Reading Guide:
Reading Guide:
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Chapter
1: The Setting for Conflict
| 5. In what sense was the concept of nature set forth in John Ray's The Wisdom of God Manifested in the Works of the Creation "to constitute the chief obstacle to the rise of evolutionary views"? Was Ray's scholarship ever of any use to the idea of evolution? |
| 12/13. How does the idea of nature as a law bound system of matter and motion [Cartesian, Newtonian,mechanistic] conflict with the idea of nature as a habitation created for humanity? |
Chapter
2: The Inconstant Heavens
| 17. What is "Mechanick theism"? |
| 17ff. Describe William Whiston's [1667-1752] A New Theory of the Earth [1696], in particular, what it implied for the relation between science and Scripture. Why choose a comet as an agent? |
| 25. How did George Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon [1707-1788] carry Whiston's precedent still further? |
| 25. What is natural theology? |
| 28. If Thomas Wright's [1711-1786] speculations led to a "scientific" explanation of the Milky Way, how did Immanuel Kant [1724-1804] turn them into a general theory of cosmic evolution? |
| 30. What did William Herschel's [1738-1822] telescopic discoveries provide to support the idea of ceaseless change and evolution amongst the heavens? |
| 31. How could Herschel [and you] determine the proper motion of the sun? |
| 36. What did Pierre-Simon, Marquis de Laplace, make of Herschel's evolutionary ideas? |
| 37. What had the constant heavens of 1700 become by 1796? |
| 37. What does Greene claim had happened to the belief in final causes and the argument of design by the dawn of the nineteenth century? |
| 37. What is the Argument from Design? Can you think of any contemporary uses of it? |
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change as decline, but natural foces could shape earth |
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terrestrial instability. fossils = remains of life |
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Deluge. Cycle. life -->fossils |
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vs. Deluge |
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vs. Deluge |
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1756 Stratigraphy.
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Volvic, 1751:
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Vulcanist. volc. widespread. Ireland. basalt: igneous |
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1777, 1782: fire and water both agents |
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1811 Paris Basin with Cuvier |
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Chapter
4: Lost Species [the creation of paleontology]
| -What backgrounds and motivations did the creators of paleontology have, according to the story told by Greene? |
| 125. How does Greene characterize Cuvier's catastrophism? |
| -What were the principal differences between Larmarck and Cuvier? |
| -Compare what was believed ca. 1700 about the history of life, with what was believed ca. 1812. |
| -What major change[s] in terms of the direction or character of historical time had occurred by the end of the 18e? |
| -Compare the modern theory of punctuated equilibrium [Eldredge and Gould] with the ideas of James Parkinson. |
| -How had the idea of the Chain of Being been affected by developments in the 18e, if at all? |
Chapter 5: From Monad
to Man [New Orders, Metaphysics, and Systems]
| 130. What was Ray's criterion for species? |
| 131. What was Linnaeus' ambition? |
| 131. How was Linnaeus' paradigm undermined? |
| 132. Distinguish between natural and artificial methods of classification. |
| 134. "Nature" according to Linnaeus, was ?? |
| 134. What kind of possible changes to Nature did Linneaus contemplate? |
| 137. What was, according to Greene, Linnaeus' achievement? |
| 138. What consequences for Linnaeus' concept of natural history did Buffon's views have? |
| 139. Buffon believed that ideas couldn't cause natural phenomena: Relate his belief to Cartesian metaphysics. |
| 140. What are "final causes," and how, with respect to them, does Buffon follow the tradition of the mechanical world view? |
| 141. What are the principal features of life? |
| 141. What is Buffon's idea of the Creator's design, and how does it differ from Linnaeus'? |
| 142. For Buffon, the distinguishing characteristic of living bodies is ? |
| 142. Thus, the key to understanding organic phenomena is ? |
| 144. In what aspects did Buffon's and Linnaeus' systems resemble each other? |
| 145. How did Buffon depart from Linnaeus? |
| 147. What did Buffon think of the idea of the mutability of species? |
| 150. What problem did variability present to Buffon? |
| 151. What did Buffon believe concerning the extinction of species? |
| 153. Did Buffon believe in spontaneous generation? |
| 154. Did Buffon see natural selection as creative? |
| 158. Explain what Greene means by the "radical positivistic materialism" of Lamarck, and how it differs from Descartes' metaphysical dualism. |
| 158. What did Lamarck think of the stability of organic forms? |
| 159. What was Lamarck's starting point for his approach to natural history, and what were his goals? |
| 160. For Lamarck, what were the 3 key agents producing variety and change? |
| 160. What direction to the history
of life did Lamarck's theory imply?
What problems did this present? |
| 162/163. How did Lamarck seem to express a belief in an ideal plan of nature? |
| 164. What difficulty did L's progressive trend face when compared with inorganic nature? |
| 165. What principle proved for L. the answer to the negentropic character of organic life? |
| 167. What radical speculation did Erasmus Darwin offer about descent? |
| 168. How did E. Darwin also emphasize the idea of progress? |
| 169. For Cuvier, "the most powerful opponent of the developmental hypothesis [what was that?],"what was life? |
| 170. What did Cuvier think about the potential range of variation? |
| 171. Describe Cuvier's great principle of correlation of parts. |
| 171. For Cuvier, what was the alpha and omega of science? |
| 171. In place of a Chain of Being, what did Cuvier provide? How was this to be useful to Darwin? |
| 173. Did Cuvier attribute extinction to the external environment? |
| 173. What does Cuvier's attempt to reconcile 2 differing views of nature tell us about [1] Cuvier? [2] the development of scientific ideas? |
Chapter
6: Man’s Place in Nature
| 175. What controversy about human history arose, as the 18th century learned more and more about primitive peoples and primates? |
| 175-176. In 1735, how did Linneaus place humans? |
| (182.) By 1766, what change had there been in Linnaeus’ thinking about humans’ classification? |
| 177. Tyson’s work with the “pygmy” (infant chimp) showed the importance of ? |
| 181. In 1766, how did Buffon classify the apes? |
| 182. What did Buffon think about materialism, that matter alone might develop thought or language? |
| 187f, What roles did Vosmaer (1720-99) and Camper (1722-1789) play in classifying the primates? |
| -How did Cuvier (1769-1832) decide to group the primates, and what interesting principle did he use? |
| -When did Cuvier change from the term “pongo (Wurmb’s ape)” to “orang”? [1829] |
| 196f. In what way did Etienne Geoffroy St. Hilaire (1772-1844) help resolve the two species of pongo and jocko? |
| -In 1847, Savage and Wyman gave the first scientific description of the last of the 4 great apes. Which was it? |
Chapter
7: The Perfectible Animal
| 201. Cultural evolution: which is it, ascent from Savagery or degeneration from perfection? |
| 202. What implications did the search for the “true natural” human have for political theory? |
| 202. What examples of living “humans” were believed to come as close to “origins” as possible? |
| 203. How did Buffon explain [or to what did he attribute] the origins of the social and cultural nature of humans? |
| 204-205 Rousseau ( 1712-78) dismissed “primitives” (already too developed), comparative anatomy (too immature), travellers’ accounts (too unreliable), but relied on a hypothetical method emphasizing mind rather than body by which humans came to be essentially who they are: that ability was? |
| 205-206. How did Rousseau’s anthropological thought contribute to a vision of a necessarily vast history to the earth? |
| -How does Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World reflect on Rousseau’s political thought? |
| 207. Rousseau vacillated between two different visions of nature and humans. What were they? |
| 209. For Lord Monboddo (1714-1799), what relation did the developing human body and mind bear to one another? |
| 210. Gradually humans remake themselves, because of their having to ? |
| 211. Consequently, humans do something totally unlike Nature’s other modes of operation -- what is it we do? |
| 210. If humans developed progressively, by what mechanism did they do so? |
| 213. Is the dominant characteristic of humans internal or external? |
| 214. Did Itard’s work with the wild boy of Aveyron conform with Monboddo’s outlook, or counter it? |
| 215. Are apes = varieties of humans? |
| 215. What was Monboddo’s opinion of Linnaeus’ system of classification? |
| 216. Is it the environment which is the dominant shaping factor of human beings? |
| -How well could scholars distinguish between species and varieties? |
| -Because species are fixed, variation ought not to be very abundant - was that what was observed? |
| 218. in the Progress of Civilization, what constituted the good? the bad? In what direction would modern postindustrialized society be going? How does Monboddo’s thought in this respect antedate Henry David Thoreau? |
| -In Cuvier’s 1817 Règne Animale, 1817, intrinsic causes and external environment worked together to produce how many races? |
| 219. What are the laws of historical development, and, for 19th century social theorists, what are the two concepts most potent to their discovery? |
Chapter
8: The Origin of Human Races
| -Briefly define monogeny and polygeny. |
| 221. Distinguish between anthropological and biological approaches to the question of variety in humans. |
| 221. Which was the older and more established “science,” biology or anthropology? |
| 221. Why were most leading naturalists monogenists? |
| 222. Did polygenists contribute much to the development of evolutionary ideas in natural history? |
| 222. If human races were indeed varieties, what problem did that raise |
| 222f. What was Blumenbach’s (1752-1840) view of the origins of humans and different races? |
| 224. If degeneration from first forms explained the formation of races, what mechanisms brought that about? |
| 226. What did Buffon (1707-1788) believe about climate and racial type? |
| 226. For Buffon, what was the agency of organic change? for Blumenbach? |
| 226. What problem raised by continual variation was Blumenbach sensitive to? |
| 228. Characterize Blumenbach’s views about (1) the fixity of species; (2) the concept of nature; (3) the age of the earth. Can you think of any modern counterparts? |
| 230. What unusual cause did Maupertuis (1698-1759) emphasize in his 1745 rejection of environmental influences and the inheritance of acquired characteristics? |
| 231. What did Maupertuis think would be the eventual fate of varieties, in a state of nature. |
| 232. What were Kant’s arguments about race and organismic change? |
| 234. Why would blood overloaded with phlogiston appear black? |
| 235. For Kant, adaptation was viewed as ? |
| -In what ways does Kant’s position on races reminiscent of Aristotelian, neoPlatonic, (and Baconian) philosophy? |
| 235. Buffon and Blumenbach : degeneration :: Maupertuis : random variation and selection :: Kant : ? |
| 235. What were Cuvier’s 3 races and their ranksHow many did Kant recognize? Blumenbach? How many races are there, actually? |
| 235-36. Characterize Cuvier’s attitudes to race. |
| 240. Describe the reasoning underlying James Prichard’s “principle of natural deviation” in his 1813 Researches into the Physical History of Man? |
| 240-241. Was Prichard an environmentalist? |
| 241. What did Prichard conclude was the the chief cause of human varieties? |
| 242-243. Define “progressive evolution” and its problems. |
| 243. What concept of selection did Prichard rely on to explain the perfectionist direction of the process of progressive evolution? |
| 244. Prichard’s application of evolution to both physical and mental development almost anticipated Darwin, but he stopped short of what idea? |
| 245. Compare the elements of William Wells’ (1757-1817) 1813 paper (published 1818) on a white female with partly black skin, with the elements of Darwin’s theory of evolution. |
| 245. Could Wells account for the origin of variations? |
| 246. All the elements of Darwin’s theory were on hand by 1818, 50 years before its unveiling at the Linnean Society, July 1, 1858. What were those elements and who had contributed them? |
| 247. What powerful ideas about Nature still captivated the Western mind? |
Chapter
9: The Triumph of Chance and Change
| 249. In 1832, were most geologists catastrophists or uniformitarians? |
| 250. What two reasons led Lyell to reject catastrophism? |
| 251. Cuvier attacked Lamarck. Why did Lyell? Is there any problem with the reasons Greene gives for Lyell attacking Lamarck, when compared with those given for rejecting catastrophism [Cuvier]? |
| 253. What became the basic problem for Lyell? |
| 255. Did Lyell believe in the extinction of species? |
| 256. How did Lyell account for the introduction of new species? |
| 257. What was for Darwin the clue to evolution? |
| 260. What two manuscripts about descent with modification did Darwin write, and when? |
| 262. What did Darwin think about the degrees of variability in nature as compared with civilization? |
| 264. If for Lamarck, variation wasn't adaptive, was it for Darwin? |
| 266. What are the elements of the beautiful simplicity of Darwin's theory, according to Greene? |
| 267. Why were instincts and complex organs difficult to explain? |
| 271. The most refractory evidence [or lack, actually] for D's theory came from what source? |
| 272. For Darwin, what was the true cause of new forms? Adaptation? |
| 274. Why were the laws of geographical distribution beneficial to Darwin, while awkward for creationists? |
| 278. How did 'descent with modification' promise to help resolve taxonomic debates over natural and artificial? |
| 279. What utility did embryology and rudimentary organs supply to Darwin's theorizing? What difficulty did the latter also present? |
| 282. What, in the end, was the strongest argument for Darwin's theory? |
| 287. Did Darwin originate the idea of 'descent with modification'? |
| 288. What 2 advantages did Darwin's work on Cirrepedia, 1846-1854, yield [study of barnacles]? |
| 290f. What did Hooker and Gray do for Darwin? |
| 294. What important paper concerning geographical distribution and the introduction of new species was published in 1855? |
| 294. What blow fell on Darwin in June 1858? |
| 293. Was Lyell a thorough going Darwinist? |
| 296. To what other agencies of variation than Natural Selection did Darwin eventually turn, and why? |
| 298. How did Darwin place a "direction" on evolutionary products? |
| 300. Why did Gray and Wallace object to the term "natural selection?" |
| 301. How did Spencer's phrase make things worse? |
| 303. In dealing with the meaning of evolution, what, like Laplace, did Darwin discover? |
| 304. Was there 'room for genuine chance in Darwin's view of nature'? |
| 304f. What key characteristic did Darwinistic metaphysics seem to imply that broke the stranglehold of mechanical determinism? |
| 306. For James, Bergson, Whitehead, and others, what did the idea of organic evolution lead to? |
Chapter
10: Human Evolution: Darwin's Adam
| 309. What did Spencer try to do in Principles of Psychology (1855)? |
| 311. What did Huxley, 1863, know of the fossil evidence of human ancestry? |
| 312. What was Huxley's basicranial method? |
| 313. Whom did Lyell credit as originally proposing the "evolutionary hypothesis?" |
| 314. What feature of Darwin's strongly appealed to Lyell? |
| 315. Did Lyell accept natural selection as an adequate cause of organic evolution? |
| 315. Was Lyell a gradualist? |
| 316. How did Wallace view natural selection and its role in the evolution of humanity? |
| 321. What were Darwin's aims in his 1871 Descent of Man? |
| 326. For Darwin, what relative prominence in human evolution did the roles of men and women have? |
| 327. Did Darwin view history as progress? Did he have any doubts? |
| 327/329. Did Darwin think that social and moral characteristics could be attributed to evolution via natural selection? |
| 330/332. On what did human Progress depend? |
| 334. Was Darwin's belief in a 'higher morality' favorable or not to his idea of human progress toward moral perfection? |
| 335. What did natural selection, 'in the last analysis,' mean? |
| 336. If biology could be a foundation for social science, what could it do "for the deepest questions of the human spirit?” |
| 337. Why didn't Darwin conceive the possibility that humans might extinguish themselves? |
| 339. What then is, for Adam, the legacy of evolutionary history, as one mid-twentieth [1959] scholar sees it? |