Essays on Francis Galton, George Darwin and the Normal Curve of Evolutionary Biology, Mathematical Association, 2018, 127 Pp, £9.00, ISBN 978-1-911616-03-0
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The Project Gutenberg Ebook #35588: <TITLE>
The Project Gutenberg EBook of Scientific Papers by Sir George Howard Darwin, by George Darwin This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org Title: Scientific Papers by Sir George Howard Darwin Volume V. Supplementary Volume Author: George Darwin Commentator: Francis Darwin E. W. Brown Editor: F. J. M. Stratton J. Jackson Release Date: March 16, 2011 [EBook #35588] Language: English Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 *** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SCIENTIFIC PAPERS *** Produced by Andrew D. Hwang, Laura Wisewell, Chuck Greif and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (The original copy of this book was generously made available for scanning by the Department of Mathematics at the University of Glasgow.) transcriber's note The original copy of this book was generously made available for scanning by the Department of Mathematics at the University of Glasgow. Minor typographical corrections and presentational changes have been made without comment. This PDF file is optimized for screen viewing, but may easily be recompiled for printing. Please see the preamble of the LATEX source file for instructions. SCIENTIFIC PAPERS CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS C. F. CLAY, Manager Lon˘n: FETTER LANE, E.C. Edinburgh: 100 PRINCES STREET New York: G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS Bom`y, Calcutta and Madras: MACMILLAN AND CO., Ltd. Toronto: J. M. DENT AND SONS, Ltd. Tokyo: THE MARUZEN-KABUSHIKI-KAISHA All rights reserved SCIENTIFIC PAPERS BY SIR GEORGE HOWARD DARWIN K.C.B., F.R.S. -
Calcul Des Probabilités
1913.] SHORTER NOTICES. 259 by series to the Legendre, Bessel, and hypergeometric equations will be useful to the student. The last of the important Zusâtze (see pages 637-663) is devoted to an exposition of the theory of systems of simul taneous differential equations of the first order. Having thus passed in quick review the contents of the book, it is now apparent that the translator has certainly accom plished his purpose of making it more useful to the student of pure mathematics. There remains the question whether there are not other additions which would have been desirable in accomplishing this purpose. There is at least one which, in the reviewer's opinion, should have been inserted. In connection with the theory of formal integration by series it would have been easy to insert a proof of the convergence in general of the series for the case of second order equations; and one can but regret that this was not done. Such a treat ment would have required only a half-dozen pages; and it would have added greatly to the value of this already valuable section. The translator's reason for omitting it is obvious; he was making no use of function-theoretic considerations, and such a proof would have required the introduction of these notions. But the great value to the student of having at hand this proof, for the relatively simple case of second order equations, seems to be more than a justification for departing in this case from the general plan of the book; it seems indeed to be a demand for it. -
Alfred Russel Wallace and the RASC
Astronomical Art & Artifact Alfred Russel Wallace and the RASC by R.A. Rosenfeld, RASC Archivist ([email protected]) o year passes without some milestones of that a decade after Darwin’s death, the great popularizer Sir Robert particularly significant part of human culture we call Ball could even state that “Astronomers were thus the first N“science” being celebrated in a big way. Big ideas get big evolutionists, they have sketched out a majestic scheme of parties. Astronomy is decently endowed with such occasions. evolution for the whole solar system and now they are rejoiced The 1986 apparition of Halley’s Comet included a celebration to find that the great doctrine of Evolution has received an of Edmund Halley’s work, and, from the cometary proof of extension to the whole domain of organic life by the splendid Newtonian celestial mechanics, led to a year-long party hosted genius of Darwin [Lightman 2007, 413].” Ball’s words carried by his successors for themselves and for the shades of Halley, weight. Formerly the Astronomer Royal of Ireland, that same his friend Newton, and their admirers Delisle, Messier, and year he was appointed to succeed John Couch Adams in the others (gains for the history of astronomy are well presented in Lowndean Chair of Astronomy and Geometry at Cambridge Thrower et al. 1990). The 2004 transit of Venus commemorated University. At Cambridge he was a colleague of the other historical efforts through parallactic methods to determine professor of astronomy, Sir George Darwin, Plumian Professor and refine what we now know as the astronomical unit (AU), of Astronomy and Experimental Philosophy, and second son of and honoured those who made the predictions, undertook Charles. -
1 What Animal?: Darwin's Displacement Of
Notes 1 What Animal?: Darwin’s Displacement of Man 1. Jacques Derrida, ‘The Animal That Therefore I Am (More to Follow)’, Critical Inquiry 28/2 (2002): 369–418. 2. W.H. Auden, ‘Address to the Beasts’. The Faber Book of Beasts. Ed. Paul Muldoon. London: Faber & Faber, 1997. 1–3. 3. Natural History Museum London, 2008, http://www.nhm.ac.uk/visit-us/ whats-on/darwin/index.html, accessed 10.11.2009. 4. The Beagle Project, http://www.thebeagleproject.com/voyages.html, accessed 10.11.2009. 5. See Diana Donald and Jane Munroe, Endless Forms: Charles Darwin, Natural Science, and the Visual Arts (New Haven, Conn. and London: Yale University Press, 2009). 6. University of Cambridge, 2009, http://www.darwin2009.cam.ac.uk/, accessed 10.11.2009. 7. A recent literary example is Will Self’s satire on primatologist discourse, in particular the work of Dian Fossey and Jane Goodall – and the sentimental idolisation of the same – in Great Apes. See Dian Fossey, Gorillas in the Mist (London: Phoenix, 2001), Jane Goodall, My Friends the Wild Chimpanzees (Washington, DC: National Geographic Society, 1967) and Will Self, Great Apes (1997, Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1998). 8. Gillian Beer, Darwin’s Plots. Evolutionary Narrative in Darwin, George Eliot and Nineteenth-Century-Fiction (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983, repr. 2000, 2009) and George Levine, Darwin and the Novelists. Patterns of Science in Victorian Fiction (Harvard University Press, 1988). 9. George Levine, ‘Reflections on Darwin and Darwinizing’, Victorian Studies 51.2 (2009): 223–45, 231–2. 10. Redmond O’Hanlon, Joseph Conrad and Charles Darwin: the Influence of Scientific Thought on Conrad’s Fiction (Edinburgh: Salamander, 1984), Michael Wainwright, Darwin and Faulkner’s Novels: Evolution and Southern Fiction (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2008). -
Scientific Papers
1909.] DARWIN'S SCIENTIFIC PAPERS. 73 historical note before the reimpression of the Traité du triangle arithmétique (volume 3, pages 435-444) never mention the name of one of the greatest European mathematicians of the sixteenth century. GENOA, ITALY, June, 1909. DARWIN'S SCIENTIFIC PAPERS. Scientific Papers. By SIR GEORGE HOWARD DARWIN, K.C.B., F.R.S., Plumian Professor in the University of Cam bridge. Vol. I, Oceanic Tides and Lunar Disturbance of Gravity, xiv + 463 pp.; Vol. II, Tidal Friction and Cos- mogony, xvi + 516 pp. Cambridge University Press, 1907, 8. Royal 8vo. IF one were in need of an example to illustrate the English use of the term "applied mathematics," it would hardly be possible to find a better one than that furnished by the scientific papers of Sir George Darwin. Many investigations ranging from the purest of pure mathematics to the observational por tions of the phenomena of nature have at times been placed under this title in our journals and treatises, and after all our language is governed by general usage and not by arbitrary rules. But in the use of an imported term it would seem better, in spite of the customs of late years, to take the foreign value rather than the domestic as the basis of definition. This definition implies an actual or suggested relation between a problem set forth on arbitrary hypotheses and the observed phe nomena of matter in space. The course which the argument follows — the laying down of hypothetical laws approximating as nearly as may be to those of nature, the translation into and development of those laws by means of symbols, and the final transference from the symbols back to the phenomena, is well known. -
Alfred Russel Wallace Letters and Reminiscences
ALFRED RUSSEL WALLACE LETTERS AND REMINISCENCES ALFRED RUSSEL WALLACE LETTERS AND REMINISCENCES BY JAMES MARCHANT HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS NEW YOR K AND LONDON ALFRED RUSSEL WALLACE Copyright. 1916, by Harper & Brothers Printed in the United States of America Published June, 1916 F-Q To the Memory of ANNIE WALLACE CONTENTS PAGE INTRODUCTION 1 PART I I. WALLACE'S EARLY YEARS 5 II. EARLY LETTERS (1854-62) 37 PART II I. THE DISCOVERY OF NATURAL SELECTION II. THE COMPLETE EXTANT CORRESPONDENCE BETWEEN WALLACE AND DARWIN (1857-81) 105 PART III I. WALLACE'S WORKS ON BIOLOGY AND GEOGRAPHICAL DISTRI- BUTION II. CORRESPONDENCE ON BIOLOGY, GEOGRAPHICAL DISTRIBUTION, III. CORRESPONDENCE ON BIOLOGY, GEOGRAPHICAL DISTRIBUTION, ETC. (1894-1913) . 312 PART IV HOME LIFE • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • • 349 PART V SOCIAL AND POLITICAL VIEWS • • • • • • • • • • • • 379 PART VI SOME FURTHER PROBLEMS I. ASTRONOMY 401 II. SPIRITUALISM 413 PART VII CHARACTERISTICS 442 APPENDIX: LISTS OF WALLACE'S WRITINGS INDEX PREFACE HIS volume consists of a selection from several thou T sands of letters entrusted to me by the Wallace family and dating from the dawn of Darwinism to the second decade of the twentieth century, supplemented by such biographical particulars and comments as are required for the elucidation of the correspondence and for giving movement and continuity to the whole. The wealth and variety of Wallace's own correspondence, excluding the large collection of letters which he received from many eminent men and women, would be sufficient material to make four volumes. The family has given me unstinted con fidence in using or rejecting letters and reminiscences, and al though I have consulted scientific and literary friends, I alone must be blamed for sins of omission or commission. -
The Distribution of Variation Before, During and After Speciation
The Distribution of Variation Before, During and After Speciation Chris Pritchard ABSTRACT Francis Galton and Charles Darwin both came to consider Quetelet’s law of error, now the normal curve, to be the best model for the distribution of variation in the characters of species where there is little pressure to survive. The initial focus for Galton was the distribution of abilities in humans and in this context he speculated that pressures arising from artificial selection, specifically differential birth rates across the social strata, distorted the distribution. He did not concern himself directly with the distribution of variation as species separate, though it is possible to picture the shape of the distribution implicit in his discussion of saltationism. Charles Darwin argued in Nature that, under changed conditions, the symmetry of the distribution would be lost around the point at which species separate but his son, George Darwin, showed how the symmetry would be restored. By a different argument, George Romanes also explained that the symmetry of the normal distribution would return and, with his analysis, Galton was in full agreement. Galton on the distribution of abilities before, during and after eugenic intervention In Hereditary Genius, published in 1869, Galton extended Quetelet’s use of the error law to model the distribution of abilities in humans. His interest was in the extent and manner in which intelligence was ranged in the population and how it might be transmitted from one generation to the next. Whilst he had nothing to say about animal species, he did draw conclusions about different races in man. -
The Galtondarwinwedgwood Pedigree of H. H. Laughlin
Biological Journal of the Linnean Society, 2010, 101, 228–241. With 5 figures The Galton–Darwin–Wedgwood Pedigree of H. H. Laughlin TIM M. BERRA FLS1*, GONZALO ALVAREZ2 and KATE SHANNON3 1Department of Evolution, Ecology and Organismal Biology, The Ohio State University, 1760 University Drive, Mansfield, OH 44906, USA 2Departamento de Genética, Facultad de Biología, Universidad de Santiago de Compostela, 15782 Santiago de Compostela, Spain 3Department of Art, The Ohio State University, 1760 University Drive, Mansfield, OH 44906, USA Received 12 April 2010; revised 17 June 2010; accepted for publication 17 June 2010bij_1529 228..241 A pedigree of the Galton–Darwin–Wedgwood families that was exhibited as a poster at the Third International Congress of Eugenics in 1932 at the American Museum of Natural History has been located in the archives of Truman State University in Kirksville, Missouri. This pedigree was prepared by Harry Hamilton Laughlin, Director of the Eugenics Record Office of the Carnegie Institute. The pedigree shows consanguineous marriages within the three families. A special collection of rare Darwin family photographs assembled by Leonard Darwin has also been found in the Truman State University archives. These photographs were exhibited as a poster alongside the pedigree at the 1932 Eugenics Congress. The poster of the Galton–Darwin–Wedgwood pedigree is published here, together with a tabular version providing ready access to the information contained in the pedigree. Also included are the Darwin family photographs and a biographical sketch of Laughlin. © 2010 The Linnean Society of London, Biological Journal of the Linnean Society, 2010, 101, 228–241. ADDITIONAL KEYWORDS: consanguinity – cousin marriages – eugenics – inbreeding. -
George William Hill
NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA BIOGRAPHICAL MEMOIRS PART OF VOLUME VIII BIOGRAPHICAL MEMOIR GEORGE WILLIAM HILL 1838-1914 ERNEST W. BROWN PRESENTED TO THE ACADEMY AT THE ANNUAL MEETING, 1915 CITY OF WASHINGTON PUBLISHED BY THE NATIONAL ACADEMY OF SCIENCES June, 1916 GEORGE WILLIAM HILL.* BY ERNEST W. BROWN. GEORGE WILLIAM HILL was the son of John William Hill and Catherine Smith, and was born in New York City on March 3, 1838. Both his father and grandfather were artists, and he himself was of English and Huguenot descent. His early education, like that of most of the men of his time in America, gave him few advantages. In 1846, when his father moved from New York to the farm at West Nyack, the coun- try was too busy with material development to produce many teachers who could give any but the most elementary instruc- tion, and the country school which he attended must have been inferior in this respect to those in the larger cities. Even at Rutgers College, in New Jersey, to which Hill was sent, owing to the exhibition of unusual capacity, and from which he took his degree in 1859, the course probably went but little beyond that now found in secondary schools. There, however, he came under thte influence of a man whose ideas on education were unusual. Dr. Strong, according to Hill's evidence, be-> lieved only in the classic treatises; but little published after 1840 was admitted to his library. Under him, Hill read La- croix's Differential and Integral Calculus, Poisson's Traite de Mecanique, de Pontecoulant's Systeme du Monde, Laplace's Mecanique Celeste, Lagrangie's Mecanique Analytique, Le- gendre's Functions Elliptiques. -
Survival of the Fittest
THE LINNEAN SPECIAL ISSUE No. 9 Survival of the Fittest A Special Issue of The Linnean celebrating the 150th anniversary of the Darwin-Wallace theory of evolution edited by Brian Gardiner, Richard Milner and Mary Morris WILEY-BLACKWELL 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ Special Issue No. 9 of The Linnean Newsletter and Proceedings of The Linnean Society of London ISSN 0950-1096 © 2008 The Linnean Society of London Burlington House, Piccadilly, London W1J 0BF www.linnean.org Charity Reference No. 220509 All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. The designations of geographic entities in this book, and the presentation of the material, do not imply the expression of any opinion whatsoever on the part of the publishers, the Linnean Society, the editors or any other participating organisations concerning the legal status of any country, territory, or area, or of its authorities, or concerning the delimitation of its frontiers or boundaries. Introduction and the “Joint Essay” This Special Issue of The Linnean is to commemorate the 150th anniversary of the most important event in the history of the Linnean Society: the reading of the Joint Essay of Darwin and Wallace in July 1858. It comprises seven papers in all, which are mainly concerned with the post-1858 careers of Darwin and Wallace. Returning to the Joint Essay, it is important to note that in May 1855 Bennett and Hooker submitted a resolution that in future papers communicated for the Proceedings should be printed in full, given a printed cover and registered as a Periodical. -
PGOMLDADLDCD Ed by Arthur Doodson That They Delayed the Years Later, Paul Hoffman Published an (Poor Great Old Man, Living Dead, Archae- Use of Computers in This Area
book reviews that the Earth’s speed of rotation was slow- describe events known to most readers, and Erdös was born in 1913 in Hungary, and ing down. He explains the problems of during which Cartwright himself had a key discovered negative numbers when he was the dissipation energy budget which has role. This was the time when, with the intro- four. He belonged to that extraordinary intrigued astronomers since Laplace. Light duction of computers, the first global cluster of scientific geniuses — which was shed on all this by the study of the partic- model of ocean tides was calculated by included John von Neumann, inventor of ular case of the Irish Sea model (1919). But a Chaim Pekeris in 1960, when ocean tidal the electronic computer and game theory, final estimate for the equilibrium energy loading was introduced in the Laplace and the Nobel prizewinners Eugene budget had to await data obtained later by equations, while in 1979 the models of Wigner, George de Hevesy and George artificial satellites and lunar laser-ranging Ernst Schwiderski described 11-diurnal, Olah — who emerged from two or three measurements. semi-diurnal and long-period tides. Dur- schools in Budapest after the First World Until the dawn of the twentieth century, ing this time also, George Platzman calcu- War. tidal research was carried out almost exclu- lated the normal modes of oscillation of the During his life, Erdös wrote more than sively by two European countries that main- ocean, and a method for analysing and pre- 1,500 papers, books and articles, more than tained large navies and regularly observed dicting tides, known as the ‘response any other mathematician ever. -
Creating the Royal Society's Sylvester Medal, British Journal for the History of Science, Volume 37 (1), 75 - 92
promoting access to White Rose research papers Universities of Leeds, Sheffield and York http://eprints.whiterose.ac.uk/ This is an author produced version of a paper published in British Journal for the History of Science. White Rose Research Online URL for this paper: http://eprints.whiterose.ac.uk/3222/ Published paper Cantor, G. (2004) Creating the Royal Society's Sylvester Medal, British Journal for the History of Science, Volume 37 (1), 75 - 92. White Rose Research Online [email protected] BJHS 37(1): 75–92, March 2004. f British Society for the History of Science DOI: 10.1017/S0007087403005132 Creating the Royal Society’s Sylvester Medal GEOFFREY CANTOR* Abstract. Following the death of James Joseph Sylvester in 1897, contributions were collected in order to mark his life and work by a suitable memorial. This initiative resulted in the Sylvester Medal, which is awarded triennially by the Royal Society for the encouragement of research into pure mathematics. Ironically the main advocate for initiating this medal was not a fellow mathematician but the chemist and naturalist Raphael Meldola. Religion, not mathematics, provided the link between Meldola and Sylvester; they were among the very few Jewish Fellows of the Royal Society. This paper focuses primarily on the politics of the Anglo- Jewish community and why it, together with a number of scientists and mathematicians, supported Meldola in creating the Sylvester Medal. At the Anniversary Meeting of the Royal Society held on the afternoon of St Andrew’s Day 1901, Henri Poincare´ was awarded the Sylvester Medal, for his ‘many contri- butions to mathematical science’.