ABSTRACT

As mentioned in chapter 2, Darwinian theory had already had a revolutionary impact on scientific inquiry a century ago.2 The suggestions that physical forms are historical rather than pregiven and that the differences among them were natural elaborations of once-small variations rather than reflections of supernatural states prompted the realization that the project of accumulating a complete knowledge of the universe, once deemed possible, could never be achieved. The target was moving. Since Darwin’s time, science has been steadily shifting away from efforts to name, classify, and measure things toward emphases that are more tentative, historically attentive, and theory-generating.