The Correspondence of Charles Darwin. Volume 5: 1851-1855by Charles Darwin; Frederick Burkhardt; Sydney Smith;The Correspondence of Charles Darwin. Volume 6: 1856-1857by Charles Darwin;

The Correspondence of Charles Darwin. Volume 5: 1851-1855 by Charles Darwin; FrederickBurkhardt; Sydney Smith; The Correspondence of Charles Darwin. Volume 6: 1856-1857 byCharles Darwin; Frederick Burkhardt; Sydney SmithReview by: Jane R. CameriniIsis, Vol. 83, No. 1 (Mar., 1992), pp. 150-151Published by: The University of Chicago Press on behalf of The History of Science SocietyStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/234040 .

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150 BOOK REVIEWS-ISIS, 83: 1 (1992)

contemplation of nature's multifariousness. For only if the aesthetic interest and ability of man are involved in the contemplation of nature is there a chance that it can be re- garded not merely as something to be con- trolled but as something valuable in its own right.

This treatise is written for experts in the history of biology who are interested less in an explication of the various scientific or philosophical standpoints than in an independent interpretation of them. At a time so in need of reflection on the basic concepts of science, the book is to be wel- comed. To have been fully convincing and to have satisfied theoretical demands, the concepts should have been defined with more clarity. Also, a consideration of Schelling's and Hegel's speculative sys- tems would have contributed to the level of reflection. Thus, the book is characterized more by the questions it poses than by the answers it provides. But this is arguably its aim.

STEFAN BUYTTNER

Charles Darwin. The Correspondence of Charles Darwin. Volume 5: 1851-1855. Ed- ited by Frederick Burkhardt and Sydney Smith. xxxii + 705 pp., illus., figs., bibl., index. Cambridge/New York: Cambridge University Press, 1989. $39.50.

Charles Darwin. The Correspondence of Charles Darwin. Volume 6: 1856-1857. Ed- ited by Frederick Burkhardt and Sydney Smith. xxxii + 673 pp., illus., figs., apps., bibl., index. Cambridge/New York: Cam- bridge University Press, 1990. $49.50.

"I hate a Barnacle as no man ever did before," penned Darwin two years before completing the fourth and final volume of his monograph on Cirripedes (Vol. 5, p. 100). We read not only of his exasperation, but also of his patient curiosity and, later, his gratification and pride on finishing the project. It is the range and humanness of Darwin's emotions in regard to barnacles and every other topic he studies that make the letters from this overwhelmingly cre- ative period of his life so accessible and in- teresting.

During these years (1851-1857) Darwin turned his attention to the subjects for which he is best known: plant breeding and hybridization, geographical distribution of

plants and animals, variation of domestic animals, classification, paleontology, and anatomy. The relation of these to his species theory is not explicitly addressed herein; rather, we find him delving into each topic, explaining its bearing on his theory of evolution by natural selection in small pieces to a select few. And if the letters relating to the construction of his theory through a massive synthesis of information from correspondents and published materials are not enough to attract readers, we are also privy to less known, but no less significant, events in his life. We read of Darwin's feelings surrounding the death of his ten-year-old daughter, his glee in learn- ing to identify grasses ("I have just made out my first Grass, hurrah! hurrah!" [Vol. 5, p. 344]), his affection for his research animals ("I love them [my pigeons] to the extent that I cannot bear to kill & skeleto- nise them" [Vol. 5, p. 497]), and his frustra- tion in trying to make the pieces of the species puzzle fit together ("I am the most miserable, bemuddled, stupid Dog in all of England & am ready to cry at vexation at my blindness & presumption" [Vol. 6, p. 429]).

There is a freshness in following for one- self Darwin's broad-ranging correspondence with scores of naturalists from all quarters of the globe, with pigeon breeders, with his family, and with the close circle of English gentleman-scientists in whom he confided. The increasing friendship and in- timacy evident in his letters to and from colleagues, most especially Joseph Dalton Hooker and Asa Gray, allow us into the circle where we find Charles Lyell prodding Darwin to get his views on species into print, Hooker reacting to part of a manuscript chapter on distribution ("I never felt so shaky about species before" [Vol. 6, p. 259]), and Darwin anxiously sending chapters of Natural Selection (the manuscript version of On the Origin of Species) to his friends.

The editors and staff sustain the superb quality of editing and production for which the series is now known. The scrupulous care given to the footnotes, appendixes, index, and so forth adds to one's appreciation of the letters. This care does not, however, extend to the reproduction of drawings, of which I counted thirty-some in these volumes. I was unable to find any information regarding the drawings, their original size, location in the text, or rendering material



BOOK REVIEWS-ISIS, 83: 1 (1992) 151

(pencil or ink). While readers might assume that the original figures were traced and placed correctly in the printed letters, and that handwritten letter elements of the orig- inals were replaced by letter-set type, ask- ing readers to make these assumptions is incompatible with the editorial care given to the verbal texts. This lack of attention to graphic and pictorial "texts" is unfortu- nately typical of many publications in the history of science.

It is difficult to imagine historians of mod- ern science, or of any period, who would not find these volumes worth reading.

JANE R. CAMERINI

Federico Di Trocchio. Legge e caso nella genetica mendeliana. 243 pp., figs., tables, index. Milan: Franco Angeli, 1989. L 22,000 (paper). Federico Di Trocchio is a young Italian his- torian of the biological sciences. He has already published a scholarly book on the Montpellier vitalists in the eighteenth cen- tury, in particular P. J. Barthez, and now he makes his first entry in the crowded field of Mendelian historiography.

The starting point of his analysis is the apparent inconsistency of Mendel's experiments, already noted by R. A. Fischer in the 1930s and discussed by Margaret Campbell in 1976. Di Trocchio refuses the traditional idea of "too-good results" and proposes a reinterpretation of Mendel's experiments on Pisum. His main point is that the logic of the experiments is not that given in the published account. He bases his reasoning on the analysis of the genetic linkage map in Pisum and the localization of the traits studied by Mendel. The conclu- sion is that Mendel undertook extensive ex- perimentation with several characters before isolating a posteriori seven of them that showed independent segregation (no linkage) and the famous 3:1 ratio.

The second and third chapters of the book offer a hypothetical reconstruction of Mendel's experiments, trying to show "6what Mendel actually did." The idea is that Mendel's research topic was constant hybrids and that he applied a statistical analysis to disaggregate the data from multifactorial crosses. This implies that the famous monofactorial crosses were not really made by Mendel, but were purely theoreti-

cal constructs. "Those experiments are imaginary, in the sense that they have been realized only on paper, getting the numeri- cal data regarding them from a disaggrega- tion of the data from multifactorial crosses. In other words, Mendel did not conduct these experiments in his botanical garden, but only in his notebooks" (p. 113). This reconstruction, which contrasts with Men- del's own description of his experiments in the published paper and in the famous letters to Carl Nageli, seems plausible, but it remains largely hypothetical. The book does not give conclusive evidence for the main thesis, but it could stimulate further historical research.

The last part of the book is devoted to a short reconstruction of Mendelian genetics after 1900 and to the role of the concept of chance in molecular biology. This part is less original and adds nothing to the current literature on these subjects.

BERNARDINO FANTINI

Lucille B. Ritvo. Darwin's Influence on Freud: A Tale of Two Sciences. xii + 267 pp., frontis., apps., bibls., index. New Ha- ven, Conn.ILondon: Yale University Press, 1990. $30.

It is rare in the history of science to find an entire book devoted to studying the impact of one great thinker on another. We are more commonly presented with studies that isolate one pioneer's influence on later gen- erations or, inversely, that explore the va- riety of historical influences that shaped one notable figure or some aspect of his or her work. Lucille Ritvo's Darwin's Influ- ence on Freud is not a study of the general impact of evolutionary theory on psycho- analysis, but of Charles Darwin's influence on Sigmund Freud, on its face a much more limited undertaking.

When Darwin passed from the scene in 1882, Freud was a twenty-six-year-old re- searcher in Ernst Bruicke's physiology lab- oratory in Vienna. Freud left medical research definitively for clinical practice three years later and, according to Ritvo's account, ceased reading in the specialized biological literature that chronicled the progress of Darwin's theory. Though Dar- win's influence on Freud's work was pro- found and endured throughout his life,



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The Correspondence of Charles Darwin. Volume 5: 1851-1855by Charles Darwin; Frederick Burkhardt; Sydney Smith;The Correspondence of Charles Darwin. Volume 6: 1856-1857by Charles Darwin;