Re: Date limit set on first Americans

On Wed, 27 Aug 2003 11:02:30 +0100, Peter Ashby
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

>In article <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>,
> Eric Stevens <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
>> 
>> It's not a cheap shot. It's a perfectly valid question. My question
>> was centred on Philip's part-sentence "How has the authors dealt with
>> critiques of similar types of works ... ". This criterion  could not
>> be applied to Darwin as at that time there were no 'similar types of
>> work'. That point remains equally valid irrespective of whether he
>> published en masse (as he did) or in a steady flow of papers.
>> 
>there were other works out there, his grandfather Erasmus had written 
>one, there was Lamark and a couple of others. The idea of evolution did 
>not start with Charles Darwin. His contribution was a functional 
>mechanism backed up with a mountain of data and close argument intended 
>to counter things like Lamarkianism.
>
Fair comment. I wasn't aware of contributions by Erasmus Darwin.




Eric Stevens