Race before Darwin: Variation, adaptation and the natural history of man in post-Enlightenment Edinburgh, 1790-1835.

This paper draws on material from the dissertation books of the University of Edinburgh's student societies and surviving lecture notes from the university's professors to shed new light on the debates on human variation, heredity and the origin of races between 1790 and 1835. That Edinburgh was the most important centre of medical education in the English-speaking world in this period makes this a particularly significant context. By around 1800 the fixed natural order of the eighteenth century was giving way to a more fluid conception of species and varieties. The dissolution of the 'Great Chain of Being' made interpretations of races as adaptive responses to local climates plausible. The evidence presented shows that human variation, inheritance and adaptation were being widely discussed in Edinburgh in the student circles around Charles Darwin when he was a medical student in Edinburgh in the 1820s. It is therefore no surprise to find these same themes recurring in similar form in the evolutionary speculations in his notebooks on the transmutation of species written in the late 1830s during the gestation of his theory of evolution.

Neptunism and Transformism: Robert Jameson and other Evolutionary Theorists in Early Nineteenth-Century Scotland.

This paper sheds new light on the prevalence of evolutionary ideas in Scotland in the early nineteenth century and establish what connections existed between the espousal of evolutionary theories and adherence to the directional history of the earth proposed by Abraham Gottlob Werner and his Scottish disciples. A possible connection between Wernerian geology and theories of the transmutation of species in Edinburgh in the period when Charles Darwin was a medical student in the city was suggested in an important 1991 paper by James Secord. This study aims to deepen our knowledge of this important episode in the history of evolutionary ideas and explore the relationship between these geological and evolutionary discourses. To do this it focuses on the circle of natural historians around Robert Jameson, Wernerian geologist and professor of natural history at the University of Edinburgh from 1804 to 1854. From the evidence gathered here there emerges a clear confirmation that the Wernerian model of geohistory facilitated the acceptance of evolutionary explanations of the history of life in early nineteenth-century Scotland. As Edinburgh was at this time the most important center of medical education in the English-speaking world, this almost certainly influenced the reception and development of evolutionary ideas in the decades that followed.

The platypus in Edinburgh: Robert Jameson, Robert Knox and the place of the Ornithorhynchus in nature, 1821-24.

The duck-billed platypus, or Ornithorhynchus, was the subject of an intense debate among natural historians in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. Its paradoxical mixture of mammalian, avian and reptilian characteristics made it something of a taxonomic conundrum. In the early 1820s Robert Jameson (1774-1854), the professor of natural history at the University of Edinburgh and the curator of the University's natural history museum, was able to acquire three valuable specimens of this species. He passed one of these on to the anatomist Robert Knox (1791-1862), who dissected the animal and presented his results in a series of papers to the Wernerian Natural History Society, which later published them in its Memoirs. This paper takes Jameson's platypus as a case study on how natural history specimens were used to create and contest knowledge of the natural world in the early nineteenth century, at a time when interpretations of the relationships between animal taxa were in a state of flux. It shows how Jameson used his possession of this interesting specimen to provide a valuable opportunity for his protégé Knox while also helping to consolidate his own position as a key figure in early nineteenth-century natural history.

Phrenology, heredity and progress in George Combe's Constitution of Man.

The Constitution of Man by George Combe (1828) was probably the most influential phrenological work of the nineteenth century. It not only offered an exposition of the phrenological theory of the mind, but also presented Combe's vision of universal human progress through the inheritance of acquired mental attributes. In the decades before the publication of Darwin's Origin of Species, the Constitution was probably the single most important vehicle for the dissemination of naturalistic progressivism in the English-speaking world. Although there is a significant literature on the social and cultural context of phrenology, the role of heredity in Combe's thought has been less thoroughly explored, although both John van Wyhe and Victor L. Hilts have linked Combe's views on heredity with the transformist theories of Jean-Baptiste Lamarck. In this paper I examine the origin, nature and significance of his ideas and argue that Combe's hereditarianism was not directly related to Lamarckian transformism but formed part of a wider discourse on heredity in the early nineteenth century.

HENRY H. CHEEK AND TRANSFORMISM: NEW LIGHT ON CHARLES DARWIN'S EDINBURGH BACKGROUND.

Evidence for the transformist ideas espoused by Henry H. Cheek (1807-33), a contemporary of Charles Darwin's at the University of Edinburgh, sheds new light on the intellectual environment of Edinburgh in the late 1820s and early 1830s. Cheek was the author of several papers dealing with the transmutation of species influenced by the theories of Etienne Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire (1772-1844), Jean-Baptiste Lamarck (1744-1829) and the Comte de Buffon (1707-88). Some of these were read to student societies, others appeared in the Edinburgh Journal of Natural and Geographical Science, which Cheek edited between 1829 and 1831. His writings give us a valuable window onto some of the transformist theories that were circulating among Darwin's fellow medical students in the late 1820s, to which Darwin would have been exposed during his time in Edinburgh, and for which little other concrete evidence survives.

Physiology of the Haunted Mind: Naturalistic Theories of Apparitions in Early Nineteenth-Century Scotland.

The late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries saw a resurgence of interest in the supernatural in Scotland as elsewhere in the United Kingdom. A number of intellectual figures responded by proposing naturalistic explanations for supernatural phenomena, drawing on the legacy of Scottish Enlightenment philosophy. These included the geologist and antiquarian Samuel Hibbert and the phrenologist George Combe. This paper explores the interrelations between these theories, their roots in the troubled cultural politics of Scotland in the early nineteenth century, and the reaction of different protagonists in the cultural conflicts of the period to their ideas.

Utilization of joint arthroplasty: racial and ethnic disparities in the Veterans Affairs Health Care System.

Studies within the Veterans Administration health care system have been very useful in identifying the existence of racial and ethnic disparities with regard to patient utilization of hip and knee joint arthroplasty. Existing studies have focused on three factors: estimates of joint arthroplasty utilization,postoperative outcomes, and patient-related variables (eg, expectations of and familiarity with the procedure, religious beliefs). Although Veterans Administration-based studies have produced helpful data, these data are limited because the populations studied are not representative of the larger US population. Specifically, studies from the Veterans Administration health care system are composed of a predominantly male patient demographic;in addition, patients are more likely to have lower income and education levels than the US population as a whole.

Toward sustainability: a case study demonstrating transdisciplinary learning through the selection and use of indicators in a decision-making process.

The purpose of this article is to use a case study example to demonstrate how a transparent, transdisciplinary approach to decision making allows the US Environmental Protection Agency Region III (USEPA Region III) to fulfill its decision-making responsibilities while taking critical steps toward engaging in sustainability discussions. The case study goals were to use information about environmental condition to inform staff and fiscal resource prioritization and allocation for the federal 2010 fiscal year. This article will use a select group of 3 indicators to show 1) that data are not the same as indicators, 2) the feasibility of using disparate data in the same analysis, and 3) specific discussions about indicators can lead to transdisciplinary learning, supporting more informed decision making. We show that, when used in a transdisciplinary learning process, these indicator lessons provide a stepping stone for organizations like USEPA Region III to consider sustainability as more than just a lofty, ethical concept. Instead, these kinds of organizations can more routinely and substantively address sustainability through a progression of individual decisions. We discuss how sustainability can be linked to decision making through a process that requires stakeholders to articulate and confront their values. In this process, selecting indicators and understanding what those choices imply regarding the issues that are highlighted and the population affected is part of the assessment of environmental condition, which is the focus of the case study.