Eve-Marie Engels and Thomas F. Glick (eds): The Reception of Charles Darwin in Europe

Abstract

Charles Darwin was anxious about how his theory would be received before he even wrote the ‘‘abstract’’ that was eventually published as The Origin of Species in 1859. It is no surprise that there was an immediate reaction in England. However the reaction to Darwin’s theory differed from country to country. In addition, Darwin’s theory became known in several countries several years after its original publication. In many cases its reception has not been studied in a systematic way. Consequently, in order to understand how his theory was received in Europe, it is necessary to examine each country separately and understand the respective cultural, political, and historical context. This is what the double volume work under the title The Reception of Charles Darwin in Europe aims to achieve. It is edited by Eve-Marie Engels, Professor of Ethics in the Life Sciences at the University of Tubingen, Germany, and Thomas Glick, Professor of History at Boston University, USA. Glick is well known as a founding figure (perhaps the founding figure) in the study of the reception of Darwin, as he was the editor of the first book ever published on the subject in 1974 (Glick 1988; a nice overview of reception studies is given in Glick 2010). There is no way that such a huge book can be reviewed in detail. I will rather provide a brief overview of the contents of the volumes and then describe how this book can be used in understanding what is at stake with the teaching of Darwin and evolution in Europe today. After a preface, the acknowledgments, and the list of contributors the first volume includes a very informative timeline, compiled by the editors, about the European reception of Charles Darwin. This is a 47-page long timeline, from 1809 until 2008. Then in their introduction, the editors provide an overview of Darwin’s reception in Europe. Most importantly, on page 3 they present a list of questions they formulated which the authors could use as a guiding thread. The questions concerned the specific factors in society which encouraged or inhibited the reception in specific disciplines, whether the general philosophical ideas and methodological standards of these disciplines influenced the reception, whether there were any scientific societies or institutions which were relevant for the acceptance or reception, whether there was any distinction among the various