Evolutionary Ideas: The Eclipse of Darwinism

Peter J Bowler, The Queen's University of Belfast, Belfast, Northern Ireland, UK

Published online: April 2001

DOI: 10.1038/npg.els.0001693

Following the acceptance of evolutionism, biologists tried – with limited success – to reconstruct the history of life on Earth, and also debated the mechanism of evolution. Many alternatives to Darwinian natural selection were tried out, including a revived version of Lamarck's theory of the inheritance of acquired characters, and evolution by saltations (which paved the way for Mendelian genetics).

Keywords: biometrics; Darwinism; Lamarckism; Mendelism; orthogenesis

 Further Reading
    book Bateson W (1992) Materials for the Study of Variation (First published in 1894) Introduction by Bowler PJ and Webster G. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press.
    book Bowler PJ (1983) The Eclipse of Darwinism. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press.
    book Bowler PJ (1988) The non-Darwinian Revolution. Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press.
    book Bowler PJ (1996) Life's Splendid Drama: Evolutionary Biology and the Reconstruction of Life's Ancestry, 1860–1940. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
    book Cope ED (1887) The Origin of the Fittest. New York: Macmillan.
    book Desmond AJ (1982) Archetypes and Ancestors. London: Blond and Briggs.
    book Gayon J (1998) Darwinism's Struggle for Survival. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
    book Gould SJ (1977) Ontogeny and Phylogeny. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
    book Hofstadter R (1959) Social Darwinism in American thought. New York: George Braziller.
    book Kellogg VG (1907) Darwinism Today. New York: Henry Holt.
    Magnello E (1996) Karl Pearson's Gresham lectures: W. F. R. Weldon, speciation, and the origin of Pearsonian statistics. British Journal for the History of Science 29: 43–63.
    book Morgan TH (1903) Evolution and Adaptation. New York: Macmillan.
    Norton BJ (1973) The biometric defence of Darwinism. Journal of the History of Biology 6: 283–316.
    book Olby RC (1985) The Origins of Mendelism, 2nd edn. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
    book Provine WB (1971) The Origins of Theoretical Population Genetics. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
    book Rudwick MJS (1976) The Meaning of Fossils. New York: Science History Publications.

Related Sub-Topics:

Evolution: Theories and Ideas | Evolutionary Processes | History
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Article Title: Evolutionary Ideas: The Eclipse of Darwinism
 
How to Cite close
Bowler, Peter J(Apr 2001) Evolutionary Ideas: The Eclipse of Darwinism. In: eLS. John Wiley & Sons Ltd, Chichester. http://www.els.net [doi: 10.1038/npg.els.0001693]