Darwinism Comes to America (Paperback)

by Ronald L. Numbers (Author)
Key Phrases: birth order unknown, most famous court trial, creationist revival, Asa Gray, United States, South Carolina (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Review
[Darwinism Comes to America] offers major new insights for our understanding of how America responded to Darwin.
--Peter J. Bowler (Science )

Numbers's carefully researched study helps us understand the origin of the wide-ranging attitudes towards creation and evolution found among conservative Christians today. Darwinism Comes to America is a worthy successor to The Creationists.
--Eugenie C. Scott, National Center for Science Education

In Darwin Comes to America, Ronald Numbers enriches our understanding of the origin debate by exploring the beliefs of a broader range of American scientists and religious sects than heretofore chronicled. Importantly, he extends the story into the late 1990s by including the repackaged anti-evolutionism of those championing "intellegent design."
--Edward J. Larson, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Summer for the Gods: The Scopes Trial and America's Continuing Debate over Science and Religion

This is an interesting, important, and concise book by a top-notch historian of science. It deals primarily with the late-19th- and early-20th-century reception of Darwinism in the United States as experienced by scientists, scientific organizations, and religious organizations...[Numbers's] underlying thesis is that the reception of Darwinism was neither as revolutionary as evolutionists say, nor as insignificant as the creationists say. Numbers argues that, in fact, there was much internal debate within both sides over the scientific meaning of "evolution" and the biblical interpretation of "creation," and therefore these was actually a constellation of views within both camps...This relatively slim volume really covers a lot of uncharted territory in six short chapters; it includes chapters on the Scopes trial and the evolutionary debate within the Seventh Day Adventist, Holiness, and Pentecostal churches. Accessible to general readers and all academic levels, this is a priority acquisition for well-established history of science and religious history collections.
--R. F. White (Choice )

In this short, but pithy, book, historian Ronald L. Numbers documents the reception of Darwinism in America, both within scientific circles and among the general public...Numbers does a superb job of detailing Adventist, Holiness, and Pentecostal responses to Darwinism. He shows how and why, at the time of the Scopes trial, few "biblical literalists" interpreted the Bible as claiming a recent creation in six 24-hour days, but by the late 20th century young-Earth creationism had become the dominant form of organized antievolutionism in America...Throughout the book, Numbers confronts what he calls myths or misperceptions that have infiltrated the popular consciousness of the history of Darwinism.
--Laurie R. Godfrey (Science Books & Films )

In this fascinating book, Numbers transforms our understanding of the reception of Darwinism in America when he shifts his attention from a few major figures to a wider sampling of America scientists. He also chronicle the fortune of the Creationist opposition to Darwinism from its inception in the late nineteenth century to the Scopes trial in 1925 and the call for equal time today. this book would be ideal for an undergraduate course on science and society.
--David L. Hull, Northwestern University

Ronald Numbers has provided an exceptionally informative overview of a fascinating episode in the history of ideas. He dissects Charles Darwin's impact on American thought with admirable scholary sophistication, and in the process he succeeds in resolving a host of issues that have been fervently debated by previous generations of intellectual historians.
--Frank J. Sulloway, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, author of Born to Rebel and Freud: Biologist of the Mind (Harvard)

Review
Numbers's carefully researched study helps us understand the origin of the wide-ranging attitudes towards creation and evolution found among conservative Christians today. Darwinism Comes to America is a worthy successor to The Creationists.
--Eugenie C. Scott, National Center for Science Education --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 224 pages
• Publisher: Harvard University Press (November 15, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0674193121
• ISBN-13: 978-0674193123
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.1 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 10.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #841,120 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

45 of 48 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Creationist-Evolutionist Debate: The Real Story, July 30, 2000

By	Gene R. Marlatt (Lakewood, Colorado USA) - See all my reviews

University of Wisconsin historian of science Ronald L. Numbers has written with grace, clarity and empathy an easy-to-read, interesting, informative, fascinating book. Readers who desire to be well-versed on one of the most controversial issues of the day should both enjoy reading it and find that it dispels "myths and misconceptions that still cling" to popular, journalisitic, and scholarly knowledge about the reaction of Christians and non-believers to Darwinian evolution. Beginning in 1860 with Asa Gray, the first American Christian Darwinian, Professor Numbers charts the reaction of scholarly believers from such leading scientists as Louis Agassiz (who opposed Darwinism) to James D. Dana (who first opposed, then accepted a theistic form of evolution) to the American statesman William Jennings Bryan ( who opposed Darwinism not so much for its biological conclusions but because the survival-of-the fittest doctrine bolstered anti-democratic elitist, racist and race-exterminationist movements like German militarism and Naziism) to the theistic evolutionists and the aniti-evolutionist flood geologists of the twentieth century. Among the myths and misconceptions the author exposes is the belief that the 1960 motion picture INHERIT THE WIND is a true account of what really happened at the Monkey (Scopes) "trial of the century" in 1925. Despite the fact that most Americans only know what they know about the trial because of the film, in fact, INHERIT THE WIND is a terribly distorted, biased portrait of the trial and the issues; anyone who relies on it for historical knowledge is foolish. Another myth exposed is that creationism is no longer believed by most Americans because Darwin's views totally triumphed after the Scopes trial. In fact, Darwin's original thesis was largely questioned by scientists by 1900. Then emerged the neo-Darwinian synthesis, which is in various forms is the prevailing theory today, but even now evolutionists themselves are widely divided on the details of evolution, and some reputable scholars, albeit a minority of the scientific establishment, question the validity of neo-Darwinian theory. Furthermore, despite the "nearly unanimous endorsement of naturalisitic evolution by leading biologists," belief that the universe and humans were created by God runs deep in the United States and Canada. In 1993, for instance, 47 percent of Americans believed that "God created man pretty much in his present form at one time within the last 10,000 years," an additional 35 percent thought that the process of evolution had been "divinely guided," and "58 percent of the public favored teaching creationism in the schools." Professor Numbers demonstrates conclusively that the current evolution-creation debate is not simply between anti-scientific religious zealots who believe in an earth no older than 10,000 years and atheistic evolutionists. Instead, a wide spectrum of views exists. At one end are rabid scientists like the famous biologist who announced that he believes in evolution despite its many unanswered questions because of a rather unscientific quasi-religious commitment to atheistic materialism. At the other end are the self-styled scientific creationists who, notwithstanding powerful evidence to the contrary, believe the earth was created 10,000 years ago and that fossils showing the earth is billiions of years old were deposited by a universal flood four to six thousand years ago. In between are religiously committed, mostly Christian, reputable scientists who hold either theisitc evolution (God used evolutionary processes to create), progressive creationism (God used evolution to create but punctuated it with perioidic special creations of new species including the special creation of human beings), to the new Intelligent Design theory (whether or not there has been evolution, the universe provides indispuitable evidence that there is a great designer--God--who is responsible for it all). And so the debate goes on, and is not likely any time soon, if ever, to end with victory for any of the parties. DARWINISM COMES TO AMERICA is an exceptionally valuable book containing, in addition to the observations heretofore described, many other insights and delights to titillate inquiring minds. No one should say another word about evolution and creation until they have read this book.

1 of 2 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars First-rate historical analysis, July 10, 2007

By	meadowreader (Sandia Park, NM USA) - See all my reviews

Numbers' fascinating and extremely well-researched book is the story of an ongoing religious tragedy, in which a small group of radical biblical literalists have managed, as one writer put it, to take a beautiful creation myth and ruin it. Their idea is that the Bible should be considered a book of scientific fact, a position that makes scripture forever hostage to the latest scientific findings. It's a move that is sheerly breathtaking in its foolishness. By pursuing this misbegotten agenda, all the literalists can accomplish is to inflict enormous harm on the credibility of religion in its proper sphere. Well, that plus getting lots of attention for themselves, selling lots of books, and doing very nicely on the lecture circuit. With friends like these, religion needs no enemies. Their counterparts on the opposite side (e.g, Dennett, Dawkins, Hitchens, et al.) are doing equally well preaching to their own choir. It's a very profitable arrangement, if you think about it, and for that very reason the lamentable charade seems destined to go on ad nauseum. Science will hardly notice, leaving religion itself and the important personal and societal functions that it serves as the only losers.

The great truths of religion do not depend on the particular facts of history or science, and it is a disastrous mistake to trivialize them in that way. To put shallow scriptural literalism in the place of the deep and timeless expressions of poetry, parable, and metaphor is about the most self-undermining move that any religion can make. John Dominic Crossen had it right when he wrote that "those ancient people told smart, metaphorical stories that we were now dumb enough to take literally." Or cynical enough. There is no excuse for this squabble otherwise.

This is a brief (only 135 pages of text) and fast-moving account of the history of this confrontation, and how it has waxed and waned, based on an enormous volume of source materials. We find that a great many common assumptions about the nature and origins of the dispute do not hold up to the evidence. For example, it is surprising how, after having pretty well died away in the late 1920s, this dispute re-emerged to take on really significant proportions in the 1970s, due largely to a key change in strategy by ultra-literalist anti-evolutionists: a demand for creationism to get equal time in the schools, rather than for the teaching of evolution to be eliminated. Some school districts discouraged lawsuits for equal time, though, because they were already teaching straight creationism -- equal time would only force them to add the teaching of evolution! The huge role of the Seventh Day Adventists in the rise of the most radical form of young earth, flood geology creationism ("creation science") that emerged in the 1970s, was news to me. The chapter on the Scopes Trial and the way it was interpreted in various quarters is very good. I had forgotten that Scopes had never actually taught Darwinism, or even biology, and I did not know that Darrow was so arrogant and overbearing that the ACLU tried to dump him from the defense team. There are interesting facts like these throughout the book, and a whole raft of larger-than-life personalities. Overall, the entire landscape is more complicated and various than I had imagined, with many more twists and turns than typical media accounts and even the work of respected historians has suggested. Numbers does a terrific job of describing the views that distinguish naturalistic evolutionists, theistic evolutionists, intelligent-design theorists, old-Earth creationists, and scientific (young-Earth) creationists, views that span a very great distance, indeed. The book is a page-turner and well worth reading.