Before and After Darwin

Origins, Species, Cosmogonies, and Ontologies

M.J.S. Hodge

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2023
• Print ISBN: 9780754659389
• eBook ISBN: 9781000939262
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: World History
• Index: History

This is the first of a pair of volumes by Jonathan Hodge, collecting all his most innovative, revisionist and influential papers on Charles Darwin and on the longer run of theories about origins and species from ancient times to the present. The focus in this volume is on the diversity of theories among such pre-Darwinian authors as Lamarck and Whewell, and on developments in the theory of natural selection since Darwin. Plato's Timaeus, the Biblical Genesis and any current textbook of evolutionary biology are all, it may well seem, on this same enduring topic: origins and species. However, even among classical authors, there were fundamental disagreements: the ontology and cosmogony of the Greek atomists were deeply opposed to Plato's; and, in the millennia since, the ontological and cosmogonical contexts for theories about origins and species have never settled into any unifying consensus. While the structure of Darwinian theory may be today broadly what it was in Darwin's own argumentation, controversy continues over the old issues about order, chance, necessity and purpose in the living world and the wider universe as a whole. The historical and philosophical papers collected in this volume, and in the companion volume devoted to Darwin's theorising, seek to clarify the major continuities and discontinuities in the long run of thinking about origins and species.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Series Page
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Introduction
• Notes on the articles
• Bibliography
• Acknowledgements
• The Very Long Run
• Cosmogonies and Ontologies After Buffon
• The Structure and Content of Darwinian Theory Since Darwin
• Index