charles_darwin

The Reception of Darwin’s Theories, 1859–1920
quick in 1859 as it would be in 1909 or 1959. Darwin died before
the radio or telephone became means of disseminating information.
The reaction to The Origin of Species built up slowly compared with
what could have happened if the book had been published in the
early twenty-first century. The first reactions were in letters written
to Darwin. Second were reviews of the book published in journals
and magazines and the reaction to those reviews, mainly by scientists.
Third was the debate in the scientific community, particularly
at official meetings of scientists. Fourth were the articles and books
written in reaction to The Origin of Species or what scientists and
other commentators had written about Darwin’s theory. Last was the
popular reaction to the book and Darwin’s theory of evolution.
The various reactions to The Origin of Species did not occur in
a vacuum. The discussion of Darwin’s ideas occurred at the same
time as other important debates and developments. The rights of
women, the definition of democracy, the fairness and legality of slavery,
and whether socialism was a legitimate form of government were
all contentious issues in 1859. How society viewed these issues could
be profoundly affected by a new belief that the species were mutable
and humans were not the product of a special creation by an intelligent
god. The reactions to The Origin of Species were varied and
complex, because Darwin’s ideas became part of a larger debate
about the direction of science and the direction of nineteenthcentury
society.
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Weaknesses in Darwin’s Argument
From a nineteenth-century scientist’s point of view, there were
two major problems with Darwin’s theory. The first of these concerned
natural selection. Natural selection might be the process that
resulted in mutation and, ultimately, transmutation, but Darwin did
not explain clearly and convincingly why natural selection occurred.
The second problem was the plausibility of descent by modification.
Was it really possible for small, sometimes imperceptible, mutations
in one species to produce a completely new species? In other words,
those scientists who might concede that one species of flower could
produce several new varieties that had never existed before were less
willing to accept that a fish by mutation could become a reptile. The
other criticisms of Darwin’s theory derived from these two fundamental
problems. Darwin and his supporters convinced the scientific
community and the rest of society that these problems were not
serious threats to a theory of evolution: this is what led to the