The meaning of absence
The primate tree that did not make it into Darwin's The Descent of Man
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 21877441 |
|---|---|
| Authors | M Sommer (0000-0001-7958-2901, University of Lucerne, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2021 |
| Volume | 6 |
| Pages | 45-61 |
| Publication date | 2021-01-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | BJHS Themes (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 2056-354X • E-ISSN: 2058-850X |
| Publisher | Cambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1017/bjt.2020.14 |
| OpenAlex | W3131116112 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 18 |
This paper engages with a specific image: Darwin's tree of the primates. Although this diagram was sketched in ink on paper in 1868, it did not make it into the publication of The Descent of Man (1871). This may seem all the more in need of an explanation because, as Adrian Desmond and James Moore have shown, Darwin strongly relied on the notion of familial genealogy in the development of his theory of organismic evolution, or rather descent. However, Darwin expressed scepticism towards visualizations of phylogenies in correspondence with Ernst Haeckel and in fact also in Descent , considering such representations at once too speculative and too concrete. An abstraction such as a tree diagram left little room to ponder possibilities or demarcate hypotheses from evidence. I thus bring Darwin's primate tree into communication with his view on primate and human phylogeny as formulated in Descent , including his rejection of polygenism. I argue that considering the tree's inherent teleology, as well as its power to suggest species status of human populations and to reify ‘racial’ hierarchies, the absence of the diagram in The Descent of Man may be a significant statement
Biology · Combinatorics · Epistemology · Evolutionary biology · Genealogy · Geography · Phylogenetic tree · Skepticism · Computer Science · Evolution and Science Education · History · Mathematics · Philosophy · Philosophy and History of Science · Race, Genetics, and Society · Genetics
| Citation velocity | historical |
|---|---|
| Highly cited | No |