In the United States wealthy tycoons funded fossil-hunting expeditions and new natural history museums to display their discoveries. Dinosaurs from the Western states dramatically transformed the way the ascent of life could be represented because they were quite unlike any living reptiles and confirmed that the ‘tree of life’ had many more branches, some of which had disappeared completely. There was increasing evidence of relatively abrupt transitions in the earth’s history, forcing geologists and evolutionists to reconsider their impression that change had been more or less continuous. As the tree of life became more complex, the assumption that the human species was the inevitable outcome of progressive evolution became less plausible. Although non-Darwinian theories were retained by some authorities, the new vision of evolution came to seem more compatible with Darwin’s vision of an open-ended and less predictable process.

This chapter explores the debates over human origins in the popular media to show how the topic influenced the ways in which Darwin’s theory was perceived (and misunderstood). The impact of the public’s fascination with the gorilla as a possible human ancestor helped to sustain the image of evolution as the ascent of a ladder. The cultural evolutionism promoted by archaeologists and anthropologists also adopted the linear model of development. Physical anthropologists saw the allegedly ‘lower’ races as intermediate steps in the ascent from the apes, in effect as ‘living fossils’ filling the gap created by the lack of genuinely ancient remains at the time. The impact of Darwin’s Descent of Man is explored in the context of the existing preconceptions generated in the 1860s. The relationship between general models of evolution and emerging ideas of social evolution, not all Darwinian in form, is explained.

This introductory chapter notes the expansion of interest in the history of popular science and its role in shaping the relationship between science and society. It outlines the elements needed to understand how science is popularized, including the work of both scientists and media figures. The chapter then shows how historians now interpret the rise of evolutionism, noting that Darwin’s theory of natural selection was at first challenged by rival views of how evolution works with very different implications for the ascent of life, not all compatible with the image of the ‘tree of life’. The application of these ideas to human origins and to ideologies based on social evolution is noted for its potential impact on how the theory was perceived. All of these positions need to be taken into account to understand how the topic was displayed to the wider public.

New book series and magazines were founded in the 1870s and helped to publicize evolutionism. Many popular accounts focused on the ascent of life, still portraying it as a linear development toward humanity. They often used living rather than fossil species to characterize the main stages in the ascent, and stressed the parallel with the development of the embryo (the recapitulation theory). A few key fossils were discovered to boost the case for evolution, including the ancestry of the horse. Both Darwinians and the supporters of Herbert Spencer’s philosophy exploited the technique of the ‘evolutionary epic’ to make their case. But so did the promoters of rival explanations, including the Lamarckians and those who saw progress as the unfolding of a divine plan. Darwinism remained a source of controversy, and the opposition began to increase toward the end of the nineteenth century.

Evolutionary ideas were in circulation before Charles Darwin began his work and were widely disseminated, arousing much controversy. In addition to the writings of Erasmus Darwin (Charles’ grandfather), French ideas gained some currency in the English-speaking world, especially the views of J. B. Lamarck. These ideas were taken up by radical thinkers who rejected divine creation, to the horror of conservatives. Early discoveries of fossils played a significant role in arousing public interest in the history of life and were often seen as evidence that life had ascended a scale of development (the chain of being) toward humanity. The first-known dinosaurs were fitted into the chain as gigantic lizards, not as evidence of creatures totally unlike anything now alive. This model was adapted to middle-class values in Robert Chambers’ Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation in 1844, again arousing controversy but gradually gaining some credibility beyond the scientific community.

Several versions of ‘social Darwinism’ flourished in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, along with ideologies derived from non-Darwinian evolution theories. They exploited discoveries of fossil hominids including Neanderthals and the Piltdown fraud to construct rival explanations of the emergence of human characteristics that might shape social development. The linear hierarchy of races erected in the nineteenth century remained the basis of many popular accounts, even though professional anthropologists began to turn their backs on it. Ideologies based on national or racial competition were advocated even by writers who did not accept the Darwinian theory of competition within populations. Fear of racial degeneration fuelled the eugenics movement’s calls for the elimination of ‘harmful’ characters, although the input from genetics encouraged an analogy with artificial rather than natural selection.

Newspapers expanded around 1900 to reach a wider readership, often reporting sensationalized stories about science. Attacks on the Darwinian theory of natural selection intensified, leading to claims that the theory was on its deathbed. Lamarckism remained active along with the theory of directed variation (orthogenesis), both presented as less materialistic than Darwinism. New alternatives appeared, including the ‘mutation theory’ (evolution by jumps) and genetics, which was at first presented as a threat to Darwinism rather than a supporting factor. In the 1920s a new surge of creationism in the United States intensified the attack on Darwinian materialism, culminating in the widely reported trial of J. T. Scopes. The same critiques appeared in a less muted form in Britain. The Darwinian ‘struggle for existence’ remained a source of anxiety for those who feared a potential threat to moral values and social stability.

In the late twentieth century, television provided more immediate ways of representing the processes of evolution, while the press increasingly seized on debates arising from their human implications. Progress remained an important theme, although the image of a linear ascent to humanity was usually qualified by recognition of diversity. The air of unity promoted in the synthesis era evaporated as biologists explored new and disturbing implications of the selection mechanism, including sociobiology and the notion of the ‘selfish gene.’ Studies of primates were used to throw light on human behaviour. Along with new challenges to the plausibility of the Darwinian theory, the resulting controversies were played out in a blaze of publicity. Darwinism also had to be modified to take account of growing evidence for discontinuities in the ascent of life, including mass extinctions. Creationists presented these ‘Darwin wars’ as evidence that evolutionism was losing its credibility even within science.

In the 1920s and 1930s the Darwinian selection theory was linked to genetics, providing it with a secure foundation, although wider dissemination of this initiative was limited until the 1940s. Historians note that the ‘evolutionary synthesis’ was a rhetorical device to create an impression of unity, leaving the various disciplines involved still functioning independently. Radio now became an important means of disseminating science news, as in the 1959 celebrations of the centenary of the Origin of Species. The new version of Darwinism eroded the plausibility of eugenics and race theory, although these ideologies remained active in less visible forms. Popular accounts of evolutionism now stressed its open-endedness and played down the old assumption that humanity must be the inevitable outcome of progress. Julian Huxley tried to give the synthesis a moral dimension by linking it to his philosophy of humanism, but creationists saw the new initiative in science as a continuation of Darwinian materialism and renewed their attacks.

This chapter outlines the development of the theory of natural selection and the events surrounding the publication and reviewing of Darwin’s Origin of Species, especially in non-specialist publications. The different responses in Britain and the United States are noted. The role of supporters such as T. H. Huxley in reaching a popular audience is explored, although their reservations about the adequacy of the theory are also taken into account. Conservative efforts to present evolution as the unfolding of a divine plan provided a very different way of understanding the general idea of evolution. Many popular accounts failed to understand the difference between Darwin’s ‘tree of life’ model and older ideas of a linear ascent toward humanity, especially when dealing with the issue of human origins. In this area, popular interest in the gorilla as a potential ancestral form distracted attention from some aspects of Darwin’s model, as shown in more detail in Chapter 3. The early evolutionism of Herbert Spencer is introduced and his relationship to Darwinism explained.

This is a myth that is ‘good in parts.’ T. H. Huxley certainly emerged as the leading defender of the Origin of Species against critics who believed that organic forms are designed – directly or indirectly – by God. But this does not mean that he accepted natural selection as a complete explanation of how evolution works. The theory suited his naturalistic ideology because it was based solely on observable processes. From the start, though, Huxley cautioned that Darwin needed to show how artificial selection could produce a new species and (more importantly) that he was wrong to rule out the possibility of new characters appearing by abrupt saltations. The latter point is the key to a basic difference between their worldviews. As a morphologist Huxley was not convinced that the fundamental structure of each type could be the accumulated product of a series of small adaptive modifications. He eventually suggested that forces internal to the organism might play a role in directing variation – a position not far removed from that of anti-Darwinians such as Mivart.