With insight and wit, Robert J. Richards focuses on the development of evolutionary theories of mind and behavior from their first distinct appearance in the eighteenth century to their controversial state today. Particularly important in the nineteenth century were Charles Darwin's ideas about instinct, reason, and morality, which Richards considers against the background of Darwin's personality, training, scientific and cultural concerns, and intellectual community. Many critics have argued that the Darwinian revolution stripped nature of moral purpose and ethically neutered the human animal. Richards contends, however, that Darwin, Herbert Spencer, and their disciples attempted to reanimate moral life, believing that the evolutionary process gave heart to unselfish, altruistic behavior. "Richards's book is now the obvious introduction to the history of ideas about mind and behavior in the nineteenth century."—Mark Ridley, Times Literary Supplement "Not since the publication of Michael Ghiselin's The Triumph of the Darwinian Method has there been such an ambitious, challenging, and methodologically self-conscious interpretation of the rise and development and evolutionary theories and Darwin's role therein."—John C. Greene, Science "His book . . . triumphantly achieves the goal of all great scholarship: it not only informs us, but shows us why becoming thus informed is essential to understanding our own issues and projects."—Daniel C. Dennett, Philosophy of Science This book traces the development of evolutionary theories of mind and behavior from their first distinctive appearance in the 18th century to their controverted state in the present. Robert J. Richards is professor of history, philosophy, and behavioral science at the University of Chicago. He is a member of the Committee on the Conceptual Foundations of Science and director of the Program in History, Philosophy, and Social Studies of Science and Medicine. Darwin And The Emergence of Evolutionary Theories of Mind and Behavior By Robert J. Richards, David L. Hull The University of Chicago Press Copyright © 1987 The University of Chicago All rights reserved. ISBN: 978-0-226-71200-0 Contents Illustrations, Preface, Introduction, 1. Origins of Evolutionary Biology of Behavior, 2. Behavior and Mind in Evolution: Charles Darwin's Early Theories of Instinct, Reason, and Morality, 3. Contributions of Natural Theology to Darwin's Theory of the Evolution of Mind and Behavior, 4. Debates of Evolutionists over Human Reason and Moral Sense, 1859–1871, 5. Darwin and the Descent of Human Rational and Moral Faculties, 6. Spencer's Conception of Evolution as a Moral Force, 7. Evolutionary Ethics: Spencer and His Critics, 8. Darwinism and the Demands of Metaphysics and Religion: Romanes, Mivart, and Morgan, 9. The Personal Equation in Science: William James's Psychological and Moral Uses of Darwinian Theory, 10. James Mark Baldwin: Evolutionary Biopsychology and the Politics of Scientific Ideas, 11. Transformation of the Darwinian Image of Man in the Twentieth Century, Appendix 1. The Natural-Selection Model and Other Models in the Historiography of Science, Appendix 2. A Defense of Evolutionary Ethics, Notes, Bibliography, Index, CHAPTER 1 Origins of Evolutionary Biology of Behavior The sciences of ethology and sociobiology have as premises that certain dispositions and behavioral patterns have evolved with species and that the acts of individual animals and men must therefore be viewed in light of innate determinants. These ideas are much older than the now burgeoning disciplines of the biology of behavior. Their elements were fused in the early constructions of evolutionary theory, and they became integral parts of the developing conception of species transformation. Historians, however, have usually neglected close examination of the role behavior has played in the rise of evolutionary thought. Yet behavior has been an important consideration virtually from the beginnings of systematic biological theorizing. Aristotle devoted generous portions of his Historia animalium to discussion of species-typical habits and relative grades of animal intelligence. Galen conducted a set of elegant experiments to show that certain actions of animals were innate and not learned. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, naturalists often disputed violently over interpretations of animal behavior, contending whether the activities of brutes were to be regarded as congenitally fixed or as the consequences of reasoned choice. These debates formed the immediate environment for the emergence of evolutionary theories at the turn of the eighteenth century. In this chapter, I wish to focus on the problems that animal instinct and intelligence posed for early evolutionary theorists. A chief difficulty stemmed from their commitment to the doctrines of sensationalism. Adherents of this persuasion in the seventeenth