Political Descent
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€47.99
1832 reform act
19th century
A01=Piers J. Hale
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Author_Piers J. Hale
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biology
british
Category1=Non-Fiction
Category=JP
Category=PDX
Category=PSAJ
charles darwin
COP=United States
cultural studies
culture
darwinian
darwinism
debate
Delivery_Delivery within 10-20 working days
demography
economics
economist
english
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eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
eq_science
eq_society-politics
ethics
europe
evolution
historical
history
hostility
intellectualism
jean baptiste lamarck
Language_English
meaning
morality
mutualism
naturalism
origin of species
PA=Available
political
politics
population growth
Price_€20 to €50
PS=Active
refutation
science
society
softlaunch
thomas robert malthus
victorian england
victorianism
Product details
- ISBN 9780226108490
- Weight: 765g
- Dimensions: 16 x 24mm
- Publication Date: 05 Aug 2014
- Publisher: The University of Chicago Press
- Publication City/Country: US
- Product Form: Hardback
- Language: English
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Historians of science have long noted the influence of the nineteenth-century political economist Thomas Robert Malthus on Charles Darwin. In a bold move, Piers J. Hale contends that this focus on Malthus and his effect on Darwin's evolutionary thought neglects a strong anti-Malthusian tradition in English intellectual life, one that not only predated the 1859 publication of the Origin of Species but also persisted throughout the Victorian period until World War I. Political Descent reveals that two evolutionary and political traditions developed in England in the wake of the 1832 Reform Act: one Malthusian, the other decidedly anti-Malthusian and owing much to the ideas of the French naturalist Jean Baptiste Lamarck. These two traditions, Hale shows, developed in a context of mutual hostility, debate, and refutation. Participants disagreed not only about evolutionary processes but also on broader questions regarding the kind of creature our evolution had made us and in what kind of society we ought therefore to live.
Significantly, and in spite of Darwin's acknowledgement that natural selection was "the doctrine of Malthus, applied to the whole animal and vegetable kingdoms," both sides of the debate claimed to be the more correctly "Darwinian." By exploring the full spectrum of scientific and political issues at stake, Political Descent offers a novel approach to the relationship between evolution and political thought in the Victorian and Edwardian eras.
Piers J. Hale is assistant professor in the Department of the History of Science at the University of Oklahoma. He lives in Norman, Oklahoma.
