Branching Darwinisms: The Rise and Fall of the Eclipse Metaphor in the Historiography of Evolutionary Biology

This book offers a meta-historical analysis of the “eclipse of Darwinism” narrative in evolutionary biology. It examines major historiographical labels – such as “Darwinism,” “anti-Darwinian,” “eclipse of Darwinism,” and “modern synthesis” – highlighting their varying uses in past and current historiography. This analysis not only invites a rethinking of how evolutionary biology’s development is periodized but also clarifies how historical narratives shape modern scientific practice by revealing the link between scientific practice and historical interpretation. Using a historical and epistemological perspective, the volume explores both the history of the “eclipse” period and how evolutionary biologists and historians have written that history. Its methodology integrates the study of historiographical traditions with analyses of scientific writings, popular accounts, and personal correspondence among scholars. The book concludes that the “eclipse” metaphor has lost heuristic value and that dividing biology into pre- and post-synthetic phases is misleading. Darwinism neither entered the 1880s–1920s as a unified program nor simply fragmented into isolated strands. Instead, evolutionary studies comprised diverse traditions that branched out and progressively specialized.