Contextualizing The descent of man by Charles Darwin: heated debates persist 150 years after its publication

Abstract

This paper discusses Charles Darwin’s (1809-1882) book The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex, from 1871, whose first edition celebrates 150 years of publication in 2021. Although as famous and essential as Origin of species, The Descent is the most controversial book by Darwin since its release until the present day. The objectives are to collect aspects of the context in which the book was written and discuss some of the controversial issues surrounding it. For this, initially, by approximations to Darwin’s studies published from the 1980s onwards, the historiographical approach adopted is characterized as post-positivist, contextualist, and enriched by multicultural theories of knowledge. Descent’s scope and objectives are presented, bearing in mind its author as a representative of the English intellectual elite of the 19th century. The selection of the polemics alive today took place in two academic forums of 2021, a discipline on Darwin and an international congress of meta-scientific studies of biology. There are three groups of polemics: 1) the craniometric school and the hierarchy of races and civilizations; 2) sexual selection and cultural gender stereotypes; 3) natural selection in the human scope and eugenic movements. The conclusions are drawn in convergence with the findings of recent historiography, recognizing that the construction of Darwin’s evolutionary theory took place in the two-way interaction between science and culture, as is the nature of the construction of all scientific knowledge. His theoretical work reflects elements of Victorian society, with which the naturalist shared both virtues and vices.