Annals of the History and Philosophy of Biology

178
Annals of the History and Philosophy of Biology, Vol. 10 (2005)
Michael Ruse
man and read (and commented on) by the aged Immanuel Kant (Ruse 2006). Charles
Darwin himself had also read Zoonomia. Then, as I also have mentioned above, Adrian
Desmond (1989) has shown the large number of radical evolutionists in London in the
1830s. Particularly important was the professor of anatomy at UCL, Robert Grant, with
whom (as an undergraduate in Edinburgh) Darwin had on many occasions discussed
matters biological.
There was also the anonymous evolutionist, the author of The Vestiges of the Natural
History of Creation. We have long known of the influence of this author, later in the 19 th
century revealed as the Scottish publisher Robert Chambers. For instance, he was clearly
a major inspiration for the poet Alfred Tennyson as he struggled to finish (what rapidly
became) his much-loved and read poem In Memoriam. Recently, James Secord (2000) has
shown just how widespread was the influence of Chambers. Finally, we might mention
the general man of letters and science, Herbert Spencer, in the 1850s just beginning his
dizzying rise upwards as the people’s philosopher in Britain and the rest of the world. In
the decade before Darwin, he was publishing evolutionary ideas including a clear statement
of natural selection (Ruse 1996; Richards 1987).
So there can be no claim that Darwin was the first evolutionist or even the first with
natural selection. (There were others who also had glimpses of selection, as well of
course as Alfred Russel Wallace, whose sending to Darwin in 1858 an essay with a clear
expression of natural selection was the immediate spur to Darwin’s writing the Origin).
Moreover, having said this, there is also the fact that Darwin rarely if ever had an original
idea in his life. He was a great packrat, forever gathering together the ideas of others. For
a start, to get to natural selection, he had to learn all about artificial selection from the
breeders – apart from some desultory experiments with pigeons, he was not into the
practical aspects of any of this. He was not really into the theoretical aspects either, getting
his information from others. Then there was the influence of Archdeacon William
Paley (1802) who sold Darwin on the idea that the world is design-like and that any natural
mechanism for the creation of organisms had better take this fact into account. And
let us not forget the crucial importance of Thomas Robert Malthus (1826), who argued
that food supplies are outstripped by population pressures and that there will be ongoing
struggles for existence. This goes straight into the Origin of Species.
A struggle for existence inevitably follows from the high rate at which all organic beings tend to
increase. Every being, which during its natural lifetime produces several eggs or seeds, must suffer
destruction during some period of its life, and during some season or occasional year, otherwise,
on the principle of geometrical increase, its numbers would quickly become so inordinately great
that no country could support the product. Hence, as more individuals are produced than can
possibly survive, there must in every case be a struggle for existence, either one individual with
another of the same species, or with the individuals of distinct species, or with the physical conditions
of life. It is the doctrine of Malthus applied with manifold force to the whole animal and
vegetable kingdoms; for in this case there can be no artificial increase of food, and no prudential
restraint from marriage. (Darwin 1859, 63)
More broadly, there was the overall influence of Charles Lyell, whose Principles of Geology
(1830-33) not only inspired Darwin in his early days as a geologist but whose general