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Updated: Jun 12, 2026

Morris Water Maze Test: Optimization for Mouse Strain and Testing Environment
Published on: June 22, 2015
Of mice and men: evolution and the socialist utopia. William Morris, H.G. Wells, and George Bernard Shaw
1Department of the History of Science, University of Oklahoma, 601 Elm Avenue, PHSC, Rm. 610 Norman, OK 73019-3106, USA. phale@ou.edu
Abstract:
During the British socialist revival of the 1880s competing theories of evolution were central to disagreements about strategy for social change. In News from Nowhere (1891), William Morris had portrayed socialism as the result of Lamarckian processes, and imagined a non-Malthusian future. H.G. Wells, an enthusiastic admirer of Morris in the early days of the movement, became disillusioned as a result of the Malthusianism he learnt from Huxley and his subsequent rejection of Lamarckism in light of Weismann's experiments on mice. This brought him into conflict with his fellow Fabian, George Bernard Shaw, who rejected neo-Darwinism in favour of a Lamarckian conception of change he called "creative evolution."
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