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The Eclipse of Darwinism: Anti-Darwinian Evolution Theories in the Decades around 1900

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We tend to think of the monolithic triumph of Darwinism in the wake of the publication of _Origin_, but as Bowler shows the theory of Darwin was under assault by the end of the nineteenth century, before the rise of the neo-Darwinian synthesis. In fact, the acceptance of the fact of evolution--and the rapid conversion of most scientists--was not matched by a similar assent to natural selection. Further, the absence of a genetic argument and the treatment of inheritance in terms of blending was a major problem. By the time of the sixth edition Darwin's claims bordered on incoherence, as a strain of Lamarckianism reentered Darwin's thinking. This was only the beginning, and by the beginning of the twentieth century claims for theistic evolution, orthogenesis, Lamarckianism flourished even as the rediscovery of Mendel produced genetics and the mutation theory. It would be some time before the real triumph of Darwinism occurred, by the middle of the twentieth century, and yet one wonders if a similar cycle must greet the harderning of the paradigm that we now see.