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Mandeville's ship: theistic design and philosophical history in Charles Darwin's vision of natural selection.(Bernard Mandeville)(Critical essay)

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From: Journal of the History of Ideas
Date: 20080701
Author:Alter, Stephen G.

I. INTRODUCTION: THE VIEW FROM THE SHORELINE

In the diary he kept during his five-year voyage on H.M.S. Beagle, Charles Darwin described an episode that would later be made famous by his published Journal of Researches (1839). The diary's version, however, included more detail. It was mid-December of 1832, and the ship was running several miles off of the northeastern coast of Tierra del Fuego, at the extreme southern tip of South America. From here Darwin and the crew members got their first glimpse of the land's inhabitants: "Shortly by the aid of glasses we could see a ...