Darwin Deleted: Imagining a World without Darwin
A young Charles Darwin tumbles off the deck of the Beagle during its 1832 voyage and drowns. Such is the counterfactual premise of Bowler’s speculations on how the world might have developed without the revolutionary biologist. Challenging the notion that the theory of evolution was simply “in the air” in mid-nineteenth century Europe, Bowler argues that in Darwin’s absence no contemporary scientist could have written anything like The Origin of Species. Not even Alfred Wallace, codiscoverer with Darwin of natural selection, could have formulated a theory premised on random variations winnowed through ruthless competition. But without that theory, readers see how thinkers such as Spencer and Haeckel could have advanced evolutionary ideas incorporating culturally ascendant notions of cosmic progress. Such non-Darwinian versions of evolution, Bowler argues, would have provoked less opposition from religious leaders, though they would have left ruthless robber barons and murderous Nazi ideologues with ample non-Darwinian sources of pseudo-scientific self-justification. Too conjectural to win universal assent, this provocative analysis finally underscores the real-world consequences of Darwinian science. --Bryce Christensen