What is it about?
I'm responding to Robert Richards's classic argument that Darwin considered evolution to be progressive. I point out that the earliest German adherent to Darwin, Emil du Bois-Reymond, interpreted natural selection in modern, mechanistic, terms. This complicates a historiography that sees Darwin as either a German Romantic or a British naturalist.
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Why is it important?
My story complicates a historiography divided over whether Darwin was a German Romantic or a British naturalist.
Perspectives
No scholar of Darwin has recognized the physiologist Emil du Bois-Reymond as the first German adherent to Darwin. They have generally considered his rival, Ernst Haeckel, to be the earliest and most important German Darwinian. This error has skewed the history of the reception of Darwinism, since Haeckel emphasized development and du Bois-Reymond did not.
Dr Gabriel Finkelstein
University of Colorado Denver
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This page is a summary of: Debates in Nineteenth-Century European Philosophy, November 2015, Taylor & Francis,
DOI: 10.4324/9781315686837.
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