Thoughts in a Haystack

A thought:

There is a sense of insecurity abroad in the world paralleling if not exceeding that which drove the first wave of American fundamentalism in the early twentieth century. People feel their whole world is crumbling around them, despite or even because of the rapid pace of technological progress. In these circumstances people need the kind of reassurance that can be given only by total commitment to a belief system which promises salvation and clearly identifies the supernatural source of that salvation. This level of commitment requires adherence to a worldview defined by a single text, and the chosen text then acquires a degree of authority that prompts a literalist reading even where such a reading defies the body of expert opinion. In an age facing overwhelming political and environmental challenges, many are seeking this level of reassurance. But as opponents such as Dawkins and Dennett are keen to point out, this kind of religious belief can all too easily lead to dogmatism, intransigence, and intolerance. If what I believe is absolutely true, then rival beliefs offered by others must be false and their influence should be curtailed.

- Peter J. Bowler, Monkey Trials and Gorilla Sermons, 2007

Peter J. Bowler is the author of Evolution: The History of an Idea, Third Edition, which is probably the definitive history of the concept of evolution. He has discussed at length the "Eclipse of Darwin" that occurred roughly beginning in the 1890s and ending only with the triumph of the "neo-Darwinian synthesis" in the 1940s. In his most recent book, Monkey Trials and Gorilla Sermons: Evolution and Christianity from Darwin to Intelligent Design, Bowler explains that much of the Eclipse was due to the reluctance of scientists at the time to embrace the materialism that evolution by random mutation and blind selection seemed to imply.

Even those engaged in restoring Darwinian evolution, such as R.A. Fisher, remained unwilling to embrace completely naturalistic evolution. Another major figure also demurred:

Some of the American founders of the modern Darwinian synthesis displayed a similar lack of enthusiasm for materialism. Most notably, the Russian émigré Theodosius Dobzhansky remained a lifelong member of the Eastern Orthodox Church. Dobzhansky's Genetics and the Origin of Species of 1937 was one of the key texts helping to link the genetics of natural selection with field studies: He recognized the danger that some church leaders might encourage a rejection of scientific advances, but saw no barrier himself between his work as an evolutionist and a liberal Christian faith. In fact, for Dobzhansky, Christianity was an evolutionary religion, since it called for everyone to participate in future human progress. As a refugee from the Soviets, he was particularly concerned to stress the role of human freedom as the essential basis for such participation. His 1967 book The Biology of Ultimate Concern made these commitments in a very explicit way. Like Huxley, he was also attracted to Teilhard de Chardin's evolutionary mysticism. He accepted the need to see evolution rising steadily to ever higher levels of mental and spiritual development, although as a good Darwinian he found it difficult to accept that the specific character of the human species was predetermined. Evolution groped its way forward in an uncertain and unpredictable manner -- it did not run straight toward a fixed goal.

Most everybody has heard of Dobzhanky's saying, taken from the title of a talk, that "Nothing in Biology Makes Sense Except in the Light of Evolution." Perhaps less well known is the following from that speech:

Antievolutionists fail to understand how natural selection operates. They fancy that all existing species were generated by supernatural fiat a few thousand years ago, pretty much as we find them today. But what is the sense of having as many as 2 or 3 million species living on earth? If natural selection is the main factor that brings evolution about, any number of species is understandable: natural selection does not work according to a foreordained plan, and species are produced not because they are needed for some purpose but simply because there is an environmental opportunity and genetic wherewithal to make them possible. ... The organic diversity becomes, however, reasonable and understandable if the Creator has created the living world not by caprice but by evolution propelled by natural selection. It is wrong to hold creation and evolution as mutually exclusive alternatives. I am a creationist and an evolutionist. Evolution is God's, or Nature's method of creation. Creation is not an event that happened in 4004 BC; it is a process that began some 10 billion years ago and is still under way.

Surprise also makes sense in the light of evolution.
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It is, I believe, fairly well known that Darwin always credited his hitting on the idea that the "struggle of life" is the central engine of natural selection to his happening to read Thomas Robert Malthus' Essay on the Principle of Population at a crucial point in the formation of his theories. Perhaps not as well known is the irony that fact entails for the anti-evolutionism in America that largely comes from the Religious Right. In his recent book, Monkey Trials and Gorilla Sermons: Evolution and Christianity from Darwin to Intelligent Design, Peter J. Bowler lays out the tale succinctly but well. Bowler, the author of probably the definitive history of the notion of biological evolution, Evolution: The History of an Idea, Third Edition, notes that Darwin gradually gave up the idea that his theory could be (at least conventionally) reconciled with the notion of a wise and benevolent Creator, in that Darwin experienced:

... a growing realization that if Malthus was right, then the struggle for existence went on relentlessly, however well the species might be adapted to its environment. Nature was a scene of constant death and endless selfish struggle, hardly the sort of process one would expect a benevolent God to establish.

But whence came Malthus' ideas?

... Malthus's principle of population had an ideological foundation. It was presented as a contribution to what was known as "political economy; an attempt to uncover the laws governing both society and the economy. In the context of early nineteenth-century Britain, this meant understanding the working of the new system of free-enterprise capitalism. Malthus challenged the reformers who thought that poverty and starvation could be eliminated by government action. He argued that poverty was not the result of an artificial social hierarchy -- on the contrary it was both natural and inevitable. ... [T]here would always be too many children born for the food supply to support, with the result that some must inevitably go hungry. State support for the poor should be abandoned, because it was better to let a few starve now rather than allow the population to expand unchecked to a level where mass starvation was inevitable.

Malthus thus endorsed free-enterprise individualism, the system of laissez-faire (the notion that the state should not interfere with the activities of individual citizens).

Of course, Darwin has been attacked by those on the Left over the years for merely projecting capitalist values onto nature. But as Bowler points out:

... science always advances through the proposal of hypotheses which are then tested against the facts. Scientists have been inspired by a variety of sources when thinking up their models of nature, including art, philosophy, politics, and religion. If the hypothesis proves fruitful in generating research, then it is doing its job in science.

In short, the extensive testing, both by Darwin himself and the myriad scientists who have come after him, has washed out whatever ideological stain there may have been with the harsh detergent of hard empiric fact. Nor can it be forgotten that the subsequent work on the nature and evolution of social organisms like ourselves undercuts the simplistic application of selection to individual humans when our "fitness" so much depends on our ability to integrate with and rely on society at large. In any event, that's where the irony comes in:

The [socialist critics of evolution] claim that Darwin's theory doesn't provide [an impetus towards generating research] because the testing process itself is warped by the preconceptions of those who do the testing. It seems curious that modern creationists ignore this argument against Darwinism's scientific credentials, given that they are always on the lookout for anything that will discredit the theory. But when we remember the source of this attack, we can see why it seems unattractive to those from the Religious Right who are convinced that the free-enterprise system is a God-given model for how we should govern ourselves. The claim that the theory they despise is a reflection of their own political values is more an embarrassment to them than an opportunity.

Their embarrassment comes mostly from a simplistic understanding of history, politics and science, but there it is. Ignorance may seem like bliss but it has a cutting edge.
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