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Michael Ruse, Charles Darwin: No Rebel, Great Revolutionary - Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2024. Pp. 252. ISBN 978-1-009-43894-0. £22.99 (paperback).

Year: 2025
Type: book-review
Abstract: Michael Ruse passed away on 1 November 2024, so this is possibly his last book.It is, in any case, a summary of his life's work, presented as a revision of his The Darwinian Revolution: Science Red in Tooth and Claw (1979), based on material presented in a series of later works.It offers a survey of what may be called the long Darwinian revolution, from the period before Darwin published On the Origin of Species (1859) through the twenty-first century.Its aim is to reinforce the claim that Darwin's thinking had a transformative impact on science, culture and society.The cover notes suggest that it may be read as a definitive history of the theory of evolution by natural selection, the inclusion of 'natural selection' being significant because, for Ruse, the publication and development of that theory are the central theme of the history of evolutionism.Few would dispute the profundity of Darwin's impact on the way we think today, but Ruse and I have long disagreed over whether the story of natural selection is the only one that should be told about nineteenth-century evolutionism.I will return to this debate later in this review, but would like to record from the start that Michael and I were always on good terms at a personal level, however rude we were about each other in print.The book opens with a brief discussion of two rival philosophies founded in the ancient world: Aristotle's organicist vision of the universe as a living thing with a coherent design and Lucretius' mechanistic view in which all we can do is study the processes that constantly transform the material world.This dichotomy helps to define Ruse's interest in Darwin and natural selection -his proposal of that mechanism (although he notes that Darwin never uses the term 'mechanism' in this context) represents a key factor in the transition from the vision of a designed world into one of constant and by no means predictable change.The main historical overview starts with a brief account of early nineteenthcentury ideas, followed by a substantial chapter on Darwin's career and his discoveries.Ruse accepts that most of the elements he combined to make the hypothesis of natural selection were already in circulation -which is why Darwin was not a rebel (as the subtitle notes).But he combined those elements in an entirely new way that transformed our thinking about nature -which is why he was also a revolutionary.Chapters follow on how the theory of natural selection was published, debated and eventually accepted as the main mechanism of evolution, told in a manner that will be familiar to readers of Ruse's previous books.He was a philosopher who gradually acquired an interest in history, so themes related to the scientific method, Kuhnian revolutions and the impact of the theory on religion and formal philosophy feature strongly throughout.
DOI: 10.1017/s0007087425000457
Language: English
Open Access status: bronze
OpenAlex ID: W4415021528
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