Darwinism Quick reference
A Dictionary of Environment and Conservation (3 ed.)
... The theory put forward by Charles Darwin that species originate and develop by evolution from simpler species, and that evolution is driven mainly by natural selection...
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David Wilkinson
The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church (4 ed.)
...Darwin or departed from Darwin in terms of mechanism. More correctly, it is used within the scientific community to distinguish Darwin’s from those other approaches. In theological debate it is sometimes used as a positive or negative label to describe scientific materialism. Neo-Darwinism is used to describe the fusion of Darwin’s theory with Mendel’s theory of genetics, which gave a mechanism of inheritance to natural selection and is often known as the Modern Synthesis. David Wilkinson P. J. Bowler , Evolution: The History of an Idea (3rd rev. and...
Darwinism Quick reference
A Dictionary of Zoology (5 ed.)
... The theory of evolution by natural selection , often used incorrectly as a synonym for the theory of evolution itself. The term ‘neo-Darwinism’ is often used to denote the ‘new synthesis’ (i.e. synthetic theory...
Darwinism n. Quick reference
A Dictionary of Psychology (4 ed.)
... n. Another name for Darwinian evolution . Darwinist n. One who promotes or believes in Darwinian evolution...
Darwinism Quick reference
A Dictionary of Genetics (8 ed.)
... the theory that the mechanism of biological evolution involves natural selection of adaptive variations. See gradualism , Origin of Species...
Darwinism Quick reference
A Dictionary of Human Geography
...to demonstrate the significance of Darwinism. But Darwinism’s influence, if only indirectly, can be detected in human geography, not just in a revivified environmental determinism , but also in evolutionary economics and ongoing debates over bioengineering and the ethics of planetary life. Furthermore, human geographers have used the spread of Darwinism to exemplify the geography of scientific knowledge, most notably in the scholarship of David Livingstone . The widespread marking of the 200th anniversary of Darwin’s birth and the 150th anniversary of the...
Darwinism Quick reference
A Dictionary of Ecology (5 ed.)
... The theory of evolution by natural selection , often used incorrectly as a synonym for the theory of evolution itself (a concept that was described by Aristotle and debated in classical literature). The term ‘neo-Darwinism’ is often used to denote the ‘new synthesis’ (i.e. synthetic theory...
Darwinism Quick reference
A Dictionary of Biology (8 ed.)
...Darwinism The theory of evolution proposed by Charles Darwin in On the Origin of Species ( 1859 ), which postulated that present-day species have evolved from simpler ancestral types by the process of natural selection acting on the variability found within populations. This was a fuller account of a paper written jointly by Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace and presented to the Linnean Society in 1858. On the Origin of Species caused a furore when it was first published because it suggested that species are not immutable nor were they specially...
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Anthony O'Hear
The Oxford Companion to Philosophy (2 ed.)
...Darwinism is a non-teleological theory of order: the variations chosen by the environment and which fit it were not designed to do so, nor did they arise in direct response to environmental pressure ( contra Lamarck). The absence of teleological explanation means that it cannot be applied directly to developments in human society or culture. Prof. Anthony O'Hear See also evolution ; social Darwinism . J. Dupre , Darwin's Legacy: What Evolution Means Today (Oxford,...
Darwinism (April 1860) Reference library
The Oxford Companion to the History of Modern Science
...of Germans. The special brand of Darwinism called social Darwinism, which gained recurrent, considerable followings in political arenas in several countries well into the twentieth century, typically did not distinguish between the different strands of Darwinism. While preaching evolution, as Darwin did, and addressing the same audiences that venerated him toward the end of his life, neither Spencer nor Haeckel had a role for natural selection: both adopted one form or another of Lamarckian evolutionism. Darwin accepted them among his supporters,...
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Peter J. Bowler
The Oxford Encyclopedia of the Modern World
... . The meaning of the term “Darwinism” has changed considerably since it was first introduced. In modern biology, Darwinism denotes the theory of evolution by natural selection: to be a Darwinist is to accept that natural selection is the sole mechanism of evolution. Charles Darwin ( 1809–1882 ) introduced the selection theory in On the Origin of Species , published in 1859 , and it was Darwin's book that precipitated the conversion of the scientific community to evolutionism. His followers naturally called themselves Darwinians, and the term...
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A Dictionary of Sociology (4 ed.)
... ( Social Darwinism ) Darwinism is the belief in the theory of evolution by means of natural selection, developed separately by Charles Darwin and Alfred Wallace , and subsequently popularized in Darwin's two great works on evolution: On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection (1859 ) and The Descent of Man (1871 ). The original version of the theory proposed that, since population numbers remained stable whilst reproduction occurred at a higher than replacement rate, there must be some systematic selective mechanism involved in...
Darwinism Quick reference
John Halliday
A Concise Oxford Dictionary of Politics and International Relations (4 ed.)
...activity, so Darwinism suggested one natural law of development for all forms of life. Not surprisingly perhaps, Darwin himself took immense pleasure in the idea that man and other animals were ‘netted together’. Indeed, many Darwinists held that there was no longer an objective basis for elevating one species above another. Needless to say, Darwinism is also fatal for all arguments from design and special creation. As a specific biological theory, Darwinism shifted the biologist’s concern from a concentration on specific types, each with its own fixed form and...
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Alvin Finkel
The Oxford Companion to Canadian History
...not be taken at face value. As Canadians struggled with the impact of Darwin's science on their religious views, they wondered what human societies might learn from Darwin's notion of evolution. Were there principles that should be followed in the organization of public life to ensure the better development of the species? Notions of ‘social Darwinism’, used to justify the domination of certain categories of people over others, conflicted with Darwin's arguments in several ways. Darwin had simply described how species adapted or failed to adapt to their...
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Allan H. Simmons
Oxford Reader’s Companion To Conrad
... . The evolutionary ideas of Charles Darwin ( 1809–82 ), published in The Origin of Species ( 1859 ) ant The Descent of Man ( 1871 ), flew in the face of the religious belief in the special creation of species by offering overwhelming evidence for the existence of a principle of natural selection. Evolution by natural selection–or descent with modification, as Darwin sometimes calls it–depends upon three broad facts: the ‘struggle for life’ (summed up in Herbert Spencer’s phrase ‘survival of the fittest’), variation, and inheritance. Darwin’s...
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Oxford Reader's Companion to George Eliot
...within this final novel mirror the internal conflicts within Darwin's own work: a negative vision of a world dominated by chance and conflict is set alongside a positive vision of historical progress grounded in the workings of inheritance. ‘Darwinism’, for Darwin as much as his interpreters, was a complex, ‘tangled bank’ of ideas. See also natural world ; science . SAS Darwin, Charles , On the Origin of Species , ed. Gillian Beer (1996). Beer (1983). Levine, George , Darwin and the Novelists: Patterns of Science in Victorian Fiction ...
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A Dictionary of Philosophy (3 ed.)
... Belief in the theory of evolution by natural selection. Core Darwinism has been defined by the biologist Richard Dawkins as ‘the minimal theory that evolution is guided in adaptively nonrandom directions by the nonrandom survival of small random hereditary changes’. The theory in its original form took wing from the observation of Malthus that although living organisms produce multiple offspring, adult populations remain relatively stable in number. Darwin realized that the different chances of survival of differently endowed offspring could...
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The Oxford Companion to Italian Literature
...The debate over social Darwinism from the early 1890s onwards was reflected in the pages of Filippo Turati's Critica sociale , in which socialist intellectuals such as Enrico Ferri and Achille Loria tackled the Spencerian positions of Guglielmo Ferrero , presenting Marx as the Darwin of social science, or human evolution in terms of the survival of the unfittest. Napoleone Colajanni , however, in the second edition of his Socialismo ( 1898 ) and in successive writings, deplored the unscientific applications of Darwinism by apologists of the...
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Oxford Reader's Companion to Hardy
... . Hardy was ‘among the earliest acclaimers’ of The Origin of Species ( LW 158), and remained committed to the dire truthfulness of Darwin's ideas. His last lines of verse, dictated on his deathbed, mock G. K. *Chesterton for claiming to refute Darwin (‘Epitaph for G. K. Chesterton’). Hardy was unusual in the post-Darwin era in eschewing popular meliorist compromises such as ‘moral evolution’, ‘creative evolution’, or social Darwinism. He was unique in making great tragic literature from the belief that ‘the surviving organism is not necessarily the...
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Ernan McMullin
The Oxford Guide to the Historical Reception of Augustine
...who are opposing Darwin's theory on scriptural grounds, pointing out to them that the scriptural tradition would, if anything, favour Darwin if the greatest authority in the early Church were to be taken seriously. They are not calling on Aug. as a source of scientific support but as a more authentic interpreter of Scripture than are Christian critics of Darwin. It is quite striking, in retrospect, that in the century following the appearance of Darwin's ...
