asked Darwin for advice on designing a comparative study of the inheritance of mental powers in women and men, and expressed her frustration at the social constraints that women faced in the pursuit of science: ‘of course, like all women, I have had no scientific training … And it is just this very helplessness as to getting information … that must form my excuse for the unwarrantable liberty I am taking.’
  • Darwinismus ainda mais forte. Carus traduzindo ainda mais coisas.
Bits and pieces de outros anos
  • 1876
    • Carus corrigia tudo que traduzia.
    • Retorno de Mivart com Lessons of Nature em 1876
    • Segue com o embate da vivisecção.
    • Pangenesis vs perigenesis
    • Dangers of patronage
  • 1877
    • Publicação do Biographical sketch of an infant"
    • Discussão sobre cores.
    • Samuel Butler
  • Mais de 500 cartas associadas ao descent.
  • Correspondentes. Algumas pesquisas não resultaram em nada.
  • Desenvolvimento de 1863 a 1874 mais didático
  • Ladies like it
  • Ataque de Mivart.

HERBERT & BARRETT 2008
Notebook M
  • Darwin wrote ‘Private’ on the inside front cover of M and N, no doubt because the notes contained much about mental qualities, both normal and abnormal, of himself, family and friends 517
  • Two entries, both in grey ink, record the opening and closing dates of the notebook: ‘July 15th 1838’ on page 1 and ‘Finished. Octob. 2d.’ on the inside front cover. The first entry, being in grey ink, was postdated. Notebook D, which resembles Notebook M in appearance, was also begun on or about 15 July and finished on 2 October 1838. The two were probably purchased together. 517
  • On the first of August he was again in London. In his ‘Journal’ he noted, ‘Very idle at Shrewsbury, some notes from my Father. & opened note book, connected with Metaphysical Enquiries’. 517
  • Notas resultantes da conversa com seu pai sobre comportamento normal e anormal. 517
  • Notas de leituras de livros tradicionais da família: Hartley, Hume, Economia Política. 518
  • Conteúdo
    • Several lines of inquiry begun in Notebooks B and C are carried forward in M.4 Darwin’s comments on the origin of man reveal that the subject held no terror for him; the liberal views of his family in religion helped him accept the consequences for man of transmutationist theory. From Notebook B onwards he was prepared to consider that ‘monkeys make men’ (B169). In Notebook C he treated the subject with greater frequency and in more detail (C55, 72, 74, 76−79, 196), speculating on the circumstances necessary for the origin of mankind (C78). In Notebook M his interest in human origins—aside from rhetorical flourishes (M84, 123)—was focused primarily on the topic of expression. Darwin had already brought up the topic in Notebook C ‘Let man visit Ourang-outang in domestication, hear expressive whine—see its intelligence . . .’ (C79), but in Notebook M he developed the subject at greater length. He observed and inquired about expression in a wide array of different animals (M142−43, 152). Darwin believed the similarity of expressions in other animals to man strengthened, even ‘proved’, the transmutationist case (M84). 
    • Another important line of inquiry connecting Notebooks B, C, D, and M was the search for an explanation for the origin of adaptation in nature. In Notebook B Darwin had discarded the notion of progressive development which included the premise of directed growth. He was thus left to begin again on the subject of adaptation. He started his inquiry with an attribute. of organisms which appeared to him quite malleable, viz., behaviour. In adopting this approach he knew he was on dangerous ground, since Jean Baptiste de Lamarck had gone the route before him. Nevertheless, if he avoided the Lamarckian presumption that organisms acted consciously in altering their behaviour, and hence their constitutions, he thought the approach had merit (C63, 163, 173). He concluded that ‘according to my views, habits give structure, . . . habits precedes structure, . . . habitual instincts precede structure.—’ (C199). Darwin’s point of departure in Notebook M was thus slightly altered Lamarckianism. In the notebook he was eager to show that mind affects body, and that human beings act without consciousness, that is from habit or instinct, on all sorts of occasions. For Darwin, understanding unconscious mental activity was a first step towards understanding the origin of adaptation.518
    • While keeping Notebooks M and D, Darwin began to consider the network of ideas he had assembled from what might be described as a ‘metatheoretical’ aspect. The most obvious sign of Darwin’s new perspective was the alignment of his transmutation view with materialism and determinism. He embraced materialism enthusiastically (M19, 57) and argued, using associationist language, that thought originated in sensation (M61− 62). On determinism he examined the traditional position that free will was illusory (M27, 126), and that free will and chance were synonomous (M31). In a second ‘metatheoretical’ effort Darwin sought to frame his theory within the setting of human knowledge generally. As in Notebooks B and C, he urged the acceptance of secondary causation in accounting for the origin of species (M154), and measured his biological thinking against the criteria for positive knowledge advanced by Auguste Comte (M69−70). 519
  • Começa a datar os escritos. M vem junto com D, o Journal e a recollection. 519
  • Tanto M quanto N foram direto para o Descent e Expression.
Notebook N
  • The opening entry on the first page of the notebook is dated ‘October 2d. 1838’; the bulk of the notebook was completed by mid-1839 (page 97 is dated 20 July), with later entries being made sporadically. The last dated entry in the body of the text is 28 April 1840 on page 121. 561
  • There are other similarities between Notebooks M and N. Both bear the inscriptions ‘Expression’ and ‘Private’; both reveal details of the personal lives of the author and his family; and both are little excised compared to other alphabetically lettered notebooks. Also, Darwin clearly carried his programme of reading over from one notebook to the next. Thus the reading list on C270 used for Notebook M ends with references to works mentioned at the beginning of Notebook N, as for example, Charles Waterton’s 1838 Essays on Natural History. 561
  • With the exception of a few stray remarks, the entries in the notebooks fall into five categories: (1) the spectrum of human activity ranging from thought and emotion through expression and behaviour; (2) habit, instinct, and heredity (heredity belonging in this group by virtue of Darwin’s belief that habits and structural changes due to habits could be inherited); (3) evolutionary origins, including questions regarding the origin of language, reason, conscience, religious belief, taste, evil passions, and chastity in women; (4) continuities between humans and other animals; and (5) epistemology. Within these categories are subordinate questions that receive greater attention in one or the other of the notebooks. Thus the subject of insanity, on which Darwin and his father spoke at length in July 1838, is abundantly represented in Notebook M but not at all in Notebook N. In other areas, however, and notably on the subjects of expression, habit, and instinct, remarks are divided more evenly between the two notebooks. 561
  • As a sequel to Notebook M, N shows a gradual decline in attention to metaphysical topics. Both were kept in a period of increasing excitement, M as accumulating data supported transmutation and N as causal agencies of transmutation became more revealed. 561
  • In content, the notebook also conveys a sense of closure. There are fewer exclamatory and self-reflective remarks in Notebook N, and more interest in providing definitions and refining terms (see, for example, N57, N76−80, and N87). 561
  • Sai pai entra esposa. Continua com leituras. 562
  • Canibilizado no NS, Descent e Expression 562

RICHARDS 1987
Cap 5
  • Contra NS
    • Charles Lyell and Asa Gray regarded the Darwinian device as deficient. Both suggested that human evolution required a supernatural impetus. Francis Galton and William Greg seemed to show that even if selection were able to produce the beginnings of human reason and moral sentiment, intensified social and sympathetic feelings would prevent beneficial culling of the mentally and morally inferior—natural selection would slowly be disengaged. And Wallace, who Darwin now feared “murdered too completely your own and my child,”? set out a series of persuasive objections to the idea that natural selection had designed human nature. 185
  • CD diz a Wallace que SS foi o que motivou seu estudo de evolução humana. 187
  • Discordância entre eles
    • Wallace believed that the distinctive coloration of a species had been inherited equally by both sexes, but that the sex most often in danger would give up bright colors, due to the operations of natural selection. While Darwin at first agreed that selection for protective camouflage likely caused the drab feathers of most female birds, he also recognized another possibility: that the inheritance of coloration was sex-linked from the start. During the course of the debate, Darwin came to reject Wallace’s explanation altogether. He argued rather that both males and females had begun with equally muted hues, and while sexual selection would dress out the male in brighter colors, the female’s original pattern would simply be handed down to her daughters. 187-8
  • Journal diz que dois caps terminados na primavera de 1869. Sem evidência que ia tratar da inteligência e moralidade, mas uma série de artigos de Wallace, Greg e Spencer podem ter feito ele mudar de ideia 189
  • Against natural prejudice 191
  • Espécies ou variedades de homem? em Wallace. Darwin diz que tanto faz mas prefere subespécies. NS não explica as raças nem os sexos pois são características sem valor adaptativo. 192 
  • ver descent 152-3 sobre essa mudança em teor da SN nas edições do Origin, além de
    • In the early editions of the Origin, he did attempt to explain most adaptations by use of natural selection, but he certainly admitted the significance of other factors 193-4
    • Mivart estressa essa questão adaptativa 194
    • I think more potent forces led him to 'exaggerate' the imporance of natural selection. Surely the very bature of the exlanatory enterprise compels the scientist to attempt an account of all relevant data. Moreover, the demonstrative requirements for fielding a new theory quite naturally would !ead him to apply the chief principle of that theory in all quarters. Finally, Darwin’s success in giving ingenious natural selection accounts (e.g., the instincts of neuter insects) would encourage him in an unstinting effort to reduce initially recalcitrant data. When he later called up the more latent resources ofhis theory of evolution (e.g., direct effects of the environment and inherited habit), he certainly did not play false to his discovery. Some historians, however, have calculated that under the brunt of attack and with the special difficulties he faced in the Descent, Darwin allowed Lamarckian mechanisms to usurp the role of natural selection. The quotation from the Descent appears to them to admit as much. They see the Descent as marking Darwin’s decline into his dotage.”? But a more careful evaluation of Darwin’s selfjudgment and a sustained analysis of his finely elaborated theory of human mental and moral evolution dispose, I believe, of that historiographic conceit. 195
  • Questão das edições 195 nota 29 (eisely, himmelfarbd, vorzimmer)
    • they complain of Darwins' use of anecdotal evidence in support of his genetic expalnation of the animal origins of hymand minds and morals. [but] darwin compiledhis [persuasive] examles fomr recognized authoritative sources. 196
  • Discute ferramentas e sentimentos religiosos e linguagem em degradê e não como critérios distintivos
    • social and cultural relationships constituted the proximate environment for the evolution of those traits we think of as distinctively human. In this specific case, however, he suggested that the environmnet acted not as the agent of selection, but as the stimulus for use inheritance. 205
  • Consciencia de Kant exclusively from the side of natural history 208
    • An evolved intellect played two critical roles in Darwin’s moral theory. First, reason and experience would guide conduct that had been stimulated by social instinct: “Although man, as just remarked, has no special instincts to tell him how to aid his fellow-men, he still has the impulse, and with his improved intellectual faculties would naturally be much guided in this respect by reason and experience.” Darwin thought this guidance would become more routinized after speech had developed in early human groups, since the language of praise and blame would help channel conduct into stable though culturally diverse patterns.°7 The second role Darwin assigned to developed intellect formed the kernel of his theory of conscience. An evolved intelligence, he argued, allowed the individual to compare an unsatisfied social instinct with a more powerful urge, such as hunger, fear, or the sexual itch, to which it had been sacrificed. 210
  • a moral being is "one who is capable of comparing his past and future actiojns or motives, and approving or disapproving of them" [descent 88] 211
  • Mivart leva CD para community selection para responder as questões utilitaristas. Recipocral altruism and social forces of praise and blame [descent 155] 213-4
    • His own theory, by contrast, proposed that moral action was not motivated by self-interest nor calculated to achieve the greatest amount of pleasure. Altruistic behavior stemmed from an immediate instinct and was guided by social habits. Its goal was not the general happiness but “the general good of the community.” 218
  • Criticos do descent
    • The initial response from friends and sympathizers was generous, yet usually hesitant about the theory of morals. In the cruel spring, though, the critical breezes grew harsh, climaxing with three large reviews, which Darwin regarded as damaging and one particularly malicious. He feared that the rejection of his ideas about man, especially by friendly naturalists, might endanger his general theory. He wondered whether, perhaps, “it was a mistake on my part to published it.”°° Nonetheless, in the revised second edition, appearing in 1874, he reinforced the essential arguments of the theory, while also making important accommodations to telling objections. 219-20
    • Hansleigh Wedgwood
      • why an intelligent creature, who compared the satisfactions of a brief but stronger instinct with the gentler pleasures of a social instinct, should prefer the latter. No metric of pleasure would obviously tip the scale for virtue. An intelligent creature who had initially followed the stronger instinct might subsequently regret the choice, but the regret would be over a mistake; it would not produce “shame,” which Wedgwood took to be the “true essence of conscience.”? In two follow-up letters, he pressed this difficulty about the special character of the moral sentiment.*? A mere recollection of unsatisfied social instinct could not, he thought, be a “vera causa”; it could never evoke the pain we recognized as the prick of conscience. He insisted that the shame felt over transgressions resulted from the disapprobation of fellow creatures. 
      • Darwin responded to his cousin in letters of 3 and 9 March 1871.°* He first pointed out that his theory never supposed that in the heat of action the moral agent would take time for a balancing of pleasures. Quite the contrary. The individual would be immediately impelled either to virtuous or to selfish behavior. Further, the pain of conscience would not consist in a recollection of unsatisfied instinct, but would well up from the actual renewal of that instinct during the time of reflection. Darwin did not wish to deny the role of social approval or disapproval in forming the moral outlook. Natural selection might provide the in-stinct to aid one’s fellows, but social approbation or disapprobation would suggest the means by which this instinct could be satisfied.?° While Darwin rejected Wedgwood’s principal complaint, that he had no vera causa, he did emphasize the role of social approval and disapproval in the second edition of the Descent. He also added a long passage on shame, agreeing that it had its chief source in the judgment of our fellows, but also pointing out that our sensitivity to such judgment ultimately stemmed from instinctive sympathy.? 220-21
    • Wallace reiterated that natural selection seemed inadequate to account for the moral sense 221
      • Darwin made no response in his second edition to this last charge by Wallace; for already in several passages of the first edition he had indeed suggested that intertribal competition would take place in large, densely inhabited areas.” 221
    • Eds descent em resposta a critica popular
      • As a result of his correspondence with Morley, Darwin confessed in the second edition of the Descent his incomplete reading of the utilitarians; he remained resolute, however, in his objection to their moral views. He allowed that these philosophers did regard the greatest happiness “as the standard, and not as the motive of conduct.” They nonetheless supposed men to be moved by the amount of pleasure associated with different kinds of behavior. This ignored, to Darwin’s mind, the often impulsive and instinctive character of moral acts. Further, an evolutionary analysis implied that the standard of morality ought to be regard as “the general good or welfare of the community, rather than the general happiness.” In amending his criticisms of utilitarianism, Darwin reintroduced a distinction he had made in his early speculations (1838—1839), but only hinted at in the first edition of the Descent—the distinction between the motive of moral behavior and the standard for judging it. Concerning the character of both the motive and standard, Darwin had not been persuaded by Morley. Community selection fixed in our natures the motive of acting for the general good, while reflection on our native impulses produced the standard, shaded and particularized though it might be by changing social circumstances. He therefore maintained that his theory differed considerably from that of Bentham, Bain, Mill, and others of the “derivative school of morals.” 223
    • 3 outras: Cobb, Edinburgh Review 224-5 e Quarterly Review [mivart]:
      • Mivart: Darwin responded to this last-mentioned objection in the second edition of the Descent; it had been voiced by many of his other critics as well. In the first edition, he had directly connected the moral imperative with instinct: “Thus at last man comes to feel, through acquired and perhaps inherited habit, that it is best for him to obey his more persistent instincts. The imperious word ought seems merely to imply the consciousness of the existence of a persistent instinct, either innate or partly acquired, serving as a guide, though liable to be disobeyed.” !”° He emended this passage in the second edition to read: “Thus at last man comes to feel, through acquired and perhaps inherited habit, that it is best for him to obey his more persistent impulses. The imperious word ought seems merely to imply the consciousness of the existence of a rule of conduct, however it may have originated.” !?! Darwin’s several critics made their point, though it was one he had already appreciated in his earliest constructions of a moral theory.!”? In the second edition, he made explicit that the ethical imperative involved a rational consideration, one, however, formulated in light of the moral instinct. When Darwin first read the review in the Quarterly, he became extremely agitated. He thought it painted him “the most despicable of men.” !? He also detected a familiar sneering obsequiousness. He wrote Huxley that “the skill and style make me think of Mivart.”!?4 Huxley agreed, and came to his friend’s defense in a counter-review—“Mr. Darwin’s Critics” !?°—that absolutely delighted the older man. Huxley took the opportunity to consider also Wallace’s objections as well as the theologically structured evolutionary ideas of Mivart’s The Genesis of Species, which had been published in ha same year as Darwin's Descent. 226
      • Huxley > smash Mivart's thelogy 228
  • while modern ethologists attribute vital communicative functions to expressions in animals, Darwin denied that emotional responses had any use at all, which is why he did not invoke natural selection to explain them. 230
DESMOND & MOORE 1995
    • Talvez também tivesse uma confabulação com john murray, sobre um novo esquema promocional. Darwin era um adepto da autopromoção, mas a significância do pnafleto de Gray era diminuta se compara com o splanos que ele tinha em mente. Apesar do surgimento darwinismus alemão, nenhum único livro satisfatóri aparece na inflaterra para apoiar aquelas ideias. Elas eram saudadas com um estrondoso silêncio. A antiguidade do homem de lyell era insípida e fora de foco; os panfletos dos operários de hxley vendiam muito pouco e cercavam o darwinismo de advertências; o seu Man's place era esplêndito em relação aos macacos mas reticente em relação a seleção natural. Com o infeliz reign of law de Argyll acumulando as glórias, medidas dráticas deveriam ser tomadas 574
    • .....
    • Conversando com Hooker, analisando as revistas, lendo as referências de Lubbock e Tylor, ficava claro que o novo livro - que ele decidira intitular The Descent of Man - teria que ter uma enorme abrangência, desde a seleção sexual e os ancestrais do macaco, até a evolução da moralidade e da religião. Seu antigo caderno de anotações tinha coberto inteiramente o assunto. Na verdade, Hooker pensou que "moral e politica podiam ser muito interessantes se discutidas como qualquer aspecto da história natural". Nem eram, ele e Darwin, os únicos a considerar esses aspectos sob a luz da seleção natural. Darwinizar acerca da sociedade era, afra um negócio intelectual retumbante. 576
  • Operação de tradução de muller em 1869 574-5
  • Mivart pré genesis
    • Durante a primavera, um dos protegidos de Huxley assediou Darwin com notas esotérica sobre a criação de salamandras semiaquáticas. St. George Mivart era um zoologo sofisticado que convertera-se ao catolicismo havia vinte e cinco anos. Ele era um agradável velho harroviano, de maneira altivas, que apareceu entre os elegantes que frwequentavam o  hotel mivart, de propriedade de seu pai, Grosvenor Square (que mais tarde viria a ser chamado de Claridge's). Recebera o diploma de advogado em Lincoln's Inn e reuncou à carreira juridica, somente depois de ouvir o discurso de Owen na casa vizinha ao colégio dos cirurgiões. Mas o cmomento crítico surgiu quando encountrou Huxley, em 1859. Comparando ao sério e taciturno Owen, Huxley era franco, excitante e zoologicamente esperto. Mivart estava hipnotizado pelos "escuros olhos encravados, pela sua perspicácia e aterrorizado pela sua implacavel desmoralização. Sentia-se entre David e Glias; qualquer referência tanto de Owen quanto de Huxley seria o suficiente para que ele obtivesse o cargo de conferencista em zoologia no hospital st mary em Paddington, em 1862. Ele continava a assitr ``as conferencias d ehuxley na school of mnes e a visitar a familia e, sob a tutela de Huxley, obteve a atenção de Darwin.
    • Darwin disparou uma fieira de perguntas em cima dele, extraindo o máximo que podia a respeito das cores, as cristas e a corte durante a desova das salamandras. Mivart estava determinado a fazer de tudo para ajudar. Ele era um écnico anatomista brilhante e podia discorrer sobre os músculos das salamandras ou sobre os membros dos macacos. Mas, em assuntos mais grandiosos, como o homem e amoralidade, a sua posiçãio estava se tornando ambígua. ele tinha sido um darwinano "entusiático", ou, pelo menos, assim dizia, Na esteira do mans place de huxley, ele estudava os macacos e os lêmures e debatia a vida e a mente. Ele disse a Darwin que "com relação à 'seleção natural', eu a aceitie completamente". Porém, não ficaria, docilmente, nas aulas de Huxley por muint tepo qualquer um que pudesse admitir que, apsar da similaridade entre o "corpo inerte" do home e do gorila, nossa "naturza intelectual, moral e religiosa" coloca-nos mais distante "de um acaco antropóide do que esse macaco de um pedaço de granito.
    • É muito provável que a conversão e o lapso de mivart não fossem ofuscamente paulinas. Ele tinha protegido a sua aposta e mantido a fé na sua igreja. Bem no fundo, persistia uma afeição ela ciência de Owen, juntamente com os receios por uma humanidade degradada e, de fato, ele confessou a Darwin que sua "duvidas e dificuldades eram, a princípio, estimuladas quando assitia as conferencias do pro huxley. Em 1868, Mivart hesitou equivocadamente diante das fronteira darwinianas. 575
    • ....
    • Huxley loved military issues and he needed a reactionary enemy. Catholicism provided it. He constantly vilified the Roman Church as ‘our great antagonist,’ the supreme foil. He pictured it as a Jesuitical militia, whose priests, trained to combat scientific change, were, next to the Dad’s army of Dissenters, like ‘the trained veterans of Napoleon’s Old Guard.’ These strategic attacks racked his Catholic admirer St George Mivart to breaking point. To hear of ‘Pithecoid Man’ was distressing; to be told that the Catholic Church ‘must, as a matter of life and death, resist the progress of science and modern civilization’ was too much – even if recent papal condemnations seemed to imply it. (Mivart was too liberal to take Pius IX’s ‘Syllabus of Errors’ seriously.) Nor had crusading Continental works like Vogt’s inflammatory Lectures on Man and Haeckel’s Generelle Morphologie helped. Mivart was torn; his letters to Darwin became a desperation of pleasantries. 588
    • ....
    • The breach had already opened, with Mivart placing anonymous articles in the Catholic Month criticizing natural selection. He raised a host of difficulties: how could selection explain a placental dog andmarsupial wolf converging so miraculously? And can it explain an incipient wing? What use is half a wing, yet selection is supposed to keep the animal functional at every stage? These were puzzlers. ‘How incipient organs can be useful is a real difficulty,’ Wallace admitted to Darwin after reading the Month, ‘so is the independent origin of similar complex organs.’ Darwin heavily annotated the anonymous reprint. He could not accept Mivart’s inner force working to a definite end. Nor could he see life swept forward on a wave front according to God’s will, any more than he could agree with Lyell, Gray, and Argyll. 590-1
  • Publicação do Descent em 1871 acompanhada do genesis
    • The proofs went off on 15 January 1871. He doubted that the book was ‘worth publishing’ and launched straight into his next one, using the left-over materials on emotional expressions. Others doubted it too. Within a week Mivart’s clever critique On the Genesis of Species arrived, the most devastating all-round attack on natural selection in Darwin’s lifetime. It was also a pre-emptive strike on the Descent of Man and, coming from a man close to the inner circle, it left Darwin badly ‘shaken.’ He was so angry he could barely speak. 
    • Like an Old Bailey barrister, Mivart – trained at Lincoln’s Inn – shrewdly caricatured Darwinism as natural selection ‘pure and simple.’ He put it in the dock and produced such a welter of counterevidence as to overwhelm the jury. Much of it was unimpeachable at the time, and it was certainly persuasive, judging by book sales. He piled on refutation after refutation, aiming for a cumulative effect: he conjured up Thomson’s time spectre, laid waste to pangenesis, lampooned the notion of a half-evolved wing, raised the problem of convergent species, exploited the differences between Darwin, Huxley, and Wallace, and ended by slating Darwinians for meddling in metaphysics. This was his real object, to show that selection was not only false, but dangerous applied to morals and religion – and heknew that Darwin was about to apply it. Privately Mivart professed nothing but ‘sympathy and esteem’ for Darwin himself. He wrote earnestly, looking forward to a chat. He blamed the reckless extension of Darwinism on its overzealous supporters, though he regretted that ‘you do not more protest against [their] unnecessary irreligious deductions:’ 597-8
  • 6 ed
    • By contrast, the Mivart fracas was an ignoble tale, which Darwin took too personally and Mivart too casually. Darwin was watching himself shudder in a mirror, wrestling with his manuscript on facial expressions, when Mivart’s letter arrived. He was being stalked. Mivart laid down the terms of engagement, while wishing ‘with all my heart we did not differ so widely.’ The debate was to be on metaphysics, on the basic assumptions of science. And he repeated that, ‘while combatting (as duty compels me to do) positions you adopt, I am not so much combatting you, as others to whose views your scientific labours give additional currency.’
    • Darwin felt irritatingly targeted, and by a turncoat. Mivart could not be written off as a windbag, though theology made him moralize. A few days later Darwin threw down his expressions manuscript, the rough draft done, and began planning a new edition of the Origin. A cheap one, he told Murray: working men in Lancashire were clubbing together to buy the fifth at fifteen shillings.34 He wanted them all to have copies. The sixth would take on Mivart. It would challenge his assumption that a half-evolved wing was an absurdity, and that selection cannot explain the similarity of marsupial and placental wolves. It would destroy his claim that some unplumbed inner force drives evolution to its goal. 
    • May and June shot by, and he raced into the summer, plundering old notes, building defences, shoring up his reputation. Paris was ravaged and the Communards crushed. And while they were making themselves ‘everlastingly infamous,’ as Darwin wrote to Kovalevsky, Mivart’s wretched Genesis of Species was ‘producing a great effectagainst Natural Selection, and more especially against me.’ He was determined to defend himself, hold his ground, and wait for philosophical reinforcements. Mivart’s ancien régime would not be revived. 602
    • But the vicious secret was out and he had to stand by it. One lap to go. He strode back to his study to finish revising the Origin. In December, after months of fitful progress, he was finishing the herculean task. Over two thousand sentences had been added or rewritten, including a new chapter against Mivart, The word ‘evolution’ appeared for the first time. A helpful glossary was added. Most encouraging of all, Murray planned a new sales drive based on a popular half-price edition.3 This would be Darwin’s last chance to answer Mivart, and he knew it. 610
    • With the changes to the Origin in hand, Murray put his plan into practice. He reset in tiny type. This left the edition riddled with errors, but it did cut 142 pages, saving sixpence a copy on paper alone. He sold the plates to Appleton in New York for £50, and as a result projected a six shillings cover price, putting it within reach of working people. 612
    • ...
    • He spent five weeks in London, visiting Erasmus and arranging for the new Origin of Species to be reviewed favourably with Mivart’s Genesis. Publication day was 19 February, and even though the torrent of revisions had pushed the cover price to 7s. 6d., sales still soared from 60 to 250 a month. He went back to the Emotions manuscript, knowing that he was reaching a wider audience. 612-3
  • Galton influencia Greg a escrevet um artigo aplicando SN a sociedade. Darwin tem que resolver o problema, ... Bagehot 577
    • The family seemed cursed, blighted by biology. Only when Galton sent his latest deliverance on ‘hereditary improvement’ did Charles perk up. Society, cousin Galton proposed, should breed out feebleness in body and mind by creating ‘a sentiment of caste among those who are naturally gifted.’ Register their families, have their children intermarry, and offer them incentives to reproduce – the genetic drain would be plugged and the nation’s stock must improve. Charles wondered about the practicality of creating such racial supermen. Only the odd child in each ‘large superior family’ would be the breeders’ pick, like the choicest pigeon – William alone of the Darwins enjoyed good health. These would naturally refuse to be listed and ‘stick to their own families,’ scotching the whole enterprise. The alternative, compulsory registration, gave Charles the political jitters. It was an illiberal ‘utopian’ nostrum, even if the ‘sole feasible’ one for ‘improving the human race.’ Better simply to publicize ‘the all-important principle of inheritance’ and let people pursue the ‘grand’ objective for themselves 618
  • A ciência estava perdendo suas censuras. 580
  • Darwinizar sobre a sociedade
    • Terrível darwinismus 580-1
  • Haeckel
    • Darwin was still agitating for an expurgated translation of his Generelle Morphologie. He offered to defray some of the cost, and at Norwich the Ray Society agreed to publish it with the ‘aggressive heterodoxy’ toned down. Savage cuts were needed, Huxley insisted; the God-as-gas jibe had to go and the book be ‘condensed to the uttermost.’ ‘We don’t much mind heterodoxy here if it does not openly proclaim itself as such,’ he warned incongruously, meaning that in England unbelief had to be polite. Haeckel actually prepared a shorn version, ready for translation. But still they met insuperable problems and the scheme eventually fell through. The book was just ‘too profound and too long.’22
    • It was also eclipsed by Haeckel’s History of Creation. Darwin was astonished at another thumping tome arriving on his doorstep, wondering at the ‘indomitable worker’ who could gestate books at Herbert Spencer’s speed. Haeckel rushed in once more with a ream of ancestral pedigrees, precisely where Darwin feared to tread. There was a breathlessness to it, and so much scintillating speculation. ‘Whether one agrees or disagrees with him,’ Huxley conceded, it was ‘more profitable to go wrong than to stand still.’ Huxley finally bowed to the inevitable and adopted Haeckel’s approach. At the Zoological Society he drew up a heraldic tree for the partridges and pigeons, doing what he once told Darwin was impossible and wrong. He produced ‘a genetic classification ,’ signifying the route by which ‘all living beings have been evolved one from the other.’ He carried on,pushing birds back, past their ostrich-like ancestors to the dinosaurs themselves.23 After a decade of cavils and caveats, he had finally come round to Darwin’s position 581-2
  • SS já em 1868
    • At home sexual sleuthing of a different kind was gathering pace. Down House had become the hub of a correspondence network across the Empire, its tentacles touching every little England. The sack of mail brought gems daily to aid his sexual selection. Botanists from Ceylon to Calcutta sent reports on monkey manes and bearded Indians; mining engineers from Malacca to Nicaragua told of indigenous customs; tile manufacturers in Gibraltar attended to merino lambs; wine exporters in Portugal followed the local tailless dogs; Laplanders measured reindeer horns; New Zealanders heroically tackled the Maori’s sense of beauty; and missionaries and magistrates from Queensland to Victoria ceased converting and incarcerating to observe aboriginal ways – with even an old Beagle shipmate Philip King helping out.29 This is what Darwin excelled at: collecting and collating, tracking down facts, verifying, extending his old notebook speculations to embrace the globe. 585
  • Wallace não via os selvagens como degenerados, mas como portadores de cérebros bons demais para suas vidas. Relacionado ao espiritismo 589-90. Huxley e Lyell 589Argyll primeval man e Lubbock 591
  • Xclub, Nature, darwin e galton 592
  • Vogt e Carus brigam pela trad do Descent 593 Carus ganha e traduz o livro fugindo da guerra.  597 Kovalevsky faz o mesmo com o livro sendo proibido na russia 599
  • questão dos primos 595-6
  • Henrietta editora 597
  • Recepção pouco alarmante do descent 599 "prova do crescimento da liberalidade na inglaterra"
    • It was, and more. In many ways the book was the man – pudgy and comfortable, sedate in its seniority, full of anecdote and rather oldfashioned. There was little fire and flair about it, nothing of Huxley, Haeckel, or Vogt. Like a doting uncle, it did not tax one’s tolerance so much as entertain. It told an arm-chair adventure of the English evolving, clambering up from the apes, struggling to conquer savagery, multiplying and dispersing around the globe. In Darwin’s early anxious jottings such a story seemed dangerously implausible; his secret assault on man’s ancestry had been a brazen act of faith, fit only for radicals and their ilk. But now, habituated to material progress, social mobility, and imperial adventure, the arriviste reading classes lapped it up. A romantic pedigree suited them, an epic genealogy. Disregarding the apes, as many did, they found the Descent a tremendous family saga.
    • All Victorian life was there, from the Fuegian savage York Minster up to ‘our great philosopher, Herbert Spencer.’ Each race moves along the ladder of civilization, propelled by natural selection, aided by useinheritance, with selfish instinct giving way to reason, morality, and English customs. Fidelity and courage are on the rise, chastity in women, temperance in men; slavery, superstition, and senseless conflict are passing away, so that ‘virtue will be triumphant.’ Yet it is an undeniable tale of Malthusian struggle. Always there are heroesand the hapless, victorious civilizations and vanquished ‘barbarians,’ expanding nations and exterminated ones, large families and small. The ‘intellectually superior’ out-breed the inferior, the better classes out-distance the ‘intemperate, profligate, and criminal classes,’ and even the rich tend to leave more offspring than the swelling poor, who are cut down in infancy. And yet through it all a lofty humanitarianism prevails. The ‘noblest part’ of human nature dictates sympathy for the ‘inferior members of society.’ The ‘bad effects of the weak surviving and propagating their kind’ are to be borne ‘without complaining.’29 
    • The Darwins fitted the picture perfectly. The Descent was essentially their story. Natural and sexual selection had made and maimed them. Charles had strutted like ‘a peacock admiring his tail’ courting Emma. Coy and impressionable, she had selected him, admiring his ‘courage, perseverance, and determined energy’ after a voyage around the world. Her ‘maternal instincts’ and feminine intuitions had been the mainstay of their marriage (even if partly a hold-over from ‘a past and lower state of civilization’). Endowed with wealth, they had a head-start in the struggle – and an ‘accumulation of capital’ was essential if civilized Westerners were to spread and subdue the lower races. The wealthy ‘who have not to labour for their daily bread’ were vital to society. ‘All high intellectual work is carried on by them, and on such work material progress of all kinds mainly depends.’ Their sons, however, must be exposed to competition, kept up to nature’s mark, and ‘the most able should not be prevented by laws or customs from succeeding best and rearing the largest number of offspring.’ 
    • Darwin ended the book on a personal note, still telling tales, still praising the real heroes, the animals. He told of the ‘heroic little monkey, who braved his dreaded enemy in order to save the life of his keeper,’ and the old baboon who saved ‘his young comrade from a crowd of astonished dogs.’ ‘For my own part,’ he confessed, ‘I would as soon be descended’ from them as from a naked, degraded savage. 600-1
  • Mivart sobre o descent
    • Then Mivart’s review of the Descent of Man arrived. It was a long, deadly dissection, laced with accusations of ‘dogmatism,’ questionbegging, and spurious metaphysics. It was also anonymous, but Darwin knew the ‘wonderfully clever’ anatomist’s hand behind it, scissoring him into shreds. Work on the new Origin made him ‘sick of everything;’ this left him in despair.
    • Here was the Catholic convert in the Quarterly Review, exposing ‘the entire and naked truth as to the logical consequences of Darwinism.’ Mivart roused the slumbering Tories against his former mentor. The Descent of Man was calculated to disturb time-honoured convictions held by ‘the majority of cultivated minds.’ It would unsettle ‘our half-educated classes.’ Morality was no ‘development of brutal instincts;’ if it were, who would know whether society ‘is right or wrong,’ or even ‘why we should obey society at all.’ People would do as they please, breaking laws and customs as they liked. No, man is a ‘free moral agent,’ created with a supernatural soul. He has ‘a consciousness of an absolute and immutable [divine] rule legitimately claiming obedience.’37 
    • Darwin saw himself an offender, a villain. ‘I shall soon be viewed as the most despicable of men,’ he burst out, ‘the most arrogant, odious beast that ever lived.’ Mivart’s ‘bigotry arrogance illiberality & many other nice qualities’ made him furious, and the bile built inside, eating at his intestines. Wright’s review of Mivart suddenly seemed perfect. It turned the tables, took natural selection as a model of good science and Mivart as a case of bad metaphysics. His inner driving force would take evolution nowhere.38 With Wright’s help, Darwin would see to it. 
    • He dashed off a letter asking Wright for permission to reprint his article as a pamphlet. Then Emma took him away for a month to recuperate. He was in a mess, so ‘giddy and bad’ at Croydon Station that she could not leave him for a moment. They rested in the North Downs hamlet of Albury (where Malthus had once been curate), looking out on the sandy fern-covered hills and pine forests. It was a sunny August, with nothing to do but sit or stroll. But Charles’s head remained ‘rocky and wretched.’ He read a little – Lubbock’s latest work on insects, Thomson’s snubbing of natural selection in his British Association address – but his mind kept drifting back to Mivart. Wright’s permission came and Darwin wrote to Murray about running off 750 copies of the pamphlet. His damage-limitationexercise began. ‘Some 200’ would see every scientific journal and society supplied, together with ‘clubs &… all private individuals’ he could think of.39 That would leave plenty for the public. 603-4
    • ...
    • Murray posted copies of the pamphlet in September. Darwinism, it was called, a ‘somewhat sensational title’ that Wright thought would sell. The word had Darwin’s blessing; it would set his seal of approval on a safe notion of science, above the metaphysics and religious mumbo-jumbo. Huxley received his copy in Scotland, where he was on holiday. He thought it would ‘do good,’ but by chance he had already done better, having just taken a few days off from golfing to castigate Mivart’s Genesis of Species and Quarterly article in a review. Mivart, though not a ‘bad fellow,’ was ‘poisoned with… accursed Popery and fear for his soul’ and had sinned unpardonably by being ‘insolent to Darwin.’ Worse, his arguments were actually swaying people. Punishment was called for, Huxley snarled, and ‘the devil has tempted me’ to administer it.41
    • Darwin, disconsolate and sick, slaving away at the Origin, sprang to life when Huxley’s news came. ‘The pendulum is swinging against our side, but I feel positive it will soon swing the other way; & no mortal man will do half as much as you in giving it a start in the right direction.’ Huxley’s proofs arrived a week later, further fortifying him. 
    • Huxley indulged in what he loved most, religious exegetics. He effectively side-stepped science and came crashing down on the Catholic Church – showing that Mivart’s position was as pernicious theologically as it was disastrous scientifically. Mivart had suggested that evolution could be reconciled with the Catholic fathers – Augustine, Aquinas, and the last great scholastic, Suarez. Huxley denied it and upstaged him with pages of painstaking Latin exegesis, proving that his wayward pupil did not understand scholastic philosophy any more than Darwin’s.
    • He was not out of his misery. Science had gone by the board; the defence of natural selection was ignored. Huxley had simply chipped at the bedrock of Mivart’s metaphysics, smiting Amalekites with his usual dexterity. Natural selection had to be shored up somehow, given the ‘impression Mivart’s book has made.’ And the omens were worrying. Wright’s pamphlets had not shifted – only fourteen had sold by the end of October.44 The way ahead looked daunting. 605-6

BROWNE 2011
  • Ideologia de Darwin ligada com a hereditariedade 365-9, 395, 451-3
  • Pângenese permitiu lamarckismo??  o que significa ser lamarckista se a ideia o precede e se é possível separar alguns pontos dos outros?? 396-7
  • Kovalevsky e trad. 401
  • royer 403-4
  • Galton 405-7, 453-4, 543-7
    • Galton was troubled because he began the work in good faith, intending to prove Darwin right; and he praised pangenesis in Hereditary Genius in 1869. Somehow he had unintentionally proved Darwin wrong. Cautiously, he criticised his cousin’s theory, although qualifying his remarks by saying that Darwin’s gemmules (he called them “pangenes”) might be only temporary inhabitants of the blood and that his experiments could have failed to pick them up. 
    • Naturally enough, Darwin wanted Galton to keep these unsatisfactory results to himself. Yet Galton went ahead and published them in Nature in 1871, followed by another article in the Proceedings of the Royal Society. Darwin objected to having his theory’s shortcomings advertised in this fashion among his scientific friends. He published a rebuttal in which he maintained he had not said anything about gemmules being in the blood. Galton was surprised to receive so curt a response. Offended, he backed down, claiming he was acting only as “a loyal member of the flock.” In the end, Darwin also backed down. He modified his wording in later editions of Variation, admitting in a footnote that he would have expected to find gemmules in the blood, although their presence there was not absolutely necessary to his hypothesis. Pangenesis suddenly seemed much harder to establish than either man anticipated. 408
  • SN e variação no Variation
    • One clarification was helpful. In the closing pages Darwin provided an explanation of the crucial difference between variation and selection. In those days, it was not always apparent that these were distinct processes. Indeed, perhaps only Darwin, with the advantage of many years of thinking about the distinction, and a handful of experienced French and German experimentalists were able easily to separate them.43 Investigators more usually felt there was some form of inbuilt direction in the process of variation—they put back into the evolutionary process the purpose or even the divine guidance that Darwin removed (variation 426-7, 430). ... Although the architect or builder would always choose the best stones for building a house, the shapes of the stones themselves were completely random—or rather, their geological production was not related in any causal way to the architect’s intention.409-10
  • Huxley vs Comte 415-6
  • Huxley combativo 432
  • Wallace, Darwin, Espiritualismo e Spencer 439-40
  • Mivart
    • Mivart was a talented evolutionary biologist who had quickly become a favourite of Huxley’s despite the potential for discord that lay in Mivart’s unwavering commitment to Catholicism. At first Mivart ignored Huxley’s theological taunts, believing they represented, in this instance, a form of rough-and-tumble affection. But in 1869 or so, Mivart parted company with Huxley and the close-knit band of Darwinians, coming to view the group as a dictatorial, self-regarding clique, a powerful brotherhood of older men at the summit of their careers who insisted that acolytes ought to adopt their position and advance the new biology in toto. In many ways Mivart read the situation accurately. The inner ring of private clubs and societies which ran scientific London—the X Club, the teaching laboratories and museums in South Kensington, the philosophers and parliamentarians in the Metaphysical Society and Athenaeum Club—were closed to outsiders. The members were influential people who kept a firm grasp on the tiller of scientific progress. Huxley enjoyed his cliques and believed that small groups of “right-minded men” were by far the most effective way to get things done. 454-5
    • Mivart wanted none of this. All through 1869 he published renegade evolutionary articles in the Catholic periodical the Month on “difficulties of the theory of natural selection,” maintaining that Darwin’s ideas could not explain the whole of nature. He dwelled on awkward anatomical cases such as the close resemblance between Australian marsupial “wolves” and European wolves, or the similarities between the eyes of cephalopods and vertebrates. It was hard to explain these similarities as coincidence. “To have been brought about in two independent instances by merely indefinite and minute accidental variations, is an improbability which amounts practically to impossibility,” Mivart stated. Like Asa Gray he opted for theological compromise, arguing that there must be some higher guidance in the process of variation that provided an element of design or direction in the evolutionary process. Underneath ran scarcely veiled contempt for the inflexible position of the Darwinians. 
    • Darwin liked Mivart when first introduced to him and welcomed the young man’s obvious ability as a natural scientist. He felt bewildered, and then betrayed, by these critical articles, for it seemed to him that Mivart deliberately ignored anatomical points when they did not suit, and that he twisted Darwin’s words solely to make the older man look foolish. With sinking spirits, Darwin wondered if Mivart might become another thorn in his side, another Owen. Intemperately, he let his feelings show. He accused Mivart (behind his back) of too much Catholicism, of being overly clever with words as if he were a Jesuit priest in training. 
    • When Mivart pointed out the unlikelihood of any intermediate steps in evolution, Darwin snapped back, “If a few fish were extinct, who on earth would have ventured even to conjecture that lungs had originated in a swim-bladder?”12 From time to time, Mivart wrote conciliatory letters to Darwin stating the high regard he felt for the Origin of Species. Darwin regarded the letters as two-faced. When Mivart pulled his articles together in 1870 for a book called The Genesis of Species, published just before Darwin’s Descent of Man, Darwin felt the facts were being distorted for religious benefit. He covered his copy with bitter remarks. “I utterly deny,” “What does this mean,” “You cd. not make a greyhound & pug, pouter or fantail thus—it is selection & survival of the fittest.” The last straw came when Mivart claimed in print that Darwin had shifted his ground on blending inheritance in the previous edition of the Origin of Species merely in order not to lose face. “Not fair,” Darwin moaned in the margin.13 
    • He found it astonishing that Mivart could still write letters to him. Blindly crashing onwards, Mivart rashly explained, “My first object was to show that the Darwinian theory is untenable, and that natural selection is not the origin of species,” a point of view that was unlikely to improve relations. 454-6
    • Preconceito contra católicos 456-7
  • Cobbe, Mivart, Wallace, Galton, Argyll e Spencer contra Darwin 458-9
  • Homem, cadernos, zoológico e seleção sexual. 425-6 Wallace não curtia 427 Inicia descent em 1868.
    • None of his friends treated the subject of humans quite as he had hoped. Despite Huxley’s continuing writings and lectures, Man’s Place in Nature mostly served its author’s special polemical purposes. Although Lubbock wrote about archaeology and prehistoric societies, he did not explicitly address natural selection. Lyell, for all his reinterpretation of the antiquity of the human species, had done as much as he was able. Spencer primarily interested himself in the development of civilisations. Asa Gray defended the existence of divinely guided variation. Haeckel ran amok with missing links and recapitulation theory. Vogt and Hunt believed that humans emerged from multiple origins. Galton pursued the human intellect with statistics alone. 428 (detalha mais em 429-30)
    • Only Wallace, as Darwin saw it, was trying to locate human origins in the strict framework of natural selection as originally proposed, and even here Darwin considered that Wallace unjustly spurned his idea of sexual selection. None of these colleagues said what Darwin thought was most needed. The moment was ripe for him to say it himself. 430
    • Mais sobre Wallace em 442-6
  • Descent
    • Meanwhile Darwin struggled onwards with his book. “Many interruptions,” he noted in his diary. Judging from the final product, he was trying to do too many different things. In order to show that humans were incontrovertibly members of the animal kingdom, he presented a barrage of information about the natural history of mankind drawn from a wide variety of sources. He also worked his way through the links between the mental faculties of animals and humans. He then discussed language, morals, and music. Most significantly, he gave his views on “sexual selection,” an important development in his schemes that accounted, as he thought, for the diverging physiques and behaviour patterns of males and females, animal or human. Towards the end, he argued that this notion of sexual selection could explain the origin of human geographical diversity, perhaps even the foundations of human civilisation itself.45 The result was a book packed with details that more or less obscured the important points he was trying to make. 
    • He opened the attack by stating that “there is no fundamental difference between man and the higher mammals in their mental faculties.” He substantiated this with a series of cameo observations of animal behaviour, ranging from horses that knew the way home to ants that defended their property, chimpanzees that used twigs as implements, bower-birds that admired the beauty of their nests, and cats that dreamed of rabbits in their sleep.46 The domestic nature of Darwin’s observations in this area, the large doses of willing anthropomorphism, his evident delight in traditional country pursuits, and the glimpses he provided of the congenial home life of a Victorian gentleman, “these fairy tales of science,” as Frances Power Cobbe was to call them, probably went some of the way towards softening readers before he confronted them with the shock of apes in the family tree. 468-9
    • At last he finished and dispatched the manuscript to John Murray, his publisher. Murray flinched a little at the subject matter. Despite his familiarity with Darwin’s unorthodox topics and his determination not to let them stand in the way of a successful business relationship, this book on human ancestry rattled his belief in the Bible story rather more than the Origin of Species had done. Gingerly, he asked his friend Whitwell Elwin for his opinion and was not surprised at the blast that came back by return of post. Elwin was no longer editor of Murray’s Quarterly Review but he still possessed the principles of a country clergyman. “It might be intelligible that a man’s tail should waste away when he had no longer occasion to wag it,” he roared, “though I should have thought that savages would still have found it useful in tropical climates to brush away insects.… The arguments in the sheets you have sent me appear to me to be little better than drivel.”63 
    • Murray partly agreed. Bit by bit, in his spare time in the evenings, the publisher began piecing together a scientific commentary of his own, a modest criticism of Lyell and his associates that he called Scepticism in Geology, published in 1877 under the nom de plume “Verifyer,” in which he politely, but decisively, disassociated himself from the secular natural history he had successfully placed before the public. Murray was neither a radical nor a conservative in religious affairs, being middle-of-the-road, and his personal dilemma over the age of the earth and “natural development in other branches of natural history” surely reflected at least some of the discomfiture of many of Darwin’s more ordinary readers. Insofar as Murray ever let his personal opinions show, this was it. He answered back. 477-8
    • Surprised, Darwin inquired which passages Murray found indelicate. When these were disclosed, he changed them into direct quotations from the original authors. A month later, Murray was back with worries about the title. Darwin’s proposal had been simple—“On the Origin of Man.” But Murray wanted something less provocative, something more closely related to the contents, more explanatory for intended purchasers. He rejected Darwin’s next suggestion, feeling that the word “sexual” could not be used on a title page. “The Descent of Man & Selection according to Sex,” would be much better, he proposed, and would “get rid of an objectionable adjective.”71 It was later changed to “in relation to sex.” 481 [ver tbm parágrafos antes e depois] [darwin queria origem do homem]
    • SS
      • At the centre lay Darwin’s idea of sexual selection. This was his special contribution to the evolutionary story of mankind, his answer to Wallace, Lyell, and others, and to all the reviewers and critics of the previous twelve years. “I do not intend to assert that sexual selection will account for all the differences between the races,” he wrote in his book. Nonetheless, he felt certain that it was “the main agent in forming the races of man.” Sexual selection was “the most powerful means of changing the races of man that I know.” 
      • In brief, Darwin claimed that human beings were like animals in that they possess many trifling features that are preserved and developed solely because they contribute to reproductive success. Just as peacocks had developed tail feathers to enhance their chances in the mating game, so humans had developed characteristic traits that promoted individual reproductive success. These traits were fluid, changeable, and not directly related to adaptation and survival. But Darwin pushed this claim far beyond the mere acquisition of secondary sexual characteristics. By these means he thought he could also explain the divergent geographical and behavioural attributes of human beings, such as skin colour, hair texture, maternal feelings, bravery, social cohesion, and so forth. Preference for certain skin colours was a good example. Men would chose wives according to localised ideas of beauty, he suggested. The skin colour of a population would gradually shift as a consequence. 
      • Similarly, sexual selection among humans could enhance mental traits such as maternal love, bravery, altruism, obedience, hard work, and the “ingenuity” of any given population; that is, human choice would go to work on the basic animal instincts and push them in particular directions. 
        • The strongest and most vigorous men—those who could best defend and hunt for their families, and during later times the chiefs or headmen—those who were provided with the best weapons and who possessed the most property, such as a larger number of dogs or other animals, would have succeeded in rearing a greater average number of offspring than would the weaker, poorer and lower members of the same tribes. There can also be no doubt that such men would generally have been able to select the more attractive women.… If then the several foregoing propositions be admitted, and I cannot see that they are doubtful, it would be an inexplicable circumstance if the selection of the more attractive women by the more powerful men of each tribe, who would rear on average a greater number of children, did not after the lapse of many generations modify to a certain extent the character of the tribe.59 
      • In effect, humanity made itself by producing and preserving differences, a process that broadly mirrored his understanding of artificial selection in which farmers chose traits for “use or ornament,” impressing their own taste or judgement on organisms. 
      • He ventured onto thorny ground when he analysed human societies in this way. His naturalism explicitly cast the notion of race into evolutionary and biological terms, reinforcing contemporary ideas of a racial hierarchy that replicated the ranking of animals. And he had no scruple in using the cultural inequalities between populations to substantiate his evolutionary hypothesis. Darwin certainly believed that the moral and cultural principles of his own people, and of his own day, were by far the highest that had emerged in evolutionary history. He believed that biology supported the marriage bond. He believed in innate male intellectual superiority, honed by the selective pressures of eons of hunting and fighting. 
        • To avoid enemies, or to attack them with success, to capture wild animals, and to invent and fashion weapons, requires the aid of the higher mental faculties, namely, observation, reason, invention, or imagination. These various faculties will thus have been continually put to the test, and selected during manhood.… Thus man has ultimately become superior to woman.60 
      • The possibility of female choice among humans hardly ruffled the surface of his argument, although he repeatedly claimed that female choice was the primary motor for sexual selection in animals. Primitive societies, he conceded, may be matriarchal or polygamous. However, he regarded this as an unsophisticated state of affairs, barely one step removed from animals. Advanced human society, to Darwin’s mind, was patriarchal, based on what was then assumed about primate behaviour and the so-called “natural” structure of civilised societies. For Darwin, it was self-evident that in civilised regimes men did the choosing. A limited number of women might sometimes be in a position to choose their mate (he was perhaps thinking of heiresses, or royalty, or beautiful heroines in novels). But his vision of mating behaviour was an explicit expression of his class and gender. His personality was evident too. His description of courting practices in The Descent of Man gave a romanticised picture of “rustics” at a country fair, “courting and quarrelling over a pretty girl, like birds at one of their places of assemblage.” For him, Victorian males set the evolutionary compass. 
      • Try as he might, he could not escape the complications of his work. “I find the man-essay very interesting but very difficult; & the difficulties of the Moral sense have caused me much labour,” he told Asa Gray in 1870.61 He was anxious about breaking new ground in so many different areas. Above all, he wanted to get these notions about sexual selection absolutely right. “Sexual selection has been a tremendous job,” he wrote to Wallace. “Fate has ordained that almost every point on which we differ shd. be crowded into this vol.” 475-7
    • Henrietta 478-81
    • Recepção
      • On the face of it, 1871 was not auspicious for any of Darwin’s usual forms of strategic publicity. The Franco-Prussian War, then at its height, seemingly obliterated any prospect of European editions. Even so, he optimistically sent proof sheets to every overseas friend who had expressed a willingness to translate, admitting that “some delay may be advisable.”74 Astonishingly, in view of the political situation in Prussia, crushing defeats for France at Sedan and Metz, and especially during the “terrible year” of the siege of Paris and the dreadful events around the Commune, the Descent of Man went into Dutch, French, German, Russian, and Italian in 1871 and into Swedish, Polish, and Danish shortly thereafter, a testimony to the fortitude of Darwin’s colleagues and general interest in evolutionary affairs. 
      • In Britain, comments were muted. Assuredly, reviewers shrank from closing the obvious gap between animals and mankind and objected to descent from “tadpoles.” How could mankind become “more crafty than the fox, more constructive than the beaver, more organized in society than the ant or bee?” inquired Sir Alexander Grant frostily in the Contemporary Review. Since primitive humans showed no discernible signs of progress it was inconceivable to him that there might be any links between “the backwaters and swamps of the stream of humanity” and cultivated English gentlemen. Harper’s Weekly complained that “Mr. Darwin insists on presenting Jocko as almost one of ourselves.” The Times was more emphatic still. “The earliest known examples of Man’s most essential characteristics exhibit his faculties in the greatest perfection ever attained. No poetry surpasses Homer.” 482-3
      • "a reputação de darwin como homem honesto reforçava o modo como seu livro era percebido" mundo mudo 484
      • [vários tipos de review] 483-7 [ver ellegard tbm]
  • Línguas, religião, moral 470-2
  • Evil darwin 473-4
  • Mivart, Descent e 6ed
    • All except St. George Mivart. Mivart wrote a fierce article for the Quarterly Review in 1871 (“a most cutting Review of me”), highlighting the hazards of considering any form of human evolution. This review was one of the most important in Darwin’s later career, certainly equal in impact to Wilberforce’s attack on the Origin of Species that had also been published in the Quarterly Review some ten years before. Whitwell Elwin, the Quarterly Review’s former editor, was once again the operative force. He had commissioned Mivart to write with the theological difficulties foremost in mind. Although he never met Darwin, and never wanted to, Elwin’s effect on Darwin’s life through these two reviews was substantial. 
    • Mivart did the job with deadly efficiency. In response, Darwin rolled out his big guns. First, he indulged in a brief but nasty pamphlet war, which satisfied his urge for immediate retaliation. He arranged for the reprinting of an article by Chauncey Wright (already issued in America) that had severely criticised Mivart’s 1870 book Genesis of Species. This indirect defensive technique had served Darwin well in the past and conveniently allowed him to attack with the words of others while maintaining a reputation for nonconfrontation. But in this case only the Darwinians appreciated the esoteric points Chauncey Wright put forward. Under Darwin’s direction, Wright clarified precisely what was, and was not, “Darwinism.” The pamphlet was left unread by those people who would be most swayed by Mivart. 
    • Frustrated, Darwin let off steam with a few sharp ripostes in the next edition of the Origin. To this sixth edition of the Origin, published in 1872, he defiantly added a new chapter expressly directed against Mivart. Here, he seemed to be coming to the end of his tether. He compromised. He defended pangenesis and neutralised natural selection in a manner that allowed considerably more adaptive change in organisms according to use and disuse and the effects of the environment, the most Lamarckian he ever became. It was a cheap edition, intended for mass sales. Darwin had been told how a group of Lancashire workmen were clubbing together to buy a single copy.91 Impressed, he realised there were more markets to penetrate, more audiences to reach. Yet he felt hemmed in, edgy, and forced to stretch a point. Making these changes bothered him more than usual, and he asked his son William to read the proofs for him. Mivart loomed unpleasantly large in his imagination. 
    • Mostly he watched agog as Huxley savaged Mivart in the Contemporary Review. All Huxley’s bulldog propensities poured out, and in “Mr. Darwin’s Critics” he ruthlessly corrected both Mivart’s biology and his interpretation of Catholic doctrine, locating old theological tracts in the university town of St. Andrews (where he was on holiday) to support his cannonade. “How you do smash Mivart’s theology: it is almost equal to your article versus Comte,” Darwin exclaimed.92 “The dogs have been barking at [Darwin’s] heels too much of late,” Huxley explained. Hooker thought Huxley’s attack was too cruel and told Darwin so. Darwin replied that he was obviously not so good a Christian as Hooker, “for I did enjoy my revenge.” Hooker found it slightly surprising to hear Darwin sneer against Mivart’s “bigotry, arrogance, illiberality & many other nice qualities.” Even Huxley and Hooker thought better of Mivart than that. 
    • Perhaps the argument might have ended there—distasteful, unpleasant, but final—if Mivart had not then gone on to criticise one of Darwin’s sons. 487-8 [continua sangrento em 489]
    • n fact, the Mivart episode has long fascinated historians for the way it exposed unseen cracks in the Darwinian movement and the heavy emotional investment channelled into it by leading figures like Darwin and Huxley. It seems more than probable that Darwin was personally wounded by Mivart’s defection. For Mivart to reject Darwin’s theory, in this regard, was to reject Darwin himself. Darwin never forgave him. On his part, Huxley reacted as if Mivart were criticising the whole of modern science and digging himself ever more deeply into the church’s foundations. Both these men felt betrayed. Mivart did not emerge unscathed from the exchange either. Not only was he excommunicated by the Darwinians as a traitor, he was also excommunicated by his own church for his belief in evolution, a sacrificial lamb for each unforgiving camp. Of all the casualties of the Darwinian movement, his was the most pitiable. 490
    • "senhor como é difícil a compreensão" 490
  • Depois do descent vai pro expression 494 Polly e a pangenese 497 figuras e pessoas importantes pro expression 498-504 grande sucesso 507 bem lamarckista
    • Furthermore, in Expression he proposed that some habits and learned behaviours could, if advantageous to an animal, be preserved and eventually rendered innate. Gazing into the heart of his original hypothesis of adaptation by natural selection he discovered he must partly concede the environmentalist point in respect to behaviour.130 Behaviour and biology were inextricably interwoven in ways that natural selection—the anvil on which he tested every theory—was insufficient to explain. Quietly, and without any fanfare, Darwin modified his views, accepting that the inheritance of acquired characteristics needed to be part of his system. 507
Shanahan 2004 (largamente derivado de Ospovat)
Progresso para Darwin, cap 7
    • The first is an entry in his “B Notebook,” composed in 1838/9: “It is absurd to talk of one animal being higher than another. – We consider those, where the cerebral structure/intellectual faculties most developed, as highest. – A bee doubtless would where the instincts were” (Darwin, B Notebook, p. 74; in Barrett et al. 1987, p. 189). The second statement is from the Origin of Species, published twenty years later: “The inhabitants of each successive period in the world’s history have beaten their predecessors in the race for life, and are, in so far, higher in the scale of nature” (Darwin 1859, p. 345; emphasis added). Taken together, these statements illustrate perfectly the two distinct (but related) problems for understanding Darwin’s account of evolutionary progress. The first problem is simply to understand what Darwin himself believed about evolutionary progress. While at times he seems to flatly reject as meaningless the idea that organisms appearing later in the history of life are in some sense “higher” than earlier organisms, at other times he appears to embrace this view. Consequently, Darwin’s view has been something of an enigma, and scholarly opinion has been divided on the question of whether or not he was a “progressionist.” 176
    • The second problem concerns whether Darwin’s view of evolutionary progress was consistent with the basic principles of his theory of natural selection. This problem is especially pertinent on the view that Darwin did believe in some sort of overall progress in the history of life. According to the standard account of the operation of natural selection, all adaptation is to local conditions, and species either evolve along with changing conditions or fail to evolve and go extinct. There is apparently no way that a series of randomly changing local environments can elicit cumulative progressive advance. So if Darwin did believe in some sort of overall progressive advance, that view seems to be at odds with the basic principles of his theory. 
    • I will argue that Darwin’s apparently equivocal remarks about evolutionary progress can be rendered consistent by clearly distinguishing the senses in which he believed evolution is progressive, from those senses in which he believed it is not. There is also a developmental aspect to Darwin’s thinking about evolutionary progress that it is critical to recognize. Darwin carefully crafted his remarks on progress in his published works in order to commit himself to the idea only to the extent that the idea could be made conceptually respectable. As his confidence grew that the idea made sense, so, too, did his boldness in endorsing it in his writings. At first he puts forth the view tentatively, with plenty of qualifications. By the end, he shows no hesitation in describing the evolutionary progress as progressive. This trend is already evident in his writings before the publication of the Origin of Species. 176-7
  • Nos no notebooks vemos darwin brincando com progresso, mas se afastando de sua necessidade 178-9
  • No essay
    • Darwin’s remark that “from the strong and general hereditary tendency we might expect to find some tendency to progressive complication in the successive production of new organic forms” is left vague and undeveloped, and runs counter to his desire to find reasons for supposing that external (i.e., environmental) conditions are sufficient to account for increasing organic complexity. 179
  • Já no Origin, "encontramos Darwin cada vez mais preocupado com a questão do progresso evolutivo com o aparecimento de cada nova edição 180
  • Competitive highness destilado 181
  • Definição de highness aparece em 1860 181-2, 184
    • The notions of “specialisation” and “division of physiological labour” as criteria of “highness” that appear in the second edition of the Origin can be traced directly to Darwin’s reading of Karl Ernst von Baer and Henri Milne Edwards, respectively. 182
    • ...
    • With the definitions of “organisation” articulated by von Baer and Milne Edwards in hand, Darwin had criteria that could be connected to the operation of natural selection to explain why evolution will tend toward advancement. In the third edition of the Origin (1861) he cites with approval von Baer’s standard of “the amount of differentiation of the different parts . . . and their specialisation for different functions; or, as Milne Edwards would express it, the completeness of the division of physiological labour” (Darwin 1959, p. 221). In all subsequent editions, Darwin identifies “the great Von Baer” and Milne Edwards by name, treating their definitions of “specialisation” and “division of physiological labour” as essentially equivalent (Darwin 1959, p. 221). These biologists supplied precisely the concepts Darwin needed in order to link together natural selection and evolutionary improvement. 182-3
  • Contudo
    • If he was aware of and in agreement with their definitions of “highness” when he was composing the first edition of the Origin, why did postpone their use until thesecond edition?It is at this point that the identification of Darwin’s primary audience becomes crucial. According to Ospovat (1981), Darwin intentionally downplayed the inevitability of progress in the first edition of the Origin because he wanted to avoid for his book the punishment that Robert Chambers’s Vestiges (1844) had received at the hands of T. H. Huxley, and because he wanted the support of Charles Lyell, who in his Principles of Geology (1830–33) had argued against progressionism. After gauging reactions to the first edition of the Origin, however, these concerns lost much of their strength. First, from the very beginning the Origin, in contrast to Vestiges, was treated as a serious contribution to science. Second, Darwin had in “morphological differentiation” and “division of physiological labour” a conception of “highness” that was generally accepted among professional zoologists. Third, by 1859 Lyell had abandoned his nonprogressionism, so Darwin felt freer in taking a progressionist stand in later editions of the Origin. Although Lyell had abandoned his nonprogressionism, he was still not convinced that natural selection could account for evolutionary progress, believing instead that a continued intervention of creative power or some “principle of improvement” was necessary to produce successively higher levels of organization. In a letter to Lyell dated 25 October 1859, Darwin responded by emphasizing the power of natural selection.
  • Competitive highness e specialization and division of physiological labour 184
  • 3 ed 1861 > on the degree to which organisation tends to advance 184
    • Darwin’s mature view is now beginning to come into focus. An increased specialization of parts supporting a division of physiological labor, by rendering organisms competitively superior, would be favored by natural selection. Hence, naturalselection produces (and explains) “highness” in both senses, and explains as well why evolution will tend toward advancement. In a later section we will return to this account in order to explore in more detail the connection between the two sorts of “highness.” 185
  • Outrad eds
    • Darwin insisted that his own theory was in no need of such a questionable belief. “On my theory the present existence of lowly organised productions offers no difficulty; for natural selection includes no necessary and universal law of advancement or development – it only takes advantage of such variations as arise and are beneficial to each creature under its complex relations of life” (Darwin 1959, p. 223).6 To make sure that this point was clearly understood, in the fifth edition of the Origin he changed this to read: “On our theory the continued existence of lowly organisms offers no difficulty; for natural selection, or the survival of the fittest, does not necessarily include progressive development” (Darwin 1959, p. 223).7 Darwin returned to this point in the last chapter of the Origin, where he emphasized that the sort of “advancement” he was advocating “is perfectly compatible with numerous beings still retaining a simple and little improved organisation fitted for simple conditions of life; it is likewise compatible with some forms having retrograded in organisation, though becoming under each grade of descent better fitted for their changed and degraded habits of life” (Darwin 1959, p. 742). This interpretation is further strengthened in the sixth edition by the inclusion of a new chapter entitled “Miscellaneous Objections to the Theory of Natural Selection.” In the section entitled “Progressive Development” Darwin explicitly contrasts belief in “an innate and necessary law of development” with “the doctrine of natural selection or the survival of the fittest, which implies that when variations or individual differences of a beneficial nature happen to arise, these will be preserved; but this will be effected only under certain favourable circumstances” (Darwin 1959, p. 228). Consequently, “there is no need . . . to invoke any internal force beyond the tendency to ordinary variability . . . which through the aid of natural selection would . . . well give rise by graduated steps to natural races or species. The final result will generally have been, as already explained, an advance, but in some few cases a retrogression, in organisation” (Darwin 1959, p. 264). Clearly Darwin did not believe in any sort of law that would invariably cause all organic beings to progress together up a ladder of being. As he makes clear in every edition of the Origin. 187
  • Na sexta ed aparece algo esquisito quanto ao progresso
    • Because Darwin’s answer to the question of whether natural selection necessarily leads to progressive development is so liable to misunderstanding, it is worth trying to make it as clear as possible. Unfortunately, Darwin himself did not always express himself on this issue as clearly as one might like. 188
    • ...
    • . Instead, what Darwin claims is that natural selection necessarily tends toward, rather than necessarily results in, progressive development. 188 [Isso também e remediado em outras passagens 189]
  • No descent 1871 v 1 p 211 tem o que o autor considera ser o melhor sumário da visão de darwin quanto ao progresso. 193. Ver uma comparação entre comentadores 195
Human physical and mental evolution cap 10
  • “The Origin of Human Races and the Antiquity of Man Deduced from the Theory of ‘Natural Selection’” (1864), Wallace proposed a completely naturalistic, selectionist explanation for human physical and mental evolution. According to Wallace, in the earliest stages of human evolution natural selection acted upon both the body and the mind, adapting each to the exigencies of the struggle for existence. But once the human intellectual and moral faculties had reached a sufficiently developed state, the mind became the means by which humans adapted to their changing environments, often by actively changing those environments to suit their needs, with natural selection then ceasing to work on the body. However, although selection had ceased to work on the human frame, it continued, and in the future would continue, to work on human intellectual and moral capacities. Optimistically, Wallace maintained that “the power of ‘natural selection,’ still acting on his mental organisation, must lead to the more perfect adaptation of man’s higher faculties to the conditions of surrounding nature, and to the exigencies of the social state” (Wallace 1864, p. clxix.). Upon reading this paper, Darwin immediately wrote to Wallace to congratulate him on his splendid essay (Darwin and Seward 1903, vol. 2, p. 33), which he later declared to be “the best paper that ever appeared in the Anthropological Review” (Wallace 1916, vol. 1, p. 251). 250
  • Seguido da apostasia de wallace (ver tbm 255). Assim
    • The challenge for Darwin was to show, not just that there is a continuum between nonhuman animals and humans but also to show that either (i) natural selection could have originally produced the distinctive characteristics we associate with humans, or (ii) such characteristics, although not the products of natural selection, could nonetheless have come about through purely natural processes. In principle, Darwin, not being a strict adaptationist, had a way out not available to Wallace. Unlike Wallace, Darwin could easily concede that a number of human physical and mental characteristics had never possessed any selective value in the struggle for existence, and therefore had not evolved directly by natural selection. 254
  • Eugenia
    • The “eugenics” movement of the early decades of the twentieth century that stemmed from this response took a number of different forms, some benign, some sinister. One particularly depressing result was the Immigration Restriction Act of 1924, which was designed to prevent the dilution of “the great American type of citizenship” (i.e., those of “Nordic” descent) by those of inferior ethnic stock (i.e., from southern and eastern Europe) (Richards 1987, p. 514). As one eugenicist put it, “Society must protect itself, as it claims the right to deprive the murderer of his life, so also it may annihilate the hideous serpent of hopelessly vicious protoplasm” (Davenport 1910, p. 129). By the 1930s, however, almost all American geneticists of distinction had abandoned the eugenicist movement, realizing that it faltered on unsophisticated genetics and a grossly oversimplified picture of the relationship between heredity and environment. 
    • As eugenics was cooling down in America, it was heating up in Germany, long fertile ground for loosely tethered speculations of a broadly Darwinian sort. At the turn of the century, Ernst Haeckel (1834–1919) was arguably the most enthusiastic German proponent of Darwinism, although his “Darwinism” contained generous admixtures of Lamarckism and extended into metaphysical speculations that seem almost Hegelian by contemporary standards. According to some scholars (e.g., Gasman 1971), Haeckel’s speculations “created an intellectual environment congenial to the growth of Nazi pseudoscience,” which located the “Aryan race” as embodied in the German people at the pinnacle of human civilization (Richards 1987, p. 533). It is hardly surprising, in the shadow of the implementation of Nazi policies to “purify” their society, exemplified in the death camps of Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen, that biological (including Darwinian) accounts of human nature would come to seem to many in the postwar period irredeemably and forever tainted with the blood of over six million individuals unfortunate enough to be victimized by the ideological highjacking of poorly understood and grossly misapplied biological ideas. 258
What did Darwin Really believe? Appendix
  • Uma discussão profunda sobre o que diferentes comentadores dizem sobre o progresso em Darwin. Conclusão:
    • If, as I have argued, Darwin was an evolutionary progressionist, why has there been such a strong tendency to view him as completely opposed to the idea of evolutionary progress? The answer must be sought by recognizing the special role Darwin plays in evolutionary biology. As John Horgan has noted, “No other field of science is as burdened by its past as is evolutionary biology. . . . The discipline of evolutionary biology can be defined to a large degree as the ongoing attempt of Darwin’s intellectual descendants to come to terms with his overwhelming influence” (Horgan 1996, p. 114). One way of coming to terms with Darwin’s influence is to appropriate him in support of one’s own views. Richards’s description of this phenomenon is right on the mark: “Among contemporary evolutionary theorists Darwin functions as an icon, an image against which theories receive approbation or reprobation. To select from the historical Darwin those features that best comport with one’s own predilections in the contemporary scientific debate is to have those predilections sanctioned by the master” (Richards 1988, p. 146). Because the majority of contemporary evolutionists are extremely wary of the notion of “progress,” they are predisposed to find in Darwin’s writings the validation they seek. As Richards picturesquely puts it, “Most historians, philosophers, and biologists . . . regard attaching the idea of progress to Darwin’s theory as comparable to stitching a Victorian bustle on the nylon running shorts of a woman marathoner, a cultural atavism disguising the slim grace supplying the real power” (Richards 1988, p. 129). This is perhaps why Gould’s interpretation of Darwin as a nonprogressionist prefaces his all-out attack on evolutionary progress. But Darwin’s view must be assessed in its own terms, not simply as a reflection of current beliefs. When we do so, a consistent (although not entirely unproblematic) picture emerges of Darwin as a committed but reflective advocate of qualified evolutionary progress. 293-4

DIOGO 2024
Livro meio ruim. Li alguns capítulos, mas desisti. Aqui estão anotações do primeiro capítulo.

1 Science, Society, and Darwin's Idealization
  • Darwinism as a religion. A secular religious perspective according to Ruse. 5
  • Darwin’s idolization did not occur despite his ethnocentric ideas and support for British colonialism, imperialism, and Victorian ideology, but in great part because of that. 7
  • Wallace era socialista e feminista e tinha uma visão melhor dos nativos com os quais conviveu. 19
  • It is remarkable how Darwin rediscovers among beasts and plants the society of England, with its division of labour, competition, opening up of new markets, inventions, and the Malthusian struggle for existence. (Karl Marx) 21, 31
  • Lack of critical reasoning
    • , critical reasoning is the effort to actively and astutely conceptualize, analyze, question, and appraise beliefs and ideas. In contrast, dogmatic thinking or dogmatism refers to the acceptance of unquestioned information without the intervention of active thought or criticism. To some extent, this is what Darwin somewhat failed to do: to do an active effort to read the type of books that would give him the needed broader sociological, historical, and philosophical background to be able to critically think about the Victorian indoctrination that he undertook during his early life. When Darwin stated, in his scientific writings, that women are intellectually inferior to men, or that savages are repugnant and are “inferior” to and have a lower morality than Europeans, or that hierarchical socioeconomic systems are better, he was indeed falling into the trap of dogmatic thinking. That is, he was taken as a given many of the biased narratives and beliefs that he heard or read about early in life at home, in school, or from people around him, without truly questioning them, even when they were contradicted by the very people he encountered and occurrences he faced during his Beagle travel. 29
    • he did not discuss the fact that during about two-thirds of his life (1809–1882), women simply could not go to university in England. [...] espite considering a lot of the classes there as “dull”, all English women were forbidden to do so, even if they were extremely motivated to do so. This is what male privileges look like: but Darwin’s biases, prejudices, and lack of curiosity about, and interest to examine in detail, such broader societal questions “outside-of-the-box” did not allow him to see those male privileges and take them into account within his writings, ideas, and evolutionary theories. 33
    • What a coincidence, of all the millions of species, and of all the numerous human groups, that his own species and, within it, its own societal group was the pinnacle of biological evolution. This is a typical flaw made by most people, including prominent thinkers or leaders: they tend to “conclude” that their own group is the “superior” one. 33
    • he could have .... he did have access and did read 33
    • As put by Desmond and Moore in their 1994 Darwin book, Darwin “knew that
      they [the ‘savages’] were being destroyed by the white man’s scourges, measles and
      liquor.” But despite knowing about all these atrocities, massacres, and hideous use
      and abuse of indigenous peoples by Europeans, he did continue to repeat, not only
      in private letters and notebooks but also in his scientific books, that “white civilization” was vastly “superior” to “savage” brutish “uncivilized habits.” 59
    • Could it be that he perceived the “savages” – let us say the Fuegians, which were among the groups that most repulsed him – as more “brutish” and “barbaric” than they truly were due to the biases and prejudices that he carried to the Beagle even before he actually interacted with them? 63
    • As we have seen, in some of his writings, Darwin explicitly stated that it was difficult to accept that disgusting “savages” such as the Fuegians could be his “fellow creatures.” Therefore, his defense of humanity’s unity had clearly less to do with such a “sacred cause” or any type of particular empathy toward the indigenous people that so often repulsed him than with the fact that such a unity was a mandatory prerequisite for his general theory of biological evolution. As we shall see, even evolutionists that are almost consensually described as racist, such as Ernst Haeckel – a German biologist that Darwin profoundly admired – also defended humanity’s unity: they had to. There was no other way for their evolutionary ideas to make any sense. In other words, what authors such as Haeckel did was, in a way, to try to have a cake and eat it too: they could easily defend humankind’s unity without putting in question their racist ideas because they could simply use the old notion of ladder of life to do so 66
    • In many private letters, Darwin explicitly recognized that he did apply his concepts of artificial selection to his ideas about the evolution of humans in particular, because humans are “said to be domesticated.” The human self-domestication hypothesis is nowadays increasingly accepted among biologists and anthropologists, so this idea that humans somehow domesticated themselves is not a problem per se, well on the contrary: Darwin’s observations are, in this respect, brilliant. The problem is rather that he somewhat exaggerated the links between natural and artificial selection as well as the importance of sexual selection for the evolution of human “races.” The theoretical link between artificial selection and sexual selection sensu Darwin is evident: contrary to what he defined as natural selection, in both artificial and sexual selection, the selector is an organismal agent – humans in the former, females or males of the group being selected in the latter. A reason why Darwin often overstated the importance of sexual selection to explain the evolution of different human “races” was because he accepted, a priori, the dogmatic view accepted back then that such “races” were real. So, Darwin was going in circles to try to explain, unsuccessfully, something that he assumed to be right from the start, but that was factually inaccurate. 89-90
    • It actually seems somewhat puzzling that when Darwin was writing the Descent, he somewhat minimized the importance of such a correlation between environmental factors and the development of so-called “racial” traits, particularly because this correlation provided a hugely strong support for the theory of evolution by natural selection that he developed earlier in the Origin. In a way, it is as if the Darwin that wrote the Origin was not the Darwin that wrote the Descent, further evidencing the logical incongruities characterizing the “brilliant biologist vs less accomplished anthropologist” dichotomy mentioned above. Why would Darwin minimize the crucial role played by external environment in human evolution? Was it because if he recognized that natural selection leading to local adaptations was a crucial component within human evolution, then his Victorian ideas about human evolution being mainly a history of “progress” or about ‘whites’ being ‘superior’ to ‘blacks’ would not make sense? Or was it because within the capitalistic notions that were so in vogue in Victorian England by then – for instance, that one needs to be a productive member of society, an active agent, and so on – it would be somewhat problematic to accept that human evolution was in great part the mere result of a combination of contingent and random events? 90-91
    • The end result is that some of the passages of the Descent, a book that was and still is often seen as a scientific “masterpiece,” are indeed plagued by social Darwinist narratives, some of them being very close to eugenicist ideas. Indeed, tragically, regrettably, and shamefully for evolutionary biologists such as me, some of those passages indeed resemble many of those used in hard-core eugenicist publications and even in Hitler’s 1925 Mein Kampf, published just 54 years after the Descent, as noted above. Moreover, regarding this topic, such a simplistic idealization of Darwin and demonization of Spencer often omits the “other side” of Spencer, as explained in Richards’s 1987 book. As Darwin had different sides that often were logically incongruent – supporting racist and pro-colonialist views and, at the same time, being anti-slavery – Spencer did have a very different side, which is sometimes referred to as “utopian socialism” because in some ways it was almost the opposite of the dark “Social Spencerianism” side that so many scholars are so inclined to emphasize in order to idealize Darwin. Idealization of something often involves demonization of something else. 99
    • a fascinating point about Darwin’s idolization is that it often involves a logically incongruent combination of both. In a simplified way, what is perceived as “positive” aspects of Darwin’s ideas, such as his theory of natural selection, is mainly attributed to his “genius,” individually. In contrast, in the much fewer common cases in which scholars recognize “problems” or “negative” aspects of Darwin’s ideas, these are typically attributed to his society, or to others, such as Spencer. As usual, reality lies in between. 103
    • Why did he say that females of our evolutionary lineage were different from those of most other mammalian groups? A major reason for this was that within Victorian manly made narratives, women were typically seen as passive players of society – including as sexually passive – so surely they could not possibly be the active players, choosing their partners: it had to be the other way round. 106-7
    • in the very same book, when it came to talk about human “progress,” “civilization,” and wildness, he completely reverted the story. Within the idea of human self-domestication and using his rabbit example, the next logical step would be for him to assert that those that he called “wild savages,” such as the Fuegians, “exerted their intellect, instincts, senses and voluntary movements” more than did Victorian people that were “closely confined” during a substantial portion of their lives to their homes or were doing very repetitive tasks confined into their workspaces. 108
    • “sacrificed themselves” for the common good neglects the fact that not only most people that fought were obliged to do so but also that most of the leaders that obliged them to do so never truly “sacrificed themselves.” 112
    • A further example of such logical incongruencies is that while in the Descent Darwin postulated that in general those societies that failed to focus on the common good would perish, in the Voyage he had defended the opposite, when he stated: “the perfect equality of all the inhabitants will for many years prevent their civilization.. until some chief rises, who by his power might be able to keep to himself such presents as animals &c &c, there must be an end to all hopes of bettering their condition.” According to the ideas he defended in the Descent, societies such as the Fuegians would be the pinnacle of evolution, as within the evolutionary history of our species nobody truly regards the common good as highly as small nomadic hunter-gatherer egalitarian societies tend to do. One of the many reasons for that is precisely because they often prevent the rise of chiefs and of the “1%” that keep “presents” to themselves and that oblige others to mainly work or fight for their “good” even if almost nobody wants to do so. Not because there are “noble savages” but because that would often be highly detrimental to small nomadic groups. 112
  • Teleological 37
  • t the maximum, what one can say, factually, is that some of Darwin’s ideas, metaphors, and hyperboles unfortunately provided easy ammunition to be subsequently used by groups such as white supremacists, including some leaders of the USA based Ku Klux Klan or of the Nazi party in Germany, 46
  • Galton ... he mereley tries to see what he wanted to see [...] the combination between his power of place and the fact that the majority of the prominent scientists and leaders in the England back then were also privileged “white” males that had a huge motivation to blindly accept, promote, and use such ideas. 48
    • Darwin also explicitly agreed, and directly cited, many of the ideas of his cousin Galton in the Descent. That is, this was clearly not a case in which some “good” ideas of Darwin were “badly” used subsequently by scholars: instead, it was an interactive process in which Darwin’s works both influenced and were influenced by, and overtly supported, eugenicists such as Galton. Darwin’s Descent includes some passages that are disturbingly similar to not only many passages of Galton’s works 50
  • just a product of his time [...] But regarding the “good” part, his opposition to slavery, then many accounts attribute this exclusively to his merit and sagacity, a product of his mind alone. 54
  • patronizing way of talking about slaves 57
  • violent liquidation of savages 62
  • Just so stories from religion and science 67
  • Wallace rousseauist and Darwin hobbesian .... “primitivist” notion of “noble savages” versus the anti-primitivist view that “savages” are brutish 70
  • in general the tone of their [Wallace and Humboldt] descriptions about their encounters with “others” were far less biased, prejudiced, and ethnocentric than that of Darwin’s Voyage of the Beagle and Descent of Man. 75
  • it would be unthinkable for people such as Bolívar to use Darwin’s name to promote the fight for independence from Europeans because many non-Westerners precisely saw – and continue to see, correctly so in that sense – Darwin as an icon of western imperialism and scientific racism 75-6
  • Autobiography as piece of propaganda [part of program of reception?] 77
  • Wallace
    • we do not know whether Wallace’s manuscript would have become or not as influential as Darwin’s subsequent Origin book became, worldwide. Probably not, because of both the type of detail and prose of Darwin’s book and also the Power of Place of Darwin, among other factors. 83
    • as far as we know what was historically taken from Wallace’s manuscript was its priority as the first manuscript that was completed about the idea of evolution by natural selection, with the issue about Darwin changing some of his ideas after that not being as relevant within that big-picture historical context. 84
    • Quammen
      • There wasn’t one letter but two – from Darwin and from Hooker. Darwin’s contained Hooker’s as an enclosure, leaving Hooker to do the main explaining. Darwin was understandably abashed and tried to portray himself as a passive party swept along by events. (Later he would assure Wallace that “I had absolutely nothing whatever to do in leading Lyell & Hooker to what they thought a fair course of action”, a claim that was weaselly at best and arguably untrue, given his strong hints and lamentations to both men.. he would also misstate the dating of his own excerpts in the Darwin-Wallace package, telling Wallace that they’d been “written in 1839 now just 20 years ago!” In fact, they’d been written in 1844 and 1857.) Both letters to Wallace have been lost, but Darwin mentioned elsewhere that he considered Hooker’s to be “perfect, quite clear & most courteous” in presenting the fait accompli. 85
  • Darwin and Spencer feeding of each other. 99
  • If one proclaims that Darwinism “conquered” and remains “triumphant” and “highly influential” to this day, how can one then argue that magically no prominent political or societal leader – particularly among white supremacists – was influenced by his ethnocentric, racist, and sexist ideas or at least used them as easy ammunition to “scientifically” justify theirs? 100
  • Expression full of speculations and weakest book 109
  • Moralidade
    • “[I insisted that there is] a non-moral character of Nature.. pointing out that for 99 hundredths of the time life has existed on the earth (or one might say 999 thousandths) the success has been confined to those beings which, from a human point of view would be called criminal.” 120
  • Disinterest for metaphysical things. 124-5
    • However, on the other hand, Darwin did not have the same interest about broader, more theoretical, multidisciplinary discussions such as the ones that he designated as “metaphysical speculations” or concerning societal topics such as the history of racism and sexism and how “others” perceive the world. This would not be so problematic if, for instance, Darwin had only written about volcanos or plants. But this became indeed a major problem, with huge societal repercussions, for a scholar that wrote two books about human evolution, “human races,” morality, emotions, the women’s role in society, and so on, and that became highly influential within various fields of science and layers of society, since then. This is because this lack of depth led him, as we have seen and will discuss in further detail in the chapters below, to often not being able to distinguish between what he had been indoctrinated to believe to be “the best” or “most noble” or “more moral” people and way of living – the Victorian “normality” – and the reality of the natural world and of our species in particular, in all its complexity. Even when he had the unique opportunity to see the facts just before his eyes, as when he encountered “others” in his voyages, such as the Fuegians, he often “saw” their evolutionary “inferiority” and their “immorality” under a Victorian perspective. He used the Victorian model not only as the “standard” but, even more problematic, as the pinnacle of evolution. As we have seen, this markedly contrasts with the way other scientists that interacted with Darwin, such as Wallace and Humboldt – and the young Huxley – reacted to, and described, “others,” which tended to be less ethnocentric and more empathetic, although there were exceptions, of course. In this sense, it is interesting that Darwin recognized, in his autobiography, that he “could never have succeeded in metaphysics” and “abstract thoughts,” and that he was aware that he was, already at his time, often criticized for being a “good observer, but.. [having] no power of reasoning.” 125

Comentários

Postar um comentário

Postagens mais visitadas deste blog

 BLUMCZYNSKI 2024 ROBINSON 2024 BENNETT E NEVES 2024 BENNETT 2023 BENNETT, Karen. Approaches to Knowledge Translation. In : MEYLAERTS, Reine; MARAIS, Kobus (eds.). Routledge Handbook of Concepts and Theories of Translation . London: Routledge, 2023. pp. 443-462. BENNETT, Karen. Popular Science as Inter-Epistemic Translation: A Case Sudy. The Translator , v. 30, n. 3, pp. 407-21, 2024a. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/13556509.2024.2350221 . BENNETT, Karen. Epistemic Translation: Towards an Ecology of Knowledges. Perspectives, Online , 2024b. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1080/0907676X.2023.2294123 .
Leia mais

O Evolucionista Voador - Costa

Imagem
Clique na imagem para ler uma amostra em PDF O Evolucionista Voador é um livro de publicação independente escrito por Felipe A. P. L. Costa, autor de diversos artigos jornalísticos de divulgação científica e pesquisador independe de instituições de ensino, ele pode ser mais facilmente encontrado aqui . O livro é constituído de 15 capítulos, alguns publicados previamente em outros lugares, voltados para a história da ciência. Os primeiros 14 capítulos falam sobre cientistas e o último é um comentário sobre dicionários de biografia científica. Em ordem, os autores tratados são: Wallace; Bates; Curie; Price; Maynard Smith; Mayr; Keeling; Southwood; Miller; Harper; Williams; Margulis; Crow; e Woese. Todos pedras angulares de seus campos, alguns mais conhecidos que outros. Destaquei diversos pontos ao longo do livro que chamaram minha atenção: A divisão biogeográfica segundo Wallace; Uma representação da seleção natural utilizando um funil como metáfora par...
Leia mais

Seminários e apresentações

Imagem
Clique na imagem para ver os slides. Aula sobre as edições traduzidas da Origem das espécies ministrada na USP a convite da Profa. Dra. Maria Elice Brzezinski Prestes. - - - - - - - - - Clique na imagem para ver os slides. Seminário sobre o capítulo "O foguete está nu" do livro "O golem a solta" de Collins e Pinch. - - - - - - - - - Clique na imagem para ver os slides. Apresentação de TCC realizada no dia 04/12/2018. A gravação pode ser vista aqui . - - - - - - - - - Clique na imagem para ver os slides. Apresentação feita para o Clube de Revista do GP-Science Studies da UEM , discutindo o artigo de Ferreira (2005) sobre Popper e Darwin. - - - - - - - - - Clique na imagem para ver os slides Slides do seminário sobre os "Variorums" da Origem das espécies, com enfâse no editado por Bárbara Bordalejo. O seminário foi apresentado no dia 11 de julho de 2018 no  GP Science Studies UEM  como pode se...
Leia mais