Reading Response QuestionsWeek 5, Precepts March 3-5, 1998
Email: creager@princeton.edu, or manfredl@princeton.edu Reminder: You may use these content-based questions as a springboard for your e-mail reading response, which should, however, focus on more general issues than the specific items detailed here. The response you send in to your preceptor each week should address all of the required readings (especially the primary source readings, which will be the focus for precept discussion); the text may include questions as well as analysis.
Week 5
Secord, excerpts from "Introduction" to the most recent edition of Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation 2° source
p. ix ff.: Given that the Vestiges was not regarded as important science even in the nineteenth century, why is this anonymously-authored book significant historically?
p. xiii: How was a history of creation seen to be related to the ideal of progress? How were metaphors of an organism's development important?
p. xviii (and xxxiii ff.): What was the effect of Vestiges' author being unknown? You might consider the rampant speculation a few years ago as to who the author of Primary Colors was. p. xxv: Who were the most adamant proponents of evolution before Vestiges was published? To which audience was Chambers trying to appeal? What kinds of metaphors and analogies did he use to try and "domesticate" transmutation?Chambers, excerpt from Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation 1° source
p. 191: What does Chambers mean by the "gradations" between kinds of organisms? What older models does he draw? What does he look for among the various "external forms of animals"? (Note how he addresses the debates between Geoffroy and Cuvier on the meaning of form in different animals on p. 206 and following.)
p. 197: What does Chambers propose about the development of an organism in relation to "lower" organisms? What is the highest point of this progression? How does his view present the role of God in creation?
p. 204 What does Chambers regard as the fundamental form of life? As James Secord has written on elsewhere, in 1836 living mites of the genus Acarus unexpectedly crawled out of an electrical experiment in the private l aboratory of the wealthy English gentleman Andrew Crosse. His experiments which were widely publicized in the 1830s. What use does Chambers make of them to address the origin of life?
p. 207: What analogy does Chambers draw between fidelity in reproduction and Charles Babbage's calculating machines? What do sequences of preprogrammed numbers have to do with transmutation of species?
p. 217: How does Chambers think that heredity works? How do bees, or people, come to have the traits they have? How do birth defects arise? What do these passages reveal about Chambers' assumed hierarchies of sex and race?
p. 222: How does transmutation work for Chambers?
pp. 226-27: What is Chambers presenting in this chart? How does he relate geological, taxonomical, and embryological information?
p. 231: On page 229 Chambers returns to the role of air, light, and environment in development and heredity. What use does Chambers make of Lamarck's ideas? By the "laws of organic development" Chambers is probably referring to embryology-observations about the growth and development of organisms from (single) cells.Desmond, "Lamarckism and Democracy" 2° source
This is a dense article; don't worry if there are terms and political movements Desmond refers to which are unfamiliar. Jeremy Bentham (1748-1832) was a free thinker who wrote on economics and political theory; his ideas were used as the basis for Utilitarianism (or Benthanism) among reformers. William Paley was the most widely read natural theologian in early 19th C Britain; Desmond refers to writings of Anglican and conservative factions who appealed to the theological "argument by design" as "Paleyite." Corporations in this article are not big businesses, but organizations such as the Royal College of Physicians which held control over licensing of medical practitioners. (For an analogy to our own time, imagine if the current American Medical Association, or AMA, was controlled by a powerful religious and political group.)
p. 102: How was new London University's medical school different from England's traditional prestigious medical schools, the Royal College of Surgeons and the Royal College of Physicians? How was the university different in its emphasis from Oxford and Cambridge? p. 103 ff.: Desmond uses terms such as 'naturalistic' or 'philosophical' anatomy to refer to the school of French comparative anatomy, as epitomized by the debates between Cuvier and Geoffroy. Whereas the British medical schools had focused only on human anatomy, these new French-trained and French-reading naturalistic anatomists focused on the morphology of all animals, trying to identify underlying shared forms. How did this change their view of the human body?
p. 104 ff.: Why were these different approaches to anatomy related to economic, political, and religious debates (in both France and England c. 1830)? Note how individuals in quite distinct political movements found themselves in agreement about the illegitimacy of the Anglican-controlled establishments.
p. 104 ff.: How is Desmond using the rubric 'vitalism'? How was it used as a pejorative term in the debates about medical schools in the 1830s?
p. 110: How did these ongoing debates about the role of religion and corporations in medical education affect the reception of Chambers' Vestiges?
p. 120: How did Richard Owen's science respond to the reformers' charges of 'bad science' in the Royal Colleges without yielding to the reformers' radical conceptions of the unity of life as adapted from Lamarck and Geoffrey? Note that the poet Samuel Coleridge was deeply involved with arguing for the need for this new but still religiously conservative anatomy.Sulloway, "Darwin and the Galapagos" 2° source
p. 35: Did Darwin think the Galapagos tortoise was native to the islands? Why is this significant?
p. 42: How did Darwin identify "Darwin's finches" while on the Galapagos Islands?
p. 45: When did Darwin begin to accept a theory of transmutation of species? How was the ornithologist John Gould's analysis of Darwin's collections of bird specimens surprising to Darwin?
p. 50: Sulloway recounts that in June of 1837 when Darwin finished writing his Journal of Researches and sent it to the publisher, he spoke of the importance of the Galapagos Islands but not of its significance in suggesting the evolution of species Why was this latter idea so "heterodox" that Darwin wouldn't go public with his scientific instinct? (I.e. relate this article to Desmond's.)
p. 53: What, according to Sulloway, are the three components of the Galapagos 'eureka' myth? Why, in Sulloway's view, does this legend tend to diminish Darwin's actual scientific contributions?Darwin, Excerpts from On the Origin of Species (1859) 1° source
"Introduction" pp. 61 ff.: What does an evolutionary theory need to explain to be convincing, according to Darwin? How does the Vestiges of Creation fall short, in Darwin's view?
p. 162: You are not reading this section, but Darwin mentions that his first chapter examines variation in domesticated animals? Why? Darwin adapts the term selection from the context of breeding to coin the term natural selection.
"The Struggle for Existence"
pp. 165-66: What does Darwin's term "struggle for existence" encompass? How id Darwin's conception of struggle in nature related to Thomas Malthus's dire theory of the limits to human populations, published first in 1798?
pp. 169-170: What are the 'checks on increase' in nature?
p. 173: What does Darwin have to say about the "entangled bank"? Among what group is competition most intense?
p. 174: What are the implications of Darwin's view for the structures of plants and animals? How does he draw from Cuvier?
p. 175: What consolation does Darwin offer in face of the incessant struggle for existence?
"Natural Selection"
p. 176: What is the role of climate in natural selection?
p. 177: What are the key differences between natural and artificial selection?
pp. 179 ff.: How does natural selection work on variation to change the population of organisms over time?
p. 180: What is sexual selection? How is it different that natural selection? What kinds of animals furnish Darwin his key examples?
p.184: How is Darwin's notion of natural selection akin to Lyell's gradualist theory of geological change?
p. 190: What is the role of geographical isolation in evolution by natural selection?
p. 194: What kind of scenario leads to extinction, in Darwin's view?
p. 194: What is the relationship between varieties and species?
p. 197: What is the principle of diversification?
pp. 199 ff.: What is the point of Darwin's branching tree of life? Notice his expansion of this metaphor on p. 207 (the great Tree of Life) to account for all living forms on earth, living and extinct.
"Difficulties on Theory: What Natural Selection Can Do"
pp. 208-09: What is the problem, in Darwin's view of Paley's teleological argument from design?
"Instinct: Neuter Insects"
pp. 210-11: What problem do sterile worker insects pose for Darwin's notion of natural selection? How does Darwin answer this challenge?
"Conclusion"
p. 212: How does Darwin's theory answer the species problem systematists face?
pp. 212 ff.: What does Darwin predict would be the results of accepting his theory?
pp. 214-15: How does Darwin close his book? Do his intentions seem to be anti-religious or radical in other respects?
