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Beyond Darwinism’s Eclipse: Functional Evolution, Biochemical Recapitulation and Spencerian Emergence in the 1920s and 1930s

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Abstract

During the 1920s and 1930s, many biologists questioned the viability of Darwin’s theory as a mechanism of evolutionary change. In the early 1940s, and only after a number of alternatives were suggested, Darwinists succeeded to establish natural selection and gene mutation as the main evolutionary mechanisms. While that move, today known as the neo-Darwinian synthesis, is taken as signalling a triumph of evolutionary theory, certain critical problems in evolution—in particular the evolution of animal function—could not be addressed with this approach. Here I demonstrate this through reconstruction of the evolutionary theory of Joseph Needham (1900–1995), who pioneered the biochemical study of evolution and development. In order to address such problems, Needham employed Herbert Spencer’s principles of emergence and Ernst Haeckel’s theory of recapitulation. While Needham did not reject Darwinian theory, Spencerian and Haeckelian frameworks happened to better fit his findings and their evolutionary relevance. He believed selectionist and genetic approaches to be important but far from sufficient for explaining how evolutionary transformations occur.

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Notes

  1. For late nineteenth-century challenges see Bowler (1988), Gayon (1998, part 2), Travis (2010).

  2. See Deichmann (2010).

  3. On Needham’s career in Sinology see Winchester (2008). On his impact on other scholars see Habib and Dhruv (1999, p. 546).

  4. Whereas Needham invested primarily in the study of embryology, Ernest Baldwin, who joined Needham as research student in 1930, came to lead research in comparative biochemistry (Needham et al. 1932; Needham 1950; Baldwin 1937; Kerkut 1970).

  5. On the importance and centrality of morphological research in the establishment of Darwin’s research see Richards (1992).

  6. Lucas’ presence in the celebrations is undocumented though it is probable that he was in the audience during the proceedings. Preparations for the celebration involved leading Cambridge physiologists as well as of Sir Horace Darwin (Charles’ ninth child), who owned the Cambridge Scientific Instrument Company in which Lucas served as director. Lucas’ publishing on evolutionary theory and its deficiencies soon after the celebrations attest to their influence (Anonymous 1909, pp. 7–8; Richmond 2006, p. 455).

  7. Needham (1929, p. 633); Needham, Notes on papers by Keith Lucas, Joseph Needham’s Papers, Cambridge University Library (hereafter: JNP-CUL), file E.76; Needham to his mother, 20 and 28 November 1920, JNP-CUL-A.75.

  8. Needham, “Outstanding Problems in Physiology” (Typescript), 1922, JNP-CUL-A.724, p. 6.

  9. Needham, “Notes on lecture on pigments, biochemistry undergraduate notebook”, JNP-CUL-E.16; Needham, “Notes on Hemoglobin and Chlorophyll”, JNP-CUL-E.190; Needham, “Note on Melanin and similar pigments”, 1922, JNP-CUL-E.37.

  10. Progress in molecular evolution and comparative biochemistry took place mainly with the improvement of molecular techniques in the 1950s and 1960s. See Dietrich (1998).

  11. Needham, “The Blood as a Tissue,” JNP-CUL-E.86.

  12. Needham, “Muscular Tone,” 1922, JNP-CUL-F.4-F.5.

  13. Needham coined the term “Cleidoic Egg” to describe the eggs of avian species. Cleidoic is the Greek for “to enclose.”

  14. On the diversity of approaches to evolution in this period see Bowler (1988). On Spencer’s influence see Ruse (2004).

  15. Needham, “The Blood as a Tissue” (undergraduate essay), JNP-CUL-E.86, p. 4.

  16. Needham, note titled “Visit to Research Hospital, Babraham Road,” 13 February 1921, JNP-CUL-E.88.

  17. Huxley to Needham, 1 February 1929, JNP-CUL-M.34.

  18. Pembrey to Needham, 1 February 1921, JNP-CUL-M.114.

  19. In the following decade, Needham made significant efforts to isolate such inducing molecular agents.

  20. Fisher advised Needham in matters of statistics. Haldane was the reader in biochemistry who Needham came to succeed. At Needham’s request, Haldane read and commented on the section on genetics and development in Chemical Embryology (Provine 1971, Chapter 5; Needham 1931a, pp. 608–612). Fisher to Needham, 18 January 1927, JNP-CUL-M.17; Needham to Haldane, 25 May 1930; draft corrected by Haldane, undated, JNP-CUL-F.100).

  21. In 1928, Dunn took the chair of zoology at Columbia University. The studies he conducted in the 1930s and 1940s and their follow up by his student Salome Gluecksohn-Walesch led to him being considered as the founder of American developmental genetics (Dobzhansky 1978; Gluecksohn-Walesch 1989).

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  1. Jacques Loeb Centre for the History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences, Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, Beer-Sheva, 84105, Israel

    Rony Armon

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Armon, R. Beyond Darwinism’s Eclipse: Functional Evolution, Biochemical Recapitulation and Spencerian Emergence in the 1920s and 1930s. J Gen Philos Sci 41, 173–194 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10838-010-9117-x

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