Evolution, Old & New

In his second book on evolution Butler surveyed the contributions of the early theorists – Buffon, Erasmus Darwin and Lamarck – alongside the more recent theories of Herbert Spencer, St George Mivart and Charles Darwin, attempting to present his own ideas as a continuation of the scientific history. The book dramatically concluded that Charles Darwin’s work was little more than a rehashing of Erasmus Darwin’s and Lamarck’s, combined with a denial of ‘the purposiveness or teleology inherent in evolution as first propounded’.