David Livingstone | Queen's University Belfast (original) (raw)
Papers by David Livingstone
Journal of Scottish Thought
Genetics, Genesis and Genealogy On 11 January 1988, Newsweek magazine ran as its cover story the ... more Genetics, Genesis and Genealogy On 11 January 1988, Newsweek magazine ran as its cover story the results of a research project, reported by Rebecca Cann and Allan Wilson in Nature the previous year, on Mitochondrial DNA. 1 The gist of the findings was that because Mitochondrial DNA is only inherited from mothers and remains unchanged in transmission from generation to generation, save for chance mutations, it can be used to 'define the maternal lineages of living individuals all the way back to a common ancestor'. 2 The Newsweek headline screamed: 'The Search for Adam and Eve'. Mitochondrial Eve had appeared on the genetic stage and, echoing the words of Cann herself, 3 Newsweek announced her arrival to the public: Scientists are calling her Eve, but reluctantly. The name evokes too many wrong images-the weak-willed figure in Genesis, the milkskinned beauty in Renaissance art, the voluptuary gardener in 'Paradise Lost' who was all 'softness' and 'meek surrender' and waistlength 'gold tresses.' The scientists' Eve-subject of one of the most provocative anthropological theories in a decade-was more likely a dark-haired, black-skinned woman, roaming a hot savanna in search of food. She was as muscular as Martina Navratilova, maybe stronger; she might have torn animals apart with her hands, although she probably preferred to use stone tools. She was not the only woman on earth, nor necessarily the most attractive or maternal. She was simply the most fruitful, if that is measured by success in propagating a cer
Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, 2005
The idea of a 'geography of reading' provides a potential point of conversation between the cultu... more The idea of a 'geography of reading' provides a potential point of conversation between the cultural and scientific wings of our profession. Here I explore some dimensions of the geography of reading scientific texts. Drawing on a number of theoretical pronouncements-Gadamer's 'fusion of horizons', Said's 'travelling theory', Secord's 'geographies of reading', Beer's 'miscegenation of texts', Fish's 'interpretive communities' and Rupke's 'geographies of reception'-I focus on the spaces where scientific theories are encountered. The argument is that where scientific texts are read has an important bearing on how they are read. This realization points to a fundamental instability in scientific meaning and to the crucial significance of what might be called located hermeneutics. As a case study in the development of a cartographics of scientific meaning, I explore the different ways in which Darwin's fundamentally biogeographical theory of evolution by natural selection was construed in a number of different settings. The sites I have chosen to illustrate this are the scientific communities which congregated around the Charleston Museum of Natural History in South Carolina, the Wellington Philosophical Society and New Zealand Institute, and the St Petersburg Society of Naturalists in Russia during the second half of the nineteenth century. In each case the encounter with evolution theory, and the ways it was interpreted, are shown to have been shaped by local cultural politics, thereby disclosing the critical role that space plays in the production of scientific meaning. key words reading spaces of science hermeneutics scientific meaning textual space Darwinism
The British Journal for the History of Science, 1999
On Wednesday 27 April 1898, Dr Luigi [Louis] Westenra Sambon (1865–1931) addressed the Royal Geog... more On Wednesday 27 April 1898, Dr Luigi [Louis] Westenra Sambon (1865–1931) addressed the Royal Geographical Society in London on a topic of much interest to the Victorian public. An Anglo-French medical graduate of the University of Naples, a Fellow of the London Zoological Society and a recent visitor to Central Africa, he was well equipped to tackle the subject of the ‘Acclimatization of Europeans in Tropical Lands’. The ‘problem of tropical colonization’, he began, ‘is one of the most important and pressing with which European states have to deal. Civilization has favoured unlimited multiplication, and thereby intensified that struggle for existence the limitation of which seemed to be its very object…I know full well that the question of emigration is beset with a variety of moral, social, political, and economic difficulties; but it is the law of nature, and civilization has no better remedy for the evils caused by overcrowding.’Even from these introductory remarks, it is already...
University of Chicago Press, 2003
English in Africa, 2014
A. W. Sloan (1979), in his elegant presidential address to the Royal Society of South Africa, sta... more A. W. Sloan (1979), in his elegant presidential address to the Royal Society of South Africa, states that science is "a search for the truth," the truth being "a pragmatic concept which explains phenomena." Science, he continues, depends on certain pre-suppositions, including a belief in order and harmony, although science itself is never static but constantly undergoing change as well as expansion. The scientist, observes Sloan, starts with some preconceived theory, and selects the relevant (as opposed to random) data - in order not to waste time. He makes a point of including Hume's (1777) contention that all science is contingent. Sloan also refers to Thomas Kuhn (1962) and Karl Popper (1959, 1972) in his address; and, perhaps surprisingly, some degree of formal logical congruency is discernible, despite their differing approaches to the subject, among the three of them in their scientific thinking.
British journal for the history of science, 2015
Anthropological inquiry has often been considered an agent of intellectual secularization. Not le... more Anthropological inquiry has often been considered an agent of intellectual secularization. Not least is this so in the sphere of religion, where anthropological accounts have often been taken to represent the triumph of naturalism. This metanarrative, however, fails to recognize that naturalistic explanations could sometimes be espoused for religious purposes and in defence of confessional creeds. This essay examines two late nineteenth-century figures--Alexander Winchell in the United States and William Robertson Smith in Britain--who found in anthropological analysis resources to bolster rather than undermine faith. In both cases these individuals found themselves on the receiving end of ecclesiastical censure and were dismissed from their positions at church-governed institutions. But their motivation was to vindicate divine revelation, in Winchell's case from the physical anthropology of human origins and in Smith's from the cultural anthropology of Semitic ritual.
Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences, 2004
This paper examines the reaction of Victorian Presbyterian culture to the theory of evolution in ... more This paper examines the reaction of Victorian Presbyterian culture to the theory of evolution in late nineteenth century Scotland. Focusing on the role played by the Free Church theologian, biblical critic and anthropological theorist, William Robertson Smith, it argues that, compared with Smith's radical scholarship, evolutionary theories did little to disturb the Scottish Calvinist mind-set. After surveying the attitudes to evolution among a range of theological leaders, the paper examines Smith's fundamentally threatening proposals and the circumstances that led to the public spectacle of his dismissal from his Free Church professorship. It concludes by suggesting that, ironically, even while his fellow churchmen were making their peace with Darwin, Smith was mobilising an evolutionary outlook that challenged Scotland's conservative religious culture to its very core.
Scottish Journal of Theology, 1984
‘We have thus arrived at the answer to our question, What is Darwinism?’ wrote Charles Hodge in 1... more ‘We have thus arrived at the answer to our question, What is Darwinism?’ wrote Charles Hodge in 1874;‘It is Atheism.’ As is commonly the fate of great men, Hodge's conclusion has frequently been reduced to mere crusade slogan, more often reported than examined, more often repeated than explained. It is for this reason, then, together with…
Scottish Journal of Theology, 1987
To reconcile the early chapters of the book of Genesis with the findings of science has been the ... more To reconcile the early chapters of the book of Genesis with the findings of science has been the self-appointed task of Christian apologists for generations. Indeed in our own day the much publicized manoeuvres of a militant creationist movement reveal just how vibrant the debate remains in some quarters about how to relate the book of Nature to the book of Scripture. Over the years numerous harmonizing strategies have been advanced and, once hatched, they have, like organisms, evolved and adapted to the intellectual climate in which they have found themselves. Among these, the gap theory (postulating a lengthy period of time between Genesis 1 verse 1 and 1 verse 2 into which the whole gamut of geological history can be squeezed), the day-age theory (interpreting the creative days as geological epochs), and the ‘days of revelation’ theory (seeing the Genesis week as successive days of divine disclosure) might be specified as concordist schemes whose fortunes have changed with the pa...
The British Journal for the History of Science, 2003
Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 2006
David N. Livingstone. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003. xii and 234 pp., figs., bibliog... more David N. Livingstone. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003. xii and 234 pp., figs., bibliog., essay, and index. $27.50 cloth (ISBN 0-226-48722-9).
Modern Intellectual History, 2021
This article explores the religious response of one neglected writer to the evolutionary philosop... more This article explores the religious response of one neglected writer to the evolutionary philosophy of Herbert Spencer. William Todd Martin was a minister of the Presbyterian Church in Ireland and in 1887 published The Evolution Hypothesis: A Criticism of the New Cosmic Philosophy. The work demonstrates the essentially contested nature of “evolution” and “creation” by showing how a self-confessed creationist could affirm an evolutionary understanding of the natural world and species transformation. Martin's approach reflected a transatlantic Presbyterian worldview that saw the harmony of science and religion on the basis of Calvinism, Baconianism and Scottish Common Sense philosophy. Martin's critique is also relevant to issues that continue to animate philosophers of science and religion, including the connections between mind and matter, morality and consciousness in a Darwinian framework, and the relationship between subjective conscious experience and evolutionary physic...
Isis, 2000
The theological doctrine of biblical inerrancy is the intellectual basis for modern creation scie... more The theological doctrine of biblical inerrancy is the intellectual basis for modern creation science. Yet Benjamin Breckinridge Warfield of Princeton Theological Seminary, the theologian who more than any other defined modern biblical inerrancy, was throughout his life open to the possibility of evolution and at some points an advocate of the theory. Throughout a long career Warfield published a number of major papers on these subjects, including studies of Darwin's religious life, on the theological importance of the age of humanity (none) and the unity of the human species (much), and on Calvin's understanding of creation as proto-evolutionary. He also was an engaged reviewer of many of his era's important books by scientists, theologians, and historians who wrote on scientific research in relation to traditional Christianity. Exploration of Warfield's writing on science generally and evolution in particular retrieves for historical consideration an important defender of mediating positions in the supposed war between science and religion.
Journal of Scottish Thought
Genetics, Genesis and Genealogy On 11 January 1988, Newsweek magazine ran as its cover story the ... more Genetics, Genesis and Genealogy On 11 January 1988, Newsweek magazine ran as its cover story the results of a research project, reported by Rebecca Cann and Allan Wilson in Nature the previous year, on Mitochondrial DNA. 1 The gist of the findings was that because Mitochondrial DNA is only inherited from mothers and remains unchanged in transmission from generation to generation, save for chance mutations, it can be used to 'define the maternal lineages of living individuals all the way back to a common ancestor'. 2 The Newsweek headline screamed: 'The Search for Adam and Eve'. Mitochondrial Eve had appeared on the genetic stage and, echoing the words of Cann herself, 3 Newsweek announced her arrival to the public: Scientists are calling her Eve, but reluctantly. The name evokes too many wrong images-the weak-willed figure in Genesis, the milkskinned beauty in Renaissance art, the voluptuary gardener in 'Paradise Lost' who was all 'softness' and 'meek surrender' and waistlength 'gold tresses.' The scientists' Eve-subject of one of the most provocative anthropological theories in a decade-was more likely a dark-haired, black-skinned woman, roaming a hot savanna in search of food. She was as muscular as Martina Navratilova, maybe stronger; she might have torn animals apart with her hands, although she probably preferred to use stone tools. She was not the only woman on earth, nor necessarily the most attractive or maternal. She was simply the most fruitful, if that is measured by success in propagating a cer
Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, 2005
The idea of a 'geography of reading' provides a potential point of conversation between the cultu... more The idea of a 'geography of reading' provides a potential point of conversation between the cultural and scientific wings of our profession. Here I explore some dimensions of the geography of reading scientific texts. Drawing on a number of theoretical pronouncements-Gadamer's 'fusion of horizons', Said's 'travelling theory', Secord's 'geographies of reading', Beer's 'miscegenation of texts', Fish's 'interpretive communities' and Rupke's 'geographies of reception'-I focus on the spaces where scientific theories are encountered. The argument is that where scientific texts are read has an important bearing on how they are read. This realization points to a fundamental instability in scientific meaning and to the crucial significance of what might be called located hermeneutics. As a case study in the development of a cartographics of scientific meaning, I explore the different ways in which Darwin's fundamentally biogeographical theory of evolution by natural selection was construed in a number of different settings. The sites I have chosen to illustrate this are the scientific communities which congregated around the Charleston Museum of Natural History in South Carolina, the Wellington Philosophical Society and New Zealand Institute, and the St Petersburg Society of Naturalists in Russia during the second half of the nineteenth century. In each case the encounter with evolution theory, and the ways it was interpreted, are shown to have been shaped by local cultural politics, thereby disclosing the critical role that space plays in the production of scientific meaning. key words reading spaces of science hermeneutics scientific meaning textual space Darwinism
The British Journal for the History of Science, 1999
On Wednesday 27 April 1898, Dr Luigi [Louis] Westenra Sambon (1865–1931) addressed the Royal Geog... more On Wednesday 27 April 1898, Dr Luigi [Louis] Westenra Sambon (1865–1931) addressed the Royal Geographical Society in London on a topic of much interest to the Victorian public. An Anglo-French medical graduate of the University of Naples, a Fellow of the London Zoological Society and a recent visitor to Central Africa, he was well equipped to tackle the subject of the ‘Acclimatization of Europeans in Tropical Lands’. The ‘problem of tropical colonization’, he began, ‘is one of the most important and pressing with which European states have to deal. Civilization has favoured unlimited multiplication, and thereby intensified that struggle for existence the limitation of which seemed to be its very object…I know full well that the question of emigration is beset with a variety of moral, social, political, and economic difficulties; but it is the law of nature, and civilization has no better remedy for the evils caused by overcrowding.’Even from these introductory remarks, it is already...
University of Chicago Press, 2003
English in Africa, 2014
A. W. Sloan (1979), in his elegant presidential address to the Royal Society of South Africa, sta... more A. W. Sloan (1979), in his elegant presidential address to the Royal Society of South Africa, states that science is "a search for the truth," the truth being "a pragmatic concept which explains phenomena." Science, he continues, depends on certain pre-suppositions, including a belief in order and harmony, although science itself is never static but constantly undergoing change as well as expansion. The scientist, observes Sloan, starts with some preconceived theory, and selects the relevant (as opposed to random) data - in order not to waste time. He makes a point of including Hume's (1777) contention that all science is contingent. Sloan also refers to Thomas Kuhn (1962) and Karl Popper (1959, 1972) in his address; and, perhaps surprisingly, some degree of formal logical congruency is discernible, despite their differing approaches to the subject, among the three of them in their scientific thinking.
British journal for the history of science, 2015
Anthropological inquiry has often been considered an agent of intellectual secularization. Not le... more Anthropological inquiry has often been considered an agent of intellectual secularization. Not least is this so in the sphere of religion, where anthropological accounts have often been taken to represent the triumph of naturalism. This metanarrative, however, fails to recognize that naturalistic explanations could sometimes be espoused for religious purposes and in defence of confessional creeds. This essay examines two late nineteenth-century figures--Alexander Winchell in the United States and William Robertson Smith in Britain--who found in anthropological analysis resources to bolster rather than undermine faith. In both cases these individuals found themselves on the receiving end of ecclesiastical censure and were dismissed from their positions at church-governed institutions. But their motivation was to vindicate divine revelation, in Winchell's case from the physical anthropology of human origins and in Smith's from the cultural anthropology of Semitic ritual.
Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences, 2004
This paper examines the reaction of Victorian Presbyterian culture to the theory of evolution in ... more This paper examines the reaction of Victorian Presbyterian culture to the theory of evolution in late nineteenth century Scotland. Focusing on the role played by the Free Church theologian, biblical critic and anthropological theorist, William Robertson Smith, it argues that, compared with Smith's radical scholarship, evolutionary theories did little to disturb the Scottish Calvinist mind-set. After surveying the attitudes to evolution among a range of theological leaders, the paper examines Smith's fundamentally threatening proposals and the circumstances that led to the public spectacle of his dismissal from his Free Church professorship. It concludes by suggesting that, ironically, even while his fellow churchmen were making their peace with Darwin, Smith was mobilising an evolutionary outlook that challenged Scotland's conservative religious culture to its very core.
Scottish Journal of Theology, 1984
‘We have thus arrived at the answer to our question, What is Darwinism?’ wrote Charles Hodge in 1... more ‘We have thus arrived at the answer to our question, What is Darwinism?’ wrote Charles Hodge in 1874;‘It is Atheism.’ As is commonly the fate of great men, Hodge's conclusion has frequently been reduced to mere crusade slogan, more often reported than examined, more often repeated than explained. It is for this reason, then, together with…
Scottish Journal of Theology, 1987
To reconcile the early chapters of the book of Genesis with the findings of science has been the ... more To reconcile the early chapters of the book of Genesis with the findings of science has been the self-appointed task of Christian apologists for generations. Indeed in our own day the much publicized manoeuvres of a militant creationist movement reveal just how vibrant the debate remains in some quarters about how to relate the book of Nature to the book of Scripture. Over the years numerous harmonizing strategies have been advanced and, once hatched, they have, like organisms, evolved and adapted to the intellectual climate in which they have found themselves. Among these, the gap theory (postulating a lengthy period of time between Genesis 1 verse 1 and 1 verse 2 into which the whole gamut of geological history can be squeezed), the day-age theory (interpreting the creative days as geological epochs), and the ‘days of revelation’ theory (seeing the Genesis week as successive days of divine disclosure) might be specified as concordist schemes whose fortunes have changed with the pa...
The British Journal for the History of Science, 2003
Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 2006
David N. Livingstone. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003. xii and 234 pp., figs., bibliog... more David N. Livingstone. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003. xii and 234 pp., figs., bibliog., essay, and index. $27.50 cloth (ISBN 0-226-48722-9).
Modern Intellectual History, 2021
This article explores the religious response of one neglected writer to the evolutionary philosop... more This article explores the religious response of one neglected writer to the evolutionary philosophy of Herbert Spencer. William Todd Martin was a minister of the Presbyterian Church in Ireland and in 1887 published The Evolution Hypothesis: A Criticism of the New Cosmic Philosophy. The work demonstrates the essentially contested nature of “evolution” and “creation” by showing how a self-confessed creationist could affirm an evolutionary understanding of the natural world and species transformation. Martin's approach reflected a transatlantic Presbyterian worldview that saw the harmony of science and religion on the basis of Calvinism, Baconianism and Scottish Common Sense philosophy. Martin's critique is also relevant to issues that continue to animate philosophers of science and religion, including the connections between mind and matter, morality and consciousness in a Darwinian framework, and the relationship between subjective conscious experience and evolutionary physic...
Isis, 2000
The theological doctrine of biblical inerrancy is the intellectual basis for modern creation scie... more The theological doctrine of biblical inerrancy is the intellectual basis for modern creation science. Yet Benjamin Breckinridge Warfield of Princeton Theological Seminary, the theologian who more than any other defined modern biblical inerrancy, was throughout his life open to the possibility of evolution and at some points an advocate of the theory. Throughout a long career Warfield published a number of major papers on these subjects, including studies of Darwin's religious life, on the theological importance of the age of humanity (none) and the unity of the human species (much), and on Calvin's understanding of creation as proto-evolutionary. He also was an engaged reviewer of many of his era's important books by scientists, theologians, and historians who wrote on scientific research in relation to traditional Christianity. Exploration of Warfield's writing on science generally and evolution in particular retrieves for historical consideration an important defender of mediating positions in the supposed war between science and religion.