Online dictionaryOnline dictionary
Synonyms, antonyms, pronunciation

  Home
English Dictionary      examples: 'day', 'get rid of', 'New York Bay'




Darwinism   Listen
noun
Darwinism  n.  (Biol.) The theory or doctrines put forth by Darwin. See above.






Collaborative International Dictionary of English 0.48








Advanced search
     Find words:
Starting with
Ending with
Containing
Matching a pattern  

Synonyms
Antonyms
Quotes
Words linked to  

only single words



Share |
Add this dictionary
to your browser search bar





"Darwinism" Quotes from Famous Books



... as was the hypothesis of Copernicus to the speculations of Ptolemy. But the planetary orbits turned out to be not quite circular after all, and, grand as was the service Copernicus rendered to science, Kepler and Newton had to come after him. What if the orbit of Darwinism should be a little too circular? What if species should offer residual phaenomena, here and there, not explicable by natural selection? Twenty years hence naturalists may be in a position to say whether this is, or is not, the case; but in either event they will owe the author of "The ...
— Darwiniana • Thomas Henry Huxley

... rank in classification corresponding to no objective reality in the natural world. Some writers, as Lankester, have found so much fault with the term as to urge its complete abandonment in scientific literature. This is logical enough from the standpoint of Darwinism; for if the latter be true there ought indeed to be such a swamping of every incipient "species" as to make one kind blend with others all around it ...
— Q. E. D., or New Light on the Doctrine of Creation • George McCready Price

... Man's Place in Nature as affected by the Copernican Theory. II. As affected by Darwinism. III. On the Earth there will never be a Higher Creature than Man. IV. The Origin of Infancy. V. The Dawning of Consciousness. VI. Lengthening of Infancy and Concomitant Increase of Brain-Surface. VII. Change in the Direction of the Working of Natural Selection. ...
— The Destiny of Man - Viewed in the Light of His Origin • John Fiske

... That new book on Evolution, which she had brought from the library just before Jubilee Day, was still lying about; a dozen times she had looked at it with impatience, and reminded herself that it must be returned. Evolution! She already knew all about Darwinism, all she needed to know. If necessary she could talk about it—oh, with an air. But who wanted to talk about such things? After all, only priggish people,—the kind of people who lived at Champion Hill. Or idiots like Samuel Bennett Barmby, who bothered ...
— In the Year of Jubilee • George Gissing

... Charles Darwin. This doctrine presents a wholly natural description of the method by which organisms evolve, putting all of the emphasis upon the congenital causes of variation, although the reality of other kinds of change is not questioned. But the contrast between Darwinism and the other descriptions of secondary factors can best be made after a somewhat detailed discussion of the former, which has gained the adherence of the majority of the naturalists of to-day. However, ...
— The Doctrine of Evolution - Its Basis and Its Scope • Henry Edward Crampton

... descendants. In this way it was supposed by Darwin that a large proportion of the ornamental characters of living creatures were produced: the tail of the peacock, the mane of the lion, and even the gorgeous coloring of many insects and butterflies. In the early years of Darwinism, the theory of sexual selection was pushed to what now seems an unjustifiable extent. Experiment has often failed to demonstrate any sexual selection, in species where speculation supposed it to exist. And even if sexual selection, ...
— Applied Eugenics • Paul Popenoe and Roswell Hill Johnson

... explain our friend's high intellectual mobility. Attempts to correlate statesmanship, which they regard with interest as a dramatic interplay of personalities, with any secular movement of humanity, they class with the differential calculus and Darwinism, as things far too difficult to be anything but ...
— A Modern Utopia • H. G. Wells

... Knowledge herself loves the young, as Fortune used to do in olden days. Contemporary civilization does not know what to do with old age; in proportion as it defies physical experiment, it despises moral experience. One sees therein the triumph of Darwinism; it is a state of war, and war must have young soldiers; it can only put up with age in its leaders when they have the strength and the mettle ...
— Amiel's Journal • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... that the public will not allow themselves to be led away by the false issues which are [290] dangled before them. A man really may love his fellow-men; cherish any form of Christianity he pleases; and hold not only that Darwinism is "tottering to its fall," but, if he pleases, the equally sane belief that it never existed; and yet may feel it his duty to oppose, to the best of his capacity, despotic Socialism in all its forms, and, more particularly, in ...
— Evolution and Ethics and Other Essays • Thomas H. Huxley

... belts has been so surprising that we think we have found, at last, the long looked for "missing link," not in "Darwinism," however, but in the belting line. We prophesy a great future for ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 601, July 9, 1887 • Various

... ardent apostle of Evolution, and it is held that no man has done more than he in expounding the theory in America. Standing permanently for his work in this field are his books, "Excursions of an Evolutionist" and "Darwinism, and Other Essays." One of his first important works was "Outlines of Cosmic Philosophy" (1874), and in more recent years "The Destiny of Man" and "The Idea of God" speak forth very distinctly, not as interpretations, but as his own contributions to the progress ...
— The War of Independence • John Fiske

... Hutton is "one of the very few who see that the change of species cannot be directly proved..." ("Life and Letters," II., page 362). The review appeared in "The Geologist" (afterwards known as "The Geological Magazine") for 1861, pages 132-6 and 183-8. A letter on "Difficulties of Darwinism" is published in the same volume of "The Geologist," page 286.), and at the same time to express my opinion that you have done the subject a real service by the highly original, striking, and condensed manner with which you have put the case. I ...
— More Letters of Charles Darwin - Volume I (of II) • Charles Darwin

... for Life. Not only did it command the earnest attention of the scientific and literary world, but it awakened the interest of thoughtful persons everywhere. Later research and criticism have modified the effect of his conclusions and led to new results, but the "Darwinian theory" or "Darwinism" still holds and seems likely long to maintain a central place in the history of modern ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 17 • Charles Francis Horne

... American, too, had a friend in William James. There is a feeling abroad now, to which biology and Darwinism lend some colour, that theory is simply an instrument for practice, and intelligence merely a help toward material survival. Bears, it is said, have fur and claws, but poor naked man is condemned to be intelligent, or he will perish. This feeling William James embodied in that theory of ...
— Winds Of Doctrine - Studies in Contemporary Opinion • George Santayana

... are unsound. Even in rejecting that phase of sexual selection depending on female choice, I insist on the greater efficacy of natural selection. This is pre-eminently the Darwinian doctrine, and I therefore claim for my book the position of being the advocate of pure Darwinism. ...
— Darwinism (1889) • Alfred Russel Wallace

... world-poet, Goethe, takes the figure of Proteus from his eldest brother, the first world-poet, and transplants it into the Second Part of Faust, where it has its place in the development of the modern man. The Mythus of Evolution the tale of Proteus becomes in Goethe's hands, and hints of Darwinism long before Darwin. ...
— Homer's Odyssey - A Commentary • Denton J. Snider

... became, by opening a summer school of science with prayer, nearly as consolatory to the unscientific who wished to believe they had souls, as Mr. John Fiske himself, though Mr. Fiske, as the arch-apostle of Darwinism, had arrived at nearly the same point by ...
— Henry James, Jr. • William Dean Howells

... people whom she describes as the most gentle and docile in the world. We had ample opportunity of making their acquaintance, for during our stay the decks were daily thronged with them. In these men the advocates of Darwinism might well behold the missing link. From head to heel they are covered with thick shaggy unkempt masses of hair; that on their heads and faces hanging down in wild elfish locks. They wear but scant raiment, a ...
— In Eastern Seas - The Commission of H.M.S. 'Iron Duke,' flag-ship in China, 1878-83 • J. J. Smith

... quite grown up. Even when he read her articles in the "Daily Review," or discussed the most weighty topics with her, she was always "little son Eric," or his "little one." And Erica's unquenchable high spirits served to keep up the delusion. She would as often as not end a conversation on Darwinism by a romp with Friskarina, or write a very thoughtful article on "Scrutin de Liste," and then spring up from her desk and play like any child with an India-rubber ball nominally kept for ...
— We Two • Edna Lyall

... gradually and slowly developed from the coarse and selfish passions of our savage ancestors to the refined and altruistic feelings of modern civilized men and women. He lived long before the days of scientific anthropology and Darwinism, and never thought of such a thing as looking upon the emotions and morals of primitive men as the raw material out of which our own superior minds have been fashioned. Nay, Hegel does not even say that sentimental love did ...
— Primitive Love and Love-Stories • Henry Theophilus Finck

... natural war, in which Hobbes said that the life of man was "nasty, short, brutish and mean," and that it might as urgently require a similar sovereign remedy. The repugnance to such a remedy was reinforced by crude analogies between a perverted Darwinism and politics. Darwin's demonstration of evolution by means of the struggle for existence in the natural world was used to support the assumption that a similar struggle among civilized men was natural and therefore inevitable; and that all attempts ...
— The History of England - A Study in Political Evolution • A. F. Pollard

... elements also largely help to make apparent the teachings they contain. Her sympathy with the evolution philosophy of the day is conspicuous in The Spanish Gypsy. It is simply a dramatic interpretation of the higher phases of Darwinism. The doctrinal element does not intrude itself, however; it is not on the surface, it is well subordinated to the artistic elements of the poem. Even intelligent readers may not detect it, and the majority of those who read the poem without any preconceptions ...
— George Eliot; A Critical Study of Her Life, Writings & Philosophy • George Willis Cooke

... denounce Darwinism as impious and absurd. They have since "cheerfully accepted" the theory ...
— God and my Neighbour • Robert Blatchford

... new species has arisen in the last 6000 years when the theory requires over 2000. Evolutionists admit this. Prof. Vernon Kellogg, of Leland Stanford University, in his "Darwinism of Today," p. 18, says:—"Speaking by and large, we only tell the general truth when we declare that no indubitable cases of species forming, or transforming, that is, of descent, have been observed.... For my part, it seems ...
— The Evolution Of Man Scientifically Disproved • William A. Williams



Words linked to "Darwinism" :   theory of organic evolution, theory of evolution, evolutionism



Copyright © 2024 Dictionary One.com