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Darwin, Teleology and Taxonomy

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 February 2009

Andrew Woodfield
Andrew Woodfield
Affiliation:
St John's College, Oxford
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Extract

Darwinism is ‘much more than a theory’, said the German botanist Albert Wigand in 1875; ‘it is a frame of mind which dominates thought, a resuscitated “Naturphilosophie”, in which the terms “Polarity”, “Totality”, “Subject”, “Object” are replaced by terms such as “Struggle for Existence”, “Inheritance”, “Selection”, and so on.’ Subsequent events have indicated that Wigand had a point. But it is not clear to us yet what exactly the point is. Interest in Man's Place in Nature, and in his alleged biological uniqueness as a language-user and tool-maker, is as great now as it was in 1871 when Darwin's Descent of Man was first published. We now have access to well over a hundred years' worth of material sparked off by The Origin of Species, linking Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection to almost every field under the sun. Yet the precise status of his theory is still the subject of vigorous controversy in philosophy of science.

Type
Research Article
Information
Philosophy , Volume 48 , Issue 183 , January 1973 , pp. 35 - 49
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Institute of Philosophy 1973

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References

1 In his 3-volume critique Der Darwinismus und die Naturforschung Newtons und Cuviers. Quoted by Ràdl, Emanuel in The History of Biological Theories, p. 62. Oxford U.P. 1930.Google Scholar

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17 Quine, W. V. O., Word and Object, M.I.T. 1960Google Scholar. Motto before the Preface: ‘“Ontology recapitulates philosophy”—James Grier Miller.’ Häckel's original Law of Biogenesis was, of course, ‘Ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny’. The fortunes of this idea and its parody trace a circle from Darwin to Häckel to Miller to Quine, and now back to Darwin again. For the wider philosophical issues involved in the question of the reality of species, see Harré, R., The Principles of Scientific Thinking, Macmillan 1970, pp. 196–200CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Also Quine's essay, ‘Natural Kinds’ in the collection Ontological Relativity and Other Essays.

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