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THE CHANGING MEANING OF "EVOLUTION"
BY PETER J. BOWLER
'Examples of the earliest uses of the term in its various contexts, military,
mathematical, scientific, and general, are given in the Oxford English Dictionary, art.
"Evolution." It should be noted that many of the additional examples cited below are
drawn from a purely personal familiarity with the literature, and it is highly probable that
I have missed many instances in which the word is used, especially in the nineteenth
century. I believe, however, that my discussion is based upon a wide enough survey to be
accurate in its generalizations.
2An early attempt to describe the changing biological meaning of the term is T. H.
Huxley's article "Evolution in Biology," originally publishedin the Encyclopaedia Britan-
nica and reprintedin Huxley's Collected Essays, II, Darwiniana(London, 1894), 187-226.
An excellent modern study of the relationship between embryology and transmutation is
G. Canguilhem et al., "Du developpement a l'evolution au XIXe siecle," Thales, 2 (1960),
3-63.
95
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96 PETER J. BOWLER
3I have checked two editions of Johnson's Dictionary of the English Language ...; the
3rd (Dublin, 1768) and the 9th (London, 1806).
4Bentley Glass, "Heredity and variation in the eighteenth century concept of the
species," in Bentley Glass, et al., eds., Forerunners of Darwin, 1745-1859 (Baltimore,
1968), 144-72, 164; also F. J. Cole, Early Theories of Sexual Generation, (Oxford, 1930),
86. 5Cole, Early Theories of Sexual Generation, 86.
6The relevant passages from Haller's notes are quoted and translated in Howard B.
Adelmann, Marcello Malpighi and the Evolution of Embryology (Ithaca, N.Y., 1966), II,
893-900;893.
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CHANGING MEANING OF "EVOLUTION" 97
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98 PETER J. BOWLER
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CHANGING MEANING OF "EVOLUTION" 99
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100 PETERJ. BOWLER
20E.g., Owsei Temkin, "German concepts of ontogeny and history around 1800,"
Bulletin of the History of Medicine, 24 (1950), 227-46.
21T.H. Huxley's translation of von Baer, "On the development of animals, with ob-
servations and reflections," in T. H. Huxley and Arthur Henfrey, (eds.), Scientific
Memoirs, selected from the Transactions of the Foreign Academies of Science andfrom
Foreign Journals (Natural History), (London, 1853), 186-238; 233. For the original, see
Karl Ernst von Baer, Uber Entwickelungsgeschichte der Thiere. Beobachtung und
Reflexion, I Theil (K6nigsburg, 1828), 259.
22WilliamB. Carpenter, Principles of Physiology, general and comparative, 3rd ed.
(London, 1851), 575-76; 870. It was through reading this edition of Carpenter's book that
Herbert Spencer first became aware of von Baer's work.
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CHANGING MEANING OF "EVOLUTION" 101
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102 PETER J. BOWLER
the word was already spreading in other fields. It has already been
pointed out that during the eighteenth century, the term had occa-
sionally been applied to a sequence of events in time, without reference
to the concept of the unfolding of a preexisting structure or design. In
the nineteenth century, this practice was extended, in particular to in-
clude the "evolution" of political or social organizations. A good
example of this occurs in the work of the historian Sir Francis Palgrave:
"Our constitutional form of government has been produced by evo-
lution. As the organs were needed, so did they arise."26This is a very
modern sounding use of the term; it carries none of the progressive im-
plications inherent in the growing embryological use of the word and
concentrates solely on change produced by adaptation to new condi-
tions. The existence of this trend, apparently quite distinct from the
embryological use, must be recognized in any attempt to understand
how "evolution" came to be associated with the transmutation theory.
Sir Charles Lyell first spoke of an "evolution" in something like the
modern sense of the word when he discussed and rejected Lamarck's
transmutation theory in the second volume of his Principles of Geology.
According to Lyell, Lamarck believed that "the testacea of the ocean
existed first, until some of them, by gradual evolution, were improved
into those inhabiting the land."27It should be noted that Lyell seems to
regard improvement as an integral part of the evolutionary process, a
fact which makes it not impossible that he chose the word because of its
embryological association with the process of development toward
maturity. Charles Darwin's first use of the term, however, does not in-
clude this implication. In the conclusion of his brief 1842 sketch of the
theory of natural selection, he wrote:
There is a simple grandeurin the view of life with its powers of growth,
assimilationand reproduction,beingoriginallybreathedinto matterunderone
of a few forms,andthat whilstthis our planethas gone circlingon accordingto
fixedlaws, andlandandwater,in a cycle of change,havegone on replacingone
another,that from so simplean origin,throughthe processof gradualselection
of infinitesimalchanges,endlessforms most beautifulandmost wonderfulhave
beenevolved.28
26SirFrancis Palgrave, Truths and Fictions of the Middle Ages. The Merchant and
the Friar (London, 1837), 201.
27Charles Lyell, Principles of Geology; being an Attempt to Explain the former
Changes of the Earth's Surface by reference to Causes now in operation, 2nd ed.
(London, 1833), II, 11.
28"CharlesDarwin's sketch of 1842," in Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace,
Evolution by Natural Selection (Cambridge, 1958), 41-88; 87; also "Essay of 1844," ibid.,
91-254; 254, and Charles Darwin, On the Origin of Species by means of Natural Se-
lection, or the preservation offavoured races in the struggle for life (London, 1854), 490.
Ernst Mayr has stated (Animal Species and Evolution [Cambridge, Mass., 1963], 4) that
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CHANGING MEANING OF "EVOLUTION" 103
Darwin does not use the word "Evolution" in the Origin, and this is strictly speaking cor-
rect. Mayr suggests that Darwin's reluctance to use the term was due to a recognition of
its connections with the preexistence theories of embryology, but in view of the above
examination of the embryological use this seems unlikely. If there was an embryological
connection for Darwin, it would have been related to progressive epigenesis, something he
would have equally strongly avoided. It is for this reason that I suggest a connection with
the non-embryological use of the term.
29Baden Powell, Essays on the Spirit of the Inductive Philosophy, the Unity of
Worlds,and the Philosophy of Creation (London, 1855), ix, xiii, 319, 328, 426.
30Ibid.,321-29.
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104 PETER J. BOWLER
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CHANGING MEANING OF "EVOLUTION" 105
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106 PETER J. BOWLER
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CHANGING MEANING OF "EVOLUTION" 107
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108 PETER J. BOWLER
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CHANGING MEANING OF "EVOLUTION" 109
48Ibid.,402-10.
49"Progress:its law and cause," 51-52. This passage is reprinted in First Principles,
404. 5Autobiography, 85, 121, 153.
5'Letter of 15 March 1869, ibid., 241, where Spencer notes that the sales of his
books in England had improved and had passed the sales of the American editions.
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110 PETER J. BOWLER
52CharlesLyell, Principles of Geology, or the modern changes of the earth and its in-
habitants considered as illustrative of geology (London, 1867-68), II, 254, 493. The first
of these references, however, is contained in a passage reprinted from the appropriate
section of the first edition.
53[A.R. Wallace], "Sir Charles Lyell on geological climates and the origin of species,"
QuarterlyReview (American edition), 126 (1869), 187-205; 204-05.
54A. R. Wallace, Contributions to the Theory of Natural Selection. I have found the
word "evolution" used only once in "The limits of natural selection as applied to man,"
333.
55T.H. Huxley, "On the animals which are most nearly intermediate between birds
and reptiles," An. & Mag. Nat. Hist., 4th series, 2 (1868), 66-75; esp. 66-68, 75.
56TheDescent of Man and selection in relationship to sex (London, 1871), I, 2.
57TheTimes, 8 April 1871, 5: "Darwin on the Descent of Man." EdinburghReview,
134(1871), 99-120; 100, 120.
58Ellegard,Darwinand the General Reader, op. cit., 60, 87-88, 91.
58aLippincott'sMagazine (Philadelphia, 1870), 29-41, 173-180, 310-19; reprinted in
E. D. Cope, The Origin of the Fittest, essays on evolution (New York, 1887), 128-72.
59AtlanticMonthly, 33 (1874), 92-101.
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CHANGING MEANING OF "EVOLUTION" 111
60ErnstHaeckel, The History of Creation. or the development of the earth and its in-
habitants by the action of natural causes. A popular exposition of the doctrine of evo-
lution in general, and that of Darwin, Goethe and Lamarck in particular (New York,
1876) translated from Naturlichte Schopfungsgeschichte. Gemeinverstendiche wissen-
schaftliche Vortrige iber die Entwickelungslehre im Allgemeinen und diejenige von
Darwin, Goethe und Lamarck im Besonderen (Berlin, 1873). In the chapter headings,
Entwickelungstheorieis translated as "theory of development."
6'Ernst Haeckel, The Evolution of Man. A popular exposition of the principal points
of human ontogeny and phylogeny (New York, 1879), translated from Anthropogenie:
oder Entwickelungsgeschichtedes Menschen (Leipzig, 1874). Note how "evolution" here
is used to convey the sense both of embryological and phylogenetic development.
62AugustWeismann, Studies in the Theory of Descent (London, 1880-82), translated
from Studien zur Descendenztheorie (Leipzig, 1875), and The Evolution Theory (London,
1904) translated from Vortrage iuberDescendenztheorie, gehalten an der Universitdt zu
Freiburgim Breisgau, 2nd ed. (Jena, 1902).
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112 PETER J. BOWLER
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CHANGING MEANING OF "EVOLUTION" 113
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114 PETER J. BOWLER
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