Abstract
William Keith Brooks was an American zoologist at Johns Hopkins University from 1876 until his death in 1908. Over the course of his career, Brooks staunchly defended Darwinism, arguing for the centrality of natural selection in evolutionary theory at a time when alternative theories, such as neo-Lamarckism, grew prominent in American biology. In his book The Law of Heredity (1883), Brooks addressed problems raised by Darwin’s theory of pangenesis. In modifying and developing Darwin’s pangenesis, Brooks proposed a new theory of heredity that sought to avoid the pitfalls of Darwin’s hypothesis. In so doing he strengthened Darwin’s theory of natural selection by undermining arguments for the inheritance of acquired characteristics. In later attacks on neo-Lamarckism, Brooks consistently defended Darwin’s theory of natural selection on logical grounds, continued to challenge the idea of the inheritance of acquired characteristics, and argued that natural selection best explained a wide range of adaptations. Finally, he critiqued Galton’s statistical view of heredity and argued that Galton had resurrected an outmoded typological concept of species, one which Darwin and other naturalists had shown to be incorrect. Brooks’s ideas resemble the “biological species concept” of the twentieth century, as developed by evolutionary biologist Ernst Mayr and others. The late-nineteenth century was not a period of total “eclipse” of Darwinism, as biologists and historians have hitherto seen it. Although the “Modern Synthesis” refers to the reconciliation of post-Mendelian genetics with evolution by natural selection, we might adjust our understanding of how the synthesis developed by seeing it as the culmination of a longer discussion that extends back to the late-nineteenth century.
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Notes
On the naturalist’s perspective, see Allen (1981).
The eclipse metaphor for this period was first proposed by zoologist Julian Huxley (1942, p. 22) in his effort to champion the return of natural selection to prominence during the “Modern Synthesis.” This characterization, which I believe to be overstated, has been most explicit in historian Bowler’s work (1983, 1988).
Largent (2009) has criticized Bowler’s use of the eclipse metaphor as a historical narrative device because of its teleological implications.
Benson (1979, 2010) has previously framed Brooks’s heredity theory as part of a defense of Darwinism. In this article, I aim to show that Brooks’s heredity work was but one strategy of many that he adopted in a grander defense of Darwinism, which took place over the course of his career. His other strategies included attacking both neo-Lamarckism and Galton’s statistical view of heredity.
On the meaning of “Darwinism” in the late-nineteenth century, see philosopher and evolutionist John Fiske’s useful survey (Fiske 1879, pp. 11–12).
An abstract of Brooks’s paper was published the following year (Brooks 1877).
Brooks’s evolutionary thought, like Darwin’s, was informed by metaphorical reasoning. The key metaphor for Brooks was the division of labor, a powerful concept that Darwin had discussed in the Origin of Species. Darwin cited therein the work of Belgian naturalist Henri Milne-Edwards, who developed the concept of physiological division of labor from the domain of economics (Darwin 1859, p. 115). As a metaphorical framework, the division of labor led Brooks to assume that natural selection, like classical economics, yielded increasingly efficient systems.
Brooks often used active verbs such as “to seize” in describing how natural selection operated, attributing to it a fervent agency.
On the reception of Brook’s theory, see Benson (1979).
His wife Amelia became seriously ill in the late 1890s and he devoted a large portion of his time away from campus caring for her until her death in 1899. Brooks’s own health steadily declined as well, and he became less productive in his final years while under the care of his daughter.
George Romanes listed Brooks as one of the most prominent American neo-Lamarckians, and Brooks sternly refuted that characterization in the pages of Natural Science. These three articles (two by Brooks, one by a Lamarckian inquisitor) were republished in the Johns Hopkins University Circular (Brooks 1896d, pp. 75–79).
Neo-Lamarckism is distinct from Lamarck’s pre-Darwinian theory of directed evolution. Nevertheless, Brooks referred to these late-nineteenth century proponents of acquired heredity as “Lamarckians.”
Brooks’s criticism of neo-Larmackian speculation seems equally applicable to his own postulation of the gemmule theory put forth earlier in his career. Perhaps developments in experimental biology in the 1880s and 1890s convinced him to be more cautious about developing speculative theories that were prone to experimental disproof.
The three articles—two by Brooks and a riposte by Cunningham—were reprinted from Natural Science (February and May of 1896) in the Johns Hopkins University Circular (Brooks 1896d).
Emphasis in original.
According to Michael Bulmer, Galton’s approach to heredity gradually shifted from physiological and mechanistic to statistical and mathematical (Bulmer 1999).
Ruth Cowan (1972) has argued that Galton had settled on this definition of heredity in his 1889 book, Natural Inheritance. An inherently mathematical concept, Galton’s heredity encompassed the several related phenomena of inheritance, reversion (a form of inheritance as he conceived it), and variation. Brooks too saw heredity as encompassing interdependent phenomena, and in fact had argued before Galton that inheritance and variation were indeed two sides of the same coin, both the product of the same cause. Even after Brooks gave up his pangenesis theory, he never wavered from the belief that inheritance and variation were simply two ways of considering a single phenomenon.
In fact Galton limited his study almost entirely to the analysis of traits in male lineages, ignoring females.
The essay was originally given as a lecture to the Baltimore to the Society of Naturalists in 1894. It was later reprinted with some further additions in Brooks’s Foundations of Zoology (1899).
Bionomics was a laboratory method developed by Kellogg to understand evolution by studying organisms in controlled settings that recreated their natural environments.
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Nash, R. William Keith Brooks and the naturalist’s defense of Darwinism in the late-nineteenth century. HPLS 37, 158–179 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40656-015-0060-3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s40656-015-0060-3