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The world after Charles R. Darwin: continuity, unity in diversity, contingency

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Abstract

The core of the Darwinian cultural challenge is connected to three basic ideas, with experimental evidences and philosophical wide consequences: (1) the natural continuity between all living beings and their properties and behaviors, humans included; (2) the mix of historical unity and the production of diversity at level of both individuals and species; (3) the historical contingency and unpredictability of evolutionary paths. Darwin was aware of these consequences when writing, not yet 30 years old, his first Notebooks on transmutation of species (1836–1844). Though not involved in public debates after 1859, he understood that his ideas were going to challenge a whole set of beliefs deeply rooted in Western traditional thought and probably, according to recent experimental studies in cognitive psychology and ethology, settled in the evolution of our mind itself. Two centuries after his birth, not only does Darwin’s heritage concern the content of his scientific research program, widely corroborated and usefully updated today, but also his innovative method of inquiry, and the emancipated “grandeur” of “this view of life” where from a simple beginning “endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved”.

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Notes

  1. The analogy between life spans of individuals and life spans of species was inspired in Darwin by the pre-evolutionary ideas of Italian geologist Giovanni Battista Brocchi, which he encountered in the pages of Charles Lyell’s “Principles of Geology” during the voyage. “There is nothing stranger in death of species, than individuals” (Notebook B, p. 21 of the original).

  2. Barrett et al. (1987), p. 63.

  3. Ibid., p. 172.

  4. Ibid., p. 176.

  5. Ibid., p. 355.

  6. Ibid., p. 413.

  7. Mayr (1991, 2001).

  8. Ibid., p. 433.

  9. Ibid., p. 228–229.

  10. Ibid., p. 224.

  11. See the website of the “Darwin Correspondence Project”: http://www.darwinproject.ac.uk.

  12. Browne (2002, 2006).

  13. Mandel’stam (1988), p. 125–149.

  14. Pancaldi (1991); Barsanti (2005).

  15. Pigliucci and Kaplan (2006); see also, Pievani (2006a).

  16. See Brumfiel (2005).

  17. Pievani (2006b, 2007).

  18. De Caro and Pievani (2009).

  19. The impossibility to empirically prove and test the Neo-Darwinian theory of evolution is asserted here: von Horn and Wiedenhofer (2007). A clear example of the ambiguous attitude towards Neo-Darwinian explanations showed by the current leaders of the Catholic hierarchy could be found in the texts of presentation of the International meeting about “Biological Evolution: Facts and Theories”, organized by the Pontifical Gregorian University in March 2009. Available at http://www.evolution-rome2009.net.

  20. Wolpert (2007); Girotto et al. (2008).

  21. Gould (2002).

  22. Pievani (2003), p. 63–81.

  23. Gould (1990).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei, University of Milan Bicocca, Milan, Italy

    Telmo Pievani

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  1. Telmo Pievani
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Correspondence to Telmo Pievani.

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This article belongs to a special issue dedicated to the Meeting “Il mondo dopo Darwin”, Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei, Rome, 11–12 February 2009.

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Pievani, T. The world after Charles R. Darwin: continuity, unity in diversity, contingency. Rend. Fis. Acc. Lincei 20, 355–361 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12210-009-0064-6

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