Abstract
From the voyages of the Rattlesnake in 1846 and 1850 came a taxonomic report from a young unknown TH Huxley based on his observations and study of the medusae, and it changed coral science totally. His methodical analysis of the numerous genera he dissected led him to identify the four major features of the medusa and outline the basic plan for more than 1000 species, including the coral polyp. His work was undertaken against the backdrop of debate centred on the growing number of evolutionary processes and theories being put forward against the age-old direct Divine Creation beliefs, which came to a head when the “most dangerous man in England” published “The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection” in 1859.
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Notes
- 1.
Facsimile in Huxley 1935, p. 352.
- 2.
Pander 1817, translation by Oppenheimer 1967, p. 258.
- 3.
Rathke 1829, translation by Oppenheimer 1967, p. 260.
- 4.
Because the legs of crabs and horses have the same function but different structures, they are considered “analogous”. In contrast, because the flipper of a dolphin, the foreleg of a horse and the arm of a human all have the same skeletal structure, they are described as “homologous”.
- 5.
The term “nematocyst” was still a decade away in 1857.
- 6.
Developed in Phaedo (100b–101d) where they are merely hypothesized and in Parmenides (130a–134e) where they are vigorously criticized.
- 7.
Metaphysics 1036a, 1084b.
- 8.
All Darwin documentation of letters, here and in following chapters, refers to the number assigned in the Darwin Online Database. This reference is Letter 1480.
- 9.
Darwin Letter 2544.
- 10.
Fremantle (1956, p. 284). That edict has since been moderated to accept the possibility of material evolution within a world created by God out of nothing, but with all souls separately created by God, and absolute proscription of atheistic evolution.
- 11.
This definition is in the opening pages of Chapter 4 of Origin, entitled “Natural Selection”. The page references to Darwin that follow are from the widely accessible 1968 Penguin Edition of Origin of Species.
- 12.
One of the most succinct, informative, readable, and probably accessible accounts for the modern reader appears in Chapter 8, “Reception of the Origin” in de Beer (1963, pp. 157–179).
- 13.
Not until Darwin’s granddaughter Nora Barlow edited and published an unexpurgated edition of his Autobiography in 1958 was Darwin’s agnosticism fully revealed.
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Bowen, J. (2015). Embryos, Archetypes and Evolution. In: The Coral Reef Era: From Discovery to Decline. Humanity and the Sea. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-07479-5_6
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