Arithmetic of the Species: Darwin and the Role of Mathematics in his Argumentation

Abstract

Abstract Historians of science resist recognizing a role for mathematics in The Origin of Species on the grounds that Darwin's arguments are inductive and mathematics is deductive, while rhetoricians seem to oppose the idea that deductive mathematical arguments fall within the jurisdiction of rhetorical analysis. A close textual analysis of the arguments in The Origin and a careful examination of the methodological/philosophical context in which Darwin is doing science, however, challenges these objections against and assumptions about the role of mathematical warrants in Darwin's arguments and their importance to his rhetorical efforts in the text.