Charles Darwin: A Biography by John Bowlby

Review by: Fiona Erskine

Isis, Vol. 82, No. 3 (Sep., 1991), pp. 578-579
Published by: The University of Chicago Press on behalf of The History of Science Society
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578 BOOK REVIEWS-ISIS, 82: 3: 313 (1991)
the scientific elite. In the clearest analysis
of the extraordinary influence of Ernst
Haeckel that I have read, Paul Weindling
relates Haeckel's embrace of Darwinism
and his shifting uses of those ideas to his
views on German politics and social devel-
opment. Finally, John Durant contributes
an interesting essay on the impact of Dar-
winism on twentieth-century religion and
on efforts to establish a new scientific the-
ology. Each of these essays represents a
general retreat from seeing the impact of
evolution on religion as a positivistic one
and sees it instead as part of a larger emerg-
ing naturalistic approach to nature and the
human situation.
Another perspective that separates this
volume from the studies of evolution of a
generation ago is the strong emphasis on
Lamarck. Greene was among the few
scholars of the fifties who refused to dispar-
age Lamarck. The scholarly generation that
honors him has led the way in recognizing
that Lamarck and Lamarckism are funda-
mental to nineteenth-century evolutionary
thought and its development throughout the
Western world. This is particularly seen in
Ludmilla Jordanova's essay on the distinc-
tion in Lamarck's thought between creation
and production.
Other contributions to the volume in-
clude Roy Porter discussing Erasmus Dar-
win, Simon Schaffer analyzing the nebular
hypothesis, Martin Rudwick exploring Vic-
torian visual representations of the prehis-
toric world, Peter Bowler discussing degen-
eration, and Robert Young contrasting
different models for approaching the history
of biology.
The present collection of essays stands
along with David Kohn's earlier volume on
Darwin as one of the two best series of ar-
ticles on the current state of research. It
should receive a wide audience not only
among scholars but also in graduate and un-
dergraduate classes on the history of sci-
ence. It is required reading for scholars in
any field concerned with evolutionary
thought in the nineteenth century.
FRANK M. TURNER
John Bowlby. Charles Darwin: A Biogra-
phy. xiv + 511 pp., illus., figs., app., bibl.,
index. London/Sydney: Hutchinson, 1990.
?19.95.
A new biography in so well worked a field
must justify itself by some special contribu-
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tion, and John Bowlby succeeds in this far
better than many recent contenders. His is
a polished and lavishly illustrated volume
that will delight the general reader, while its
authoritative use of recently published
sources makes it an effective introduction
to Darwin for historians new to the field.
Meanwhile, Bowlby's focus on Darwin's
illness offers some novel insights to Darwin
scholars.
Bowlby argues that Darwin suffered from
hyperventilation syndrome and that his vul-
nerability to attacks in adult life stemmed
from the death of his mother while he was
still a child. Bowlby claims that the day-to-
day stresses of Darwin's public work,
rather than his adoption of radical doctrines
of materialism and transmutation, provided
the precipitating factors in his early attacks;
species theory became a precipitating cause
only in the 1860s, after publication of the
Origin. This thesis is perhaps better sub-
stantiated than Bowlby's further and more
traditional claim that the domineering na-
ture of Darwin's father gave rise to his ex-
cessive sensitivity to criticism and desire
for praise.
The treatment of Darwin's character is
not altogether successful. Perhaps because
of Bowlby's sympathy for his subject, he
fails to grapple with the issues of Darwin's
professional jealousy; his failure to credit
predecessors and contemporaries for their
contributions to his ideas, his peculiar
blend of vanity and self-deprecation, and
his unsympathetic attitude toward Charles
Lyell's spiritual difficulty with evolution. A
full portrait of Darwin, giving due weight to
his petty conceits as well as his undeniable
attractions, is still required.
One interesting feature of the book is its
emphasis on the influence of Darwin's
grandfather Erasmus, who espoused an
evolutionary theory dependent on the in-
heritance of acquired characteristics. It is
disappointing therefore that Bowlby does
not proceed to question the conventional
view: that Darwin's increasing reliance on
acquired characteristics in later editions of
the Origin was nothing more than a defen-
sive gesture. A similar anomaly arises over
Bowlby's treatment of the allegedly danger-
ous nature of Darwin's theories. For while
accepting this thesis he does not give it any
explanatory value, either for Darwin's ill-
ness or for the delay in publishing the Ori-
gin.
Bowlby has made a valuable contribution
to the "normalization" of Darwin, leveling
 BOOK REVIEWS-ISIS,
out some of the disjunctionsthat have typ-
ified the literature:among these the alleged
anti-intellectualismof his youth, the exag-
gerated role of species in his personal de-
velopment, and the supposed isolation of
his middle and old age. Ultimately, though,
Bowlby's interpretation of his materials
leads him to portray a compulsive worker
whose depression and ill health cast an im-
mense shadow over his life once the exhil-
aration of the Beagle years had passed.
This is an importantperspective, but an ex-
aggeratedone, for the same materialsalso
allow an interpretationof a man who, de-
spite his obsession with his health and his
frequent, acute suffering, yet managed to
lead a rich and not unhappy professional,
domestic, and social life.
FIONA ERSKINE
Thomas Junker. Darwinismus und Botanik:
Rezeption, Kritik und theoretische Alterna-
tiven im Deutschland des 19. Jahrhunderts.
(Quellen und Studien zur Geschichte der
Pharmazie,54.) x + 367 pp., bibl., index.
Stuttgart: Deutscher Apotheker Verlag,
1989. DM 48 (paper).
The history of the life sciences has been
written largely from the perspective of hu-
manbiology and zoology. Despite Darwin's
considerable interest in botany, even the
literaturedealingwith the receptionof Dar-
winism offers us only scattered hints that
the plant world exists and that a scientific
disciplinehas been created to study it. Per-
haps two clearly definedcultures are not in
place, but a botanical counterpartof C. P.
Snow might at least be tempted to enquire
of his otherwise scientifically literate col-
leagues whether they could explain the life
cycle of a fern or name a significantbota-
nist other than Carl Linnaeus. Thomas
Junker's study of the initial reception of
Darwinism among German-speakingbota-
nists will not by itself restore balanceto the
historicaltreatmentof the life sciences, but
it is a modest contributiontowardthat end.
Although not presented in the liveliest of
styles, this work treats evolution theory
from a thoroughly botanical perspective,
and, as Junkerpoints out, this is also one of
the few published studies of the reception
of Darwinismthat focuses in detailon a sin-
gle disciplinewithin a narrowlyconstrained Lehrbuch der Botanik, gradually voiced
time period.
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82: 3: 313 (1991) 579
Withinthis period, roughly 1860to 1880,
Junker deals with the work of over forty
botanists, focusing eventually on four-
Carl Nageli, Albert Wigand, Julius Sachs,
and Hermann Muller. Before discussing
these four central figures, he offers a
lengthy survey of the initial reception of
Darwinism within five major branches of
botany-morphology, systematics, paleo-
botany, geobotany, and flowerbiology. His
treatmenthere is ratherdidactic:a brief in-
troductionto each of the subdisciplinesis
followed by a stringof independentdiscus-
sions of the reactionsto Darwin'stheory by
individualpractitionersof the given subdis-
cipline. This section, taken as a whole, at
least conveys to the reader a sense of the
extreme difficultyof assessing the effects of
Darwin'stheory on so complex and diverse
a field as botany in mid-nineteenth-century
Germany. There are no surprises. In bot-
any, as in other fields, rapid acceptance of
descent theory and continued skepticism
toward naturalselection were the rule; but
Junker'sgenerous survey makes clear that
Darwin's work was introducedagainst the
background of an elaborate theoretical
frameworkdealingwith the form, function,
and distributionof plant life.
Of Junker's four central figures, only
MullerembracedDarwinismfully, applying
naturalselection theory to an understand-
ing of the interrelationshipsbetween flow-
ering plants and their insect pollinators.
Although he later moved toward a La-
marckismsimilarto that of Samuel Butler,
Muller, a political liberal and opponent of
religion, early on saw Darwinismas an es-
sential feature of a thoroughly scientific
worldview that was destinedto replace tra-
ditionalforms of social and politicalauthor-
ity. Unlike Muller, the other three ap-
proached evolution theory from a
morphologicalrather than functional per-
spective, and all found fault with Darwin-
ism. Wigand, the most openly hostile, ar-
gued against natural selection theory on
both logical and overtly religious grounds,
while Nageli and Sachs groundedtheir cri-
tiques in an orthogeneticview of evolution.
Nageli's view was based on a linger-
ing attachment to idealistic morphology
that compelledhim to see phylogenetic de-
velopment as the result of an inner "per-
fecting force." Sachs, despite giving Dar-
win's theory a sympathetic hearing in his
strong criticisms regardingthe efficacy of