The Notion of Limited Perfect Adaptedness in Darwin's Principle of Divergence

Perspectives on Science 21 (1):1-22 (2013)
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Abstract

Darwin begins On the Origin of Species by asking the reader to “reflect on the vast diversity of the plants and animals which have been cultivated” (1859, p. 7); almost five-hundred pages later, he closes by having the reader consider the “endless forms most beautiful and wonderful” that have evolved (1859, p. 490). Darwin contemplates diversity throughout the Origin and presents the principle of divergence as a way to explain it. Darwin formulated the principle of divergence around 1857 (Browne 1980), at which point he began replacing his previous view of “limited perfect adaptedness” with a view of relative adaptedness (Ospovat 1981; Burian 1983). Proponents of perfect adaptedness, such as Paley and ..

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10.1162/posc_a_00084

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Citations of this work

The Darwinian muddle on the division of labour: an attempt at clarification.Emmanuel D’Hombres - 2016 - History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences 38 (1):1-22.

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References found in this work

Darwin and the political economists: Divergence of character.Silvan S. Schweber - 1980 - Journal of the History of Biology 13 (2):195-289.
The foundations of the Origin of species: two essays written in 1842 and 1844.Charles Darwin - 1987 - New York: New York University Press. Edited by Francis Darwin.
Darwin's Botanical Arithmetic and the "Principle of Divergence," 1854-1858.Janet Browne - 1980 - Journal of the History of Biology 13 (1):53 - 89.
Darwin's principle of divergence.Ernst Mayr - 1992 - Journal of the History of Biology 25 (3):343-359.

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