Darwin and the White Shipwrecked Sailor: Beyond Blending Inheritance and the Jenkin Myth.

This paper revisits Fleeming Jenkin's anonymous review of Charles Darwin's Origin of Species, published in the North British Review in June 1867. This review is usually revered for its impact on Darwin's theory of descent with modification. Its classical interpretation states that Jenkin, a Professor of Engineering at the University of Edinburgh, made a compelling case against natural selection based on the fact of "blending inheritance" and the "swamping" of advantageous variations. Those themes, however, are strikingly absent from Jenkin's text. They were later read into Jenkin's text by scholars trying to explain how Darwinian selection was reconciled with Mendelian genes and the birth of the Modern Synthesis. While many scholars have tried to measure Jenkin's effect on Darwin, the value of the 1867 review remains unclear. This paper re-examines its content and concludes that Jenkin's "able review" was in fact written by an engineer whose competencies in biology were very low. Focusing on the figure of the shipwrecked white sailor isolated on an island inhabited by Black people, this paper also underlines the racial assumptions behind Jenkin's review. "Blending inheritance" is thus a theme linked to theoretical reworkings on the question of race and skin colors, taking its root in Galton's typology of heredity. Darwin was probably mostly unimpressed by Jenkin's review. The problems raised by the review were not so much "blending inheritance" and "swamping" but a conundrum of problems related to the effects of intercrossing on variation and reversion.

Bateman's Data: Inconsistent with "Bateman's Principles".

A.J. Bateman (1948) hypothesized that a metric of sexual selection is in sex differences of intrasexual variance in number of mates (V NM). AJB predicted that (a) males have greater variance in reproductive success (V RS) than females; (b) males have greater V NM than females; and (c) a positive relationship between V NM and V RS is stronger among males. AJB used phenotypically observable mutations in offspring to identify parents and to count subjects' NM and RS. AJB's conclusions matched his predictions, later called "Bateman's Principles." Empirical challenges to his conclusions guided analyses herein. (a) AJB's analysis pseudo-replicated sample sizes, violating a sexual selection assumption: That is, individuals must be in the same population to choose and compete. (b) AJB's methods overestimated subjects with no mates while underestimating subjects with one or more. (c) A replication (Gowaty et al., 2012) showed that offspring inheriting nametags from both parents often died before expressing adult phenotypes, proving some of AJB's methods produced biased data. Science historian Thierry Hoquet located AJB's archived, handwritten laboratory notes, photocopied, and transcribed them. We tested each of the 65 unique populations for expected combinations in offspring of parental mutations: 41.5% failed Punnett's tests: Offspring carrying nametags simultaneously from both parents were missing showing estimates of parents' NM and V NM were undercounted. 58.5% of populations met Punnett's expectations providing an unparalleled opportunity to re-evaluate AJB's predictions. 34 unbiased populations had no sex differences in V RS; 37 had no sex differences in V NM. No sex differences in slopes of RS and NM occurred in any unbiased population. Regressions showed weak, positive, significant associations between V NM and V RS for females and males, contrary to AJB's prediction that the relationship would be positive in males but not in females. AJB's laboratory data are inconsistent with "Bateman's Principles."

Defining "Development".

Is it possible, and in the first place is it even desirable, to define what "development" means and to determine the scope of the field called "developmental biology"? Though these questions appeared crucial for the founders of "developmental biology" in the 1950s, there seems to be no consensus today about the need to address them. Here, in a combined biological, philosophical, and historical approach, we ask whether it is possible and useful to define biological development, and, if such a definition is indeed possible and useful, which definition(s) can be considered as the most satisfactory.

What Does It Mean to be Central? A Botanical Geography of Paris 1830-1848.

This paper focuses on the geography of the botanical community in Paris, under the July Monarchy (1830-1848). At that time, the Muséum d'Histoire naturelle (MHN) was at its institutional acme and, under the impulse of François Guizot, its budget was increasing dramatically. However, closer attention to manuscript sources (correspondence, travel diaries) reveals that the botanists of the time favoured other private institutions, located both on the Right and Left Banks of the Seine. The MHN was prestigious for its collections and professors but it was relatively remote from the centre of Paris, and its plant samples were sometimes difficult to access. Several other first-class private herbaria granted liberal access to botanists: those of Jacques Gay, Phillip Barker Webb, and Benjamin Delessert. Thanks to their wealth, these plant amateurs had ownership of historical herbaria consisting of species types alongside rich botanical libraries. Botanists visiting Paris from foreign countries or other provinces of France also spent some time studying less general plant collections, like those of Count Jaubert, or specialized collections, like Montagne's or Léveillé's on cryptogams. Other botanists also enjoyed renown at the time, although they published little, if anything (like Maire). Living in crammed apartments, literally in the middle of their plant samples, these botanists were key nodes in botanical networks, although they had no relation with the prestigious MHN.

Benjamin Delessert's collections between travelers and Candolle's natural method (1803-1847).

During the first half of the nineteenth century, while Georges Cuvier ruled over natural history and the Muséum d'Histoire Naturelle (MHN) was at its institutional acme, a French banker and industrialist with a Swiss family background, Benjamin Delessert, was developing an important botanical museum in Paris. His private collection included both a rich botanical library and a massive herbarium: the close integration of these two dimensions, together with the magnanimity of Delessert's patronage, contributed to making this private institution a worthy rival to the powerful and state-funded MHN. Delessert's museum had the favor of both professional and amateur naturalists. Knowledgeable and dedicated assistants (Antoine Guillemin and Antoine Lasègue) curated the collections. Moreover, Delessert was an intimate friend of the Genevan botanist Augustin- Pyramus de Candolle. Although Delessert's herbarium followed the Linnaean order, the Delessert Botanical Museum (DBM) contributed to the development of Candolle's natural system, especially through the publication of costly volumes of engravings, the Icones selectae plantarum rariorum. This essay draws together the main steps in the evolution of Delessert's collections, stressing the interdependency between books and dried plants. It focuses on the DBM as a case of cooperation between institutional and amateur expertise, private and public collections, and field collectors and cabinet naturalists.

History without time: Buffon's natural history as a nonmathematical physique.

While "natural history" is practically synonymous with the name of Buffon, the term itself has been otherwise overlooked by historians of science. This essay attempts to address this omission by investigating the meanings of "physique," "natural philosophy," and "history," among other terms, with the purpose of understanding Buffon's actual objectives. It also shows that Buffon never claimed to be a Newtonian and should not be considered as such; the goal is to provide a historical analysis that resituates Buffon's thought within his own era. This is done, primarily, by eschewing the often-studied question of time in Buffon. Instead, this study examines the nontemporal meanings of the word "history" within the naturalist's theory and method. The title of his Natural History is examined both as an indicator of the kind of science that Buffon was hoping to achieve and as a source of great misinterpretation among his peers. Unlike Buffon, many of his contemporaries actually envisioned the study of nature from a Baconian perspective where history was restricted to the mere collection of facts and where philosophy, which was the implicit and ultimate goal of studying nature, was seen, at least for the present, as unrealizable. Buffon confronts this tendency insofar as his Histoire naturelle claims to be the real physique that, along with describing nature, also sought to identify general laws and provide clear insight into what true knowledge of nature is or should be. According to Buffon, history (both natural and civil) is not analogous to mathematics; it is a nonmathematical method whose scope encompasses both nature and society. This methodological stance gives rise to the "physicization" of certain moral concepts--a gesture that was interpreted by his contemporaries as Epicurean and atheist. In addition, Buffon reduces a number of metaphysically tainted historical concepts (e.g., antediluvian monuments) to objects of physical analysis, thereby confronting the very foundation of natural theology. In Buffon, as this essay makes clear, natural history is paving the way for a new physique (science of natural beings), independent from mathematics and from God, that treats naturalia in a philosophical and "historical" manner that is not necessarily "temporal."

Darwin teleologist? Design in The orchids.

Focusing on "The Orchids," this article aims at disentangling the concepts of teleology, design and natural theology. It refers to several contemporary critics of Darwin (Kölliker, Argyll, Royer, Candolle, Delpino) to challenge Huxley's interpretation that Darwin's system was "a deathblow" to teleology. "The Orchids" seems rather to be a "flank-movement" (Gray): it departs from the Romantic theories of transmutation and the "imaginary examples" of the Origin; it focuses on empirical data and on teleological structures. Although Darwin refers to natural selection, his readers mock him for his fascination for delicate morphological contrivances and co-adaptations - a sign that he was inescapably lured to finality. Some even suggested that his system was a "theodicy". In the history of Darwinism, "The Orchids" reveals "another" quite unexpected and heterodox Darwin: freed from the hypothetical fancies of the Origin, and even suggesting a new kind of physico-theology.