Speaker
Trevor Pearce (University of Western Ontario)
Title
"Psychologists Don't Know Much about Evolution": Osborn, Cope, and the Baldwin Effect
Abstract
The so-called Baldwin Effect – environmentally induced ontogenetic variation gives groups of organisms time to develop coincident phylogenetic variation – is normally seen as stemming primarily from the behavioral research of J.M. Baldwin and C.L. Morgan. The third of its co-discoverers, H.F. Osborn, is either ignored or dismissed as a Lamarckian (Richards 1987; Depew 2003). In treating Osborn as the odd one out, historians have neglected the broader context of the Baldwin Effect – the ‘factors of evolution’ debates of the 1890s prompted by August Weismann’s work. In this talk, I will argue that the ‘factors’ debates, with their emphasis on variation and plasticity, had a decisive influence on Osborn, Morgan, and Baldwin. I will also highlight the contrasting roles played in these debates by the neo-Lamarckian E.D. Cope and the neo-Darwinian E.B. Poulton. The discovery of the Baldwin Effect is an important chapter not just in the history of psychology, but also in the history of evolutionary biology; as Cope wrote to Osborn in 1896, “The Psychologists don’t know much about Evolution – look out for them!”