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The Social History of Evolution in Britain

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 January 2017

Mark A. Gordon
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Abstract

It has come to be common for scientists to study the history of scientific thought. But too often even today, we assume our present theories are "Truth." Scientific histories usually describe intellectual events as either having enhanced or impeded discoveries consistent with modern theory. However, by applying the same standards to Western thought that we apply to non-Western cosmologies, we find that the development of Western worldview closely reflected its own changing social structure. The idea that nature was fixed permanently by God during the creation gave way to the idea of a constantly changing, evolving world-and, at the same time, the fixed class system of European society gave way to an industrialized society characterized by class mobility. This paper will analyze British scientific theories and biohistoric models from the Reformation to Darwin's Origin of Species.

Type
Articles
Information
American Antiquity , Volume 39 , Issue 2Part1 , April 1974 , pp. 194 - 204
Copyright
Copyright © Society for American Archaeology 1974

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