This dissertation reveals that the American reception of evolution often hinged on the theory's implications for gender and that Darwinian ideas significantly shaped feminist thought in the U.S. While the impact of evolution on American culture has been widely studied, few scholars have done so using gender as a category of analysis. Similarly, evolutionary theory is largely absent from histories of American feminist thought. Yet, Darwin's ideas, specifically those in The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex (1871), had profound ramifications for gender and sex. Nineteenth century scientists and laypeople alike eagerly applied Darwin's theories to the "woman question," generally to the detriment of women. At the same time, key female activists embraced evolution as an appealing alternative to biblical gender strictures (namely the story of Adam and Eve) and enthusiastically incorporated it into their speeches and writings. My work describes how women including Antoinette Brown Blackwell, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and Charlotte Perkins Gilman utilized Darwinian principles to challenge traditional justifications for female subordination and bolster their arguments for women's rights. Furthermore, my research demonstrates that gender roles, particularly those pertaining to courtship, marriage, and reproduction, were reformulated in accordance with Darwin's theory of sexual selection, altering popular ideas about motherhood and paving the way for eugenics and birth control. My interdisciplinary project draws on scientific and mainstream publications, the feminist press, prescriptive literature, fiction, popular culture, and archival materials, and it explores both intellectual developments and their impact on people's daily lives. I argue that evolution shifted the terms of debate from women's souls to women's bodies, encouraged feminists to claim "equivalence" rather than "equality," inspired opponents and proponents of women's rights to ground their arguments in science (most frequently biology and zoology), destigmatized sex as a topic of scientific inquiry, and galvanized support for greater female autonomy in reproductive decisions. Looking at gender, religion, and evolutionary theory in concert not only helps us more fully comprehend the construction of gender and the development of American feminism, especially its troubled relationships with religion and science, it also enriches our understanding of the American reception of Darwin. / text

Uppsatsen undersöker några svenska populärvetenskapliga framställningar av Darwins idéer under halvseklet efter publiceringen av On the origin of species. De publikationer som studeras mest ingående är Ny illustrerad tidning och Verdandis småskrifter. Med hjälp av Ludwik Flecks vetenskapssociologiska tankar, jämte ett antal andra perspektiv på polulärvetenskapens form och funktion, resonerar jag om populariseringarnas folkbildande och stundtals politiska syften och sätt att presentera en omstridd teori som ovedersägligen sann. Uppsatsen innehåller också en översikt över populärvetenskapens historia i Europa och Sverige.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Delaware, 2005. / Principal faculty advisor: J.A. Leo Lemay, Dept. of English. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (M.A.)--Miami University, Dept. of Psychology, 2005. / Title from first page of PDF document. Document formatted into pages; contains [1], iv, 41 p. : ill. Includes bibliographical references (p. 41).

Richard Rorty found Friedrich Nietzsche’s critique of epistemology (perspectivism) to be a helpful tool in getting us to stop thinking of knowledge as something we find, and instead as something that we create. He also found perspectivism to be a helpful tool in that of the private sphere, of private self-creation. The Nietzsche that provides perspectivism is “The Good Nietzsche”. Rorty, however, conceived of Nietzsche’s ideas as being absolutely useless when it comes to politics, along with his ideas regarding morality, the Will to Power, and the Übermensch. These are the ideas of “The Bad Nietzsche”. Rorty’s actual usage of Nietzsche’s ideas, however, defies such easy, self-defined categorization, because these ideas extend outside of their spheres into the realm of politics in Rorty’s own writings. Most traditional analyses of the relationship between Nietzsche and Rorty as it regards politics tend to focus on Nietzsche. By focusing on Rorty’s appropriation of Nietzsche, through looking at his extensive writings and interviews, a more subtle, and complex relationship between Nietzsche’s various ideas and Rorty’s politics is seen to exist.

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Spinner dolphins (Stenella longirostris) were surveyed and photographed during the Spring/Summer of 2004-2007 in the Southern Tañon Strait region of the Philippines. Over 17,000 images of dorsal fins were taken during the study period for photoidentification purposes. The study area (approximately 100 Km2) is a popular site for cetacean-watching and more recently underwent oil exploration and drilling. A photographic database of 329 unique spinner dolphin dorsal fins was produced, and used to assess abundance and life history characteristics using DARWIN software. An overall abundance estimate (2004-2007) of 1118 individuals (990-1246 with a 95% confidence interval) was obtained using the POPAN feature of MARK software. These mark-recapture results reveal that approximately 28% (n= 92) of the identified individuals (n= 329) were present in the study area in at least two of the four study years. This information is necessary to gain a better understanding of the ecology and life history characteristics of small cetaceans in the Tafton Strait, and in the development of conservation, education, and habitat protection programs designed to protect these cetaceans from human impacts. This project is part of a long-term ongoing study of the small cetaceans in the Southern Tañon Strait.

The thesis is that contrary to the received popular wisdom, the combination of David Hume's sceptical enquiry and Charles Darwin's provision of an alternative theoretical framework to the then current paradigm of natural theology did not succeed in defeating the design argument. I argue that William Paley's work best represented the status quo in the philosophy of biology circa 1800 and that with the logical mechanisms provided us by William Dembski in his seminal work on probability, there is a strong argument for thr work of Michael Behe to stand in a similar position today to that of Paley two centuries ago. The argument runs as follows: In Sections 1 and 2 of Chapter 1 I introduce the issues. In Section 3 I argue that William Paley's exposition of the design argument was archetypical of the natural theology school and that given Hume's already published criticism of the argument, Paley for one did not feel the design argument to be done for. I further argue in Section 4 that Hume in fact did no such thing and that neither did he see himself as having done so, but that the design argument was weak rather than fallacious. In Section 5 I outline the demise of natural theology as the dominant school of thought in the philosophy of biology, ascribing this to the rise of Darwinism and subsequently neo-Darwinism. I argue that design arguments were again not defeated but went into abeyance with the rise of a new paradigm associated with Darwinism, namely methodological naturalism. In Chapter 2 I advance the project by a discussion of William Dembski's formulation of design inferences, demonstrating their value in both everyday and technical usage. This is stated in Section 1. In Sections 2 and 3 I discuss Dembski's treatment of probability, whilst in Section 4 I examine Dembski's tying of different levels of probability to different mechanisms of explanation used in explicating the world. Section 5 is my analysis of the logic of the formal statement of the design argument according to Dembski. In Section 6 I encapsulate objections to Dembski. I conclude the chapter (with Section 7) by claiming that Dembski forwards a coherent model of design inferences that can be used in demonstrating that there is little difference between the way that Paley came to his conclusions two centuries ago and how modem philosophers of biology (such as I take Michael Behe to be, albeit that by profession he is a scientist) come to theirs when offering design explanations. Inference to the best explanation is demonstrated as lying at the crux of design arguments. In Chapter 3 I draw together the work of Michael Behe and Paley, showing through the mechanism of Dembski's work that they are closely related in many respects and that neither position is to be lightly dismissed. Section 1 introduces this. In Section 2 I introduce Behe's concept of irreducible complexity in the light of (functional) explanation. Section 3 is a detailed analysis of irreducible complexity. Section 4 raises and covers objections to Behe with the general theme being that (neo-) Darwinians beg the question against him. In Section 4 I apply the Dembskian mechanic directly to Behe's work. I argue that Behe does not quite meet the Dembskian criteria he needs to in order for his argument to stand as anything other than defeasible. However, in Section 5 I conclude by arguing that this is exactly what we are to expect from Behe's and similar theories, even within competing paradigms, in the philosophy of biology, given that inference to the best explanation is the logical lever therein at work. / KMBT_363 / Adobe Acrobat 9.54 Paper Capture Plug-in

This dissertation examines representations of deep time in nineteenth-century British novels in order to argue that these texts help carve a path for our contemporary definitions of deep time and the Anthropocene. Examining fiction by Charles Dickens, George Eliot, Thomas Hardy, Edward Bulwer-Lytton, H. Rider Haggard, H. G. Wells, and Joseph Conrad, I suggest that these novels participate in the secularization of deep time by transforming the concept of vast spiritual time that had been in use earlier in the nineteenth century into a scientifically-informed model that anticipates our current understandings of deep time. While the concept of geological time emerged in the late-eighteenth century and became widely recognized in the nineteenth, the phrase “deep time” originates in nineteenth-century literature when Thomas Carlyle first used it in a non-scientific context. By studying a wide range of fiction, I demonstrate how nineteenth-century authors employed innovative narrative strategies to convey these potentially inconceivable timescales in non-numerical terms, and thereby make them more accessible to human comprehension. I also challenge conventional distinctions between literary realism and popular romance in the period by analyzing the complementary ways in which both genres of fiction engage with vast temporal scales in their narratives. I develop my argument by examining how these novels use a model of what I call “folding time” to incorporate remote time periods into their texts. Departing from the novel’s linear narrative structure to bring distant historical moments into direct contact with one another, folding time situates human activity in relation to vast pre-and-post-human periods and in doing so acknowledges an age of humans within deep time; in this sense, these novels articulate an early concept of the Anthropocene. By including deep time in the novel’s traditionally individual and familial framework, these authors simultaneously expand the novel’s temporal scope and humanize vast scientific timescales. Further, as these novels illustrate characters’ psychological responses to overwhelming scientific timescales, they reposition deep time in relation to private temporal experience. This study employs an interdisciplinary approach to acknowledge the mutually reciprocal relationship between science and literature in the nineteenth century, and draws on temporality studies, history of science theory, and literary criticism to situate its argument in relation to current critical discussions. I also consider the work of scientists such as Charles Lyell, Charles Darwin, and William Thomson in order to contextualize my novels’ scientific references. By studying nineteenth-century British novels in relation to scientific temporalities, this dissertation recovers an overlooked component of the history of deep time that has had significant and lasting cultural influence given the enduring popularity and wide readership of these texts.

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