Walter Pater’s engagement with nineteenth-century science has long been acknowledged, but critics have often characterized it in negative terms. This essay demonstrates that while Pater viewed Darwinian evolutionary theory negatively, insisting that it ‘stealthily withdraws the apparently solid earth itself from beneath one’s feet’ (Plato and Platonism, 1893), he embraced non-Darwinian theories of development. Peter J. Bowler has argued that an ‘eclipse of Darwinism’ or ‘non-Darwinian revolution’ took place in the second half of the nineteenth century, in which there was widespread public acceptance of the transmutation of species but not of the mechanism of adaptation and natural selection proposed by Darwin. Instead, as Bowler demonstrates, the prevailing understanding of evolution was of a non-Darwinian variety that emphasized form over function and design over random chance. I suggest that within these theories, such as the transcendental morphology propounded by Richard Owen, Pater finds a physical manifestation of his own particular philosophic blend of materialism and idealism. Viewed through this lens, many of Pater’s theories in art and philosophy become clearer, such as his belief in the ‘limitations’ of sculpture, discussed in Studies in the History of the Renaissance. Instead of viewing this as a denigration of sculpture as the art form furthest from the ideal, this essay demonstrates that Pater viewed sculpture in terms of the archetype of transcendental morphology: something both material and immaterial, simple and yet also ideal. Far from retreating from the spectre of contemporary science, as many critics suggest Pater does, Pater views science and the humanities as complementary disciplines, or homologues, sharing an underlying structure.

中文翻译：

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沃尔特佩特和非达尔文科学

沃尔特·佩特 (Walter Pater) 对 19 世纪科学的贡献早已为人所知，但批评家们常常以负面的方式对其进行描述。这篇文章表明，尽管佩特对达尔文进化论持否定态度，坚持认为它“悄悄地从脚下撤回了看似坚固的地球本身”（柏拉图和柏拉图主义，1893 年），但他接受了非达尔文主义的发展理论。Peter J. Bowler 认为，“达尔文主义的衰落”或“非达尔文主义革命”发生在 19 世纪下半叶，公众普遍接受物种的演变，但不接受适应机制和达尔文提出的自然选择。相反，正如鲍勒所展示的那样，对进化的普遍理解是一种非达尔文主义的变体，强调形式而不是功能，强调设计而不是随机机会。我认为，在这些理论中，例如理查德欧文提出的先验形态学，佩特找到了他自己的唯物主义和唯心主义哲学混合的物理表现。从这个角度来看，佩特的许多艺术和哲学理论变得更加清晰，例如他对雕塑“局限性”的信念，在文艺复兴史研究中进行了讨论。这篇文章并没有将此视为对雕塑的诋毁，认为它是一种离理想最远的艺术形式，而是证明了佩特是从先验形态学的原型的角度来看待雕塑的：既有物质又有非物质，既简单又理想。