Evolution for John Doe: Pictures, the public, and the scopes trial debate

Journal of American History

Volumn 87, Issue 4, 2001, Pages 1275-1303

  Clark, Constance Areson ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF COLORADO   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 33746371199     PISSN: 00218723     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.2307/2674729     Document Type: Article

References (186)

1. Joseph Wood Krutch, Lives Than One (New York, 1962), 153;
2. Joseph Wood Krutch, "The Monkey Trial," Commentary, 43 (May 1967), 84.
3. Tennessee Evolution Case: A Complete Stenographic Report of the Famous Court Test of th e Tennessee Anti-Evolution Act, at Dayton, July 10 to 21, 1925, Including Speeches and Arguments of Attorneys (Cincinnati, 1925), 174-77;
4. George William Hunter, A Civic Biology Presented in Problems (New York, 1914), 194.
5. The phrase "acids of modernity" is Walter Lippmann's; see Lynn Dumenil, The Modern Temper: American Culture and Society in the 1920s (New York, 1995), 148.
6. Frederick Lewis Allen, Only Yesterday: An Informal History of the 1920s (New York, 1931);
7. Inherit the Wind, dir. Stanley Kramer (United Artists, 1960);
8. Lawrence W. Levine, Defender of the Faith: William Jennings Bryan, the Last Decade, 1915-1925 (Cambridge, Mass., 1987);
9. Garry Wills, Under God: Religion and American Politics (New York, 1990);
10. Edward Larson Summer for the Gods: The Scopes Trial and America's Continuing Debate over Science and Religion (New York, 1997);
11. Ronald L. Numbers, Darwinism Comes to America (Cambridge, Mass., 1998);
12. Paul K. Conkin, When All the Gods Trem bled: Darwinism, Scopes, and American Intellectuals (Lanham, 1998).
13. For recent revisions of the Scopes trial and its context, see also Edward Larson, Trial and Error: The American Controversy over Creation and Evolution (New York, 1989);
14. James Gilbert, Redeeming Culture: American Religion in an Age of Science (Chicago, 1997), 23-35;
15. and George E. Webb, The Evolution Controversy in America (Lexington, Ky., 1994).
16. On the reception of Darw inism, see Jon H. Roberts, Darwin and the Divine in America: Protestant Intellectuals and Organic Evolution, 1859-1900 (Madison, 1988);
17. Ronald L. Numbers and John Stenhouse, eds., Disseminating Darwinism: The Role of Place , Race, Religion, and Gender (New York, 1999);
18. James R. Moore, The Post-Darwinia troversies: A Study of the Prote stant Struggle to Come to Terms with Darwin in Great Britain and America, 1870-1900 (Cambridge, Eng., 1979);
19. David L. Hull, Darwin and His Critics: The Reception of Darwin's Theory of Evolution by the Scientific Community (Chicago, 1973);
20. Peter J. Bowler, Life's Splendid Drama: Evolutionary Biology and the Reconstruction of Life's Ancestry, 1860-1940 (Chicago, 1996);
21. Peter J. Bowler, The Eclipse of Darwinism: Anti-Darwinian Evolutio n Theories in the Decades around 1900 (Baltimore, 1983);
22. Peter J. Bowler, The Non-Darwinian Revolution: Reinterpreting a Historical Myth (Baltimore, 1988);
23. Peter J. Bowler, "Darwinism and Modernism: Genetics, Palaeontology, and the Challenge to Progressionism, 1880-1930," in Modernist Impulses in the Human Sciences, 1870- 1930, ed. Dorothy Ross (Baltimore 1994), 236-54;
24. Mark Pittenger, American Socialists and Evolutionary Thought, 1870-1920 (Madison, 1993);
25. Paul Jerome Croce, Science and Religion in the Era of William James: Eclipse of Certainty, 1820-1880 (Chapel Hill, 1995).
26. On the general cultural background he United States in the 1920s, see Dumenil, Modern Temper;
27. Warren I. Susman, Culture As History: The Transformation of American Society in the Twentieth Century (New York, 1973).
28. On the recent literature a ing visual culture in history, see George H. Roeder Jr., "Filling in the Picture: Visual Culture," Reviews in American History, 26 (March 1998), 275-93.
29. Martin J. S. Rudwick's knowledge of scientific practice is firsthand: before becoming a historian, he was an invertebrate paleontologist and his ear rk is still cited by paleontologists. Martin J. S. Rudwick, "The Emergence of a Visual Language for Geological Science, 1760-1840," History of Science, 14 (Sept. 1976), 149-95;
30. Martin J. S. Rudwick, Scenes from Deep Time: Early Pictorial Representations of the Prehistoric World (Chicago, 1992).
31. See also "Special Issue: Seeing Science," Representations, 40 (Fall 1992);
32. "Special Issue on Pictorial Representation in Biology," Biology and Philosophy, 6 (April 1991);
33. the special issue "Science and the Visual," British Journal for the History of Science, 31 (June 1998);
34. Stephanie Moser, Ancestral Images: The Iconography of Hum an Origins (Ithaca, 1998);
35. Brian S. Baigre, ed., Picturing Knowledge: Historical and Philosophical Problems Concerning the Use of Art in Science (Toronto, 1996);
36. Michael Lynch and Steve Woolgar, eds., Representation in Scientific Practice (Cambridge, Mass., 1990);
37. Thomas L. Hankins and Robert J. Silverman, Instruments and the Imagination (Princeton, 1995);
38. Bruno Latour, "Visualization and Cognition: Thinking with Eyes and Hands," Knowledge and Society, 6 (1986), 1-40;
39. Caroline A. Jones and Peter Galison, eds., Picturing Science Producing Art (New York, 1998);
40. Stephen Jay Gould, Full House: The Spread of Excellence from Plato to Darwin (New York, 1996);
41. Stephen Jay Gould, "Ladders and Cones: Constraining Evolution by Canonical Icons," in Hidden Histories of Science, e d. Robert B. Silvers (New York, 1995), 37-67;
42. Stephen Jay Gould, The Mismeasure of Man (New York, 1996), 401-12;
43. and Charlotte M. Porter, "Essay Review: The Hist f Scientific Illustration," Journal of the History of Biology, 28 (Fall 1995), 545-50.
44. William Jennings Bryan and Mary Baird Bryan, The Memoirs of William Jennings Bryan (Philadelphia, 1925), 535.
45. See also Levine, Defender of the Faith;
46. Larson, Summer for the Gods, esp. 37-59;
47. Wills, Under God, 97-137;
48. Stephen Jay Gould, Bully for Brontosaurus: Reflections in Natural History (New York, 1991), 416-31.
49. Michael M. Sokal, "Promoting Science in a New Century: The Middle Years of the AAAS," in The Establishment of Science in America: 150 Years of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, ed. Sally Gregory Kohlstedt, Michael M. Sokal, and Bruce V. Lewenstein (New Brunswick, 1999), 50-102.
50. Peter J. Bowler suggests that paleontologists of the early twentieth century, while retaining a teleological evolutionary philosophy, had a view of evolutionary processes more complicated than the views predominant before 1900. Fragmentation and competition among newly professionalized disciplines exacerbated the unsettled state of evolutionary theory, pitting scientists in the young discipline of genetics, for example, against those in the older fields of morphology and paleontology, and laboratory-based scientists against field scientists. See Bowler, Eclipse of Darwinism;
51. Bowler, "Darwinism and Modernism";
52. Garland Allen, Life Science in the Twentieth Century (New York, 1975);
53. Ronald Rainger, Keith Benson, and Jane Maienschein, eds., The American Development of Biology (Philadelphia, 1988);
54. Paul Lawrence Farber, Finding Order in Nature: The Naturalist Tradition from Linnaeus to E. O. Wilson (Baltimore, 2000);
55. Ernst Mayr and William Provine, eds., The Evolutionary Synthesis: Perspectives on the Unification of Biology (Cambridge, Mass., 1980);
56. and Vassiliki Betty Smocovitis, Unifying Biology: The Evolutionary Synthesis and Evolutionary Biology (Princeton, 1996).
57. On Henry Fairfield Osborn and his colleagues, the history of the American Museum of Natural History, a nd the history of museums generally, see Ronald Rainger, An Agenda for Antiquity: Henry Fairfield Osborn and Vertebrate Paleontology at the American Museum of Natural History, 1890-1935 (Tuscaloosa, 1991);
58. John Micha el Kennedy, "Philanthropy and Science in New York City: The American Museum of Natural History, 1868-1968" (Ph.D. diss., Yale University, 1968);
59. Sheila Ann Dean, "What Animal We Came From: William King Gregory 's Paleontology and the 1920s Debate on Human Origins" (Ph.D. diss., Johns Hopkins University, 1994 );
60. Edwin H. Colbert, William Diller Matthew, Paleontologist: The Splendid Drama Observed (New York, 1992);
61. Donna Haraway, Primate Visions: Gender, Race, and Nature in the World of Modern Science (New York, 1989), 26-58;
62. Charlotte Porter, "Henry Fairfield Osborn and the Hall of the Age of Man," Museum Studies Journal, 1 (Spring 1983), 26-34;
63. Greg Mitman, Reel Nature: America's Romance with Wildlife on Film (Cambridge, Mass., 1999 );
64. Sally Gregory Kohlstedt, "Essay Review: Museums: Revisiting Sites in the History of the Natural Sciences," Journal of the History of Biology, 28 (Spring 1995), 151-66;
65. and Steven Conn, Museums and American Intellectual Life, 1876-1926 (Chicago, 1998).
66. Newspapers as far from New York as California covered the Osborn-Straton exchange. See letters and clippings about it, folder 4, box 21, Osborn Papers (Library, American Museum of Natural History, New York, N.Y. ). See especially He airfield Osborn to John Roach Straton, March 8, 1924, Steven Conn, Museums and American Intellectual Life, 1876-1926 (1998).ibid.;
67. John Roach Straton, "Making Poison Plausible," sermon, 1924, Museums and American Intellectual Life, 1876-1926 (ibid.;
68. and John Dickenson Sherman, "'Treason to God Almighty': Rev. Dr. J. R. Straton Denounces American Museum of Natural History," newspaper clipping, Fort Bragg [California] News, May 3, 1924,
69. John Dickenson Sherman, "'Treason to God Almighty': Rev. Dr. J. R. Straton Denounces American Museum of Natural History," Fort Bragg [California] News, 1924, ibid.
70. See also John Roach Straton and Charles Francis Potter, Evolution versus Creation: Second in the Series of Fundamentalist-Modernist Debates (1924), in Creationism in Twentieth-Century America: A Ten-Volume Anthology of Documents, 1903-1961, ed. Ronald L. Numbers, vol. II: Creation-Evolution Debates (New York, 1995), 21-131.
71. New York Times, Jan. 14, 1926, p. 6.
72. The Osborn Papers at the American Museum of Natural History contain many reviews of his own and other s' books of this type. For materials relating to Men of the Old Stone Age, see box 99, Osborn Papers;
73. to Earth Spea ks to Bryan, box 92, ibid.;
74. to Mason, ed., Creation by Evolution, box 14, ibid.
75. Sales figures for Osborn's books duri ng the 1920s are in folders 7-11, box 56, ibid. On the window display at Brentanos, see Sterling Galt to Charles Scribner, memo, July 21, 1925, folder 2, box 92, ibid. "Books for Babbitt," World's Work, 58 (June 1929), copy of clipping, folder 14, box 14, ibid.
76. See also Susman, Culture as History, 105-21;
77. James Steel Smith, "The Day of the Popularizers: The 1920s," South Atlantic Quarterly, 62 (Spring 1963), 297-309;
78. and Joan Shelley Rubin, The Makin Middlebrow Culture (Chapel Hill, 1992).
79. Henshaw Ward, Evolution for John Doe (Indianapolis, 1925), 15.
80. Other books in this genre include Henry C. Crampton, The Coming and Evolution of Life: How Living Things Have Come to Be As They Are (New York, 1931 );
81. Edwin Grant Conklin, The Direction of Human Evolution (New York, 1922);
82. Benjamin C. Gruenberg, The Sto ry of Evolution: Facts and Theories on the Development of Life (Garden City, 1929);
83. John Langdon-Davies, The New Age of Faith (New York, 1925);
84. Frederic A. Lucas, Animals of the Past: An Account of Some of the Creatures of t he Ancient World (New York, 1922);
85. Richard Swann Lull et al., The Evolution of Man (New Haven, 1922);
86. Franc es Mason, ed., Creation by Evolution: A Consensus of Present-Day Knowledge As Set Forth by Leading Authorities in Non-Technical Language That All May Understand (New York, 1928);
87. Kirtley Mather, Sons of the Earth: A Geologist's View of History (New York, 1930);
88. Shailer Mathews, ed., Contributions of Science to Religion (New York, 1924);
89. Horatio Hackett Newman, Readings in Evolution, Genetics, and Eugenics (Chicago, 1921);
90. Horatio Hackett Newman et al., The Nature of the World and of Man (Chicago, 1926);
91. Henry Fairfield Osborn, Men of the O ld Stone Age: Their Environment, Life, and Art (New York, 1916);
92. Henry Fairfield Osborn, The Origin and Evoluti on of Life (New York, 1918);
93. Henry Fairfield Osborn, Man Rises to Parnassus: Critical Epochs in the Prehistory of Man (Princeton, 1928);
94. Lucretia Perry Osborn, The Chain of Life (New York, 1925);
95. Harold Peake and Herbert John Fleure, Apes and Men (New Haven, 1927);
96. Chester A. Reeds, The Earth: Our Ever-Changing Planet (New York, 1931);
97. William Berryman Scott, The Theory of Evolution: With Special Reference to the Evidence upon Which It Is Founded (New York, 1923);
98. G. Elliott Smith, The Evolution of Man: Essays (London, 1924);
99. Adam Gowans Whyte, The Wonder World We Live In (New York, 1921);
100. H. G. Wells, Julian Huxley, and G. P. Wells, The Scien ce of Life (New York, 1929);
101. and H. G. Wells, Outline of History: Being a Plain History of Life and Mankind (New York, 1920).
102. See also Ronald C. Tobey, The American Ideology of National Science, 1919-1930 (Pittsburgh, 1971).
103. On the history of evolutionary tree diagrams, Stephen G. Alter, Darwinism and the Linguistic Image: Language, Race, and Natural Theology in the Nineteenth Century (Baltimore, 1999);
104. Gould, "Ladders and Cones";
105. Stephen Jay Gould, The Lying Stones of Marrakech: Penultimate Reflections in Natural History (New York, 2000), 115-43;
106. Bowler, "Darwinism and Modernism," 247-54;
107. Robert J. O'Hara, "Representations of the Natural System in the Nineteenth Century," Biology and Philosophy, 6 (April 1991), 255-74;
108. William Coleman, "Morphology between Type Concept and Descent Theory," Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences, 31 (no. 2, 1976), 149-75;
109. H. J. Lam, "Phylogenetic Symbols, Past and Present," Acta Biotheoretica, 2 (Oct. 1936), 153-94;
110. Edward G. Voss, "The History of Keys and Phylogenetic Trees in Systematic Biology," Journal of the Scientific Laborat of Denison University, 43 (Dec. 1952), 1-25;
111. Howard E. Gruber, "Darwins Tree of Nature' and Other Images of Wide Scope," in On Aesthetics in Science, ed. Judith Wechsler (Cambridge, Mass., 1978), 121-40;
112. and Theodore D. McCown and Kenneth A. R. Kennedy, eds., Climbing Man's Family Tree: A Collection of Major Writings on Human Phytogeny, 1699 to 1971 (Englewood Cliffs, 1972).
113. Charles Darwin, On the Origin of Species: A Facsimile of the First Edition (1859; Cambridge, Mass., 1964);
114. Gruber, "Darwin's 'Tree of Nature' and Other Images of Wide Scope."
115. Ernst Haeckel, The Evolution of Man (1866; New York, 1896), 189;
116. Jane M. Oppenheimer, "Haeckel's Variations on Darwin," in Biological Metaphor and Cladistic Classification: An Interdisciplinary Perspective, ed. Henry M. Hoenigswald and Linda F. Wiener (Philadelphia, 1987), 123-35;
117. Alter, Darwinism and the Linguistic Image, 108-45;
118. Bowler, "Darwinism and Modernism," 247-54;
119. Gould, "Ladders and Cones."
120. Henry Fairfield Osborn, The Age of Mammals in Europe, Asia, and North America (New York, 1910), 7.
121. A similar tree, used as the frontispiece for a 1921 book, outfitted the human at the top of the tree in the garb of the stereotyped "cave man." See Whyte, Wonder World We Live In, n.p.
122. The cave man is obviously taken from a 1911 picture published in the Illustrated London News and reproduced in Moser, Ancestral Images, 155.
123. Horse diagrams were often drawn to support Osborn's linear, progressive model of evolution. See Rainger, Agenda for Antiquity, 164-65, 208-10.
124. W. D. Matthew, "The Evolution of the Horse: A Record and Its Inter pretation," Quarterly Review of Biology, 1 (no. 2, 1926), 139-85;
125. American Museum of Natural History, Evolution of the Horse (New York, 1924);
126. Thomas Henry Huxley, American Addresses (London, 1877), 71-90;
127. Gould, Full House, 57-88;
128. Gould, Bully for Brontosaurus, 168-81;
129. George Gaylord Simpson, Horses: The Story of t he Horse Family in the Modern World and through Sixty Million Years of History (Garden City, 1961).
130. W. Maxwell Reed, The Earth for Sam (New York, 1930).
131. Bowler, "Darwinism and Modernism."
132. Thomas Henry Huxley, Man's Place In Nature (1863; Ann Arbor, 1959), frontispiece (n.p.), 129-30.
133. See also Nicholas Rupke, Richard Owen: Victorian Naturalist (New Haven, 1994);
134. and Adrian Desmond, Huxley: From Devil's Disciple to Evolutions High Priest (Reading, 1997).
135. For a discussion of recent versions of this joke, from a perspective that differs from mine, see Gould, "Ladders and Cones," New Yorker, June 6, 1925, p. 3. For another example, see Judge, July 18, 1925, p. 2.
136. Thanks to George Roeder for the observation that William King Gregory's diagram made its "working hypothesis" nature explicit, and for the suggestion that this could explain why such trees did not find their way into popular books. William King Gregory and Marcelle Roigneau, Introduction to Human Anatomy: Guide to Section I of the Hall of Natural History of Man (New York, 1934).
137. For Gregory's discussions of human evolution, tree diagrams, and mosaic evolution, see, for exa mple, William King Gregory, "Studies on the Evolution of the Primates," Bulletin of the American Museum of Na tural History, 35 (1916), 239-355;
138. William King Gregory, Our Face from Fish to Man: A Portrait Gallery of Our Ancient Ancestors and Kinsfolk together with a Conci story of Our Best Features (New York, 1929);
139. William King Gregory, "The Origin, Rise, and Decline of Homo sapiens," Scientific Monthly, 39 (Dec. 1934), 481-96; and
140. William King Gregory, "Supra-specific Variation in Nature and in Classification: A Few Examples from Mammalian Paleontology," American Naturalist, 71 (Jan.-Feb. 1937), 268-76.
141. Gregory, Our Face from Fish to Man, frontispiece (n.p,). The caption accompanies the frontisp iece, which shows the same faces in a more tree-like arrangement. I am grateful to Richard Areson Clark for his perceptive reading of this diagram.
142. Henry Fairfield Osborn, "Our Ancestors Arrive in Scandinavia," Natural History, 22 (March-April 1922), 116-34;
143. Rainger, Agenda for Antiquity;
144. Dean, "What Animal We Came From";
145. Daniel J. Kevles, In the Name of Eugenics: Genetics and the Uses of Human Heredity (New York, 1985);
146. Philip J. Pauly, "Essay Review: The Eugenics Industry - Growth or Restructuring?," Journal of the History of Biology, 26 (Spring 1993), 131-45.
147. For a ence to this diagram in a context that emphasizes Osborn's disagreement with Gregory, see Dean, "What Animal We Came From," 220, 291.
148. "Ascent to Utopia Evolutions Aim, Says Savant, Decrying Quibbling," Poughkeepsie Enterprise, June 22, 1925, clipping, folder 14, box 19, Osborn Papers;
149. New York Times, July 12, 1925, se c. 8, p. 1;
150. William King Gregory, "Did Man Originate in Central Asia?," Scientific Monthly, 24 (May 1927), 385- 401;
151. George Grant MacCurdy, "Old Problems and New Methods in Prehistory," Scientific American, 134 (May 1926) , 308-9;
152. L. Perry Curtis Jr., Apes and Angels: The Irishman in Victorian Caricature (Washington, 1997);
153. Moser, Ancestral Images.
154. Henry Fairfield Osborn, "Recent Discoveries Relating to the Origin and Antiquity of Man," Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, 66 (1927), 373-89;
155. Henry Fairfield Osborn, "Is the Ape-Man a Myth?," Human Biology, 1 (Jan. 1929), 4-9;
156. Osborn, Man Rises to Parnassus;
157. Osborn, Men of the Old Stone Age.
158. On the disagreement between Osborn and Gregory, see Rainger, Agenda for Antiquity, 228-41;
159. and Dean, " What Animal We Came From," 4, 259-300.
160. For Gregory's statement, see George Gaylord Simpson, "Willi ng Gregory, 1876-1970," American Journal of Physical Anthropology, 35 (Sept. 1971), 158.
161. J. H. McGregor, "Restoring Neanderthal Man," Natural History, 26 (May-June 1926), 288-93;
162. Rainger, Agenda for Antiquity, 170-73.
163. McGregor, "Restoring Neanderthal Man," 289, 293.
164. On Keiths ideas about human evolution in the context of his celebration of European imperialism, see Bowler, "Darwinism and Modernism," 252-54.
165. Rainger, Agenda for Antiquity, 99-104;
166. Arthur Keith, "Whence Came the White Race?," New York Times Sunday Magazine, Oct. 12, 1930. A clipping of this article is i n folder 2, box 12, Osborn Papers.
167. Ad for God - or Gorilla by Alfred Watterson McCann, New York Evening Post, June 3, 1925, p. 11;
168. Alfred Watterson McCann, God - or Gorilla (New York, 1925);
169. Nathan G. Moore, The Theory of Evolution (An Inquiry) (Chicago, 1931);
170. Henry Fairfield Osborn, "Evolution and Daily Living," Forum, 73 (Feb. 1925), 171.
171. Ad for The Earth Speaks to Bryan by Henry Fairfield Osborn, Mew York Times Book Review, July 12, 1925, p. 18. For the correspondence between Osborn and Charles night about this painting see box 1, Charles R. Knight Papers (New York Public Library, New York, N.Y.); and folders 8 and 9, box 12, Osborn Papers.
172. Moser, Ancestral Images, 159-60;
173. Rainger, Agenda for Antiquity, 174-77;
174. Sylvia Massey Czerkas and D F. Glut, Dinosaurs, Mammoths, and Cavemen: The Art of Charles R. Knight (New York, 1982), 68-69.
175. Henry Fairfield Osborn, The Earth Speaks to Bryan (New York, 1925);
176. "Joint Statement upon the Relations of Science and Religion, by Religious Leaders and Scientists," Science, June 1, 1923, pp. 630-31.
177. THe film quoted the last two lines of a poem by William Herbert Carruth. The complete poem is: " A firemist and a planet crystal and a cell, / A jelly-fish and a saurian, / And caves where the cave-men dwell. / Then a glimpse of law and beauty / And a face turned from the sod:- / Some call it Evolution / And oth ers call it God." It was published and quoted often in the 1920s. See, for example, Straton and Potter, Evolution versus Creation, in Creationism in Twentieth-Century America, ed. Numbers, II, 49;
178. and Langdon Smith, Poems of Evolution (Girard, 1924);
179. Editor, "The Scientist Bends the Knee," New Republic, Aug. 5, 1925, pp. 280-81.
180. Osborn, "Evolution and Daily Living," 171;
181. Osborn, Earth Speaks to Bryan, 87; Thomas Hunt Morgan to Osborn, folder 1, box 16, Osborn Papers;
182. Rainger, Agenda for Antiquity, 136.
183. James J. Porter to editor, New Republic, Aug. 12, 1925, p. 323.
184. G. K. Chesterton, The Everlasting Man (New York, 1925), 34-35;
185. Simeon Strunsky, "About Books, More or Less: Chesterton's Faith," New York Times Book Review, Nov. 22, 1925, p. 4.
186. Osborn once wrote that if he could, he would prohibit young people from ever reading "the irreverent funny pages." Henry Fairfield Osborn, Creative Education in School, College, University, and Museum (New York, 1927), 47. William McDougall to Osborn, July 15, 1925, folder 2, box 92, Osborn Papers.