The Secret History of Victorian Evolution

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• Prof. Jim Secord, Dept. of History and Philosophy of Science
• Tuesday 12 May 2009, 13:00-14:00
• The Garden Room, St Edmund's College.

If you have a question about this talk, please contact Dr Zoe Binns.

Free light buffet lunch from 12.30

This talk offers a broad, and sometimes unexpected, perspective on the seemingly familiar picture of Victorian debates about evolution and religion. As is well known, many authors had proposed evolutionary theories long before Charles Darwin’s ‘On the Origin of Species’ appeared in 1859. What is often forgotten—particularly in the current 150th anniversary celebrations—is that there was a vibrant and sometimes virulent controversy about species from the mid-1840s onwards, which brought the entire question into public view, particularly in its theological dimensions.. This was sparked by the anonymous ‘Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation’ (1844). Yet Vestiges was in many ways a mysterious work. Its author was unknown for forty years, and although outwardly orthodox, the book seemed to many to be a pill of rank atheism. By comparison, Darwin’s “dangerous idea” was generally thought compatible with Christian orthodoxy. How could this be the case?

This talk is part of the Faraday Institute Events series.

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• The Garden Room, St Edmund's College

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