The scientific method in Charles Darwin

The General Science Journal, 2022

This article 8 of the series is devoted exclusively to the conception, development, preparation and publication, in 1859, of Charles Darwin's The Origin of Species, as well as to the methodological and scientific analysis of Darwin's work and the social reception of his theory of evolution. It covers a long period of Darwin's life from 1828 (his arrival in Cambridge) to his death in 1882. The article analyses from his training as a naturalist to his commitment and effort to adapt his work to the canons of Newtonian science, both from the deductive and the inductive point of view, the latter supported by an overwhelming empirical documentation collected mainly from the observation of nature and, to a lesser extent, from experimentation.

Archives of Natural History, 1995

Given the number of books written by Charles Darwin and the significance of these spread out over a large natural historical and scientific field, it is surprising that English publishers have not made more of an effort to present a compact selected volume of the kind usually available in the United States. Now, at last, Penguin Books have added such a selection to their standard versions of the Voyage of the Beagle (edited by Janet Browne and Michael Neve) and On the Origin of Species (edited by J. W. Burrow). As one would expect, the Portable Darwin includes a large chunk from both of these. The editors give the first four chapters, and the last, of the first edition of the Origin where Darwin outlined the main points of his argument succinctly, and some well4cnown but always readable passages from the Journal of researches. These extracts are well-chosen for their purpose. It is, however, the material before and after which really shows the variety and excellence of their undertaking. There are extracts from Darwin's geological works, including the papers and books about South America and coral reefs which made his scientific name; the entire text of the joint papers by Darwin and Wallace which were presented to the Linnean Society in July 1858; and crucial passages from the Descent of Man. Everyone will be glad to see these in such an accessible form. In between, there are notes on bees, seeds, primroses and worms, showing just how firmly Darwin's researches rested on laboriously detailed practical investigations into nature. The editors really come into their own, however, with the material chosen to reflect Darwin's working life after the Origin: the fascinating excursion into orchid sexual anatomy, the expression of the emotions, the effects of cross-fertilisation in plants, and the movement of plants, as well as one or two spirited paragraphs on sexual selection (including Ruskin's quip about Darwin's "deep and tender interest" in the hinder parts of monkeys) and the sense of direction shown by horses. They include Darwin's curious theory of pangenesis (inheritance) and useful material on variation. Darwin's private life is well represented too, particularly in his recollections of John Stevens Henslow, his friend and professor at Cambridge University, his memoir on his grandfather Erasmus Darwin, and his sketch of an infant's development, based on his observations on his own growing children. Everything, it should be mentioned, comes from a then-contemporary publication, many of them difficult to find today: there are no private letters or notebook musings here. The editors have rightly decided to show the man that the Victorians saw-the public Darwin as well as the eminently portable one. The whole is as fresh, readable, and interesting as anyone could wish. JANET BROWNE BAUMUNK, BODO-MICHAEL and RIESS, JÜRGEN, (editors). Darwin und Darwinismus. Akademie Verlag, Berlin: 1994. Pp 265 (26 cm x 22 cm), illustrated, paperback. Price DM 48.00.

American Journal of Physical Anthropology, 1992

Biology and Philosophy, 1991

ABSTRACT: Natural selection (NS) is the explanatory principle of Darwin’s evolutionary theory. After updating the subject, this paper analyses, in the first place, the twofold language in which Darwin expressed his idea of NS. Second, the structure of the Origin of Species’ «long argument» is displayed as the cycle of scientific explanation encompassing discovery and justification, respectively in terms of abduction and reconstruction. At the end it is shown how NS plays the role of an explanatory principle in a scientific theory as well as that of a regulative idea in a naturalistic philosophy, setting the main lines of a program whose development has been accomplished in biological sciences altogether. Yet its philosophical and technological implications also lead to remarkable metaphysical and bioethical approaches. KEYWORDS: Abduction, analogy, Darwin, metaphor, natural selection, philosophy, scientific explanation RESUMEN: La selección natural (SN) es el principio explicativo de la teoría de la evolución de Darwin. Tras una puesta al día de la situación actual, este artículo estudia, en primer lugar, el doble lenguaje en que formuló su idea de la SN. En segundo lugar, se presenta la estructura del «extenso argumento» de El origen de las especies como la del circuito de la explicación científica, que unifica los procesos de descubrimiento y justificación, en términos de abducción y reconstrucción, respectivamente. En último lugar, se considera cómo SN juega el papel de principio explicativo de una teoría científica y de idea regulativa de una filosofía naturalista, que marcalas líneas de un programa, cuyo desarrollo científico se ha producido en el conjunto de las ciencias biológicas. Pero sus consecuencias filosóficas y tecnológicas conducen también a planteamientos metafísicos y bioéticos de importancia. PALABRAS CLAVE: Abducción, analogía, Darwin, explicación científica, filosofía, metáfora, selección natural.

Understanding Evolution in Darwin’s “Origin”. The emerging context of evolutionary thinking, 2023

The sixth chapter of Charles Darwin’s Origin of Species is called “Difficulties of the theory”. In that part of his work, Darwin reveals some possible objections to his theory and attempts to provide an answer to all of them. Such a chapter was part of the first edition of the Origin of Species, therefore the difficulties described were not reactions derived from the publication of the book. Some of them have been probably presented by friends, such as Charles Lyell. Others can be found in works published before Darwin’s work, such as Natural Theology by William Paley, which argued for creationism and introduced arguments against any natural explanation of the origin of species. Many other problems dealt with in the sixth chapter were born, however, from Darwin’s own internal dialogue, from his own initial doubts concerning the theory and from this anticipation of criticism, as one can gather from his manuscripts. This paper describes the main difficulties shown in the sixth chapter of the Origin of Species, providing a more detailed exposition of a few topics, and analyzing Darwin’s defense, in those cases. It also discusses some of the weak points in Darwin’s line of reasoning, from a diachronic point of view.

Both Darwin and Wallace tried to find the challenge that triggers new species: for Darwin this was the ‘competition between populations’, in Wallace's opinion the most important factor was ‘a change in the environment’. Both of them tried to show that their theory had two major consequences in the general knowledge of species: (1) the fact that all species adapt by progress (improvement) and (2) the fact that new species would branch out from old species, characteristics of the last being increasingly different from each other. The attempts of the two writers show a great deal of ‘explanatory responsibility’ (Jonathan Hodge’s formula). And this explanatory responsibility turned into beautiful imaginary examples. This paper will try to show (in a nutshell) the method Darwin used to fill in explanatory gaps in the theory of the evolution of species: he took it over from Thomas Malthus, the father of social sciences, he adapted it according to Charles Lyell’s principles and he gave it the shape of imaginatory illustrations.

F1000Prime Reports, 2015

Darwin is the father of evolutionary theory because he identified evolutionary patterns and, with Natural Selection, he ascertained the exquisitely ecological ultimate processes that lead to evolution. The proximate processes of evolution he proposed, however, predated the discovery of genetics, the backbone of modern evolutionary theory. The later discovery of the laws of inheritance by Mendel and the rediscovery of Mendel in the early 20th century led to two reforms of Darwinism: Neo-Darwinism and the Modern Synthesis (and subsequent refinements). If Darwin's evolutionary thought required much refinement, his ecological insight is still very modern. In the first edition of The Origin of Species, Darwin did not use either the word "evolution" or the word "ecology". "Ecology" was not coined until after the publication of the Origin. Evolution, for him, was the origin of varieties, then species, which he referred to as well-marked varieties, whereas, instead of using ecology, he used "the economy of nature". The Origin contains a high proportion of currently accepted ecological principles. Darwin labelled himself a naturalist. His discipline (natural history) was a blend of ecology and evolution in which he investigated both the patterns and the processes that determine the organization of life. Reductionist approaches, however, often keep the two disciplines separated from each other, undermining a full understanding of natural phenomena that might be favored by blending ecology and evolution through the development of a modern Theory of Natural History based on Darwin's vision of the study of life.

HOPOS: Journal of the International Society for the History of Philosophy of Science, 2018

In a series of papers and books published in the 1970s, David Hull (1935-2010) and Michael Ruse (1940-) proposed interpretations of the relation between nineteenth-century British philosophy of science, on the one hand, and the views and methods of Charles Darwin, on the other, that were incompatible or at least in strong interpretive tension with one another. According to Hull, John Herschel and William Whewell’s philosophies of science were logically incompatible with Darwin’s revolutionary theory. According to Ruse, on the other hand, Darwin discovered and developed his theory through direct adherence to those philosophies. Here I reconstruct Hull’s and Ruse’s interpretations of the Herschel-Whewell-Darwin relationship and then, drawing on Hull and Ruse’s published papers and archival correspondence in the years 1968-1976 – particularly regarding reduction, laws, and species – I offer an explanation for their differences: namely, their different orientations to logical empiricism.

Victorian Web, 2008

This essay treats pre-Darwinian evolution in Great Britain not only to consider the ways in which Charles Darwin adhered to or diverged from the views of late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century thinkers, but also to understand these works in their own right. I consider the theories of earlier evolutionists and some uses to which their systems were put. I argue that we cannot arrive at a full appreciation for Darwin’s contribution without understanding his evolutionary ancestors.