Disseminating Darwinism: The Role of Place, Race, Religion, and Gender

by Ronald L. Numbers (Editor), John Stenhouse (Editor)

This innovative collection of original essays focuses on the ways in which geography, gender, race, and religion influenced the reception of Darwinism in the English-speaking world of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The contributions to this volume collectively illustrate the importance of local social, physical, and religious arrangements, while revealing that neither distance from Darwin's home at Down nor size of community greatly influenced how various regions responded to Darwinism. Essays spanning the world from Great Britain and North America to Australia and New Zealand explore the various meanings for Darwinism in these widely separated locales, while other chapters focus on the difference it made in the debates over evolution.

Genres: Science, History

314 pages, Paperback

First published December 28, 1999

Reviews

[Paul · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is an interesting early attempt to try to broaden the traditional focus of the science-and-religion subfield, with essays about women's and Black responses to Darwinism, although the single chapter for each gives more than a little whiff of tokenism. In all, this more or less blends in to the other collections of essays I read all dealing with the same general topic. The feeling is that there's little more to be said.