Darwinism and the Linguistic Image: Language, Race, and Natural Theology in the Nineteenth Century

Abstract

In the 19th century, philology - especially comparative philology - made impressive gains as a discipline, thus laying the foundation for modern linguistics. While not a philologist himself, Charles Darwin drew striking comparisons to contemporary linguistic theories at key points in The Origin of Species and The Descent of Man. But since such analogies supplied no real scientific evidence for his theory of evolution, why did Darwin use them? In this volume, the author examines how comparative philology provided a genealogical model of language that Darwin, as well as other scientists and language scholars, used to construct rhetorical parallels with the common-descent theory of evolution. He analyzes the argumentative strategy implicit in such comparisons and weighs their effectiveness, both theoretically and historically. Finally, he considers the long-term consequences of this interdisciplinary parallelism, noting its profound influence in both biology and the humanities. Drawing on texts that range from Darwin's The Origin of Species to letters, notebooks and book reviews, the work details the role of philological theory in 19th-century Darwinian debates.

Cite this work

No public copy is stored for this record, so only the metadata is cited.

Stored only when both papers are in the corpus — 112 citations exist upstream.