Annals of the History and Philosophy of Biology

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172 Address for correspondence: Prof. Dr. Nicolaas A. Rupke Institut für Wissenschaftsgeschichte Georg-August-Universität Göttingen Papendiek 16 D-37073 Göttingen, Germany nrupke@gwdg.de Annals of the History and Philosophy of Biology, Vol. 10 (2005) Nicolaas A. Rupke
Was there a Darwinian Revolution? Michael Ruse Abstract Some twenty five years ago I published a book called The Darwinian Revolution: Science Red in Tooth and Claw. No one then doubted that I was talking about a real subject, namely the Darwinian Revolution? Since then, that happy assumption has come under attack and in this paper I examine the question about the Darwinian Revolution. First, is it proper to talk at all about scientific revolutions? I argue that it is, so long as one does not assume that all such revolutions are the same. I also argue that the Darwinian Revolution is a paradigm of such revolutions. Second, even if there is a revolution, is it properly Darwin's? I agree that if you restrict the question narrowly and refuse to look at later developments, then Darwin becomes somewhat less important. But I argue also that such restrictions are unfair and if we look at the full scope of the issue, Charles Darwin is very significant and deserves the name of the revolution. Finally, what kind of revolution was the Darwinian Revolution? I argue that it is only in a limited sense like that discussed by Thomas Kuhn, but that the form-function dichotomy that runs through the Darwinian Revolution does have non-rational elements as well as empirical backing. Twenty five years ago I published an account of the Darwinian Revolution: The Darwinian Revolution: Nature Red in Tooth and Claw. The first reader of any book is the author, and this was certainly the case for me and this book. I had been a scholar (meaning that the bulk of my education was now over) for about ten years and my field was the philosophy of science, with a particular interest in evolutionary theory. Although the predominant philosophy of science (in the Anglophone world) of the late 1960s was so-called “logical empiricism” – chief gurus: Carl Hempel, Ernest Nagel, R B Braithwaite, and, somewhat off to the side, Karl Popper – the really exciting book of the day was Thomas Kuhn’s The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Above all else, Kuhn argued that philosophers of science needed to take seriously the history of science. For me and for others – notably my long-time friend and mentor David Hull – this was a call we were happy to hear and obey. As it happened, this was a wonderful moment to get involved in the history of evolutionary theory. History of science as a profession was now developing fast. There were terrific conceptual issues (internalism versus externalism, for instance) and there was good advice about the way to move forward (go to the archives, for instance). More than this, the history of evolutionary theory – the history of Darwinism particularly – was Annals of the History and Philosophy of Biology, Vol. 10 (2005): 173-187 173
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Preface A new yearbook for history
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Annals of the History and Philosophy of Biology

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