This document discusses Richard Owen, a British anatomist in the 19th century, and his views on evolution and responses to Charles Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection. It provides details on Owen's career and scientific work establishing homology and the archetype theory. Though Owen acknowledged evolution in some form, he rejected Darwin's mechanism of natural selection and maintained species were pre-ordained by natural law. The document also describes the debate and conflict between Owen and Thomas Huxley over their differing views on evolution and humans' place in nature.

1. Responses
Owen
Agassiz
Huxley
Mivart

2. Charles Bell
1858 was not “marked by any of
those striking discoveries which
at once revolutionize, so to
speak, the department of
science on which they bear”
Presidential Address, Linnaean Society

3. Initial Positive Reviews
The Times Gardeners Chronicle

4. Adam Sedgwick
“I cannot conclude without
expressing my detestation of the
theory, because of its unflinching
materialism;—because it has
deserted the inductive track, the
only track that leads to physical
truth;—because it utterly repudiates
final causes, and thereby indicates a
demoralized understanding on the
part of its advocates”
Spectator (7 April 1860)

5. Adam Sedgwick
The theory was “not inductive
– not based on a series of
acknowledged facts pointing
to a general conclusion, - not
a proposition evolved out of
the facts, logically, and of
course including them.”
Spectator (7 April 1860)

6. Adam Sedgwick
“I have read your book with more pain than
pleasure. Parts of it I admired greatly, parts I
laughed at till my sides were almost sore; other
parts I read with absolute sorrow, because I think
them utterly false and grievously mischievous.You
have deserted—after a start in that tram-road of
all solid physical truth—the true method of
induction, and started us in machinery as wild, I
think, as Bishop Wilkins's locomotive that was to
sail with us to the moon. Many of your wide
conclusions are based upon assumptions which
can neither be proved nor disproved, why then
express them in the language and arrangement of
philosophical induction?”
Letter to CD, 11/24/59

7. Adam Sedgwick
“I shall always protest against
that degrading hypothesis
which attributes to man an
origin derived from the lower
animals”
October 1868

8. George Douglas Campbell
Duke of Argyll
Reign of Law (1867)
Both history and physical
phenomena were planned and
directed by a divine Mind using
natural law.
Transmutation could occur, natural
selection was not the mechanism.
Beauty for beauty’s sake could not
be explained.

9. Henry Charles Fleeming Jenkin
North British Review, 1867
Since artificial selection had its
limits, it actually disproved
natural selection.
Advantageous variants would
be swamped within the
population as a whole.
Addressed by Darwin in the
5th edition of 1869

10. Shipwrecked Englishman
“Our shipwrecked hero would probably become king; he would kill
a great many blacks in the struggle for existence; he would have a
great many wives and children, while many of his subjects would live
and die as bachelors. In the first generation there will be some
dozens of intelligent young mulattoes, much superior in average
intelligence to the negroes. We might expect the throne for some
generations to be occupied by a more or less yellow king; but can
any one believe that the whole island will gradually acquire a white,
or even a yellow population, or that the islanders would acquire
energy, courage, ingenuity, patience, self-control, endurance, in virtue
of which qualities our hero killed so many of their ancestors, and
begot so many children; those qualities, in fact, which the struggle
for existence would select, if it could select anything?”

11. Richard Owen
1804 - 1892

12. Life
Apprenticed to surgeon apothecary
Educated for six months in Edinburgh, 1824
Prosector at St Bartholomew’s Hospital, 1825
Member, Royal College of Surgeons, 1826
Hunterian Museum: Assistant Curator 1827,
Curator 1842
Fellow, Royal Society, 1834
Hunterian Professor, Royal College of Surgeons,
1836
Introduced to Darwin by Lyell, 1836
British Museum: Superintendent, 1856 - 1883
Founded British Museum (Natural History), 1881
Knight of the Order of the Bath, 1883

15. Fusing of functionalism (Cuvier) with
transcendental anatomy (Oken).

16. Functionalism
Georges Cuvier
Adaptation of organism to
external conditions
“Correlation of Parts” and
“Conditions of Existence”
Could be allied with British
Natural Theology

17. Lorenz Oken
Naturphilosophie
The skull consisted of
modified vertebrae
(1807)

19. Megatherium 1842

20. Dinosauria 1842

21. Dinornis 1843

22. Royal Medal 1846 Chaning Pearce 1842

23. Great Exhibition1851

24. Gideon Mantel 1852

25. Archaeopteryx 1863

26. Homology

27. Homology
“The same organ in
different animals under
every variety of form and
function”

28. Vertebral
Theory

31. The Vertebrate Archetype
On the Archetype and Homologies of the Vertebrate Skeleton
Archetype as abstract principle or law of nature (1848)
Archetype as pre-existing pattern (1849)

32. 1839
“Do the speculations … of Lamarck and
Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire derive any support, or
meet with additional disproof, from the facts? …
We have the opportunity of tracing Ichthyosauri,
generation after generation through the whole of
the immense series of strata. The very species
which made its first abrupt appearance in the
lowest strata, maintains its characters unchanged
and recognizable in the highest of the Secondary
strata. … In the chalk the genus Ichthyosaurus
quits the stage of existence as suddenly as it
entered it … and with every appreciable
character unchanged. There is no evidence
whatever that one species has
succeeded or been the result of the
transmutation of a former species”

33. Evolutionism?
1830’s - Matter had “organizing
energy” (vitalism)
1838 - Ridicules Lamarckism
1840’s - “The continuous operation of
the ordained becoming of all things”
1849 - Humans evolved from fish by
natural law
1854 - Apes could not be transformed
into men but humans could have
evolved from other species by a
process other than transmutation

34. “Derivative Hypothesis”
Owen’s Evolutionism
Fundamental relationship of all
(vertebrate) organisms
Spontaneous generation Pattern in
fossil record from general to specific
Studies of fossils could actually
reveal the steps by which
adaptation took place.
Species come into existence through
pre-ordained process of natural
law
Transmutation is saltational – there
are breaks between groups

35. Reject Darwinism
Edinburgh Review, 1860
Origin suffered for the “abuse of
science ... to which a neighbouring
nation, some seventy years since,
owed its temporary degradation”
Natural Selection can only cause
extinctions
Apparent random nature of
process
Miss-portrayal of Owen by
Darwin as a creationist.

36. On Darwin
“Darwin stands to biology
in the relation in which
Copernicus stood to
astronomy”
However, a Newton
(nomotheization) was still
to come

37. Not A Creationist
“We have no sympathy
whatever with Biblical
objectors to creation
by law, or with the
sacerdotal revilers of
those who would explain
such law”

38. 1858
“I cannot shut my eyes to
the significance of that all-
pervading similitude of
structure - every tooth,
every bone, strictly
homologous - which
makes the determination
of the difference [between
man and ape] the
anatomist’s difficulty”

47. Owen on Humans
Sole members of sub-class
Archencephala
Larger relative brain size
Increase in size of cerebral
hemispheres
Well developed cerebellum
with increased convolutions
Presence of hippocampus
minor

48. Examining a Water Baby

49. BAAS Meeting of June 1860, Oxford

50. Bishop Samuel Wilberforce

51. Hooker Fitzroy

52. “Cambridge Duet”
BAAS Meetings
1860: Oxford
1861: Manchester
1862: Cambridge
Scientific Journals
Natural History Review (Huxley)
Annals and Magazine of Natural
History (Owen)

53. Man’s Place in Nature
1863

54. Problems with
“Traditional” View
Both sides erred
Mis-translated Latin (RO)
Illustrations (RO and THH)
Lack of fossil evidence (THH)
The continued attack by THH since 1850
Owen’s evolutionism

55. Long Campaign
Networking with younger
scientists
Continually attacking Owen’s
work since early 1850’s
“Slaying a great man as a
means to achieve greatness”
Attempt to prevent formation
of BM(NH) in 1860 -
museums were for research

56. Vehement anti-evolutionary member of “old guard”
or
Theistic evolutionist and victim of institutional politics

57. Convicted
Mantell & Iguanodon
Denied presidency of
Geological Society
Pearce & blemenites
Voted off councils of
Zoological and Royal societies.
Huxley & brains
Prevented from joining Royal
Society council
Hooker & funding for Kew

58. Darwin on Owen
“The Londoners say he is mad with envy because my
book is so talked about. It is painful to be hated in the
intense degree with which Owen hates me.”
“I used to be ashamed of hating him so much, but
now I will carefully cherish my hatred & contempt to
the last days of my life.”

60. 1885

62. 1866

63. 1867

64. 1868

65. 1869

66. 1881

67. 1881

68. 1881

69. King of
A Shanty 1882

70. 1882

71. Swift
McNeil 1893

72. 1867

73. 1876

74. 1880

75. 1882