The Darwin-L Archives on the Historical Sciences

Welcome to the Darwin-L Archives. The Darwin-L Archives contains the collected message logs and supporting materials of Darwin-L, a discussion group for academic professionals in the historical sciences that was active from 1993–1997. Darwin-L was established to promote the reintegration of a range of fields all of which are concerned with reconstructing the past from evidence in the present, and to encourage communication among researchers in these fields. The group had more than 600 members from 35 countries, and produced a consistently high level of discussion over its several years of operation.

In spite of its name, Darwin-L did not focus specifically on the work of Charles Darwin, but rather covered the entire range of palaetiology from an explicitly comparative perspective, including evolutionary biology, historical linguistics, textual transmission and stemmatics, historical geology, systematics and phylogeny, archeology, paleontology, historical geography, cosmology, and historical anthropology. Although the Darwin-L discussion group is now closed, this archive of materials generated by the group (more than seven megabytes of text in all, maintained by Dr. Robert J. O’Hara at rjohara.net/darwin) continues to serve as a valuable resource for researchers around the world who are interested in the historical sciences.

The menu of choices which appears at the top of this page is present on every page in the Darwin-L Archives. It will allow you to:

• Find out more information about the Darwin-L discussion group and about palaetiology, the term William Whewell coined to refer to the historical sciences collectively.

• Examine the “Today in the Historical Sciences” calendar, a listing of anniversaries of important persons and events in various palaetiological fields.

• Browse a collection of reading lists and other files relating to the historical sciences that were posted to Darwin-L, including bibliographies on “tree thinking,” on the history of systematics, and on the role of narrative in the historical sciences.

• View the extensive monthly Darwin-L message logs containing more than 3000 messages posted over a period of several years. [Testing: Individual Darwin-L Message Logs, vol. 1, vol. 2, vol. 3, vol. 4, vol. 5, vol. 6, vol. 7, vol. 8]