Evolution, Old & New is a work of intellectual history and polemic by the Victorian writer Samuel Butler, author of Erewhon. In it Butler compares the evolutionary theories of Buffon, Dr. Erasmus Darwin, and Lamarck with that of Charles Darwin, arguing that the older naturalists had grasped important truths about life that Darwin’s account of natural selection obscured.
Butler championed the idea of purposeful, inherited adaptation against what he saw as the blind chance of Darwinian selection, and his sharp criticism helped fuel a long public quarrel with Darwin himself. The book is a lively contribution to nineteenth-century debates over how species change and why. It remains of interest to anyone studying the history of evolutionary thought, and is offered here as a free EPUB download.