Peter J. Bowler

Peter J. Bowler (born 8 October 1944) is a historian of biology who has written extensively on the history of evolutionary thought, the history of the environmental sciences, and on the history of genetics. Quotes The palaeoanthropologists of the early twentieth century were thus able to put together a view of human evolution which can be seen as an extension of the cyclic or rhythmic theory of progress advocated throughout the Victorian era. Despite its emphasis on struggle as the means by which higher types displaced their primitive antecedents, this was no product of Darwinian gradualism. Most of its supporters rejected natural selection as the motor of progressive evolution, preferring to invoke some vaguely defined creative force in the central Asian heartland. The fact that both the concept of progress through cycles and the fascination with Asia as the centre of development survived well into the twentieth century reveals the power these Victorian ages had to shape the imagination. The echoes of Max Muller's account of Aryan migrations can still be heard in the theories of human origins by archaeologists and anthropologists committed to the idea of continuous evolution. But once the faith in continuous progress was undermined by growing militarism in the age of imperial rivalries, the model of progress through conquest emerged from the wings to extend its influence over ideas on human origins. The early twentieth century merely extended the sense of racial destiny that had been growing throughout the Victorian era. The Invention of Progress: The Victorians and the Past. 1989. Oxford, Basil Blackwell. 127-8. quoted in : 1995 Shaffer, J.G. and D.A. Lichtenstein. "The Cultural Tradition and Paleoethnicity in South Asian Archaeology." In The Indo-Aryans of Ancient South Asia: Language, Material Culture and Ethnicity. G. Erdosy, (Ed.). Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, pp. 126-154. External links Category:1944 births Category:Historians of science Category:Living people Category:University of Cambridge alumni