After a couple of biology classes and a visit last year to the American Museum of Natural History, my understanding of Darwin was roughly this: that he traveled on the Beagle around the world; that he quietly developed his "theory of evolution by natural selection" for decades; that he rushed to publish his ideas upon hearing that Alfred Russel Wallace was coming out with something similar; and that The Origin of Species changed the world.
This week I've learned that the theory everyone calls Darwin's was largely the result of a group effort. My source is Darwin himself: in the "Historical Sketch" that accompanies my edition of The Origin of Species, he cites 34 other naturalists and philosophers (among them Aristotle, Goethe, and his own father) who either had discussed evolution before him, or were thinking along these lines at the same time he was. In this same edition's foreword, Patricia G. Horan notes that "[w]hen The Origin of Species was written, the theory of evolution [...] was already old [...] 'Natural selection' had been in the air, waiting to be born."
My realization this week that Darwin did not invent evolutionary theory reminds me of my "discovery" last year that that Freud did not invent psychoanalysis. Popular history has propped up certain men and women as Founders and Great Thinkers, but they themselves often point to broader dialogues. I think the history of ideas shouldn't be taught as a succession of solo performances; it's much more like a singalong.
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Ur discovery that Drawin was the first guy has also been discovered before. See para at the end of this post.
Ur contention that Freud/Darwin did not really invent but this was more of a singalong phenomenon is correct BUT...
The big but is that someone somehwere has to champion an issue or cause. This someone then becomes a stakeholder in the propagation of that issue. He/she risks his reputation, profession and may be even money for the sake of it. So if he succeed and his issue is accepted by and large, the society begins to relate that personality with the issue.
Nowhere does it say that Freud invented PA. It's usually said that he devised it or was a proponent of it. In fact, PA today is several hundred times more than Freud's PA but we just relate him to the issue.
Several ancient philosophers expressed the idea that Nature produces a huge variety of creatures, apparently randomly, and that only those creatures survive that manage to provide for themselves and reproduce successfully; well-known examples include Empedocles[26] and his intellectual successor, Lucretius,[27] while related ideas were later refined by Aristotle.[28] Another important component of natural selection, the struggle for existence, was first described by al-Jahiz in the 9th century.[29][30] Such classical arguments were reintroduced in the 18th century by Pierre Louis Maupertuis[31] and others, including Charles Darwin's grandfather Erasmus Darwin.
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