Human descent and sexual selection

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Title page of the 1st English edition.

The Descent of Man (Engl. The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex ) is the title of which appeared on 24 February 1871 two-volume work of Charles Darwin . In it he dealt with the descent of humans as well as with sexual selection and used the term " evolution " for the first time in one of his writings . The German translation published in the same year comes from the zoologist Julius Victor Carus .

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Charles Darwin 's The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex was published on February 24, 1871 by John Murray with an edition of 2500 copies and sold for a price of one pound and four shillings . The first edition was sold out on the third day after publication. The German zoologist Julius Victor Carus made an early effort to obtain the German translation, which could therefore appear in the year of publication of the original work under the title The Descent of Man and Sexual Selection . In the following years Carus also translated the other editions of the work.

History of origin

In the third to last paragraph of his work The Origin of Species , Darwin summarized in 1859 that “a wide field” now opens up for further research, and he concluded this paragraph with the well-known sentence: “Light will fall on the origin of humanity and its history. “ (Light will be thrown on the origin of man and his history.) Thomas Henry Huxley had already dealt with the“ ape descent ”of humans in 1863 in his work Evidence as to Man's Place in Nature, as did Ernst Haeckel in 1868 in Natural Creation History . Charles Lyell presented evidence of mankind's advanced age in The Geological Evidences of the Antiquity of Man in 1863 . Darwin hesitated to turn to the subject, and in 1868, The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication, put together additional facts to support his selection theory.

In early July 1868 he wrote to Alphonse Pyrame de Candolle : "I decided to disperse myself by publishing a short article on human descent." In the first edition of The Academy magazine in October 1869, publisher John Murray announced the appearance of For the coming year, announcing that “the main conclusions he came to in The Origin of Species ... will be applied to humans. [...] The difficult question of the gradual development of the peculiarities of morality and the intellectual properties of people of lower types is also briefly considered. "

In mid-August 1870 the manuscript was sent to the printer. In October 1870 Carus received the first clichés for his German translation. Darwin's daughter Henrietta Emma (1843–1927) helped with proofreading and defused some of his phrasing. On January 15, 1871, Darwin finished reviewing the final proofs .

Originally a three-part work was planned. He finished the third part on "Emotional Movements" in 1872 and published it as a separate work under the title The Expression of Emotional Movements in Humans and Animals .

The first English edition was followed by several reprints, whereby these were immediately translated into German by Carus in two editions (1871, 1872). In 1874 Darwin published a considerably expanded or modified second edition, which corresponds to the third German edition (again in two volumes) from 1875.

content

The upper figure is a human embryo according to Ecker , the lower one that of a dog according to Bischoff .

The work is divided into three parts and comprises a total of 21 chapters:

  • Part One: The Descent of Man
    1. Facts which testify to the descent of man from a lower form
    2. About the manner in which man evolved from a lower form
    3. Comparison of the spiritual powers of man with those of the lower animals
    4. Comparison of the spiritual powers of man with those of the lower animals (continued)
    5. About the development of intellectual and moral faculties during primeval times and civilized times
    6. About human relationships and genealogy
    7. About the races of man
  • Second part: Sexual selection
    1. Principles of Sexual Selection
    2. Secondary sexual characters in the lower classes of the animal kingdom
    3. Secondary sexual characters of the insects
    4. Insects. (Continued) order Lepidoptera
    5. Secondary sexual characters of fish, amphibians and reptiles
    6. Secondary sexual characters of the birds
    7. Birds (continued)
    8. Birds (continued)
    9. Birds (conclusion)
    10. Secondary sexual characters of the mammals
    11. Secondary Mammalian Sex Characters (Continued)
  • Third part: Sexual selection in relation to humans and the end
    1. Secondary human sexual characters
    2. Secondary human sexual characters (continued)
    3. General summary and conclusion

The first part deals with the descent of humans . Darwin expressed the assumption that humans developed in Africa . He explained that human intellectual and moral abilities only developed over time. Darwin regarded humans as a single species and argued against it, to understand the races (or subspecies ) of humans as different species (in the 7th chapter: "About the races of humans"). In the second edition, Darwin added to the first part an appendix written by Huxley entitled Note on the Similarities and Differences in the Structure and Development of the Brain in Man and in Apes .

In the second part he turned to sexual selection , the effects of which he described starting with the lower animals using insects , fish , amphibians , reptiles , birds and mammals . Only after this detailed discussion did he describe in the third part the effect of sexual selection on human development.

reception

Title page of the 1st German edition

An anonymous reviewer described the reactions of his contemporaries after it appeared in The Edinburgh Review : “Since The Origins of Species was published , no scientific book has received more attention than Mr. Darwin's new paper on human descent . In the drawing room it competes with the latest novel, and in the study it worries scientists, ethicists and theologians alike. Everywhere it is causing a storm, mixed with anger, astonishment and admiration. "

After initially benevolent reviews of his book, the critical voices increased. The Irish author Frances Power Cobbe (1822–1904) considered the views it represented on the moral nature of man to be the “most dangerous” since Bernard Mandeville and spoke of a “science fairy tale ”. St. George Mivart heavily criticized Darwin's work after it appeared in The Quarterly Review , which led to his ultimate falling out with Darwin.

In Germany, on the other hand, Anton Dohrn discussed Darwin's new work positively.

During Darwin's lifetime, the work was translated into German (1871), French (1872–1873), Italian (1871), Japanese (1881), Dutch (1871–1872), Polish (1874), Russian (1871), Swedish (1872) and Spanish (1876) translated.

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Original editions

German translations

  • 1st edition, translated from English by J. Victor Carus. E. Schweizerbart'sche Verlagshandlung (E. Koch), Stuttgart 1871, 2 volumes
  • 2nd edition, corrected from the last edition of the original, translated from English by J. Victor Carus. E. Schweizerbart'sche Verlagshandlung (E. Koch), Stuttgart 1871–1872, 2 volumes
  • 3rd edition, completely revised edition, translated from English by J. Victor Carus. In: Ch. Darwin's collected works, Vol. 5 & 6. E. Schweizerbart'sche Verlagshandlung (E. Koch), Stuttgart 1875; Volume 1 , Volume 2
Wikisource: Human Descent and Sexual Selection Volume I (1875)  - Sources and full texts
Wikisource: Human Descent and Sexual Selection, Volume II (1875)  - Sources and full texts

Meetings

  • [Anonymous]: In: The Annual Register . 1871, p. 368; on-line
  • [Anonymous]: In: The British Quarterly Review . January to April 1871; on-line
  • [Anonymous]: In: The Popular Science Review . Volume 10, 1871; on-line
  • [Anonymous]: In: The Edinburgh Review . Volume 134, 1871, online
  • [Anonymous]: In: Journal of Anatomy and Physiology . Volume 5, 1871, p. 363; on-line
  • [Anonymous]: In: The Medical Times and Gazette . Volume 1, 1871; on-line
  • [Anonymous]: (Review of) Dawin's Descent of Man . In: Brownson's Quarterly Review . 1871, p. 340; on-line
  • Frances Power Cobbe: Darwinism in Morals . In: The Theological Review . Volume 8, 1871; on-line
  • Anton Dohrn: English Critics and Anti-Critics on Darwinism . In the other countries . Volume 49, 1871, pp. 1153-1157
  • Neville Goodman: (Review of) The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex . In: Journal of Anatomy and Physiology . May 1871, No. 5, Part 2, pp. 363–372, PMC 1318795 (free full text)
  • St. George Mivart: Darwin's Descent of Man . In: The Quarterly Review . Volume 131, 1871, pp. 47-90; online - originally published anonymously

literature

  • Adrian Desmond, James Moore: Darwin . List, Munich / Leipzig 1991, ISBN 3-471-77338-X .
  • The evolutionary anthropology . In: Eve-Marie Engels: Charles Darwin . CH Beck, Munich 2007, ISBN 3-406-54763-X , pp. 127-163
  • Annette Grünewald: Natural science storytelling: an analysis of Charles Darwin's “The Descent of Man”, [Hamburg] 2003, OCLC 2551639 (Master's thesis University of Hamburg August 6, 2003, 82 sheets).
  • Thomas Junker: Charles Darwin (1809-1882) . In: Ilse Jahn , Michael Schmitt: Darwin & Co. A history of biology in portraits . Volume 1, CH Beck, Munich 2001, ISBN 3-406-44638-8 , pp. 369-389.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ John Murray to Charles Darwin, February 27 [1871], Letter 7519 in The Darwin Correspondence Project (accessed January 8, 2009).
  2. ↑ Origin of species p. 488
  3. ^ Charles Darwin to Alphonse de Candolle, July 6, 1868, Letter 6269 in The Darwin Correspondence Project, (accessed January 8, 2009).
  4. ^ Gowan Dawson: Darwin, Literature and Victorian Respectability . Cambridge University Press, 2007, ISBN 0-521-87249-9 , p. 29
  5. ^ Charles Darwin to Julius Viktor Carus, August 18 [1870], Letter 7305 in The Darwin Correspondence Project (accessed January 8, 2009).
  6. ^ Charles Darwin to Julius Viktor Carus, October 11, 1870, Letter 7340 in The Darwin Correspondence Project (accessed January 8, 2009).
  7. ↑ Desmond / Moore p. 650
  8. ↑ Desmond / Moore p. 651
  9. ↑ Emile ALGLAVE to Charles Darwin, October 22, 1869 letter 6269 in The Darwin Correspondence Project (accessed on 8 January 2009).
  10. ↑ Charles Darwin: The Descent of Man and Sexual Selection. Schweizerbart, 1871, p. 12 ( limited preview in Google book search).
  11. ↑ [Anonymous]: In: The Edinburgh Review . Volume 134, 1871, p. 195
  12. ↑ Eve-Marie Engels, p. 127 f.
  13. ↑ Bibliography of The Descent of Man

Web links

Commons : Ancestry of Humans  - collection of images, videos and audio files
Commons : The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex  - Collection of images, videos and audio files
Wikisource: Descent of Man  - Sources and full texts (English)
Wikisource: Human Lineage and Sexual Selection  - Sources and Full Texts