HISTORY 60

Department of History
University of California, Irvine
Instructor:    Dr. Barbara J. Becker

 

Week 9.  Natural Selection

Adaptation vs. Extinction

 
Supplementary readings for Week 9's lectures include excerpts from:
  • "Monkeyana" (1861) a poem by Gorilla of the Zoological Gardens; and

In 1859, Charles Darwin published On the Origin of Species triggering what some historians of science have described as a scientific revolution.

Darwin asked questions deemed appropriate for scientists to ask and tried to answer them using methods that scientists of his day accepted as valid.  Even Thomas Kuhn would have to agree that he was a true "normal" scientist working on "normal" puzzles using "normal" methods.  And Darwin certainly was not the first to suggest that present day animals have evolved from earlier forms.

So what is the "revolution" here?  How do Darwin and On the Origin of Species fit into Kuhn's structure of scientific revolutions?
 
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