1.2 Evolution of Evolutionism
Last modified 07/05/2008
| Ideas of evolution were beset with ideological overtones from the beginning. The radical 'evolutionism' of the leftist 'atheist materialists' in the generation after the French Revolution was a delaying factor in the idea's acceptance, waiting on Darwin's conservatized version to achieve public popularity. The blends of the idea of evolution with the idea of progress appear in such figures as Erasmus Darwin. The whole spectrum of ideas about 'evolution', a later term, was a cornucopia of speculation and exotic philosophical perspectives, a notable corner here, for example, being the Hegelian Nature Philosophy, soon displaced by the Feuerbachian tide and the onset of positivism. Less considered, then, is the phase of German Classical philosophy starting with Kant, whose work issued a challenge to straight Newtonian conceptions of causality, with the discourses on the theme of freedom in the context of science. The figure of Lamarck is especially significant, since his generalized views of evolution contained the key to a larger perspective on evolution than that finally crystallized by Darwin. In general the coming of Darwinism created the illusion that all these antecedent, often inchoate, ideas of evolution were to be dismissed in the triumph of Darwinian science. Lost to view was the possibility that a 'science' of evolution was going to be contradictory from the start. | ||
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