Re: early evolutionary ideas
dfsiemensjr@juno.com
Mon, 13 Dec 1999 13:09:28 -0700
On Mon, 13 Dec 1999 12:47:16 -0500 bivalve@mailserv0.isis.unc.edu (David
Campbell) writes:
> Does anyone know what sort of evolutionary ideas were likely to be
> held in
> the U.S. in the mid-1840's? A paper from 1845 speculates that a
> newly-found fossil might be "an intermediate connecting link
> between"
> Cetacea and Saurians (i.e., whales and reptiles). Robert W. Gibbes
> was a
> medical doctor in Columbia, South Carolina and wrote several papers
> on
> fossil vertebrates. I believe that Linnaeus thought evolution could
> at
> least account for changes from one species to another within a
> genus.
> Would this be an example of a broader concept of the possible range
> of
> evolutionary change? Obviously, Darwin's publications over 10 years
> later
> were not an influence here.
I cannot document specific beliefs in the States, but Lamarck published
_Systeme des animaux sans vertebres_ in 1801. This was the first
publication of his evolutionary ideas. He was a contemporary of Buffon,
who also suggested evolutionary development. Erasmus Darwin's _Zoonomia_
was published 1794-6. Robert Chambers' _Vestiges . . . of Creation_
(1844) was probably too late to be an influence. But it suggests the kind
of ideas that were floating around about the time Gibbes published.
Dave