Talk:Edward Blyth

message: This account relies way too heavily on the work of Loren Eiseley, which is not very well respected for its historical accuracy anymore. This really needs some updating using historiography from at least the 1980s, much less things more current. --Fastfission 21:03, 11 February 2006 (UTC)
replies: text: A solid refutation of Eiseley's view comes even earlier than the eighties:  Joel S. Schwartz, "Charles Darwin's Debt to Malthus and Edward Blyth," Journal of the History of Biology vol. 7, no. 2, Autumn 1974, pp. 301-318, online at http://www.jstor.org/stable/4330617  Looks like Gould and Wilkins have already been cited as counterpoints to Eiseley at this point, but Schwartz is a good further reference. Lippard (talk) 18:17, 11 June 2011 (UTC)
thread_title: Eisely-centric

message: "Blyth was also a Christian, and probably would be branded today as a creationist"
I removed this sentence as unhelpful, but it has been reinstated. I do not see why it is appropriate to label 19th century biologists with anachronistic terms taken from modern debates. The claim also comes close to the weaselly implication that a Christian is necessarily a creationist, which is both provocatively POV and untrue. Myopic Bookworm 09:16, 8 September 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Creationism 

message: I have removed the comment about Darwin's copies of Blyth's articles being in the University of Cambridge Library, and the corresponding reference.  This information was taken from a page on my web site, and more recent research indicates that the journals are not held at that location now.  I am still trying to find out what has happened to them.
Andrew Bradbury. 09:22, 17 September 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Darwin's copies of Blyth's articles 

message: "The theologian William Paley had earlier presented this argument, doing so to refute (in later pages) a claim that modern species preserve the good designs winnowed from a much broader range of initial creations after natural selection had eliminated the less viable forms: "The hypothesis teaches, that every possible variety of being hath, at one time or other, found its way into existence (by what cause of in what manner is not said), and that those which were badly formed, perished"." 
The quotation can be found here – Paley is setting up someone else's argument, and it's not really natural selection. Perhaps "natural attrition" or "natural deaths" would be more appropriate. . . dave souza, talk 08:16, 19 May 2009 (UTC)
thread_title: Paley

message: :I've removed the following as original research. The quotations from Blyth clearly refer to variation within a species as defined by John Ray, not speciation. . dave souza, talk 08:16, 19 May 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: Fred Hoyle and Chandra Wickramasinghe are hardly reliable expert sources on natural selection. . . dave souza, talk 08:16, 19 May 2009 (UTC)

text: Yes, I agree. Notions of struggle for existence, over-fecundity (Malthus), variation within a species (Ray, Linnaeus), evolution (Lamarck), hard heredity (Lawrence) and even natural selection in a limited form (Wells), had all appeared before Blyth, and are indeed good starting-points, but as isolated ideas. The complete synthesis (minus hard heredity) was achieved by C.D., and not by Blyth. Incidentally, I've located the source of the Paley quote, and added the final clause of his sentence, wickedly omitted by some other contributor! Macdonald-ross (talk) 08:49, 19 May 2009 (UTC)
thread_title: Original research