‘The art itself is nature’: Darwin, domestic varieties and the scientific revolution

Common to both the scientific and Darwinian revolutions were discussions challenging the distinction between art and nature. Was art a part of nature? Could art be used as a model for nature? This intellectual congruence, however, is more than just nominal. Charles Darwin and Asa Gray, for example, were well-aware of the 17th century debates which preceded them through the works of such revered English writers as William Shakespeare and Thomas Browne. Furthermore, they used their understandings of these debates to inform and express their own thinking about the relation between artificial and natural selection.