When people must either save a greater number of people from a smaller harm or a smaller number from a greater harm, do their choices reflect a reasonable moral outlook? We pursue this question with the help of an experiment. In our experiment, two-fifths of subjects employ a similarity heuristic. When alternatives appear dissimilar in terms of the number saved but similar in terms of the magnitude of harm prevented, this heuristic mandates saving the greater number. In our experiment, this leads to choices that are inconsistent with all standard theories of justice. We argue that this demonstrates the untrustworthiness of distributive judgements in cases that elicit similarity-based choice.

The IPHS conference in Yokohama demonstrates that the history of planning is in rude health. The discipline now includes the histories of planning around the world, and scholars from many different countries are reflecting deeply on their own and each other's experiences. Planners, the institutes they work in, the evolution and transmission of their ideas and of course their application and success or failure are now considered from a multitude of regional and disciplinary perspectives. The vitality of these debates in the twenty-first-century global urban world holds much promise that historical study can contribute to understanding some of the challenges facing contemporary cities.

Darwinian ideas were developed and radically transformed when they were transmitted to the alien intellectual background of late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century China. The earliest references to Darwin in China appeared in the 1870s through the writings of Western missionaries who provided the Chinese with the earliest information on evolutionary doctrines. Meanwhile, Chinese ambassadors, literati and overseas students contributed to the dissemination of evolutionary ideas, with modest effect. The ‘evolutionary sensation’ in China was generated by the Chinese Spencerian Yan Fu's paraphrased translation and reformulation of Thomas Huxley's 1893 Romanes Lecture ‘Evolution and ethics’ and his ‘Prolegomena’. It was from this source that ‘Darwin’ became well known in China – although it was Darwin's name, rather than his theories, that reached Chinese literati's households. The Origin of Species itself began to receive attention only at the turn of the twentieth century. The translator, Ma Junwu (1881–1940), incorporated non-Darwinian doctrines, particularly Lamarckian and Spencerian principles, into his edition of the Chinese Origin. This partially reflected the importance of the pre-existing Chinese intellectual background as well as Yan Fu's progressive ‘evolutionary paradigm’. In this paper, I will elucidate Ma Junwu's culturally conditioned reinterpretation of the Origin before 1906 by investigating his transformation of Darwin's principal concepts.

A rich seam of scientific research has been opened by the recent location of both shipwrecks from the disastrous 1845 Franklin northwest passage expedition. Even more than the forensic study of any human remains, the contents of Her Majesty’s Discovery Ships Erebus and Terror have already begun to illuminate the day-to-day lives of Victorian sailors in the Arctic. Yet many hitherto unexamined but informative documents have survived too, both in the British National Archives and at local levels throughout the United Kingdom, which also enable us to focus upon those men, their work and families, thereby gaining a far better understanding of their meticulously planned but ultimately doomed voyage. This article examines the previously ignored Royal Navy Allotment Books and cross-references them with other contemporary records, such as censuses and parish registers, to give us new insights into the backgrounds of the crews of HMSs Erebus and Terror.