Tag: George Eliot

Natural Selection is the differential survival and reproduction of individuals due to differences in phenotype, text concept button on keyboard

^{Type
post

Author
Neil Thomas

Date
November 17, 2025

Categories
Evolution
Scientific Reasoning
Tagged
, agnosticism, Alexander von Humboldt, Artificial Selection, breeders, Charles Darwin, Christianity, Dov Ospovat, Edward Bouverie Pusey, English, fossil record, George Eliot, HMS Beagle, livestock, metaphors, natural selection, naturalists, Naturphilosophie, Origin of Species, paleobiologists, physiology, Quarterly Review, Richard Owen, Samuel Wilberforce, terminology, theology, Victorian England, world spirit}

What’s in a Name? Darwin’s Confusing Terminology

_{Neil Thomas
November 17, 2025

Evolution, Scientific Reasoning

10}

In the English language prior to Darwin, “natural selection” was a term used by those who reared animals to denote nature’s serendipity. Read More ›

^{Type
post

Date
October 21, 2025

Categories
Culture
Evolution
History of Science
Tagged
, A. N. Whitehead, Algernon Charles Swinburne, Alistair McKitterick, Charles Darwin, Darwinism, David Galloway, Enlightenment, False Messiah, French Revolution, George Eliot, history, James Le Fanu, literature, Marxism, Michael Behe, Neil Thomas, Paul Beasley-Murray, Peter Jeavons, philosophy of nature, purpose, purposeless, Steve Fuller, Steve Laufmann, Taking Leave of Darwin, The Origin of Species, The Prelude, Victorian England, William Wordsworth}

New Book: Darwinism as “The God That Failed”

_{Science and Culture
October 21, 2025

Culture, Evolution, History of Science

8}

There is hope for renewal in a flanking movement against materialism — the spiritually charged philosophy of nature in the poetry of William Wordsworth. Read More ›

^{Type
post

Author
Neil Thomas

Date
September 25, 2025

Categories
Arts
Evolution
Tagged
, alchemy, ancient Greece, Ancient Rome, Aristotle, Ben Jonson, Charles Bradlaugh, Christopher Marlowe, Cicero, David Berman, Doctor Faustus, Enlightenment, Epicurus, evolution, Galen, George Eliot, George Henry Lewes, H. J. Shephard, history, HMS Beagle, intellectual history, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Journal of Researches, literature, Lucretianism, Lucretius, Matthew Arnold, Misia Landau, Origin of Species, Peter Bement, philosophy, Plato, Renaissance, seafaring, The Alchemist, Tom Wolfe}

Darwin, Faust, and the Alchemist: Unexpected Roots of a Scientific Idea

_{Neil Thomas
September 25, 2025

Arts, Evolution

19}

Today we would of course brand both Faust and the Alchemist fantasists or “mad scientists” of the first order. Was Darwin prone to such wishful thinking? Read More ›

^{Type
post

Author
Neil Thomas

Date
November 5, 2022

Categories
Bioethics
Faith & Science
Tagged
, Alexander Pope, bestseller, Charles Darwin, George Eliot, Harriet Martineau, John Stuart Mill, Lake District, nature, poets, tourists, transcendence, Victorian England, William Wordsworth, Wordsworth versus Darwin (series)}

Wordsworth: The Sage of the Lakes

_{Neil Thomas
November 5, 2022

Bioethics, Faith & Science

3}

Wordsworth gave rise not just to a minority group of high-culture admirers but to a popular revolution in ordinary people’s thinking. Read More ›

^{Type
post

Author
Neil Thomas

Date
January 28, 2022

Categories
Bioethics
Evolution
Philosophy
Tagged
, Bible, Charles Darwin, Charles Darwin and the Ghost of Epicurus (series), Christianity, Das Wesen des Christentums, David Hume, deism, demythologization, Enlightenment, evolution, faith, George Eliot, John Stuart Mill, Ludwig Feuerbach, On the Origin of Species, Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Samuel Wilberforce, secularization, The Essence of Christianity, Thucydides}

For Darwin, Timing Was Everything

_{Neil Thomas
January 28, 2022

Bioethics, Evolution, Philosophy

7}

Charles Darwin, as we saw yesterday, pulled off an intellectual coup against the major thinkers of the Western tradition. How did he do it? Read More ›

^{Type
post

Author
Neil Thomas

Date
January 12, 2022

Categories
Evolution
Life Sciences
Tagged
, agnostics, atheism, atomism, Charles Bradlaugh, Charles Darwin, Christianity, down, Edward Aveling, Epicurus, Erasmus Darwin, evolution, George Eliot, HMS Beagle, London, Lucretius, Ludwig Feuerbach, Natural Selection: Discovery or Invention? (series), Naturphilosophie, world spirit}

Darwinian Theory: Science or Speculative Philosophy?

_{Neil Thomas
January 12, 2022

Evolution, Life Sciences

7}

Bottom line: Darwin did not have a single scrap of empirical fieldwork to document his conjectures. Read More ›

^{Type
post

Author
Michael Flannery

Date
December 23, 2020

Categories
Evolution
Tagged
, Brooklyn, Brooklyn College, Daniel Dennett, Darwin and the Darwinian Revolution, Darwin's Dangerous Idea, Darwinism, David Berlinski, Down House, Edmund Burk, England, George Eliot, Gertrude Himmelfarb, Irving Kristol, Jacques Barzun, James D. Watson, Janet Browne, Jews, Lord Acton, Oliver Cromwell, Protestants, Roman Catholic, The Devil’s Delusion, The New Republic, The People of the Book, Thomas Henry Huxley, University of Chicago}

#10 Story of 2020: Farewell to Gertrude Himmelfarb

_{Michael Flannery
December 23, 2020

Evolution

7}

It is comforting to know that Himmelfarb never lost her intellectual acuity or her moral passion on the subject. Read More ›

^{Type
post

Author
Jonathan Witt

Date
December 12, 2020

Categories
Bioethics
Tagged
, "survival of the fittest", 2001: A Space Odyssey, civilization, Darwinian materialism, Darwinian theory, Émile Zola, evolution, extinction, George Eliot, H.G. Wells, humans, Jack London, literature, mutations, natural science, natural selection, naturalism, Robert Ardrey, science fiction, sheep, Stanley Kubrick, Stephen Crane, The Time Machine, Theodore Dreiser, Thomas Hardy, violence}

Literary Naturalism and a Time Machine

_{Jonathan Witt
December 12, 2020

Bioethics

3}

The sun is burning out, and life on Earth is heading for extinction. This aptly conveys Darwinian materialism’s vision of a meaningless universe. Read More ›

^{Type
post

Author
Robert F. Shedinger

Date
July 7, 2020

Categories
Evolution
Science Education
Tagged
, Alfred Tennyson, Benedikt Hallgrimsson, Brian K. Hall, élan vital, evolution, evolutionary biology, Galileo Galilei, Genetics (journal), George Bernard Shaw, George Eliot, Harvard School of Public Health, heliocentric model, Henri Bergson, Herbert Spencer, intelligent design, Isaac Newton, Johannes Kepler, John Cairns, Joseph Conrad, Karl Marx, Max Delbrück, Nicolaus Copernicus, Peter Bowler, Ptolemaic system, randomness, religion, Salvador Luria, Sigmund Freud, Strickberger’s Evolution, textbooks, Thomas Hardy, Thomas Kuhn}

The Triumphalism of Strickberger’s Evolution

_{Robert Shedinger
July 7, 2020

Evolution, Science Education

7}

The oversimplification here is staggering (Darwin and women’s rights?!) and would take an entire book to unpack. Read More ›

^{Type
post

Author
Michael Flannery

Date
January 3, 2020

Categories
Evolution
Tagged
, __edited, Brooklyn College, Charles Darwin, Daniel Dennett, Darwin and the Darwinian Revolution, Darwin's Dangerous Idea, David Berlinski, David Quammen, E.O. Wilson, Edmund Burk, England, George Eliot, Gertrude Himmelfarb, Irving Kristol, Jacques Barzun, Janet Browne, Jews, Julian Huxley, Library of Congress, Oliver Cromwell, The Devil’s Delusion, The New Republic, The People of the Book, University of Chicago, Winston Churchill}

Farewell to Gertrude Himmelfarb, Brutally Honest Historian of the “Darwinian Revolution”

_{Michael Flannery
January 3, 2020

Evolution

6}

Written in 1959, her monumental book, Darwin and the Darwinian Revolution, continues to tower over Whiggish studies on the subject. Read More ›