Commemorating Darwin

Scientific Memory and the Politics of Evolution

Joel Barnes, Ian Hesketh

• Publisher: University of Pittsburgh Press
• Year: 2026
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Evolution
• eBook ISBN:
  9780822992424
• Index: History

Since Charles Darwin's death in 1882, people across the world have used forms of commemoration and memorialization to celebrate, and at times critique, various aspects of Darwin's scientific, social, and cultural impact. Commemorative events, activities, and publications marking major anniversaries of Darwin's birth and death, of the publication of On the Origin of Species (1859) and other works, and of the Beagle voyage, have been occasions for the casting and recasting of narratives of the history of evolutionary science, spurs to new historical research, and episodes in the public legitimation of contemporary scientific developments. They have engendered much discussion and debate about relations between evolution and religious belief as well as political questions related to issues of nation-building and social development. This volume examines these commemorative activities in global perspective, exploring the complexity of meanings of Darwin and his science to different social, cultural, scientific, and national groups, from the moment of Darwin's death up to the recent sesquicentennial of The Descent of Man (1871) in 2021.

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction: New Perspectives on Darwinian Commemoration
• Section I: Death and Rebirth
• Chapter 2. Argentina’s Darwinians Coping with Darwin’s Life and Death: The 1882 Commemoration Speeches
• Chapter 3. Appraisals of a Paper Monument: Religious Responses to The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin (1887)
• Section II: The Centennial of the Origin of Species
• Chapter 5. Caught Between (Scientific) Empires: The 1959 Darwin Centennial in Canadian Academic and Popular Culture
• Chapter 6. The Darwin Centenary Celebrations in Australia, 1959
• Chapter 7. “Uncritical Enthusiasm for Evolutionary Theory”: John Mulvaney, Edmund D. Gill, and the Centennial Construction of Australia’s Human History
• Section III: Comparing Commemorations
• Chapter 9. Memorializing the Unmemorable: Charting Evolutionary Dialogues in 1920s China
• Chapter 10. Celebrating Darwin in Japan: The “Success” and “Failure” of the Reception of Evolutionary Theory
• Chapter 11. Darwin Under Siege: The Politics of Remembering and Forgetting
• Afterword: Commemorating Darwin Redux?
• Notes
• Selected Bibliography
• Contributors
• Index
• Backcover Page