In On the Origin of Species (1859), Charles Darwin put forward his theory of natural selection. Conventionally, Darwin's argument for this theory has been understood as based on an analogy with artificial selection. But there has been no consensus on how, exactly, this analogical argument is supposed to work – and some suspicion too that analogical arguments on the whole are embarrassingly weak. Drawing on new insights into the history of analogical argumentation from the ancient Greeks onward, as well as on in-depth studies of Darwin's public and private writings, this book offers an original perspective on Darwin's argument, restoring to view the intellectual traditions which Darwin took for granted in arguing as he did. From this perspective come new appreciations not only of Darwin's argument but of the metaphors based on it, the range of wider traditions the argument touched upon, and its legacies for science after the Origin.
Author(s): Roger M. White, M.J.S. Hodge, Gregory Radick
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Year: 2021
Language: English
Pages: 260
City: Cambridge
Cover
Half-title
Title page
Copyright information
Contents
Preface
Introduction
Chapter 1: Analogy in Classical Greece
Chapter 2: Analogy in the Background to the Origin
Chapter 3: Darwin's Analogical Theorising before the Origin
Chapter 4: The 'One Long Argument' of the Origin
Chapter 5: An Analysis of Darwin's Argument by Analogy
Chapter 6: Darwin's Use of Metaphor in the Origin
Chapter 7: Rebuttals of the Revisionists
Chapter 8: Wider Issues Concerning Darwinian Science
Chapter 1 Analogy in Classical Greece
The First Introduction of the Concept of Analogy
Euclid V: Analogy and Incommensurable Magnitudes
The Alternation of Analogies
Euclid VI: Similar Triangles and Argument by Analogy
Archytas of Tarentum: Analogy and Definition
Plato: The Informal Use of Analogy
Aristotle: Two Ways of Comparing Things
Analogy in Biology
Argument by Analogy
Retrospect: Analogical Models and Argument by Analogy
Analogy within Mathematics
Analogy beyond Mathematics
Plato
Aristotle
Chapter 2 Analogy in the Background to the Origin
'Analogie' in the Encyclopédie
Thomas Reid's Account of Argument by Analogy
William Paley, Natural Theology
Aristotelian Analogy in the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries
Immanuel Kant: Strictures on the Use of Analogy
Edward Copleston, Richard Whately and the Aristotelian Revival
John Stuart Mill, A System of Logic
Chapter 3 Darwin's Analogical Theorising before the Origin
Darwin's Earliest Sustained Causal Four-Term Analogical Reasoning
Articulation and Revision of a First Zoonomical System: Summer 1837 to Summer 1838
On the Origin of the Selection Theory with No Selection Analogy
Adding an Analogy without Subtracting Any Theory
From the 1842 Sketch and Beyond
Darwin's Analogy before the Origin
Chapter 4 The 'One Long Argument' of the Origin
The Elements and Their Integrations
The First of Three Chapter Clusters (I-IV)
The Second Cluster (V-VIII) and the Third (IX-XIII)
Selection: From Chapters I to IV
A Comprehensive Causal-Explanatory Complex
Extinction, Branching and Divergence
The Causal-Explanatory Complex Defended and Deployed
Explaining Resemblances and Differences
Chapter 5 An Analysis of Darwin's Argument by Analogy
Suspicions about Analogical Argument
The Analogy between Artificial and Natural Selection
Domestic Breeding
The Struggle for Existence
Artificial Selection as a Model for Natural Selection
The 'Material Circumstance'
Can Natural Selection Be Responsible for the Formation of New Species?
A Fortiori
Alternating the Analogy
Chapter 6 Darwin's Use of Metaphor in the Origin
Metaphor and Analogy
Metaphors Based on Analogy
Scientific and Poetic Uses of Metaphor
Metaphors as Shorthand
Metaphors as Extensible
Metaphors and Concept Formation
Conclusion
Chapter 7 Rebuttals of the Revisionists
Lennox: Darwinian Thought Experiments
Richards: When Artificial Selection Meets Natural Selection
Gildenhuys: Selection Is One
Burnett: Selection Is Spectral
Chapter 8 Wider Issues Concerning Darwinian Science
Darwin and 'Aristotelian' Traditions
Art and Nature
Aristotelian and Boylean Traditions
Mechanism and Animism
Charles Darwin, Adam Smith and an Invisible Hand
After Darwin: Wallace and Galton
After Darwin: Wright and Fisher
Natural Selection as a Causal-Explanatory Theory Then and Now
Concluding Reflections
References
Index
