Evolution and The Island of Doctor Moreau

There are a lot of misconceptions about Darwin's theory of evolution. One of the biggest is that he called the theory by that name. Albrecht von Haller used the word "evolution" in 1744 to mean "to unroll," so the word was around in Darwin's time, but Darwin never used it in the sense we use it today. It was added later by others, including Herbert Spencer, who is responsible for the theory we call Social Darwinism. This theory is misnamed; it is not based on Darwin's work, but Spencer's.

Darwin did not come up with his theory out of nowhere. Like anyone else who has made discoveries, he was influenced by others. For quite a long time before Darwin, people didn't look beyond the Biblical creation story. Such things as fossils, primitive stone tools and visible layers in rock were said to have been placed on earth by God. There wasn't a great deal of work done on what we now call evolution, until the age of exploration began. Around that time people noticed that there were different types of humans in different parts of the world. There were several attempts to classify the various types of humans, but such classifications were generally extremely ethnocentric, and included ideas that have been proved incorrect. For a time people believed that creatures like Dr. Moreau's Beast People could and did exist in the world; explorers told fantastic tales of humans with the heads of dogs, or mermaids, or islands populated by only humans of only one gender. In the seventeenth century John Ray coined the term "species," but he believed that none of the species had changed since the day of creation. Linnaeus, who invented the system of binomial nomenclature used today to classify different species, was also a creationist.

Darwin gave ...

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... lack reproductive fitness. They also revert to beast form very rapidly. For these reasons it is clear that they will die out quickly.

Bibliography:

Darwin: A Norton Critical Edition, Second Edition ; ed. by Philip Appleman; copyright 1979, 1970 by W.W. Norton & Company, Inc.

Philip G. Fothergill, Historical Aspects of Organic Evolution, pub. 1953 by the Philosophical Library Inc., 15 East 40th Street, New York, NY

Myers, provider of source material for Edie Heydt's notes from "Human Origins," fall 1997, Alfred. Much of the material in the notes is paraphrased, and the original information sources are unknown.

Michael Ruse, The Darwinian Revolution, pub. 1979 by The University of Chicago Press, Chicago 60637

H.G. Wells, The Island of Dr. Moreau, copyright 1996 by Dover Publications, Inc., USA [This is a reprint of the London 1896 edition.]