Our early summer contributions include the potent Beagle Cocktail courtesy of Dr Dean Madden. Kevin Dixon writes about radical agitators in Darwin, the Reverend Taylor & Ashburton’s Richard Carlile whilst by contrast Peter Stiles’ character is an utopian Christian Socialist and naturalist - his essay is titled Darwin and Philip Henry Gosse.
On June 13th, North [...]

  
 
David Love
 
 
Any scientific theory has to make predictions that can be falsified.  A theory that makes no predictions, or one that cannot be falsified, regardless of whatever evidence comes along, is simply not science.
 
Darwin’s theory of evolution by natural selection has been accused of not being falsifiable, but this is not the case.  One example [...]

Our new website launches today with an initial collection of articles by Kevin Dixon who has contributed Darwin & Marx, Darwin’s Religious Beliefs, Darwin and Kinship with Non-human Animals, Darwin and Victorian Society, Adaptation & Conflict in Early Modern Devon and Pat Grant. who has contributed The Evolution of Humans.
We are seeking further contributions with [...]

 
Patricia Grant
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
1859 was a crucial year for our understanding of living organisms and how they came into their present form. This was the year in which Charles Darwin published The Origin of Species’. He did not, however, discuss the descent of humans in his book. Fossils of many ancient creatures had been already recognised as such, but human [...]

Kevin Dixon
 
 
 
The publication of Charles Darwin’s Origin of Species in 1859 rapidly made an impact on Victorian society far beyond its intended scientific audience.
 
Between 1859 and 1870, approximately three quarters of the British scientific community came to accept the concept of evolution and, though mankind is hardly mentioned in The Origin, the implications were obvious. [...]

 
Kevin Dixon
 
Although it is developed in the crude English style, this is a book which contains the basis of natural history for our views. (Marx on Darwin’s Origin of Species)
During the late nineteenth century, both democrats and reactionaries, and socialists and anti-socialists, claimed to be Darwinian and adopted evolution as a way of explaining the [...]

 
Kevin Dixon
 
 
 
 
 
 
Man in his arrogance thinks himself a great work, worthy of the interposition of a deity. More humble, and I believe true, to consider him created from animal. (Darwin in Keynes 2001: 40)
 
 
Charles Darwin was a pioneer in science but he was also a product of his time and while his discoveries led [...]

 Kevin Dixon
 
 
“Didn’t Charles Darwin become a Christian later in life, and denounce his own evolution theory?” (Letter to South Devon’s Herald Express, December 2, 2008)
 
After his death in 1882, several stories emerged suggesting that Darwin had undergone a deathbed conversion and renounced evolution. Such reports began to be included in sermons as early as May [...]