WI: No Origin of the Species

What if Charles Darwin never published his On the Origins of the Species? How might this effect scientific development or political culture? Karl Marx had explained history and economics with his theory, but he couldn't explain biology until Darwin published his work on evolution. How would Marx explain biology without the works of Charles Darwin, if he could at all?
 
Darwin only published his work because someone else was about to publish more or less the same idea. In fact the guy was far enough along that they co-presented the idea when they first revealed it to the scientific establishment, Darwin merely got top billing.
 
Alfred Russel Wallace gets credit. He had the same theory and was about to publish it before Darwin did.

If neither of them did, then the establishment of evolution as fact would take several more decades. Possibly butterfly away the Scopes Monkey Trial and much of the opposition to the theory for a later date.
 
If neither of them did, then the establishment of evolution as fact would take several more decades.

I don't know about that. The theory of evolution by natural selection was "in the air" at the time, and there were in fact other people who had come up with some version of the theory on their own. From the book Evolution in Modern Thought (1917):

[...] the principle of Natural Selection had been independently recognised by Dr. W. C. Wells in 1813 and by Mr. Patrick Matthew in 1831, but he had no knowledge of these anticipations when he published the first edition of The Origin of Species. [...] as Darwin said, "(Wells) observes, firstly, that all animals tend to vary in some degree, and, secondly, that agriculturists improve their domesticated animals by selection; and then, he adds, but what is done in this latter case 'by art, seems to be done with equal efficacy, though more slowly, by nature, in the formation of varieties of mankind, fitted for the country which they inhabit.'"

<snip>

Of Mr. Patrick Matthew, [...] Darwin said that "he clearly saw the full force of the principle of natural selection." In 1860 Darwin wrote—very characteristically—about this to Lyell: "Mr. Patrick Matthew publishes a long extract from his work on Naval Timber and Arboriculture, published in 1831, in which he briefly but completely anticipates the theory of Natural Selection."

De Quatrefages and De Varigny have maintained that the botanist Naudin stated the theory of evolution by natural selection in 1852. He explains very clearly the process of artificial selection, and says that in the garden we are following Nature's method. "We do not think that Nature has made her species in a different fashion from that in which we proceed ourselves in order to make our variations."

<snip>

Profs. E. Perrier and H. F. Osborn have called attention to a remarkable anticipation of the selection-idea which is to be found in the speculations of Étienne Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire (1825-1828) on the evolution of modern Crocodilians from the ancient Teleosaurs. Changing environment induced changes in the respiratory system and far-reaching consequences followed. The atmosphere, acting upon the pulmonary cells, brings about "modifications which are favourable or destructive; these are inherited, and they influence all the rest of the organisation of the animal because if these modifications lead to injurious effects the animals which exhibit them perish and are replaced by others of a somewhat different form, a form changed so as to be adapted tothe new environment."
 

Sachyriel

Banned
Oh, with no Darwin or no Wallace maybe someone interested in the whole hereditary sciences will read Gergor Mendel and see his works as a bit of good research and science starts from his works! :eek:
 
Oh, with no Darwin or no Wallace maybe someone interested in the whole hereditary sciences will read Gergor Mendel and see his works as a bit of good research and science starts from his works! :eek:
This could set back the theory then. Many at the time thought that Mendel and Darwin's theories conflicted.

Langdon Cheves also had a theory almost identical to Darwin's.
What was so unique about Darwin was not his hypothesis, but his enormous amount of evidence to back that hypothesis up.
 

Sachyriel

Banned
This could set back the theory then. Many at the time thought that Mendel and Darwin's theories conflicted.

Langdon Cheves also had a theory almost identical to Darwin's.
What was so unique about Darwin was not his hypothesis, but his enormous amount of evidence to back that hypothesis up.

Maybe with someone finally looking at his work, and it gets a bit more popular, people start making more evidence?
 
Alfred Russel Wallace gets credit. He had the same theory and was about to publish it before Darwin did.

If neither of them did, then the establishment of evolution as fact would take several more decades.

I think that's too pessimistic. Evolution by natural selection was one of those ideas that was in the air.
 
Maybe with someone finally looking at his work, and it gets a bit more popular, people start making more evidence?
Cheves or Wallace? Cheves didn't publish it though I don't know why. Maybe he was afraid of his native South turning against him for going against God? Not sure.

Anyways basically Wallace would publish it, but it would become accepted slower until evidence amasses to back it up.
 
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