Lustig A., Richards R, J., Ruse M. (eds.) Darwinian Heresies

New York, "Cambridge University Press", 2004, -210 p.Darwinian Heresies looks at the history of evolutionary thought, breaking through much of the conventional thinking to see whether there are assumptions or theories that are blinding us to important issues. The collection, which includes some of today’s leading historians and philosophers of science, digs beneath the surface and shows that not all is precisely as it is too often assumed to be. Covering a wide range of issues starting back in the eighteenth century, Darwinian Heresies brings us up through the time of Charles Darwin and the Origin all the way to the twenty-first century. It is suggested that Darwin’s true roots lie in Germany, not in his native England; that Russian evolutionism is more significant than many are prepared to allow; and that the main influence on twentieth-century evolutionary biology was not Charles Darwin at all but his often-despised contemporary, Herbert Spencer. The collection is guaranteed to interest, to excite, to infuriate, and to stimulate further work.Abigail Lustig is a postdoctoral Fellowat the Dibner Institute for theHistory of Science and Technology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. She has previously held fellowships at the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, Berlin; the Secretariat National Recherche et Sauvetage, Paris; and the Universitat Autonoma, Barcelona.Robert J. Richards is Professor of History and Philosophy and director of the Fishbein Center for History of Science at the University of Chicago. He is the author of Darwin and the Emergence of Evolutionary Theories of Mind and Behavior (1987), The Meaning of Evolution (1992), and The Romantic Conception of Life: Science and Philosophy in the Age of Goethe (2002).Michael Ruse is Lucyle T. Werkmeister Professor of Philosophy at Florida State University. He is the author of many books, including The Darwinian Revolution: Science Red in Tooth and Claw (1979), Monad to Man: The Concept of Progress in Evolutionary Biology (1997), and Can a Darwinian Be a Christian? The Relationship between Science and Religion (Cambridge University Press, 2000).Introduction (by Abigail Lustig).
Russian theoretical biology between heresy and orthodoxy: Georgii Shaposhinikov and his experiments on plant lice (by Elena Aronova and Daniel Alexandrov).
The spectre of Darwinism: the popular image of Darwinism in early twentieth-century Britain (by Peter J. Bowler).
Natural theology (by Abigail Lustig).
Ironic heresy: how young-earth creationists came to embrace rapid microevolution by means of natural selection (by Ronald L. Numbers).
If this be heresy: Haeckel's conversion to Darwinism (by Robert J. Richards).
Adaptive landscapes and dynamic equilibrium: the Spencerian contribution to twentieth-century, American, evolutionary biology (by Michael Ruse).
'The ninth moral sin': the Lamarckism of W. M. Wheeler (by Charlotte Sleigh).
Contemporary Darwinism and religion (by Mikael Stenmark).