Charles Darwin

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Charles Darwin

1809–1882

A first way ina deliberate simplification – the portrait says more

For Darwin, all species, including humans, developed over vast time through natural selection, without any plan or designer.

Placement

Science & Human Sciences · Northern Europe · Science

Evolution by natural selection – placed humanity within natural history.

Key ideas

Natural selection
Descent of man

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Influence

Influenced 14

Herbert Spencer

influenced
Spencer had formulated his evolutionism before Darwin, but after reading the Origin of Species he coined ‘survival of the fittest’ for natural selection (Principles of Biology, 1864). H. Spencer, The Principles of Biology, vol. I (1864); C. Darwin, On the Origin of Species (1859), 5th ed. (1869); SEP “Herbert Spencer”
Evidence: also in InPhO · InPhO
Herbert Spencer › 1820–1903
William James

influenced
James’s Principles of Psychology (1890) treated mind as a function serving the organism’s adaptation, and ‘Great Men and Their Environment’ (1880) applied Darwin’s spontaneous variation to history. W. James, “Great Men and Their Environment” (1880); The Principles of Psychology (1890); SEP “William James”
Evidence: AI draft
William James › 1842–1910
Sigmund Freud

influenced
Freud took Darwin’s primal horde as a premise of Totem und Tabu (1912–13) and called his theory of descent the ‘biological’ blow to human self-love (1917). S. Freud, Totem und Tabu (1912–13); “Eine Schwierigkeit der Psychoanalyse” (1917); C. Darwin, The Descent of Man (1871); F. J. Sulloway, Freud, Biologist of the Mind (1979)
Evidence: AI draft
Sigmund Freud › 1856–1939
Henri Bergson

influenced ✓
In Creative Evolution (1907) Bergson accepted evolution but argued that Darwin’s insensible accidental variations cannot explain convergent organs such as the eye, positing a vital impetus. H. Bergson, L’Évolution créatrice (1907); SEP “Henri Bergson”
Evidence: also in Wikidata · Wikidata
Henri Bergson › 1859–1941
John Dewey

influenced
In ‘The Influence of Darwin on Philosophy’ (1909) Dewey argued that the Origin of Species turned thought from fixed essences and final ends to change and concrete problems. J. Dewey, The Influence of Darwin on Philosophy and Other Essays (1910); SEP “John Dewey”
Evidence: AI draft
John Dewey › 1859–1952
Daniel Dennett

influenced
Dennett read Darwin’s natural selection as an algorithmic process that yields design without a designer, a ‘universal acid’ for traditional ideas of purpose (Darwin’s Dangerous Idea, 1995). D. C. Dennett, Darwin’s Dangerous Idea: Evolution and the Meanings of Life (1995); C. Darwin, On the Origin of Species (1859)
Evidence: also in InPhO · InPhO
Daniel Dennett › 1942–2024

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Friedrich Engels

influenced
Engels likened Marx’s law of history to Darwin’s law of organic nature (graveside speech, 1883) and drew on Darwin for an essay on labour in human evolution (1876). F. Engels, speech at Marx’s grave (1883); “Anteil der Arbeit an der Menschwerdung des Affen” (1876, publ. 1896); letter to Marx (Dec. 1859)
Evidence: AI draft
Friedrich Engels › 1820–1895
Francis Galton

influenced
Galton, Darwin’s half-cousin, said the Origin of Species turned him to heredity; Hereditary Genius (1869) led to his eugenics, which scholarship rejects as scientifically and ethically untenable. F. Galton, Hereditary Genius (1869); Memories of My Life (1908); C. Darwin, On the Origin of Species (1859)
Evidence: AI draft
Francis Galton › 1822–1911
Peter Kropotkin

influenced
Against Huxley’s ‘struggle for existence’ Kropotkin invoked the social instincts of Darwin’s Descent of Man (1871) to make mutual aid a factor of evolution (Mutual Aid, 1902). P. Kropotkin, Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution (1902); T. H. Huxley, “The Struggle for Existence” (1888); C. Darwin, The Descent of Man (1871)
Evidence: AI draft
Peter Kropotkin › 1842–1921
Paul Rée

influenced
Rée’s Ursprung der moralischen Empfindungen builds an evolutionary moral psychology on Darwin’s account of morality and altruism. Cadernos Nietzsche 37 (1), 2016 (abstract read); R. Small, Nietzsche and Rée (2005)
Evidence: AI draft
Paul Rée › 1849–1901
Yan Fu

influenced
In ‘On Strength’ (Yuan qiang, 1895) and the Tianyanlun (1898) Yan Fu introduced Darwin’s natural selection as a process in which things contend and Heaven chooses (wujing tianze), applying it to nations. Yan Fu, Yuan qiang (1895); Tianyanlun (1898); B. Schwartz, In Search of Wealth and Power: Yen Fu and the West (1964)
Evidence: AI draft
Yan Fu › 1854–1921
Edvard Westermarck

influenced
Westermarck framed The History of Human Marriage (1891) with Darwin’s theory of descent and selection, arguing that lasting pair bonds, not promiscuity, go back to the earliest humans. E. Westermarck, The History of Human Marriage (1891); C. Darwin, The Descent of Man (1871)
Evidence: AI draft
Edvard Westermarck › 1862–1939
George Herbert Mead

influenced
Mead started his account of the ‘conversation of gestures’ from Darwin’s Expression of the Emotions (1872), reading gestures socially rather than as expression (Mind, Self, and Society, 1934). G. H. Mead, Mind, Self, and Society (1934); C. Darwin, The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals (1872); SEP “George Herbert Mead”
Evidence: AI draft
George Herbert Mead › 1863–1931
Mary Midgley

influenced
Midgley used Darwin and ethology to place human nature among the animals (Beast and Man, 1978) and criticised making evolution a secular creed (Evolution as a Religion, 1985). M. Midgley, Beast and Man (1978); Evolution as a Religion (1985)
Evidence: AI draft
Mary Midgley › 1919–2018

Criticism

Criticized by 4

Jamal al-Din al-Afghani

criticised by
Al-Afghani’s Refutation of the Materialists (1881) ridiculed Darwin’s theory among the ‘naturalist’ doctrines that, in his view, dissolve religion, morality and society. Jamāl al-Dīn al-Afghānī, al-Radd ʿalā al-dahriyyīn (1881), tr. N. R. Keddie, An Islamic Response to Imperialism, 1968
Evidence: AI draft
Jamal al-Din al-Afghani › 1838–1897
Friedrich Nietzsche

criticised by
Nietzsche’s ‘Anti-Darwin’ objected that life seeks power, not mere survival, and that the struggle favours the weak over the exceptional (Twilight of the Idols, 1889). F. Nietzsche, Götzen-Dämmerung (1889), Skirmishes §14 “Anti-Darwin”; Die fröhliche Wissenschaft (1887), §349; SEP “Friedrich Nietzsche”
Evidence: AI draft
Friedrich Nietzsche › 1844–1900
Sylvia Wynter

criticised by
In “Unsettling the Coloniality of Being” (2003) Wynter read Darwin’s Origin of Species (1859) as the founding text of a second, biocentric conception of Man, in which the colonised and the poor appeared as the “dysselected” – a self-description of the West she set out to unsettle. S. Wynter, “Unsettling the Coloniality of Being/Power/Truth/Freedom”, CR: The New Centennial Review 3:3 (2003), 257–337
Evidence: AI draft
Sylvia Wynter › b. 1928
Jerry Fodor

criticised by
With Piattelli-Palmarini, Fodor argued that natural selection cannot distinguish traits selected for from coextensive ‘free riders’ and so does not explain adaptation (What Darwin Got Wrong, 2010). J. Fodor & M. Piattelli-Palmarini, What Darwin Got Wrong (2010), part II
Evidence: AI draft
Jerry Fodor › 1935–2017

Works

1859On the Origin of Species
Natural selection as the engine of evolution.

Position

Darwin explained the diversity of life without a designer. Organisms vary, more are born than can survive, and those variations that help in the struggle for existence are passed on more often. Over vast periods this natural selection produces new species, all descended from common ancestors. The apparent design in nature, which theologians had used as proof of God, could thus arise from an undirected process. In The Descent of Man he applied the theory to humans, including our moral sense and emotions. Darwin changed how philosophy thinks about human nature, purpose, ethics and knowledge, from pragmatism to evolutionary epistemology.

Life & context

Born in 1809 in Shrewsbury, Darwin abandoned medicine in Edinburgh and studied for the clergy in Cambridge. The voyage of HMS Beagle (1831–1836), above all to South America and the Galápagos, made him a naturalist. He then lived as a private scholar at Down House in Kent for decades, publishing his theory in 1859 after Alfred Russel Wallace reached similar ideas. He died in 1882.