Some Darwinian Lessons for Behavior Analysis: A Review of Bowler's the Eclipse of Darwinism

Abstract

Even biologists who were well disposed toward the selection mechanism found it necessary to pause and take stock of the situation. They admitted that there was considerable disagreement over the future course of biology. ... Those who were opposed to the selection mechanism had no doubt about the overall trend. Darwinism was on the decline and would soon be eliminated altogether as a major evolutionary theory. This confidence is best illustrated by the title of a German work as translated into English, Eberhart Dennert's At the Deathbed of Darwinism (1903). The translation was American, symbolizing the fact that here flourished the most vocal school of neo-Lamarckism, one determined to show that selection was at best only a secondary force in evolution. Yet these reports of the death of Darwinism were exaggerated. (p. 4)