Peter J. Bowler
Peter J. Bowler is a historian of biology who has written extensively on the history of evolutionary thought, the history of the environmental sciences, and on the history of genetics. His 1984 book, Evolution: The History of an Idea is a standard textbook on the history of evolution; a 25th anniversary edition came in 2009. His 1983 book The Eclipse of Darwinism: Anti-Darwinian Evolution Theories in the Decades Around 1900 describes the scientific predominance of other evolutionary theories which led many to minimise the significance of natural selection, in the first part of the twentieth century before genetics was reconciled with natural selection in the modern synthesis.Life
Peter Bowler holds a BA from the University of Cambridge, an MSc from the University of Sussex and a PhD from the University of Toronto. In the 1970s he taught at the School of Humanities, Universiti Sains Malaysia, Penang. He is currently a professor in the history of science at Queen's University Belfast, and is an elected Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and a corresponding member of the Académie Internationale d'Histoire des Sciences. He was President of the British Society for the History of Science from 2004 to 2006.
His current interests are in the development and implications of Darwinism, the history of the environmental sciences, science and religion, and popular science writing.
Current research is on the production of popular science literature in early twentieth-century Britain, with particular emphasis on the role played by professional scientists. Bowler discusses the attempts by Victorian scientists to promote science for public understanding and the increasing accessibility of popular science works.
Bowler has criticised creationism in Northern Ireland. He has made appearances on local radio, including interviews with William Crawley on BBC Radio Ulster shows TalkBack and Sunday Sequence - here he defended evolution and highlighted the non-scientific nature of creationism.Publications
- Fossils and Progress: Palaeontology and the Idea of Progressive Evolution in the Nineteenth Century
- Theories of Human Evolution: A Century of Debate, 1844–1944
- The Mendelian Revolution: The Emergence of Hereditarian Concepts in Modern Science and Society
- The Invention of Progress: Victorians and the Past
- The Non-Darwinian Revolution: Reinterpreting a Historical Myth
- The Eclipse of Darwinism: Anti-Darwinian Evolution Theories in the Decades Around 1900
- The Fontana History of the Environmental Sciences
- Biology and Social Thought: 1850–1914 : Five Lectures Delivered at the International Summer School in History of Science Uppsala, July 1990
- Charles Darwin: the man and his influence.
- Life's splendid drama: evolutionary biology and the reconstruction of life’s ancestry, 1860–1940.
- Reconciling science and religion: the debate in early twentieth-century Britain.
- "The spectre of Darwinism: popular images of Darwinism in early twentieth-century Britain" in Abigail Lustig, Robert J. Richards and Michael Ruse, .
- Making modern science: a historical survey.
- 'Experts and publishers: writing popular science in early twentieth-century Britain' in British Journal for the History of Science, xxxix.
- .
- 'Darwin's Originality', in Science
- Evolution: the history of an idea.
- Science for All: The Popularization of Science in Early Twentieth-Century Britain.
- Q&A Darwin: Off the Record .
- Darwin Deleted: Imagining a World Without Darwin.
- A History of the Future: Prophets of Progress from H. G. Wells to Asimov
