Conclusion: Toward a reassessment
It should be clear that Lyell's scientific contemporaries would hardly have agreed with Robert Munro's remark that Antiquity of Man created a full-fledged discipline. Only later historians have judged the work a synthesis; those closer to the discoveries and events saw it as a compilation — perhaps a “capital compilation,”95 but a compilation none the less. Its heterogeneity made it difficult to judge as a unity, and most reviewers, like Forbes, concentrated on the first part of Lyell's trilogy. The chapters on glaciation were admired by Lyell's friends but had relatively little appeal to more general readers. His discussion of the species question hedged far too much to please those who accepted the cogency of Darwin's evidence and arguments. This last section of the book blatantly lacks originality or commitment and certainly has no claim to classical status in anthropology.
We are left, then, with the first twelve chapters, for it was this portion that dictated the book's title and that amassed the available evidence favoring the antiquity of the human species. Did it do anything more than marshall the evidence that others had discovered? I think not. Lyell could write with style and verve. Principles of Geology is a remarkably readable book. But Antiquity is the work of a geologist, not of a systematic student of man. Despite its occasional touches of power, it never captures the freshness and immediacy of Lubbock's Pre-historic Times nor the theoretical brilliance of E. B. Tylor's Researches into the Early History of Mankind (1865).96 Antiquity utilizes little of the comparative method whereby Lyell's contemporaries used data from modern “savagery” to elaborate the possible social functions of the prehistoric remains being uncovered. It contains little social theory and has virtually no integrated framework. Even the first twelve chapters do not really hang together. As Hooker, commenting to Darwin on Lubbock's review, sadly wrote: “Lubbock in [the] N[atural] H[istory] Review, had in a note called attention to Lyell's ... ‘doing injustice’ to Prestwich & Falconer. I modified this expression ‘injustice’ in Lubbock's paper (which was friendly and apologetic). I am deeply sorry for it, but what can one do? I do think Lyell's first XII chapters a complete mess.”97 In another letter to Darwin, Hooker described this first portion of Antiquity as “confused and confusing.”98
Part of the problem, of course, lay in the subject's novelty for Lyell and for most of his contemporaries. At a deeper level, however, I believe that the book accurately reflects Lyell's uncertainties about Darwin's work and its implications for man.99 Leonard Wilson's edition of Lyell's Scientific Journals provides a unique insight into Lyell's mind during the years just before he began to write Antiquity.100 Preoccupied with the human implications of evolutionary biology, Lyell was not clear how many of those implications were compatible with his deep convictions about the dignity of man's place in the cosmos. With a certain naiveté, Lyell complained in 1873 that many of his readers had failed to see the “natural connections” among the three portions of Antiquity.101 Connections could indeed be drawn between man's antiquity and his evolutionary origins; Lyell's private Scientific Journals movingly demonstrate that he was well aware of this fact. But he never fully made the connections in his published writings. Antiquity of Man is more appropriately seen as the last gasp of the heroic period in British geology than as the opening salvo in a new, post-Darwinian anthropological synthesis. Between the founding of the Geological Society of London in 1807 and the middle of the nineteenth century, geology was recognized as one of the most exciting and innovative scientific fields in Britain.102 Lyell himself had contributed much to that drama, and by the 1860's he was a public figure of venerable proportions. More then any other man he represented a geology that had extended the boundaries of process, time, and life. The fundamental achievements of Lyell and his colleagues had been assimilated into the wider Victorian consciousness, yet the earlier public debates about “genesis and geology” had left untouched in its essentials the concept of Man as a moral, responsible, created being.103
Lyell never abandoned this view of his own species, and in 1863 it was a completely responsible creature which, under the weight of empirical evidence, Lyell admitted had lived on earth far longer than had previously been thought. Certainly this more generous allowance for human existence was constitutive to what Burrow calls the evolutionary social theory of midcentury Britain.104 Unlike Lyell, the younger representatives of this anthropology quietly accepted both man's antiquity and his aboriginal animality. Herbert Spencer's Principles of Psychology (1855), as well as the other volumes of his grand Synthetic Philosophy, presented as part of the cosmic process the development of human from prehuman beings.105 Tylor's discussion of what in his Researches (1865) he called the “gesture-language” presupposed the gradual and de novo origin of language in early human populations.106 Lubbock's young and polished mind was untroubled by the human implications of Darwin's work, and he cast his Prehistoric Times into such a perfect mold that it and its companionpiece (On the Origin of Civilization, 1870) went through seven editions each between 1865 and World War I, with their original theoretical structures intact. In a way that Lyell could not grasp, Lubbock was intrigued by questions concerning the origins of moral and religious beliefs and did not flinch at the thought of an amoral, atheistic creature as an ancestor.107 Indeed, as the German naturalist Carl Vogt pointed out in his Lectures on Man, translated into English the year after Antiquity, both Darwin's theories and the primitive flint knives of the Stone Age bore witness to a time beyond that imaginable from the condition of the lowest present-day “savage”:
From such a low condition [little better than anthropomorphous apes], compared to which that of the so-called savages of the old and new world is a refined civilisation, has the human species gradually extricated itself, in a bitter struggle for existence, which it was well able to maintain, by being gifted with a larger amount of brain and intelligence than that possessed by the surrounding animal world.108
The easy integration of biological and social themes was perhaps the distinguishing hallmark of Victorian anthropology of the 1850's and 1860's. After his fashion, Lyell got both themes into Antiquity, but he carefully separated them with a seven-chapter wall of glacial ice. Lyell's anthropology was not that of a thoroughgoing evolutionist like Lubbock, Tylor, or Spencer. For Lyell prehistoric man was not a product of biological evolution. Rude and superstitious he may have been, but he possessed ritual and a belief in a future state, and thus deserved “the epithet of ‘noble,’ which Dryden gave to what he seems to have pictured to himself as the primitive condition of our race: as Nature first made man/when wild in woods the noble savage ran.”109
As a systematic argument, Lyell's book was at best a significant failure. As a popularization, it was a success — largely because of the personal stature of its author and the particular moment of its appearance. It helped establish the fact of man's antiquity with a wider Victorian audience, in itself no mean achievement. But Lyell was unable to exploit the fuller implications of his material in the service of a secular science of man. Ironically, he exploited only his colleagues' discoveries. Though the aging Lyell, with failing eyesight but unfailing mental powers, can still be seen as a man of considerable importance, his Antiquity belongs to the carefully circumscribed world of British geology rather than to the less disciplined world of Victorian anthropology.
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References
Marvin Harris, The Rise of Anthropological Theory (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1968), p. 47.
Robert Munro, Palaeolithic Man and Terramara Settlements in Europe (Edinburgh; Oliver and Boyd, 1912), p. 99.
Hugh Falconer, “Letter”, Athenaeum, no. 1849 (4 April 1863), 459–460.
Other instances are discussed by Roy Porter, “Charles Lyell and the Principles of the History of Geology,” Brit. J. Hist. Sci., 9 (1976), 91–103; Paul J. McCartney, “Charles Lyell and G. B. Brocchi: A Study in Comparative Historiography,” ibid., pp. 175–189; and Leonard G. Wilson, Charles Lyell, The Years to 1841 (New Haven and London; Yale University Press, 1972), chap. 14. Lyell's early careerism is discussed by J. B. Morrell, “London Institutions and Lyell's Career: 1820–41,” Brit. J. Hist. Sci., 9 (1976), 132–146.
I shall use the following abbreviations for quotations from archival material: Darwin MSS = Charles Darwin papers, University Library, Cambridge; Huxley MSS = T. H. Huxley papers, Imperial College, London; Lubbock MSS = John Lubbock papers, British Library; Hooker MSS = J. D. Hooker papers, Library of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew; Falconer MSS = Hugh Falconer papers, Falconer Museum, Forres, Grampian, Scotland; Lyell MSS = Charles Lyell papers, Edinburgh University Library.
Standard biographical treatment was given in the “life and letters” form for Lyell, Owen, Prestwich, Lubbock, Hooker, Darwin, Pengelly, and Huxley. I shall refer to these works only when they bear directly on the issues under discussion.
Roy M. MacLeod, “Evolutionism and Richard Owen, 1830–1868: An Episode in Darwin's Century,” Isis, 56 (1965), 259–280. A general account of the Huxley-Owen debates may be found in Leonard Huxley, Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley, 2nd ed., 3 vols. (London; Macmillan, 1903), I, chap. 15. See also Adrian Desmond, Archetypes and Ancestors: Palaeontology in Victorian London, 1850–1875 (London: Blond & Briggs, 1982).
Michael Bartholomew, “Huxley's Defence of Darwin,” Ann. Sci., 32 (1975) 525–535.
Charles Lyell, The Geological Evidences of the Antiquity of Man (London: John Murray, 1863), 480–493; cf. T. H. Huxley, Evidence as to Man's Place in Nature (London: Williams and Norgate, 1863), 113–118. In the Huxley Archives at Imperial College, London, there are letters from Lyell to Huxley and copies of two replies by Huxley, written between 25 June 1861, and 11 October 1862, concerned with the Huxley-Owen affair. Huxley not only supplied Lyell with material, he also let him see a proof copy of Man's Place in Nature.
Richard Owen, “Letter,” Athenaeum, no. 1843 (21 February 1863), 262–263 (263).
Hooker to Darwin, “Thursday” [February 1863], Darwin MSS vol. 101, ff. 108–110. As Hooker had commented to Darwin earlier (vol. 101, ff. 105–107, dated “Monday”), “The worst of it is that, I suppose it is virtually Huxley's writing and that [Lyell] will find great difficulty in answering Owen unaided. This is a dreadful position to be in.”
George Rolleston, “Letter,” Athenaeum, no. 1844 (28 February 1863), 297.
See note 9.
Charles Lyell, “Letter,” Athenaeum, no. 1845 (7 March 1863), 331–332.
Lyell to Huxley, 9 August 1862, Huxley MSS (vol. 6, f. 66). Emphasis added.
Hooker to Darwin, “Monday” [February 1863], Darwin MSS. vol. 101, ff. 105–107.
As reported by Lyell to Darwin (11 March 1863), in K. Lyell, ed., Life, Letters and Journals of Sir Charles Lyell, Bart. (London: John Murray, 1881), II, 362.
Darwin to Hooker (24 February 1863), in Francis Darwin, Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, (London: John Murray, 1887), III, 8.
Hooker to Darwin, “Thursday” [February 1863], Darwin MSS. vol. 101, ff. 108–110. “[Lyell's] book is far too long, or far too short — neither a summary nor a treatise.”
“Review of Antiquity,” Athenaeum, no. 1842 (14 February 1863), 219–221: “the volume appears to have been written to the subject rather than to have grown out of it.”
[J. D. Forbes], “Lyell on the Antiquity of Man,” Edinburgh Rev., 108 (1863), 254–302; Quotation on p. 295.
It is probably significant that scientific reviewers reacted more critically to Lyell's book than did literary ones. Compare the reviews of Lubbock in Nat. Hist. Rev., Forbes in Edinburgh Rev., and John Phillips in Quart. Rev., 114 (1863), 368–417, with those of the writer Julia Wedgwood, Macmillan's, 7 (1863), 476–487, or the barrister Sir W. F. Pollock, Frazer's, 67 (1863), 463–475.
This judgment was shared by Hooker and Darwin. Cf. Steenstrup to Lubbock, 20 March 1863, “With Mr Lyell's Antiquity of Man — I am sorry to say it — I am not quite satisfied.” Lubbock MSS, Brit. Mus. Add. MSS 49639.
Hooker to Darwin, “Monday” [February 1863], Darwin MSS, vol. 101, ff. 105–107.
Lyell to Hooker, 9 March 1863, Hooker MSS. The letter (though not the portion I have quoted) is partially printed in K. Lyell, ed., Life, Letters and Journals, (no. 17), II, 361–362.
There is a short biographical memoir of Falconer by Charles Murchison in Murchison's edition of Palaeontological Memoirs and Notes of the Late Hugh Falconer, M.D., 2 vols. (London: Hardwicke, 1868). The Falconer papers, now in the Forres Museum, have recently been calendared by P. J. Boylan, Director of the Leicester Museum. I am grateful to him for granting me access to these papers.
For instance, Owen and Falconer had clashed on various occasions about the identification and classification of fossil elephants. See Falconer's remarks in his “On the American Fossil Elephant of the Regions Bordering the Gulf of Mexico,” reprinted in his Palaeontological Memoris, II, 212–291, esp. 215–218 and 272–274, But as Falconer wrote to his niece on 16 March 1863, “I have had a hard morning with Prestwich. He makes common cause with me against the foe [Lyell]. My encounter with O[wen] is child's play to it.” Falconer MSS, letter 94.
There are various examples of this in the Lyell MSS in Edinburgh, and in a series of letters concerning some molars found by Rev. S. W. King, forwarded by Lyell to Falconer, in the small collection of Falconer letters in the library of the Wellcome Institute for the History of Medicine.
For an excellent assessment of these explorations see J. W. Gruber, “Brixham Cave and the Antiquity of Man,” in Context and Meaning in Cultural Anthropology ed. M. E. Spiro (New York: Free Press, 1965).
Charles Lyell, The Geological Evidences of the Antiquity of Man (London: John Murray, 1863), p. 101.
E. Healey, Lady Unknown: The Life of Angela Burdett-Coutts (London: Sidgwick and Jackson, 1978).
The series is preserved in the Lyell MSS, Edinburgh University Library.
General accounts of these developments may be found in K. P. Oakley, “The Problem of Man's Antiquity,” Bull. Brit. Mus. (Nat. Hist.), Geol. Ser., 9 (1964), 86–155, esp. 94–95; Glyn Daniel, The Idea of Prehistory (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1962); J. Lyon, “The Search for Fossil Man: Cinq personnages à la recherche du temps perdu,” Isis, 61 (1970), 68–84; and especially L. Kevin Clark, Pioneers of Prehistory in England (London: Sheed and Ward, 1961).
J. V. Gruber, “Brixham Cave and the Antiquity of Man,” in Context and Meaning in Cultural Anthropology ed. M. E. Spiro (New York: Free Press, 1965). p. 396, insists on the importance of Lyell's public conversion. Lyell's 1859 address, Gruber wrote, “represents something of a watershed in the history of man's conception of his own past.”
Lyell's correspondents began awaiting Antiquity in 1861, and on 27 March 1862, Pengelly wrote to Lyell, “You may be interested that a poor coast-guard man has just written to ask if I can tell him when your work on the ‘Antiquity of Man’ may be expected. I was quite delighted with the query from such a quarter. He lives in a very out-of-the-world nook in Cornwall.” Lyell MSS.
For example, Joseph Prestwich, “On the Occurrence of Flint Implements Associated with the Remains of Animals of Extinct Species in Beds of a Late Geological Period, in France at Amiens and Abbeville, and in England at Hoxne,” Proc. Roy. Soc. (London), 10 (1859), 50–59 [abstract], and Phil. Trans. Roy. Soc. (1860–61), 277–318; John Evans, “On the Occurrence of Flint Implements in Undisturbed Beds of Gravel, Sand, and Clay,” Archaeologia, 38 (1860), 280–307; and Hugh Falconer, “On the Ossiferous Grotta di Maccagnone, near Palermo,” Quart. J. Geol. Soc. London, 16 (1860), 99–106.
For instance, pieces by Evans, Prestwich, Thomas Wright, A. C. Ramsay, and others appeared in the Athenaeum in 1859, 1860, and 1861; see no. 1650 (11 June 1859), 781–782; no. 1651 (18 June 1859); 809; no. 1654 (9 July 1859), 51–52; no. 1655 (16 July 1859), 83; no. 1675 (3 December 1859), 740–741, and so on.
The correspondence in the Times in 1858 and 1859 concerning the communications of Prestwich and John Evans cited in note 36 is mentioned in Joan Evans, Time and Chance: The Story of Arthur Evans and his Forebears (London: Longmans, Green, 1943), p. 106.
I have discussed this point previously in “Time's Noblest Offspring: The Problem of Man in the British Natural Historical Sciences, 1800–1863” (Ph.D. diss., Cambridge University, 1974), chap. 5, and in an unpublished paper entitled “The Blind Man and the Elephant: Towards a History of Prehistory in Britain.”
H. Falconer, “Letter,” Athenaeum, no. 1849 (4 April 1863), 459–460.
Charles Lyell, The Geological Evidences of the Antiquity of Man (London: John Murray, 1863), 1 st ed., pp. 163–166. Prestwich's paper, “Notes on Some Further Discoveries of Flint Implements,” had been published in Quart. J. Geol. Soc. London, 17 (1861), 362–368.
From Falconer's letter cited in note 40.
Hooker to Darwin, “Thursday” [February 1863], Darwin MSS. vol. 101, ff. 108–110.
Charles Lyell, “Letter”, Athenaeum, no. 1851 (18 April 1863), 523–525.
On Pengelly's role see Gruber, “Brixham Cave,” and Hester Pengelly, A Memoir of William Pengelly (London: John Murray, 1897), esp. chaps. 7–9.
Lyell to Pengelly, 24 November 1861, copy in Lyell MSS, ff. 4654–56. For Pengelly's lengthy reply see ff. 4681–86.
W. Pengelly, “On a New Bone-Cave at Brixham,” Geologist (1861), 456–460.
Falconer to Lubbock, 24 May [1864], Lubbock MSS, Brit. Mus. Add. MSS 49639.
Brief extracts of the correspondence between Pengelly and Lyell are printed in H. Pengelly, A Memoir, pp. 136 ff. The full series of letters from Pengelly to Lyell, together with drafts of some of Lyell's letters to Pengelly, are among the Lyell MSS in the Edinburgh University library. The fullest account is contained in Pengelly's letter of 11 April 1863.
Lyell, letter cited in note 44, p. 524.
For instance, Hooker to Darwin, 20 April 1863, Darwin MSS, vol. 101, ff. 128–131.
Huxley to Hooker, 20 April 1863, Huxley MSS vol. 2, ff. 118–124.
Joseph Prestwich, “Letter”, Athenaeum, no. 1852 (25 April 1863), 555.
Hooker to Darwin, 20 April 1863, Darwin MSS vol. 101, ff. 128–131.
Falconer's interest in fossil man went back to the 1830's. As proof he cited early papers published in Proc. Zool. Soc. London (1844) and Trans. Geol. Soc. London (1836).
Hugh Falconer, “Letter,” Athenaeum, no. 1853 (2 May 1863), 586.
After Falconer's death M'Call married Joseph Prestwich.
Falconer to Grace M'Call, 8 April 1863; Falconer MSS, letter no. 83.
Athenaeum contains a lively discussion of this episode; see no. 1851–62 (23 May–4 July 1863), 523, 682, 747–748, 779–780, 19–20. Letters from Falconer on the matter appeared in the Times on 25 April and 21 May 1863.
Charles Lyell, Antiquity of Man, 3rd ed. (London: John Murray, 1863), pp. 515–519. For a full assessment of Falconer's involvement in the Moulin-Quignon jaw incident see Patrick J. Boylan, “The Controversy of the Moulin Quignon Jaw: The Role of Hugh Falconer,” in Images of the Earth, ed. L. J. Jordanova and Roy Porter (Chalfont St. Giles, Bucks: British Society for the History of Science, 1979).
Hooker to Darwin, “Tuesday” [March 1863], Darwin MSS. vol. 101, ff. 111–112. See aslo H. G. Hutchinson, Life of Sir John Lubbock, 2 vols. (London: Macmillan, 1914), I, 58–59.
Lubbock, Nat. Hist. Rev., 3 (1863), 211–219.
Hooker to Darwin, “Saturday” [March 1863], “Falconer is implacable and takes a most violent and most prejudicial view of Lyell. I had at him in vain; and Lubbock did his very best too, separately.” Darwin MSS vol. 101, ff. 121–125.
See note 62.
Lubbock to Darwin, 7 April [1863], “I hope you don't think that Lyell could really be vexed by my article [in Natural History Review]. He certainly has not quite done justice to others and particularly to Prestwich.” Darwin MSS.
Falconer's reply is in the Lubbock MSS in the British Library. See note 48.
Lyell to Lubbock, 20 February 1863, “I have struck out Galton and Prestwich at p. 11 who will be surprised to learn they were in Denmark.” Lubbock MSS, Brit. Mus. Add. MSS 49639. See also C. Lyell, Antiquity of Man, 2nd ed. (London: John Murray, 1863), p. 11.
Huxley to Lubbock, 7 March 1865, Lubbock MSS, Brit. Mus. Add. MSS 49640. Although Tyndall was involved in the dispute, the Tyndall papers at the Royal Institution apparently do not shed any significant light on the matte. There is no central collection of Busk papers.
Lubbock to Lyell, 13 March 1865, Lyell MSS.
From Lyell's rough notes (undated) in the Lyell MSS. The originals have not been preserved in the Lubbock MSS.
John Lubbock, Pre-historic Times (London: Williams and Norgate, 1865); emphasis in original.
Lyell to Lubbock, 25 May 1865, from Lyell's copy in Lyell MSS.
For instance, A.von Morlot, “Études géologico-archéologiques en Denemark et en Suisse,” Bull. séances Soc. Vandoise Sci. Naturelles, 6 (1859), 263–328.
Lubbock to Lyell, 29 May 1865, Lyell MSS.
Lyell to Lubbock (Lyell's copy), 30 May 1865, Lyell MSS.
Charles Lyell, Antiquity of Man, 3rd ed. (London: John Murray, 1863), “In conclusion I will take the opportunity of stating that the second chapter of this work, treating of the Danish peat-mosses and kitchen-middens, as well as the Swiss Lake-dwellings, was originally written in 1860 for the sixth edition of the ‘Elements of Geology,rs and the printed proofs were transferred early in the autumn of the next year to be set up in another form for the present work, which I had then determined to get out before the ‘Elements.’ In the shape which the chapter then assumed it remained in type for two years, being unchanged in substance and in the sequence of the arguments, and receiving no more additions than was consistent with the paging remaining undisturbed. “I mention this fact as an apology for not having availed myself more largely of several valuable contributions to our knowledge both of Danish and Swiss antiquities of the stone and bronze periods, which were published in the interval between the Autumn of 1861 and February 1863. In this long interval my time had been entirely absorbed in the composition and printing of the chapters on the glacial phenomena, and those relating to theories of the origin of species. My account of the Danish peat-mosses and shell-mounds had been derived chiefly from the admirable digest given by my friend M. Morlot of the labours of the Danish and Swiss archaeologists and naturalists, which he had kindly sent me in English MS before its appearance in print: first in French, dated Berne, Sept. 1859, in the ‘Memoirs [sic] de la Société Vaudoise des Sciences Naturelles, T.VI.:’ and afterwards in English, in a translation for the Smithsonian Institution, Washington, 1861. I gladly took advantage of the later numbers of Keller's ‘Prahlbauten,’ and of Mr. Lubbock's ‘Memoir on the Danish Kjökkenmöddings’ printed in the October number of the ‘Natural History Review’ for 1861,to improve the wording, and occasionally the subject-matter, of certain sources for which M. Morlot had already supplied the principal data. I had not space, without disturbing my type for entering on a single new field of enquiry, or any new deductions furnished by Messrs. Keller, Lubbock, or other writers. Had I attempted to do justice to them, or to any authors of later date than the summer of 1860, I must have expanded the plan of the whole book, and seriously delayed the publication of the first edition, as well as of subsequent issues.” This new preface appeared in copies of Antiquity of Man sold after June 1865. As Huxley wrote to Hooker on 12 June of that year: “This Lyello-Lubbockian business is not a pleasing shindy. I have known all about it from the first from Lubbock and have given such advice as I thought would tend most towards a peaceful solution of the difficulty. Latterly Lyell has been to me and I have found it very difficult to deal honestly with both sides without betraying the confidence of either or making matters worse.” Huxley MSS.
Hooker to Huxley, 6 June 1865, Huxley MSS.
Huxley to Hooker, 12 June 1865, Huxley MSS.
Lubbock to Hooker, undated, and 23 June 1865, Hooker MSS. Lubbock wrote on 23 June: “My first intention was to have given citations and in fact I had them in type, but from this I was dissuaded because they said it would be so damaging to Lyell.”
Lyell to Hooker, 4 June 1865, Hooker MSS. (Letters of 31 May and 5 June are also relevant.)
Darwin to Hooker, 1 June 1865, Darwin MSS (copy).
Darwin to Hooker, 9 June 1865, Darwin MSS (copy).
Ibid.
Huxley to Hooker, June 1865, Huxley MSS.
Charles Lyell, Antiquity of Man, 3rd ed. (London: John Murray 1863), 1 st ed., pp. 49–51.
Huxley to Hooker, 12 June 1865, Huxley MSS.
Archibald Geikie, Life of Sir Roderick I. Murchison (London: John Murray, 1875), II, 322–325.
T. H. Huxley, “On the Method of Palacontology,” Ann. Nat. Hist., 18 (1856), 43–45; Hugh Falconer, “On Prof. Huxley's Attempted Refutation of Cuvier's Laws of Correlation, in the Reconstruction of Extinct Vertebrate Forms,” ibid., 476–493.
M. J. Bartholomew, “The Award of the Copley Medal to Charles Darwin,” Notes Rec. Roy. Soc. London, 30 (1976), 209–218.
Godwin-Austen to Huxley, 30 March 1863, Huxley MSS. The cutting referred to in the letter seems to have disappeared.
Lubbock, Nat. Hist. Rev.3 (1863), 212.
See, Ole Klindt-Jensen, A History of Scandanavian Archaeology, trans. G. R. Roole (London: Thames and Hudson, 1975).
For example, Robert K. Merton, “Priorities in Scientific Discovery,” in The Sociology of Science, ed. Norman W. Storer (Chicago and London: University of Chicago Press, 1973), pp. 286–324. The proper intellectual framework for the disputes recounted here, however, is better captured by Jack Morrell and Arnold Thackray, Gentlemen of Science: Early Years of the British Association for the Advancement of Science (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1981). Morrell and Thackray expose the inadequacy of the professionalization model for explaining early Victorian science.
Hooker to Darwin, “Friday” [June 1865], Darwin MSS. I am grateful to Peter Gautrey of the Cambridge University Library for generously transcribing this letter for me. Emphasis in original.
The phrase is Hooker's, in the letter to Darwin cited in note 94.
There is a growing literature on Tylor, whose Researches has a much stronger claim to classical status than Lyell's Antiquity. See George W. StockingJr., “Animism in Theory and Practice; E. B. Tylor's unpublished ‘Notes on Spiritualism’,” Man, 6 (1971), 88–104; J. W. Burrow, Evolution and Society (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1966), chap. 7; and Gay Weber, “Science and Society in Nineteenth Century Anthropology,” Hist. Sci., 12 (1974), 260–283.
Hooker to Darwin, “Saturday” [March 1863], Darwin MSS vol. 101, ff. 121–125.
Hooker to Darwin, “Sunday” [March 1863], Darwin MSS vol. 101, ff. 117–120.
Michael Bartholomew, “Lyell and Evolution: An Account of Lyell's Response to the Prospect of an Evolutionary Ancestry for Man,” Brit. J. Hist. Sci., 6 (1973), 261–303.
Leonard G. Wilson, ed., Sir Charles Lyell's Scientific Journals on the Species Question (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1970).
Charles Lyell, Antiquity of Man, 4th ed. (London: John Murray, 1873), v–vi.
M. J. S. Rudwick, “The Founding of the Geological Society of London,” Brit. J. Hist. Sci., 1 (1963), 325–355; Roy Porter, The Making of Geology: Earth Science in Britain, 1660–1815 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977).
C. C. Gillispie, Genesis and Geology (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1951); Bynum, “Time's Noblest Offspring” and “The Blind Man and the Elephant.”
Burrow, Evolution and Society, esp. chaps. 6 and 7.
J. D. Y. Peel, Herbert Spencer: The Evolution of a Sociologist (London: Heinemann, 1971).
E. B. Tylor, Researches into the Early History of Mankind and the Development of Civilization (London: John Murray, 1865), chap. 1.
John Lubbock, Pre-historic Times, 2nd ed. (London: Williams and Norgate, 1870), p.564: “It has been asserted over and over again that there is no race of men so degraded as to be entirely without a religion — without some idea of a deity. So far from being true, the very reverse is the case. Many, we might almost say all, of the most savage races are, according to the nearly universal testimony of travellers, in this condition.”
Carl Vogt, Lectures on Man, ed. James Hunt (London: Longman, 1864), pp. 294–295.
Charles Lyell, Antiquity of Man, 1 st ed., (London: John Murray, 1873), p. 193.
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Bynum, W.F. Charles Lyell's Antiquity of Man and its critics. J Hist Biol 17, 153–187 (1984). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00143731
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00143731