In relation to the centenary of Darwin=92s "Origin of Species" in 1959, t=  
he   
great statistician and evolutionary biologist R.A. Fisher (1999, p. 318)   
stated:   
  
"More attention to the History of Science is needed, as much as by   
scientists as by historians, ... and this should mean a deliberate attemp=  
t   
to understand the thoughts of the great masters of the past, to see in   
what circumstances or intellectual milieu their ideas were formed, where   
they took the wrong turning or stopped short of the right track."  
  
This statement is not an example of Whig history writing. R.A. Fisher   
seems to have followed his own proposal at an early point of time in orde=  
r   
to develop parts of the foundation of modern evolutionary analysis throug=  
h   
his formalisation of the process of selection. Fisher's analysis of   
Darwin's arguments and difficulties might even have given him ideas for   
his founding of some of the methods of modern statistics.  
  
Of course, this kind of argument is most appropriate with respect to   
underexplored areas of scientific analysis like those of (economic)   
evolution.  
  
Esben Sloth Andersen   
  
Source: Ronald A. Fisher (1999), The Genetical Theory of Natural   
Selection: A Complete Variorum Edition, Oxford: Oxford University Press.