The Post-Darwinian Controversies: A Study of the Protestant Struggle to Come to Terms with Darwin in Great Britain and America, 1870-1900 - Tapa dura

' ... an important book: one of the best on the historical relations of science and evolution and definitely the best on religion and theology ... {Moore} discusses scientific controversies and theological debates with equal skill. no one interested in the history of science and religion should fail to give this book a careful reading.' Isis

'The Post-Darwinism Controversies is an exciting well-argued and richly informative book that both dwarfs and renders obsolete nearly everything previously written about the response made to Darwin by committed Christians in Britain and America.' Reviews in American History

' ... its arguments are bold and exciting, its insights stimulating and provocative ... Moore's commendable effort substantially alters the Victorian intellectual landscape.' Victorian Studies

The Post-Darwinian Controversies offers an original interpretation of Protestant responses to Darwin after 1870, viewing them in a transatlantic perspective and as a constitutive part of the history of post-Darwinian evolutionary thought. The impact of evolutionary theory on the religious consciousness of the nineteenth century has commonly been seen in terms of a 'conflict' or 'warfare' between science and theology. Dr. Moore's account begins by discussing the polemical origins and baneful effects of the 'military metaphor', and this leads to a revised view of the controversies based on an analysis of the underlying intellectual struggle to come to terms with Darwin. The middle section of the book distinguishes the 'Darwinism' of Darwin himself amid the main currents of post-Darwinian evolutionary thought, and is followed by chapters which examine the responses to Darwin of twenty-eight Christian controversialists, tracing the philosophical and theological lineage of their views. The paradox that emerges - that Darwin's theory was accepted in substance only by those whose theology was distinctly orthodox theology and of other evolutionary theories with liberal and romantic theological speculation.