Lecture #19 -- Darwinism

I. Introduction

            A. The nineteenth century, as you have probably figured out, was one in which change became the by-word. Old ideas and methods were replaced right and left.

            B. This meant not only the new methods and lifestyles produced by the Industrial Revolution, but also new ideas and ideologies.

II. The Status Quo & Early Challenges

            A. In London, the British Museum houses all sorts of artistic, historical and scientific exhibits. One room there is was a room known as the "Bird Room", because it contacts various specimens of birds and their fossils.

                        1. If you went into this room in the nineteenth century, the odds were that you would see a old man. Actually fairly short, slender fellow, and basically a little old man.

                        2. One of the clergymen in England went to visit and says to those he was with "There is the most Dangerous man in England". Now how could a little old man puttering around in the Bird Room be dangerous? Simple. That man was Charles Darwin, and his new scientific ideas presented the greatest threat to the status quo in late nineteenth century Britain, and everywhere else -- the status quo in regard to the world view of nature, the divine and eventually how society worked.

            B. The Status quo -- the accepted world view in the mid-19th century was stated earlier by an Englishman named William Paley in his book Natural Theology (1834).

                        1. This book was extremely popular and was required reading in most theological seminaries. He re-iterated an old argument for the existence of God that went back to Thomas Aquinas. This was the Design argument. The design argument or the teleological argument said that there was a design in the world, and therefore there must be a designer. Rock versus the watch.... Problem was that this did not necessarily mean that the designer was divine -- Douglas Adams.

                        2. The other portion of the status quo argument was put forth in the 17th century by an Church of Ireland/ Anglican Irish bishop named Usher. He studied the genealogical portion of the Old Testament, and concluded through his study that the earth was created in 4004 B.C. Some of his followers came up with an actual date for creation. This last wasn't held by the majority those of the 19th century, but they did believe that the world was no more than 6000 yrs old.

                        3. During the 19th century there were a variety of discoveries that began to shoot holes in these theories -- both Paley's & Usher's discoveries in a variety of sciences. Darwin's discoveries involved biology and geology and with the literal interpretations of the Bible which insisted on the 6000 year-old earth, Darwin's ideas became a major problem.

            C. The beginnings of the dispute over scientific discoveries pre-dated Darwin, however. They began with the work of a Swedish scientist Carl Linneaus (1707-78).

                        1. Linneaus was a botanist and the son of a Lutheran minister and focused his work on classification. He classified some 18,000 different species, giving them latin names, which was still the international language of science.

                        2. But the number of species and other discoveries began to raise questions. Some of the most important questions were raised first by a French scientist named Jean Baptiste Lamark (1744-1829). He was the curator of the zoological gardens in Paris, who published a systematic treatise called Zoological Philosophy (1809). This work focused on the idea of evolution. He saw organisms changed over time, and isolation made these characteristics different. Part of his theory involved the idea that since creatures changes over time, in must be in response to their environment, and then they pass on these acquired characteristics through heredity to their offspring.

                        3. If creatures changed over time, then that seemed to imply that the creation was not perfect, but flawed. Christian theology held that the earth was perfect at creation and immutable since.

                        4. To add to this, consternation of these new scientific ideas, the Biblical literalism of the evangelical and other Christians was also under attack from another angle. In the 19th century, principles of Higher Criticism were being developed. What this meant was textual criticism and rules of evidence. Most evangelical Christian were literalists in their interpretation of the Biblical text. In the mid-19th century, scholars were beginning to apply these techniques of literary criticism to the Bible, which disturbed many. The episode in the book of Joshua in which the sun stands still was called into question and some said the Old Testament was contradictory.

III. Darwin & Origin of Species

            A. Into this atmosphere of challenges to tradition by Lamarck and Higher Criticism entered Darwin, who would deliver the crowning blow to the 19th century mind-set.

                        1. Charles Darwin (1809-1882) was from a prominent British family, and his father was in the medical profession. The assumption was made that young Charles would become a clergyman. His parents actually worried about Charles at Oxford because he was not serious about his studies and eventually saw him as a disgrace, because he could not seem to find a major. He finally decided on science, but there was no tutor, but studying on his own he finally got a degree from Oxford.

                        2. Through some luck and help from family connections, Darwin got a post as a scientific observer on a voyage to circumnavigate the Southern Hemisphere on the H.M.S. Beagle. The Beagle left in 1831 and was gone for 5 years on a map-making voyage.

            B. This voyage combined with other influences to help Darwin formulate his theories. Scientists in that day and age were only just beginning to become specialized, and on the voyage Darwin served in a variety of capacities.

                        1. He became an expert in all sorts of things. He collected all sorts of samples and shipped them back to England for future study. AS part of these collections, Darwin found evidence of species that no longer existed. This led to ask the question, if species were immutable, then how could there be ones that no longer exist? Plus how did one explain vast differences in flora and fauna in various places? Darwin would have intense discussions with the captain of Beagle over these issues and the captain became quite angry with Darwin.

                        2. The most important of the places and the collecting efforts of Darwin was in the Galapagos Islands. Here there were a great variety of birds, particularly finches. Two species in particular were vastly different and it seemed to be because of how they lived -- One species was long-billed and one had a bill like a hammer, according to different food-gathering needs.

                        3. On top of the ideas and evidence gathered on this voyage, there ideas of other scientists also influenced Darwin's thinking and his responses to these various new species. One of these was a book his uncle gave him as a gift to read aboard ship -- the first volume of Charles Lyell's Principles of Geology (1830). Lyell published a three volume work from 1830-33, and in it Lyell followed the empiricists' view of the earth, which demonstrated that the age of earth was far above the 6,000 years of the Biblical literalists. This gave Darwin the TIME necessary for his theories.

                        4. The other major influence was from an 18th century philosophe -- Thomas Malthus and his 1798 work Essay on Population. In it, Malthus argued that more individuals are born than can survive, than can be supported by the earth. Thus there came the question of survival. Malthus simply said there was a struggle to survive, but he never said how it was determined.

            C. With these things in mind, Darwin collected data for the next twenty years. He had the bare bones by the time he reached England, but would continue to collected data for the next twenty years. He first wrote his theory and findings in 1842, but still continued to amass evidence very carefully, and he still didn't publish his findings.

                        1. Then in 1859, Darwin received a letter from Alfred L. Wallace, who was working as a scientist in the Malaysian colonies and had independently come up with the same thing. So in order to get the credit, Darwin in 1859 went ahead and published On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life. This was his magnum opus in which he presented his theories and it became an immediate best seller.

                        2. Darwin's work consisted of four major conclusions/ principles. First, he said All organism live in intimate dependence on their environment. his second principle came primarily from Malthus, this was the struggle to survive -- All species overpopulate, and therefore engage in a constant struggle to survive. Darwin did not however use the phrase "survival of the fittest".

                        3. The third conclusion Darwin reached was that Species develop variations to avoid destruction. This lead to the development of heritable variants which are apparently random, but that can be inherited. The fourth conclusions was that Nature engages in a constant process of selecting those variants which were most suited to survive. -- Natural Selection.

                        4. It should be understood that Darwin never used the term "survival of the fittest", in fact that term came from Herbert Spencer. and in Origin of Species, he never applied his theories to humans. What he did was to legitimize the concept of evolution with scientific support, and the key was natural selection.

            D. Of course, Darwin's work was a best-seller, but that did not mean that all the reactions it were good. There was in fact one major problem in all of this. Where is God? in all of these theories? Darwin left out moral principles an God in examining nature. It was simply a mechanistic amoral process, something that not even Newton had done. Could God and Darwin be resolved? Many thought one or the other had to be chosen.

IV. Challenges & Problems

            A. There were two major types of controversies with Darwin, and the process entered the first phase of reaction in 1861. The first method of attack was Unquestioned Answers.

                        1. These were matters that were not supposed to be questioned at all. The champion of this form of attack became Bishop Samuel WIlberforce who wrote a 150 page attack on Darwin. He was a witty, intelligent man known as "Soapy Sam", and after his review he engaged in a debate of Darwin's ideas at a meeting of the Royal Society. Darwin himself was not there, being a shy man, so instead the banner was lifted T.H. Huxley -- Darwin's Bulldog.

                        2. Wilberforce was humorous, and articulate, but his main method of attack was humor, ending with "I would like to know whether Mr. huxley is descended from an ape on his mother's or his father's side?" Unfortunately for Soapy Sam, this left the way open for Huxley to take the Moral High ground for science, and accuse Wilberforce of simply trying to obscure the Truth.

            B. There were other controversies and attacks on Darwin that were not so easily dealt with, however. This was the second form -- Unanswered Questions. These were matters that Darwin did not solve and did not even address at times.

                        1. Darwin said that variants occur randomly. But he never answered How do variants occur? He also never answered how it happened that How do two with the same variant join? This implied sexual selection, which most scientists were highly skeptical of.

Then there was the question that if variants develop gradually, why are variants not swamped or wiped out before they are effective.

                        2. These questions Darwin could never entirely answer, and every edition of Origin was different to try and accommodate them. Darwin almost became Lamarckian and said acquired characteristics are inherited, and then he back-pedaled.

                        3. The problems were resolved later by the work of the Austrian monk Gregor Mendel (18222-1884) who developed theories of gene transmission and genetics through his work with snow peas, which languished in obscurity for two decades.

                        4. The other problems were helped by Hugo de Vries (1901) who explained the variants as mutations of gene cells which are then passed on in a single generation.

            C. Darwin would never apply his theories universally, and left them in their original biological setting. But his ideas did not exist in a vacuum and would soon be picked up by others who were not so scrupulous about collecting supporting data for their theories. It was through these supporters than Darwinism would become a Secular Creed.

                        1. These secular creeds had many forms. What I mean by this is a dependence or belief in a set of ideas that had nothing to do with the divine, but at the same time were followed with a religious devotion.

                        2. The first of these Secular faiths we have already looked at -- Marxism. Anyone who did not get the handout? Marxism, as we have already mentioned, grew out of a response to the new conditions prevailing in Europe, and Karl Marx believed that he had found the key and the laws to how society worked. This was not a theory, but indisputable fact, and not open to interpretation.

                        3. Marx's ideas included his theory of history, which we have already mentioned, and even more importantly his emphasis on Economic determinism. Everything was explainable by economic forces. He also argued that capitalism must eventually fail because it was inherently incapable of peaceful reform. Reform and change had to come through revolutionary change.

                        4. Marx's ideas along with those of his friend Friedrich Engels inspired many. They believed strongly in the coming revolution and following the ideas of the Communist Manifesto and Das Kapital with a passion. As inspirational to some as Marx's ideas became, at first they were ignored, and this new secular creed had less impact than the application of Darwin's theories to society.

            D. Social Darwinism emerged among intellectuals who took Darwin's theories and applied them directly to society, national relationships, racial and individual situations. This became extremely influential and eventually showed up in places with no scientific support, but with the air of scientific authenticity. utilizing Darwin in ways that would have appalled him. It showed up in several ideas that permeated the latter 19th and 20th centuries, which we will discuss more next time.