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Robert J. Richards

The University of Chicago

 

Bibliography

 

Books

 

 

The Tragic Sense of Life:  Ernst Haeckel and the Struggle over Evolutionary Thought. University of Chicago Press, 2008 (580 pp.). Sample chapters:  Preface & Chapter 1; Chapter 10.

        

 

The Romantic Conception of Life: Science and Philosophy in the Age of Goethe.  University of Chicago Press, 2002; paperback, 2004 (606 pp.). Winner of the University of Chicago Press’s Laing Prize. 

(Reviews)

 

 

The Meaning of Evolution:  The Morphological Construction and Ideological Reconstruction of Darwin’s Theory.  University of Chicago Press, 1992; paperback, 1993 (203 pp.).

 

 

Darwin and the Emergence of Evolutionary Theories of Mind and Behavior.  University of Chicago Press, 1987; paperback, 1989 (700 pp.).  Winner of the History of Science Society’s Pfizer Prize for the Best Book in the History of Science, 1988.

 

 

Darwinian Heresies, edited with Abigail Lustig and Michael Ruse (Cambridge:  Cambridge University Press, 2004).                         

 

 

 

 

 

Cambridge Companion to the Origin of Species, edited with Michael Ruse, forthcoming in September 2008

         

 

 

 

 



Current Research:
An Historical and Philosophical Commentary on Darwin's Origin of Species

Forthcoming Articles:
 

“Karl Ernst von Baer,” in Evolution: A Guide , ed. Michael Ruse and Joseph Travis (Cambridge:  Harvard University Press, 2008).

 

“Ernst Haeckel,” in Evolution: A Guide, ed. Michael Ruse and Joseph Travis (Cambridge:  Harvard University Press, 2008).

"Science as a Process, " in Evolution: A Guide, ed. Michael Ruse and Joseph Travis (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2008)

 

"Darwin's Theory of Natural Selection and Its Moral Purpose," Cambridge Companion to Darwin's Origin of Species, eds. Robert J. Richards and Michael Ruse (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008).

 

 

 

Published Articles:

 

“The Moral Grammar of Narratives in History of Biology—the Case of Haeckel and Nazi Biology,” Cambridge Companion to the Philosophy of Biology, ed. Michael Ruse and David Hull (Cambridge:  Cambridge University Press, 2007).

 

“Ernst Haeckel’s Alleged Anti-Semitism and Contributions to Nazi Biology,” Biological Theory 2 (Winter, 2007): 97-103. (Response to Daniel Gasman's Critique)

Nature is the Poetry of Mind, or How Schelling Solved Goethe’s Kantian Problems,” in Michael Friedman and Alfred Nordman (eds.), The Kantian Legacy in Nineteenth[Century Science (Cambridge:  MIT Press, 2006): 27-50.

 Ernst Haeckel and the Struggles over Evolution and Religion,” Annals of the History and Philosophy of Biology 10 (2005):  89-116.

 

The Aesthetic and Morphological Foundations of Ernst Haeckel’s Evolutionary Project,” in Mary Kemperink and Patrick Dassen (eds.), The Many Faces of Evolution in Europe, 1860-1914 (Amsterdam:  Peeters, 2005), pp. 1-16 + plates.

 

The Narrative Structure of Moral Judgments in History:  Evolution and Nazi Biology(2005 Ryerson Lecture), The University of Chicago Record 39 (May 26, 2005).

 

Darwin’s Metaphysics of Mind,” in Darwin and Philosophy, ed. Vittorio Hoesle and Christian Illies (Notre Dame:  Notre Dame University Press, 2005), pp. 166-80.

 

The Relation of Spencer’s Evolutionary Theory to Darwin’s,” in Great Jones and Robert Peel (eds.), Herbert Spencer:  The Intellectual Legacy (London:  The Galton Institute, 2004), pp. 17-36.

 

If This be Heresy:  Haeckel’s Conversion to Darwinism,” in Abigail Lusting, Robert J. Richards, and Michael Ruse (eds.), Darwinian Heresies (Cambridge:  Cambridge University Press, 2004), pp. 101-30.

 

Michael Ruse’s Design for Living,” Journal of the History of Biology, 37 (2004):  25-38.

 

“Did Friedrich Schelling Kill Auguste Böhmer and Does it Matter? Or, the Role of Biography in Intellectual History,” in Biography and Historical Analysis, ed. Lloyd Ambrosius (Lincoln:  University of Nebraska Press,  2004):  133-54.

 

The Erotic Authority of Nature:  Science, Art, and the Female during Goethe’s Italian Journey,” in The Moral Authority of Nature, ed.  Lorraine Daston and Fernando Vidal (Chicago:  University of Chicago Press, 2003), pp. 127-54.

 

Darwin on the Evolution of Mind, Behavior, and Emotions,” in Jonathan Hodge and Gregory Radick (eds.), Cambridge Companion to Darwin (Cambridge:  Cambridge University Press, 2003), pp. 92-115.

 

"Biology," in David Cahan (ed.), From Natural Philosophy to the Sciences:  Writing the History of Nineteenth-Century Science (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003), pp. 16-48.

 

Race,” Oxford Companion to the History of Modern Science, ed. John Heilbron (Oxford: University of Oxford Press, 2002)

     

The Linguistic Creation of Man: Charles Darwin, August Schleicher, Ernst Haeckel, and the Missing Link in 19th-Century Evolutionary Theory,” in Experimenting in Tongues: Studies in Science and Language, ed. Matthias Doerres (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2002)

 

“Psychology as a Humanism,” Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences, 37 (2001):  61-66.

 

Kant and Blumenbach on the Bildungstrieb:  A Historical Misunderstanding," Studies in the History and Philosophy of Biology and Biomedical Sciences, 31(2000): 11-32


 

“The Epistemology of Historical Interpretation: Progressivity and Recapitulation in Darwin’s Theory” in Epistemology and Biology, eds.  Richard Creath and Jane Maienschein (Cambridge:  Cambridge University Press, 1999), pp.64-90.

 

“The Nature and Necessity of Cultural History of Science,” The Modern Schoolman 76 (1999).

 

“Darwin’s Romantic Biology, the Foundation of his Evolutionary Ethics,” in Biology and the Foundation of Ethics, ed.  Jane Maienschein and Michael Ruse (Cambridge:  Cambridge University Press, 1999), pp. 113-53.  (A briefer version of this article has been distributed as the Stiernotte Lecture for 1997).

 

“Charles Darwin,” The MIT Encyclopedia of the Cognitive Sciences (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1999)

 

Rhapsodies on a Cat-Piano, or Johann Christian Reil and the Foundations of Romantic Psychiatry,” Critical Inquiry 24, no. 3 (spring, 1998): 700-736.

 

“The Darwinian Justification of Altruism,” Acta Universitatis Upsaliensis (Studies in Bioethics and Research Ethics) 3 (1998): 37-50.

 

"Theological Foundations of Darwin's Theory of Evolution," in Science in Context, eds. Karen Parshall and Paul Theerman, (Rutgers University Press, 1996).

 

"Arguments in a Sartorial Mode, or the Asymmetries of History and Philosophy of Science," in Proceedings of the Philosophy of Science Association 1992, vol. 2, eds. M. Forbes and D. Hull (1994)

 

"Resistance to Constructed Belief," in Questions of Evidence, eds. J. Chandler, A. Davidson, and H. Harootunian (Chicago:  University of Chicago Press, 1994)

 

"Ideology and the History of Science," in Biology and Philosophy , 8 (1993):  103-108

 

"Birth, Death, and Resurrection of Evolutionary Ethics," in Evolutionary  Ethics, ed. Matthew Nitecki (New York:  SUNY, 1993). reprinted as "Evolutionäre Ethik revidiert und gerechtfertigt," in Evolution und Ethik, ed. Kurt Bayertz  (Stuttgart:  Reclam Verlag, 1993), pp.  168-98.

 

"Evolution," in Keywords in Evolutionary Biology, edited by Evelyn Fox  Keller and Elisabeth Lloyd.  (Cambridge Mass.:  Harvard University Press, 1992), pp. 95-105.

 


"The Structure of Narrative Explanation in History and Science," in  History and Evolution, ed. M. Nitecki and D. Nitecki (New York:  State University of New York Press, 1992), pp. 19-54.

 

"Dutch Objections to Evolutionary Ethics," Biology and Philosophy, 4 (1989):  331-43.

 

"The Moral Foundations of the Idea of Evolutionary Progress:  Darwin, Spencer, and the Neo-Darwinians," in Evolutionary Progress, ed.  Matthew Nitecki (Chicago:  University of Chicago Press, 1988); reprinted in Oxford Readings in Philosophy: The Philosophy of Biology, ed. D. Hull and M. Ruse (Oxford:  Oxford University Press, 1998).

 

"A Defense of Evolutionary Ethics," with replies by Cela-Conde, Gewirth, Hughes, Thomas, and Trigg, and rejoinder "Justification  through Biological Faith," Biology and Philosophy 1, no. 3 (1986).  Reprinted in Issues in Evolutionary Ethics, ed. Paul Thompson (Albany, N.Y.: State University of New York Press, 1995).

 

"William James's Theory of Mental Evolution," Contributions to a History of Developmental Psychology, eds. G. Eckardt and W. Bringmann (Berlin:  Mouton, 1985).

 

"Why Darwin Delayed, or Interesting Problems and Models in the History of Science," Journal of the History of Behavioral Sciences 19  (1983):  45-53; reprinted in A History of Psychology:  Original  Sources and Contemporary Research, ed. L. Benjamin, 2nd ed. (New York:   McGraw-Hill, 1998).

 

"The Personal Equation in Science:  William James's Psychological and  Moral Uses of Darwinian Theory," A William James Renaissance,  ed. M. Schwehn, Harvard Library Bulletin (special issue), 30  (1982):  387-425.

 

"Darwin and the Biologizing of Moral Behavior," The Problematic Science:  Psychology in Nineteenth-Century Thought, eds W. Woodward and M. Ash (New York:  Praeger, 1982), pp. 43-64.

 

"Emergence of Evolutionary Biology of Behavior in the Early Nineteenth Century," British Journal for the History of Science 15 (1982):   241-280.

 

"Instinct and Intelligence in British Natural Theology:  Some Contributions to Darwin's Theory of the Evolution of Behavior," Journal of the History of Biology 14 (1981):  193-230.

 

"Habit," "Imitation," "Instinct," "Rational Soul"--articles for the Dictionary of the History of Science, eds. W. Bynum, R. Porter, E.J. Browne (London:  Macmillan; Princeton:  Princeton University Press, 1981).

 


"Natural Selection and Other Models in the Historiography of Science," Scientific Inquiry and the Social Sciences:  a Volume in Honor of Donald T. Campbell, eds. M. Brewer and B. Collins (San Francisco:  Jossey-Bass, 1981), pp. 37-76.  Reprinted in Science and the Quest for Reality, ed.  Alfred Tauber (London:  Macmillan Press, 1997), pp.  203-30.

 

"Christian Wolff's Prolegomena to Empirical and Rational Psychology:   Translation and Commentary," Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 124 (1980):  227-239.

 

"Wundt's Early Theories of Cognitive Evolution and their Relation to  Darwinian Biopsychology," Wundt Studies, eds. W.  Bringmann  and R. Tweney (Toronto, Goettingen, Zurich:  Hogrefe, 1980):   42-70.

 

"Influence of Sensationalist Tradition on Early Theories of the Evolution  of Behavior," Journal of the History of Ideas 40 (1979):  85-105.

 

"The Natural Selection Model of Conceptual Evolution," Philosophy of Science 44 (1977):  494-501.

 

"Lloyd Morgan's Theory of Instinct:  from Darwinism to Neo-Darwinism," Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences 13 (1977):   12-32.

 

"James Gibson's Passive Theory of Perception:  a Rejection of the Doctrine of Specific Nerve Energies," Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 37 (1976):  218-233.

 

"The Innate and the Learned:  the Evolution of Konrad Lorenz's Theory  of Instinct,"  Philosophy of the Social Sciences 4 (1974):  111-133.

 

"Sellars' Kantian Perspective on the Compatibility of Freedom and Determinism," Southern Journal of Philosophy 11 (1973):  228- 236.

 

"Substantive and Methodological Teleology in Aristotle and Some Logical Empiricists," Thomist 37 (1973):  702-733.

 

"Materialism and Natural Events in Dewey's Developing Thought," Journal of the History of Philosophy 10 (1972):  55-69.

 

 

Reviews:

 

General Journals:


"Bad Seeds: Review of Barbara Oakley's Evil Genes: Why Rome Fell, Hitler Rose, Enron Failed, and My Sister Stole My Mother's Boyfriend," American Scientist, 96, no. 2 (March-April, 2008).

"Reason and Reverence: Review of Francis Collins's The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief," American Scientist, 95, no. 2 (March-April, 2007).

 

 "And Gladly Wolde He Lerne and Gladly Teche:  Review of Richard Dawkins’ Ancestor’s Tale,"  American Scientist, 92, no. 2 (March-April, 2005).

 

“’Why We Do It’:  Sex and the Single Cell,” review of Niles Eldredge’s “Why We Do It:  Rethinking Sex and the Selfish Gene,” New York Times Book Review (Sunday, June 20, 2004).

 

“The Evolutionary War:  Review of Steven Pinker’s Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature,” New York Times Book Review (Sunday, October 13, 2002), p. 9.

 

Pulp Nonfiction:  Commotion over Evolution Before Darwin:  Review of James Secord’s Victorian Sensation,” American Scientist 89 (September-October, 2001), pp. 454-56.

 

“You Can’t Get There From Here: Review of Henry Gee’s In Search of Deep Time.” New York Times Book Review (Sunday, February 27, 2000), p.  32.

 

“Designing Man: Review of Ian Tattersall’s Becoming Human: Evolution and Human Uniqueness,” New York Times Book Review (Sunday, April 26, 1998), p. 30.

 

“Neanderthals Need Not Apply: Review of C. Stringer and R. McKie’s African Exodus: the Origins of Modern Humanity,” New York Times Book Review (Sunday, August 17,1997), p.  10.

 

"Origins of Darwin:  Review of John Bowlby's Charles Darwin:  A  Biography," Chicago Tribune, Tribune Books, (Sunday, June  23, 1991), pp. 6-7.

 

 

Professional Journals:

 

“Review of Charles Darwin’s Descent of Man, with introduction by Adrian Desmond and James Moore,” British Journal for the History of Science 39 (2006):  615-17.

 

“Review of Donald Broom’s The Evolution of Morality and Religion,” Quarterly Review of Biology 80 (2005): 228-29.

 

“Review of Lewis Petrinovich’s Human Evolution, Reproduction, and Morality,” Quarterly Review of Biology 71 (1996):  559-60.

 

“Review of Paul Farber’s The Temptations of Evolutionary Ethics,” Isis (1995).

 

"Review of Ilse Bulhof's The Language of Science, a Study of the Relationship between Literature and Science in the Perspective of a Hermeneutical Ontology," Isis (1993).

 

"Review of Donald Polkinghorne's Narrative Knowing and the  Human  Sciences," American Journal of Sociology, 1989. 

 

"Review of Robert Boakes' From Darwin to Behaviourism, Science 228  (1985):  862-863.

 

"Review of Michael Ruse's Is Science Sexist:  Essays in the Bio-Medical  Sciences," Isis 74 (1983): 421.

 

"Review of Charles Darwin's Descent of Man (New Edition) and Gene  Bylinsky's Life in Darwin's Universe, BioScience (1982).

 

"Review of D. King-Hele (ed.), The Letters of Erasmus Darwin," Science 216 (1982):  1101-1102.

 

"Review of Jutta Schmidt's Die Umweltlehre Jakob von Uexkuells," Isis  73 (1982):  474-475.

 

"Review of Thomas Leahey's A History of Psychology:  Main  Currents  in Psychological Thought," Isis 73 (1982):  125- 127.

 

"Review of D. Robinson's An Intellectual History of Psychology and The  Mind Unfolded," Isis 71 (1980):  325-326.

 

"Critical Review of D. Lindberg's Theories of Vision from  Alkindi to  Kepler," Journal of the History of the Behavioral  Sciences 15  (1979):  378-382.

 

"Review of Hecaen and Albert's Human Neurophysiology," Journal of the  American Medical Association 240 (Dec. 1978): 2777.


 

 

Papers:

2008

“Beyond Biology: The Sources of Racial Categories in Evolutionary Thought,” Humanities Center, Grinnell College, Grinnell, Iowa, April, 2008  

"Darwin's Biology of Intelligent Design," Phi Beta Kappa Lecture, Rockford College, Rockford Illinois, April, 2008

"Objectivity in the Visualization of Life," workshop of the History of Science Program, Princeton University, February, 2008.

"Darwin's Natural Theology," Gleacher Center, University of Chicago, March, 2008.

2007


"Werther Electrified: Science and Romanticism in Mary Shelley's Frankenstein," Midwest Faculty Seminar, Univeristy of Chicago, November, 2007.


"Darwin's Place in the History of Biology," Darwin Celebration, Field Museum of Natural History, Chicago, November, 2007.

"Darwin's Evolutionary Theology," Grinnell College, Grinnell Iowa, September, 2007.


"Darwin's Theory of Natural Selection and Its Moral Purpose," presented at the Cambridge Companion Conference, Florida State University, March, 2007

"How Schelling Solved Goethe's Kantian Problems," Weissbourd Conference, University of Chicago, April, 2007

"Religion, Evolution, and the Charges Against Haeckel," Rice University, April, 2007

 

2006

 

“Responsibility in Evolutionary Theory,”  conference on “Responsibility in the Human Sciences, The Chicago-Max Planck Conference in the History of the Human Sciences, October, 2006.

 

“Did Ernst Haeckel Fraudulently Misrepresent Embryos and Why are Intelligent Designers Interested,” Department of History of Science, Univeristy of Minnesota, September, 2006.

 

Darwin’s Biology of Intelligent Design,” Phi Beta Kappa Lecture, Eastern Illinois University, September, 2006

 

“Religion in the Evolution Debate of the 19th Century,” Institut für Wissenschaftsgeschichte, Georg-August-Universität, Göttingen, Germany, June, 2006.

 

“Romanticism,” and “Darwin Studies,” Academia Sinica and Institute of History & Center for Science, Technology and Society, Taiwan, China, May, 2006.

 

“Biology and Medicine:  the Haeckel-Virchow Dispute over Evolution,” American Association for the History of Medicine, Halifax Nova Scotia, May, 2006.

 

Darwin’s Biology of Intelligent Design,” Phi Beta Kappa Lecture, University of South Dakota, April  2006.

 

________.  Midwest Faculty Seminar, The University of Chicago, April 2006.

 

________.  The Stanton Sharp Lecture, Southern Methodist University, Dallas, Texas, February, 2006.

 

________.  Lecture at the Humanist Society of Chicago, February, 2006

 

 

2005

 

“Ernst Haeckel’s Travel to the Canary Islands:  the Empirical Justification of Darwin’s Theory, symposium on “Naturalists Voyaging,” in honor of Richard Burkhardt, University of Illinois, November, 2005.

  

“Did Ernst Haeckel Fradulently Represent his Embryo Illustrations,” Department of History of Science, Johns Hopkins University, Maryland, September, 2005.

 

________.  Conference on Developmental and Evolutionary Biology, University of Chicago, October, 2005.

 

“The Moral Grammar of Narrative History:  Evolution and Nazi Biology,” Ryerson Lecture, University of Chicago, April, 2005.

 

________, Depts. of History and Biology, Oberlin College, April, 2005

 

Darwin’s Romantic Biology,” Phi Beta Kappa Lecture, Grinnell College, April, 2005.

 

________, Phi Beta Kappa Lecture, Alfred University, April, 2005.

 

 

2004

 

“The Tragic Sense of Life:  Ernst Haeckel and the Struggle over Evolutionary Theory,” Museum national d’histoire naturelle, Centre Alexandre Koyré and the CNRS, Paris, December, 2004.

 

“Haeckel’s and Miklucho-Maclay’s Polymorphous Demonstration of Darwin’s Theory, or How to Deep-Six your Graduate Student,” Annual History of Science Society Meeting, Austin, Texas, November, 2004

 

“The Nature of History,” Humanities Day, University of Chicago, October, 2004.

 

“Did Ernst Haeckel Fraudulently Depict the Human Embryo,” The Thomas Hall Lecture, Washington University in St. Louis, October, 2004.

 

“The Nature of Popular Science,” Dept. of Biology, Washington University in St. Louis, October, 2004.

 

Darwin’s Romantic Biology,” Phi Beta Kappa Lecture, Truman State University, Kirksville, Missouri, May, 2004

 

“The Politics and Epistemology of Evolutionary Theory:  Yesterday and Today,” Conference on Biology and Values, Florida State University, April, 2004.

 

“The Erotic Foundations of Morphology,” The William Coleman Humanities Lecture, University of Wisconsin, Madison, March, 2004.

 

"Goethe’s Use of Kant in the Erotics of Nature," Depts. of Philosophy and Liberal Studies, Notre Dame University, March, 2004.

 

“Response to Critics of The Romantic Conception of Life, American Philosophical Society, Pacific Division, March, 2004.

  

 

2003

 

“Ernst Haeckel:  Lamarckian or Darwinian,” delivered at the symposium on Lamarck sponsored by the French Cultural Ministry, Wellcome Institute, London, December, 2003

 

“Darwin’s Romantic Biology,” Phi Beta Kappa Lecture, Augustana College, Rock Island, Illinois, December, 2003.

 

“Politics and Epistemology of the Theory of Evolution:  the Haeckel-Virchow Debate,” delivered at the annual meeting of the History of Science Society, Boston, November, 2003.

 

“Spencer’s Relations to Darwin,” read at The Galton Institute, Linnean Society of London, September, 2003.

 

“Kant and Goethe,” delivered at the meeting