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Evolution: The History of an Idea
Since its original publication in 1983, The History of an Idea has been recognized as a comprehensive and authoritative source on the development and impact of this most controversial of scientific theories. This new edition has been entirely rewritten to take account of the latest work of historians and scientists. The sequence of chapters has been reconstructed in a way that will help students and general readers to understand the key phases in the development of modern evolutionism. The book's substantial bibliography has been updated to serve as a valuable introduction to the immense literature on this topic.
464 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1984
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About the author
Peter J. Bowler
41 books18 followersPeter J. Bowler, FBA, is a historian of biology who has written extensively on the history of evolutionary thought, the history of the environmental sciences, and on the history of genetics.
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July 2, 2025Preliminary thoughts on Evolution: The History of an Idea, by Peter Bowler.
More engaging than one might anticipate, for a text book on such a difficult and esoteric subject. It also seems to present a reasonably thorough history of the idea of evolution--although certainly not an exhaustive one. No Anaximander?! The great Ionian philosopher authored the oldest known speculations on the subject of evolution. Six centuries before the birth of Christ, he even correctly posited that life began in the sea and only gradually adapted to life on land. The omission of Anaximander from any history of evolutionary thought is unpardonable.
Yet my biggest complaint with the book so far is philosophical. Peter Bowler seems determined to downplay similarities between Darwin's great idea and those of his many predecessors. Bowler accuses previous historians of science of quoting pre-Darwinian evolutionists selectively to make them seem more prescient than they really were. And to be fair, such expedient readings of the historical record undoubtedly occur. But always and necessarily?
Yes, Bowler seems to imply. His argument here rests on a bit of ad hoc psychoanalysis. The unconscious motive of these historians, he suggests, is a stubborn refusal to accept that genuine scientific revolutions can occur. Cue Kuhn: inevitably, Bowler invokes The Structure of Scientific Revolutions here to support this point.
His argument might have impressed me more had I encountered it before reading Anaximander and the Birth of Science by Carlo Rovelli. That book argues (persuasively, in my opinion) that the famous "paradigm shifts" of Thomas Kuhn are rarely, if ever, such radical departures from the reigning scientific orthodoxy as so often imagined. To Kuhn, the historical progress of science consisted of unprecedented "paradigms" bursting into occasional existence, like flashes of lighting in the night, to incinerate their obsolete precursors. In reality, science usually proceeds less by revolution than evolution.
Take Kuhn's own favorite example: the displacement of the ancient Ptolemaic cosmology by Copernican astronomy. It truth, Copernicus less overthrew Ptolemy than modernized him. He modified those elements of Ptolemy that could no longer be harmonized with observation, and preserved those of them that still could. Copernicus, in fact, revered Ptolemy, and for good reason. Ptolemy, in turn, would have appreciated Copernicus. Kuhn, according to Rovelli, melodramatized the history of scientific progress as a series of violent contests between irreconcilable dogmas. But Ptolemy and Copernicus were partners, not rivals, collaborating across the centuries to refine humanity's understanding of the cosmos. Likewise, Einstein did not displace Newton; he completed him. Scientific "paradigm shifts" seem more extreme, and more antagonistic, when they occur then they tend to appear in sober retrospect. Kuhn's concept makes for a compelling human narrative. But it comes at the expense of accuracy if taken too literally.
It's ironic that Bowler seems to miss this point, of all places, in a book about the history of evolution. In fact, it's doubly ironic, because all the evidence you need to challenge Bowler's claim is contained within his own account. For example, in the eighteenth century, the French naturalist Comte de Buffon suggested that all extant mammal species might derive from as few as 38 "root species," which diverged into a multiplicity of forms over the course of geological time. A primeval feline, for instance, branched out into the house cats, leopards, and tigers of today. Another "root species" presumably engendered the hooved mammals; another, the rodents, and so forth. While de Buffon rejected the hypothesis that all mammals might share a common ancestor, it must be stressed that he rejected it explicitly. This is significant. It shows that the idea of a deeper interrelatedness of living forms was within his purview, even if he couldn't bring himself to accept it.
In the same century, the Scottish geologist James Hutton speculated about how species might improve by passing down advantageous traits to their offspring. The French Enlightenment philosopher Denis Diderot wrote of how "experiments of nature" might produce "monstrosities" that could result in new species--a clear, if rough, anticipation of the concept of mutation. All these examples can be found in Bowler's book.
The point isn't to diminish Darwin's tremendous achievement. Neither de Buffon, nor Hutton, nor Diderot pursued the implications of selective pressure and random variation as fearlessly or rigorously as Darwin did to produce a scientific theory of breathtaking explanatory power. But the suggestion their ideas weren't incremental steps towards Darwinism seems unsupportable. Darwinism did not appear like a lightning flash in the night. Like the organic processes it so ingeniously illuminated, it evolved.
Some caveats. I'm still not quite halfway through this book as I write this. My views might change with further reading. Too, the edition I'm reading was published in 1984. The most recent edition was issued in 2009. Subsequent updates might address points of my critique. Perhaps still more to the point, Peter Bowler is a professional historian of science, and regarded as one of the world's foremost authorities on the history of evolutionary theory. I'm some anonymous autodidact who reads a lot. And finally, despite my criticisms, I'm enjoying Evolution: The History of and Idea immensely. I'm reading it slowly, and taking dense notes, and learning a lot. It's intoxicating for one who concurs with Daniel Dennett that evolution is the greatest idea a human has ever had.
Longer review forthcoming.
More engaging than one might anticipate, for a text book on such a difficult and esoteric subject. It also seems to present a reasonably thorough history of the idea of evolution--although certainly not an exhaustive one. No Anaximander?! The great Ionian philosopher authored the oldest known speculations on the subject of evolution. Six centuries before the birth of Christ, he even correctly posited that life began in the sea and only gradually adapted to life on land. The omission of Anaximander from any history of evolutionary thought is unpardonable.
Yet my biggest complaint with the book so far is philosophical. Peter Bowler seems determined to downplay similarities between Darwin's great idea and those of his many predecessors. Bowler accuses previous historians of science of quoting pre-Darwinian evolutionists selectively to make them seem more prescient than they really were. And to be fair, such expedient readings of the historical record undoubtedly occur. But always and necessarily?
Yes, Bowler seems to imply. His argument here rests on a bit of ad hoc psychoanalysis. The unconscious motive of these historians, he suggests, is a stubborn refusal to accept that genuine scientific revolutions can occur. Cue Kuhn: inevitably, Bowler invokes The Structure of Scientific Revolutions here to support this point.
His argument might have impressed me more had I encountered it before reading Anaximander and the Birth of Science by Carlo Rovelli. That book argues (persuasively, in my opinion) that the famous "paradigm shifts" of Thomas Kuhn are rarely, if ever, such radical departures from the reigning scientific orthodoxy as so often imagined. To Kuhn, the historical progress of science consisted of unprecedented "paradigms" bursting into occasional existence, like flashes of lighting in the night, to incinerate their obsolete precursors. In reality, science usually proceeds less by revolution than evolution.
Take Kuhn's own favorite example: the displacement of the ancient Ptolemaic cosmology by Copernican astronomy. It truth, Copernicus less overthrew Ptolemy than modernized him. He modified those elements of Ptolemy that could no longer be harmonized with observation, and preserved those of them that still could. Copernicus, in fact, revered Ptolemy, and for good reason. Ptolemy, in turn, would have appreciated Copernicus. Kuhn, according to Rovelli, melodramatized the history of scientific progress as a series of violent contests between irreconcilable dogmas. But Ptolemy and Copernicus were partners, not rivals, collaborating across the centuries to refine humanity's understanding of the cosmos. Likewise, Einstein did not displace Newton; he completed him. Scientific "paradigm shifts" seem more extreme, and more antagonistic, when they occur then they tend to appear in sober retrospect. Kuhn's concept makes for a compelling human narrative. But it comes at the expense of accuracy if taken too literally.
It's ironic that Bowler seems to miss this point, of all places, in a book about the history of evolution. In fact, it's doubly ironic, because all the evidence you need to challenge Bowler's claim is contained within his own account. For example, in the eighteenth century, the French naturalist Comte de Buffon suggested that all extant mammal species might derive from as few as 38 "root species," which diverged into a multiplicity of forms over the course of geological time. A primeval feline, for instance, branched out into the house cats, leopards, and tigers of today. Another "root species" presumably engendered the hooved mammals; another, the rodents, and so forth. While de Buffon rejected the hypothesis that all mammals might share a common ancestor, it must be stressed that he rejected it explicitly. This is significant. It shows that the idea of a deeper interrelatedness of living forms was within his purview, even if he couldn't bring himself to accept it.
In the same century, the Scottish geologist James Hutton speculated about how species might improve by passing down advantageous traits to their offspring. The French Enlightenment philosopher Denis Diderot wrote of how "experiments of nature" might produce "monstrosities" that could result in new species--a clear, if rough, anticipation of the concept of mutation. All these examples can be found in Bowler's book.
The point isn't to diminish Darwin's tremendous achievement. Neither de Buffon, nor Hutton, nor Diderot pursued the implications of selective pressure and random variation as fearlessly or rigorously as Darwin did to produce a scientific theory of breathtaking explanatory power. But the suggestion their ideas weren't incremental steps towards Darwinism seems unsupportable. Darwinism did not appear like a lightning flash in the night. Like the organic processes it so ingeniously illuminated, it evolved.
Some caveats. I'm still not quite halfway through this book as I write this. My views might change with further reading. Too, the edition I'm reading was published in 1984. The most recent edition was issued in 2009. Subsequent updates might address points of my critique. Perhaps still more to the point, Peter Bowler is a professional historian of science, and regarded as one of the world's foremost authorities on the history of evolutionary theory. I'm some anonymous autodidact who reads a lot. And finally, despite my criticisms, I'm enjoying Evolution: The History of and Idea immensely. I'm reading it slowly, and taking dense notes, and learning a lot. It's intoxicating for one who concurs with Daniel Dennett that evolution is the greatest idea a human has ever had.
Longer review forthcoming.
April 4, 2013
Peter Bowler is an Irish historian of science who is known for his studies of evolution as an "-ism". This is undoubtedly his magnum opus and is one of the best introductory texts on this subject available.
But, a word of caution - this book is not for everyone. With notes and index, it comes to 432 pages, and, as Bowler himself notes in the preface, it is intended for undergraduate students or as a survey text for the specialist. That having been said, his prose is approachable and one does not need to have a background in history or science to follow the argument.
Also, unlike many other texts on this subject, Bowler does not descend into triumphalist or other such ideologies that remove science from its own social context. In the words of the author:
"Finally, we must look more closely at the problems the historian faces as he tries to chart the rise of scientific evolutionism. In particular, these problems arise from the normal view of science as an objective search for knowledge and the suspicions of many critics that scientific theories are themselves value-laden contributions to philosophical and ideological debates" (Bowler, pg.4).
He does an excellent job of explaining not only the theories and their evidence but does so by relating them to their own social and historical context. His analysis is also distinguished from many of its predecessors (and descendants, unfortunately) by its breadth and scope. Bowler does not confine his study to the merely biological, but begins with geology and early modern ideas of nature and change, or more appropriately, the lack thereof. Furthermore, he brings the reader up to the date of publication with a healthy discussion of the current debates, which once again stresses the idea of "evolution" as an "evolving" concept.
This is a history text. Thus, this book is for the novice, whether initially hostile to the concept of common descent through natural selection or not, who wants a comprehensive and scholarly introduction to the material, as well as for the biologist who finds herself caught in the throes of "biology as ideology," and wishes to read a scholarly text testing science's absolute claim to truth.
But, a word of caution - this book is not for everyone. With notes and index, it comes to 432 pages, and, as Bowler himself notes in the preface, it is intended for undergraduate students or as a survey text for the specialist. That having been said, his prose is approachable and one does not need to have a background in history or science to follow the argument.
Also, unlike many other texts on this subject, Bowler does not descend into triumphalist or other such ideologies that remove science from its own social context. In the words of the author:
"Finally, we must look more closely at the problems the historian faces as he tries to chart the rise of scientific evolutionism. In particular, these problems arise from the normal view of science as an objective search for knowledge and the suspicions of many critics that scientific theories are themselves value-laden contributions to philosophical and ideological debates" (Bowler, pg.4).
He does an excellent job of explaining not only the theories and their evidence but does so by relating them to their own social and historical context. His analysis is also distinguished from many of its predecessors (and descendants, unfortunately) by its breadth and scope. Bowler does not confine his study to the merely biological, but begins with geology and early modern ideas of nature and change, or more appropriately, the lack thereof. Furthermore, he brings the reader up to the date of publication with a healthy discussion of the current debates, which once again stresses the idea of "evolution" as an "evolving" concept.
This is a history text. Thus, this book is for the novice, whether initially hostile to the concept of common descent through natural selection or not, who wants a comprehensive and scholarly introduction to the material, as well as for the biologist who finds herself caught in the throes of "biology as ideology," and wishes to read a scholarly text testing science's absolute claim to truth.
April 14, 2015
This is a survey-style text book on the history of evolution with what I would call a twist. The text looks at the current historiography of the field and suggests ways to improve it, pushing the reader to look into each subject covered more and asking deep questions as to how to improve upon what the book states. While comprehensive, the text does not go deeply into particular topics, but this is what one would expect from a textbook. That being said, I found it easy to read and graspable, something really useful for an intro to the history of science.
April 13, 2022
A fascinating read into the history of the biological innovation of evolution as well as the many contentious historical disputes which have taken place during the years. The book goes in linear fashion through the history of evolution as well as referencing the theory in a broader social context of influence which includes contentious racist notions of social Darwinism put forward by among others Herbert Spencer.
I was indeed surprised to find out that Darwinian evolution was not the dominant theory of evolution at the end of the 19th century, as there were other competing theories as in the religious creation myth and the competing theory of Lamarckism. Lamarckism obviously had a strong foothold especially in France as well as it fit more on par with Hegelian idealism in Germany (for 19th century Germans evolution had to contain an intent).
I would strongly recommend the book to anyone remotely interested in science as it shows keen insight into the incredible creativity of Darwin and just how difficult the theory was to corroborate in earlier times (the ascertained strong compatibility between genetics and evolution has since corroborated evolution to a very strong scientific theory in modern times along with other mounting evidence ).
(Note I don't like the star rating and as such I only rate books based upon one star or five stars corresponding to the in my opinion preferable rating system of thumbs up/down. This later rating system encourages in my opinion the degree to which the reader is likely to engage with a review instead of merely glancing at the number of stars)
I was indeed surprised to find out that Darwinian evolution was not the dominant theory of evolution at the end of the 19th century, as there were other competing theories as in the religious creation myth and the competing theory of Lamarckism. Lamarckism obviously had a strong foothold especially in France as well as it fit more on par with Hegelian idealism in Germany (for 19th century Germans evolution had to contain an intent).
I would strongly recommend the book to anyone remotely interested in science as it shows keen insight into the incredible creativity of Darwin and just how difficult the theory was to corroborate in earlier times (the ascertained strong compatibility between genetics and evolution has since corroborated evolution to a very strong scientific theory in modern times along with other mounting evidence ).
(Note I don't like the star rating and as such I only rate books based upon one star or five stars corresponding to the in my opinion preferable rating system of thumbs up/down. This later rating system encourages in my opinion the degree to which the reader is likely to engage with a review instead of merely glancing at the number of stars)
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October 7, 2018Read 1/2... This book is written with all the detail and nuance a scholar would necessitate. The content most invaluable to me were all the insights that contradicted popular impressions about the history of evolution (TH Huxley held private reservations about Darwinism especially the aspect of gradualism; he didn't win in the popular court or make galvanic impact in his legendary debate with the wily archbishop; Mendel wasn't looking to establish a revolutionary model of heredity so much as to continue the idea of the origin of species by hybridization; the period following Darwin's publication was characterized by the rebloom of Neo-Lamarckism; etc. and etc.) This book is a scholarly treasure to revisit and meditate upon.
September 7, 2022
To say this is an introduction to evolution is a gross understatement. Rather, this is a historical account of what evolution was in different eras and to different scientists and schools of thought. The multiplicity is staggering!
A huge effort has been put into this book to make it a springboard to more detailed investigations. Naturally, this left me tracking down other works to expand on some developments. I am indebted to the author for the effort to cover as many facets of each idea as possible.
A huge effort has been put into this book to make it a springboard to more detailed investigations. Naturally, this left me tracking down other works to expand on some developments. I am indebted to the author for the effort to cover as many facets of each idea as possible.
January 1, 2013
I loved this book in that it is a combination of science history with the most despised topic in American education. It is a great work on the development of an idea and supporting researching. I was surprised to find statistician Karl Pearson was a Darwinist. I knew that Fischer (ANOVA) was involved in evolutionary theory but not that he was the person to integrate population genetics. I can see this text used in conceptual change and epistemology research.
June 23, 2011
A fascinating, fairly well-written, only periodically-dense historical account (by a guy who obviously can't stand Creationists).
January 19, 2025
An excellent introduction to the concept of evolution in its broadest sense. It offers a historical, philosophical, and scientific examination that culminates with The Origin of Species and continues to the present day with subsequent developments, elaborations, and clarifications. The history of Darwinism and post-Darwinism—from the emergence of Darwin's ideas, through the eclipse of Darwinism, to the integration of Mendelian genetics and mathematics in the 1930s and 1940s—is expertly presented, with clear yet thorough writing. The author is a historian of science and handles the topics with great skill and expertise.
August 8, 2020
This was in my dads stuff after he died so i read it. Interesting but parts of it could have been summed in a few sentences without all the repetitive details.
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October 26, 2022History of evolutionary thought
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/5...
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/ev...
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/5...
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/ev...
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