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An Origin of Citations: Darwin’s Collaborators and Their Contributions to the Origin of Species

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Abstract

In the first edition of the Origin of Species (1859), Charles Darwin apologized for not correctly referencing all the works cited in his magnum opus. More than 150 years later we have catalogued these citations and analyzed the resultant data. Looking for a complete selection of collaborators, a flexible interpretation of the term citation was necessary; we define it as any reference made to a third party, independently of its form or function. Following the same idea, the sixth edition of the Origin, originally published in 1872 and reprinted with minor additions and corrections in 1876, was chosen for the research because it represents the end of a long debate between Darwin and his peers. It naturally is the edition with the greatest number of citations and collaborators. Through a diverse theoretical analysis, we aim to present a new perspective for the study of the Origin of Species: a bibliographic approach that provides the tools needed to understand the history of the book as a physical and cultural object. Bibliometrics provides a theory of citations as well as a quantitative analysis; science studies highlights the profound social aspects of science in the making. The analysis resulted in 639 citations to 298 collaborators and provided a new perspective of the rhetorical structure of the Origin, even though these results are only the tip of the iceberg of the potential of all the data gathered in this study.

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Notes

  1. To W. D. Fox, 21 [July 1858], Darwin Correspondence Project, “Letter 2312,” accessed 5 January 2020, http://darwinproject.ac.uk/letter/DCP-LETT-2312.xml. Also published in The Correspondence of Charles Darwin, vol. 7.

  2. To J. D Hooker, [5 August 1858], Darwin Correspondence Project, “Letter 2313,” accessed 5 January 2020, http://darwinproject.ac.uk/letter/DCP-LETT-2313.xml. Also published in The Correspondence of Charles Darwin, vol. 7.

  3. To J. D. Hooker, 12 [October 1858], Darwin Correspondence Project, “Letter 2339,” accessed 5 January 2020, darwinproject.ac.uk/letter/DCP-LETT-2339.xml. Also published in The Correspondence of Charles Darwin, vol. 7.

  4. Two other annotated editions of Origin, a Brazilian translation of the first edition by Nélio Bizzo (Darwin 2018) and a Portuguese translation of the sixth edition by Ana Afonso (Darwin 2009), also include similar notes about Darwin’s collaborators, but set aside the quest for the references. Afonso’s edition is the only Portuguese translation available on Darwin Online, but it has many errors in its notes, and thus needs to be used carefully as a research resource. For example, on page 145 John Edward Gray is misidentified as Asa Gray (https://darwin-online.org.uk/converted/pdf/2009_OriginPortuguese_F2062.7.pdf).

  5. However, it is not the first citation in the history of science, since books preceded the scientific journals; see Leydesdorff and Wouters (1999, p. 173).

  6. Waters (2003, p. 117) hypothesised that part of Origin’s success might have come from its less formal style.

  7. Three out of the five first options on Amazon.com are from the first edition.

  8. We verified this claim by using an online tool for text comparison (diffchecker.com) and through the document comparison tool available in Microsoft Word.

  9. Shapin (1994) extensively discuss the role of gentlemanly science in seventeenth-century society. Hodge (2003, p. 65) claims that this was still applicable to the naturalists of the early nineteenth century.

  10. Unfortunately, we were unable to find a digital version of this document and resorted to Ellegård’s account.

  11. Abu'l-Fath Jalal-ud-din Muhammad Akbar, emperor of the Mughal Empire (1526–1857), which comprised most of modern India.

  12. To J. D. Hooker, 16 January [1869], “Letter 6557,” Accessed 5 January 2020. https://darwinproject.ac.uk/letter/DCP-LETT-6557.xml. Also published in The Correspondence of Charles Darwin, vol. 17.

  13. See Morris (1994) for a lengthy commentary on Jenkin’s review and its effects on Darwin.

  14. To W. E. Darwin, [26 May 1858], “Letter 2266,” Accessed 5 January 2020, https://darwinproject.ac.uk/letter/DCP-LETT-2266.xml. Also published in The Correspondence of Charles Darwin, vol 7.

  15. See, for example, “On the Termination of the Visceral Arterioles of Arion rufus,” published in Comptes rendu of the French Academy of Sciences in 1879 and s in Annals and Magazine of Natural History 3 (1879): 243.

  16. To C. Lyell, 22 May [1860], “Letter 2812,” Accessed 5 Jan. 2020, https://darwinproject.ac.uk/letter/DCP-LETT-2812.xml. Also published in The Correspondence of Charles Darwin, vol. 8.

  17. From H. G. H. Norman, 30 November 1866, “Letter 5287,” Accessed 5 Jan. 2020. https://darwinproject.ac.uk/letter/DCP-LETT-5287.xml. Also published in The Correspondence of Charles Darwin, vol. 14.

  18. From C. Kingsley, 18 November 1859, “Letter 2534;” to C. Kingsley, 30 November [1859], “Letter 2561,” Accessed 5 Jan. 2020, https://darwinproject.ac.uk/letter/DCP-LETT-2561.xml. Also published in The Correspondence of Charles Darwin, vol. 7.

  19. Gross, Harmon, and Reidy (2009, p. 9) define presentation as “the ways the text of the scientific article is organized and the ways in which its data are displayed. Citations and headings are features of presentation; so are tables and graphics.” This is an expanded definition of Aristotle’s presentation, one of the three categories of classical rhetoric.

  20. To J. D. Hooker, 16 September [1871], Darwin Correspondence Project, “Letter no. 7949” and footnote 5, accessed 5 Jan. 2020, https://darwinproject.ac.uk/letter/DCP-LETT-7949.xml. Also published in The Correspondence of Charles Darwin, vol. 19.

  21. To J. Murray, 23 September [1871], Darwin Correspondence Project, “Letter no. 7964,” accessed 5 Jan. 2020, https://darwinproject.ac.uk/letter/DCP-LETT-7964.xml. Also published in The Correspondence of Charles Darwin, vol. 19.

  22. To A. R. Wallace, 12 July [1871], Darwin Correspondence Project, “Letter no. 7858,” accessed 5 Jan. 2020, https://darwinproject.ac.uk/letter/DCP-LETT-7858.xml. Also published in The Correspondence of Charles Darwin, vol. 19.

  23. See Regner (2006) for a more in-depth analysis of Darwin’s rhetoric against Mivart.

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Acknowledgements

The authors wish to thank CAPES (Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior) and the Fundação Araucária, Brazil, for funding this research. We are also grateful to JHB editors, Karen Rader and Marsha Richmond, and anonymous reviewers for suggestions that greatly improved the paper, and to Luzia Marta Bellini, Roger Domenech Colacios, and Francine Marcondes Castro Oliveira, who first read and provided corrections to the manuscript.

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  1. Maringá State University (UEM), Maringá, PR, 87020-900, Brazil

    Pedro de Lima Navarro & Cristina de Amorim Machado

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Correspondence to Pedro de Lima Navarro.

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de Lima Navarro, P., de Amorim Machado, C. An Origin of Citations: Darwin’s Collaborators and Their Contributions to the Origin of Species. J Hist Biol 53, 45–79 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10739-020-09592-8

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