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Biology in Transition

Biology in Transition

Martin Luck

(2018)

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Abstract

Arthur Milnes Marshall was a 19th-century scientist who gave lectures addressing the biological debates of his time. They covered topics including evolution, embryology, development and inheritance, with Charles Darwin’s name and those of other important biologists distributed liberally throughout.

Marshall was a zoologist, embryologist, anatomist and Darwin enthusiast, as well as an accomplished mountaineer and sportsman. He was a humanist, an admired academic teacher and brilliant public educator. The lectures reveal his passion for communicating his subject, to his students and to the working men and women of Manchester, and they provide a remarkable snapshot of the state of biological science at the close of the 19th century.

His death in 1893 aged only 41, on a climbing expedition in the Lake District, left a fascinating time capsule in the form of lectures from a critical transitional period in the history of biology. Evolution by natural selection was the established doctrine but genes were undefined, with Mendel’s work yet to be recognised. Embryology was suggesting recapitulation but ancestry, genetics and missing links awaited liberation from theoreticians and the stones of palaeontology. Microscopy was flourishing and cell science was finding its feet, but DNA and molecular science were far in the future.

Had Marshall lived and worked into the 20th century, these lectures would undoubtedly have been superseded and forgotten. Instead, they reveal biology’s transformation from a descriptive exercise to an experimental science, its rejection of purpose and design in evolution, and the shift of its axis from continental Europe to Britain and the United States.

Professor Martin Luck discovered these lectures (published by CF Marshall in two volumes shortly after his brother’s death) languishing in a university corridor. His careful curation, introductions to each lecture and copious annotations on the organisms, theories and scientists discussed, illuminate their significance as prequels to modern biology. Marshall’s own story brings the lectures and their social context into sharp relief.

Biology in Transition will interest anyone curious about the history of science, especially biology, evolution, genetics and its 19th-century pioneers.


Martin Luck is Emeritus Professor of Physiological Education at the University of Nottingham, UK. He holds degrees from the Universities of Nottingham, Leeds and the Open University and is a National Teaching Fellow and Principal Fellow of the Higher Education Academy. His early research career in reproductive biology and endocrinology took him to Germany and Australia, before returning to a faculty position at Nottingham in 1990. He has a longstanding interest in the links between teaching and research and helped to found a leading journal devoted to publishing research by undergraduate students. He has written books on student research and endocrinology and is currently co-authoring a major textbook for biology students.

Table of Contents

Section Title Page Action Price
Cover i
Title Page iii
Copyright iv
Foreword: Matthew Cobb ix
Apology: History by Serendipity xii
General Note xiv
Acknowledgements xv
VOLUME 1 1
BIOLOGICAL LECTURES AND ADDRESSES 1
LECTURE 1 7
THE MODERN STUDY OF ZOOLOGY 7
LECTURE 2 22
THE INFLUENCE OF ENVIRONMENT ON THE STRUCTURE AND HABITS OF ANIMALS 22
LECTURE 3 32
ON EMBRYOLOGY AS AN AID TO ANATOMY 32
LECTURE 4 39
THE THEORY OF CHANGE OF FUNCTION 39
LECTURE 5 46
BUTTERFLIES 46
LECTURE 6 54
FRESH-WATER ANIMALS 54
LECTURE 7 64
INHERITANCE 64
LECTURE 8 75
THE SHAPES AND SIZES OF ANIMALS 75
LECTURE 9 97
SOME RECENT DEVELOPMENTS OF THE CELL THEORY 97
LECTURE 10 115
ANIMAL PEDIGREES 115
LECTURE 11 144
SOME RECENT EMBRYOLOGICAL INVESTIGATIONS 144
LECTURE 12 158
DEATH 158
LECTURE 13 168
THE RECAPITULATION THEORY 168
INTERLUDE 205
A revealing book review 205
VOLUME 2 211
LECTURES ON THE DARWINIAN THEORY 211
LECTURE 14 224
HISTORY OF THE THEORY OF EVOLUTION 224
LECTURE 15 236
ARTIFICIAL SELECTION AND NATURAL SELECTION 236
LECTURE 16 251
THE ARGUMENT FROM PALAEONTOLOGY 251
LECTURE 17 265
THE ARGUMENT FROM EMBRYOLOGY 265
LECTURE 18 285
THE COLOURS OF ANIMALS AND PLANTS 285
LECTURE 19 304
OBJECTIONS TO THE DARWINIAN THEORY 304
LECTURE 20 317
THE ORIGIN OF VERTEBRATED ANIMALS 317
LECTURE 21 332
THE LIFE AND WORK OF DARWIN 332
List of Authorities 346
Biography: Arthur Milnes Marshall and His Family 363
Index 379