Thoughts in a Haystack

A thought:

Darwin was prepared for the abuse which the content of his theory, especially its implications for man, was to receive from certain quarters, but he was not prepared for the criticism which his methodology was to receive from the most respected philosophers and scientists of his day. Most contemporary commentators tend to dismiss these criticisms as facile, disingenuous and superficial, suspecting that they stemmed more from a distaste of the content of Darwin's theory than from his methodology, but this dismissal is itself too facile. Certainly the repeated invocation of the Baconian method by many of Darwin's critics and even by Darwin himself indicated no great understanding of the actual nature of this method or the philosophy from which it stemmed, but the leading philosophers contemporary with Darwin, John Herschel, William Whewell, and John Stuart Mill, were equally adamant in their conviction that the Origin of Species was just one mass of conjecture. Darwin had proved nothing! From a philosophical point of view, evolutionary theory was sorely deficient. Even today, both Darwin's original efforts and more recent reformulations are repeatedly found philosophically objectionable. Evolutionary theory seems capable of offending almost everyone.

- David L. Hull, Darwin and His Critics: The Reception of Darwin's Theory of Evolution by the Scientific Community (1973)

This mystery guest won't be one for long if you Google the quoted selection, so here are some clues beforehand that might interest you in him beyond his name.

At the age of twenty-five this gentleman was accidentally blinded by his father while the two men were out hunting, when an errant aim caused two small shot to strike him, and, in a strange chance, one entered each eye. Despite this, he became a professor at Cambridge University, a member of Parliament and, eventually, Postmaster General.

As a friend of John Stuart Mill, this guest was the person who passed on Mill's seeming approval of Darwin's method as "in the most exact accordance with the strict principles of logic." This news came at perhaps Darwin's emotional low point, as negative reactions to the Origin kept coming in, including that of another great philosopher of science, John Herschel, who called Darwin's work "the law of higgeldy-piggeldy." Darwin sighed that "I began to think that perhaps I did not understand at all how to reason scientifically." As David L. Hull, in his book, Darwin and His Critics: The Reception of Darwin's Theory of Evolution by the Scientific Community, points out, the satisfaction Darwin took from Mill's reported remark might have been misplaced:

On closer examination, however, Mill's endorsement can be seen to be not nearly reassuring. Darwin had properly used the Method of Hypothesis, but this method belonged to the logic of discovery, not proof. In spite of twenty years' labor, Darwin had failed to provide proof for his theory of evolution by natural selection.

Darwin himself was infected with the distrust of hypothesis common in the philosophy of science of his day, considering "a strong tendency to generalize as an entire evil." But, ultimately, Darwin knew it couldn't be done without:

About thirty years ago there was much talk that geologists ought only to observe and not theorise; and I well remember some one saying that at this rate a man might as well go into a gravel-pit and count the pebbles and describe the colours. How odd it is that anyone should not see that all observation must be for or against some view if it is to be of any service!

But on to the guest, who, common enough for his day -- so unlike our own -- saw no conflict between science and theology:

... [T]he statement that a new species has appeared is tantamount to the assertion that a living form has been introduced upon the earth which cannot have been generated from anything previously living. It therefore becomes necessary to suppose that the same effort of Creative Will, which originally placed life upon this planet, is repeated at the introduction of every new species; and thus a new species has to be regarded as the offspring of a miraculous birth. We are as powerless to explain by physical causes this miracle as we are any other. To hope for an explanation would be as vain as for the human mind to expect to discover by philosophy the agency by which Joshua made the sun and moon stand still. ... Those, therefore, who attempt to render unnecessary the belief in these continuously-repeated creative fiats, seek to explain hitherto unexplained phenomena of the highest order of interest and importance in natural history. Whenever this explanation shall have been given, a similar service will have been done to this science, as was performed by Newton for astronomy, when he enunciated his law of gravitation. Newton's discovery is now found in numerous religious works as a favourite illustration of the wisdom of the Creator; and it is now considered that a hymn of praise is sung to God when we expound the simplicity of the Newtonian laws. The day will doubtless come when he who shall unfold, in all their full simplicity, the laws which regulate the organic world, will be held, as Newton is now, in grateful remembrance for the service he has done not only to science, but also to religion.

It has been a while since I've had a mystery guest. This man was a soldier, who fought in the Crimean War and the Indian Mutiny, until he gave up soldiering for biology and geology. He eventually became a member of the Royal Society and a university lecturer and professor in New Zealand. Darwin himself commented on how our guest was one of the few people who realized and accepted that evolution cannot be directly proved and, instead, must be demonstrated through the ability of the theory to group and explain diverse phenomena.

David L. Hull, in his book, Darwin and His Critics: The Reception of Darwin's Theory of Evolution by the Scientific Community, points out that our guest's review of the Origin was notable for the way he attacked those who criticized Darwin's work on religious grounds, particularly taking on Adam Sedgwick. The following is from that review. It has all too much relevancy for today:

Time was, and not so long since, either, when fossils were enigmas even to the learned; when thoughtful and sapient men discussed with heat of temper and with angry tones whether such organic remains of past creations embedded in the soil were really shells, and bones, and plants, or whether they were plastic forms modelled in the dark recesses of the ground. Even now a-days some literary adventurers and crack-brained sages -- and we are sorry to say, some men too, of better note but mistaken views -- now and then attempt to palm off this long ago exploded whim under a specious guise upon an intelligent world. The danger from such productions is small, and few indeed of those worth caring for would think a fossil bone or shell aught else than the treasured fragment of some ancient living being.

More dangerous, however, are the wilful perverters who argue with a specious show of knowledge; and such detractors Darwin's theory, like every other, is sure to bring forward against itself. "Species have been constant," says one, "ever since they first existed; change the conditions, and the old species would disappear. New species would come in and flourish. But how? by what causation? By creation. What is meant by creation? The operation of a power quite beyond the power of a pigeon fancier, a cross-breeder, or a hybridizer, in which one can believe by the legitimate conclusion of sound reason drawn from the laws and harmonies of nature, and, believing, can have no difficulty in the repetition of new species."

Dickens, in one of his novel, very shrewdly remarks that the advice given to street-boys about to fight "to go in and win" is very excellent if they only knew how to follow it; and when one naturally asks how new species which geology shows us appearing from time to time first began, the answer, by creation is as easy to give and about as useless as the advice offered to the street-boys. It is, after all, a mere assertion, an evasion of the question, a cloak for ignorance.

Now, who might that describe?
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There were many objections raised to Darwin's theory but one subgroup was the attack that Darwin's method was not "true science." These claims were not limited to religiously biased proponents of special creation but were also made by competent scientists who were, by all apparent measures, honestly attempting to fairly judge a novel theory. As David Hull (yes, him again) explains in his book, Darwin and His Critics: The Reception of Darwin's Theory of Evolution by the Scientific Community:

Darwin had his own doubts about his method but time has more than vindicated him. One of those potentially "occult qualities" mentioned above was essentialism:

Essentialsm may not have been right but it was not stupid, given the knowledge of the day. The temptation to think we are smarter now than people in the past is a great error.

Here is some more from David L. Hull's book, Darwin and His Critics: The Reception of Darwin's Theory of Evolution by the Scientific Community. In discussing the essentialism that had always been pervasive in Western thought, Hull relates a case of near instant revisionism.

Darwin, in addition to dismissing theological explanations of the origin of species as not properly scientific, also dismissed explanations in terms of "plans," whether divine or otherwise. Such explanations had been common in biology well before Darwin, particularly among the ideal morphologists, such as Goethe, Cuvier, Owen, and Agassiz. To Darwin, they were mere empty verbiage.

As long as one believed in God, and these plans could be interpreted literally as thoughts in the mind of the creator, then such explanations had some explanatory force, but if reference to God is left out of the explanatory picture, then all that is left are the plans. Rather than being explanations, the existence of such "plans" calls for explanation.

But times change:

[I]n Darwin's day ... [m]any philosophers and some scientists still looked upon miracles and ideas in the mind of the creator as acceptable elements in a scientific explanation, though most scientists were loath to discuss the issue. These "explanations" were not so much refuted by Darwin as discounted. Similarly, the theological and metaphysical objections to evolutionary theory gradually subsided, not because their authors had been converted, but because no one whose opinion mattered was listening any more. The change can be seen in the difference between the aggressive confidence of Agassiz's first review of the Origin of Species in 1860 and the petulant timidity of his final comments in 1874 ... [when] he hardly dared mention his pet theory of creation by repeated acts of divine cognition. Owen went so far as to assert that the leading naturalists of the day, referred to by Darwin as special creationists, had never maintained the view that species were specially created by divine action. Rather, he along with the other so-called special creationists had always maintained that some unknown law governed the introduction and extinction of species. Lyell, to the contrary, had the candor to admit that he "formerly advocated the doctrine that species were primordial creations, and not derivation." He differed from the catastrophists only in his belief that species were created and extinguished serially, rather than in wholesale lots.

Scientists are people first and foremost.

More datapoints for the proposition that there truly is nothing new under the sun:

One Dr. Michael Kellman will be giving this week's "Pinhead Town Talk" at the Telluride Science Research Center, which is entitled: "Is it Science? — Global warming, intelligent design, the cosmic anthropic principle and Einstein's moon." The origin of the name for the occasion is complex (see "history" under "About Pinhead Institute") but one can only hope that the ordinary associations it engenders lend the affair a certain air of tongue meeting cheek, given the following from Dr. Kellman:

When biologists are not feeling defensive, they admit that there is a lot not understood about evolution. In public, biologists tend to overstate their case. Evolution is too young and under-analyzed, too complex to be a real theory. To the biologists who claim that evolution is as well established a scientific theory as the law of gravity, I would say to them, 'You don't understand the law of gravity.'

Oh, my! Now, I won't claim to understand the theory of gravity but, last I heard, no one had figured out how the stuff actually works. Sure, the fact of gravity and it's association with mass are as well established as anything in science but the fact of evolution and its association with reproduction is hardly far behind. And biologists at least have a very good, though not certain, account as to how evolution works.

But Dr. Kellman's error is not in mismeasuring the relative certainty of the two theories. His is a more basic misunderstanding of science itself. And it's an old one.

In 1860, mathematician and physicist William Hopkins reviewed the Origin of Species for Fraser's Magazine. In the review, Hopkins compared evolutionary theory to Newton's theory of gravity and the "undulatory theory" of light. David Hull explains Hopkin's error, which appears to apply to Kellman as well:

Biologists tend to become indignant when their own efforts are judged by the standards of excellence set in physics. Regardless of whether the practice of judging biology on standards derived from physics is inherently reprehensible, it should be undertaken only by someone with sufficient knowledge of both biology and physics, and such men are hard to come by. More often than not, the critic finds fault with biology either because he is ignorant of the biological theory he is criticizing or because he lacks sufficient understanding of the physical paradigm. As Darwin observed, Hopkins did not understand evolutionary theory very well. But it is of greater significance that Hopkins' canons of reasoning and evidence were drawn from only two physical theories, and he held an extremely distorted (though prevalent) view of these theories.

[T]he philosophy of science extracted from a cursory knowledge of physics by such men as [William] Whewell and [John Stuart] Mill was untrue not only for science in general but also for the physical theories which served as paradigms. Hopkins demanded that evolutionary theory be proved in the same manner that gravitational theory and the undulatory theory of light had been proved. In the first place, neither had been proved because both were false. In the second place, these two theories were hardly typical of physics. There were other physical theories -- for example, the theory of matter erected on Maxwell's equations -- that fitted the paradigm derived from these two theories little better than evolutionary theory. As [Charles] Peirce observed, when statistical theories, like the theory of gases, were taken as paradigms, evolutionary theory did not come off so badly. Given Hopkins' parochial selection of physical theories and his unrealistic interpretation of them, evolutionary theory was bound to be judged inadequate, no matter how fair he might be.

So, not only has the philosophy of science eluded Dr. Kellman ... so has history.
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Well, there's been no takers on my last mystery guest (time for a clue: he was an embryologist -- and if you can't get it now you need to brush up on your history of science). This one also is tough and, I think, un-Googleable, so I'll give a hint up front. He supervised the first translation of the Origin into a major European language, although he wasn't Darwin's first choice. Darwin didn't like the translation and arranged for another one later.

Incidently, "Priestley's green matter" refers to Joseph Priestley, who had a hand in the discovery of oxygen but attempted to interpret it in the context of the phlogiston theory. As David Hull describes the mystery guest's point:

Since people seem to be enjoying this, here is another mystery guest. But this one will be a little tougher, since I'm pretty sure that the article the quotation comes from is not online, subject to being Googled.

... Darwin's book on the descent of man has appeared, but it has not convinced me. I still cannot comprehend how man in the course of time could have developed from an ape-like animal. My doubts on this score are very simple. No matter how I view apes, they always seem to be organized for an arboreal life, whereas, in contrast, man is organized to walk upright on solid ground. Of course, it is said that both faculties have developed in the course of time through "adaptation." But then, for what environment should this problematic primate archetype have been organized, since, obviously, all animals require a specific environment? Were they perhaps climbing animals that had a few descendants so obsessed with the idea of progressing that they refrained from climbing trees for thousands and millions of years until their lower extremities became adapted for an upright gait? It would seem easier for me to imagine that this archetype was plantigrade. A few of their descendants were so glutinous that they refused to leave the trees which supplied their food, and from these evolved the "poor relations" which we sometimes call apes.

"But," someone might ask, "why bother yourself about the question of how these first primates may have lived? It is enough that they must have existed if the descent of man is to be explained." But to this I reply that no matter how necessary it may seem for such an explanation, I cannot believe that a creature has lived and reproduced itself which was not organized from the start as one of the possible forms of life that could inhabit this earth.

Another guest to learn about:

Some persons seem to have thought [Darwin's] theory dangerous to religion, morality, and what not. Others have tried to laugh it out of court. We can share neither the fears of the former nor the merriment of the latter; and, on the contrary, own to feeling the greatest admiration both for the ingenuity of the doctrine and for the temper in which it was broached, although, from a consideration of the following arguments, our opinion is adverse to its truth. ...

Although many domestic animals and plants are highly variable, there appears to be a limit to their variation in any one direction. This limit is shown by the fact that new points are at first rapidly gained, but afterwards more slowly, while finally no further perceptible change can be effected. Great, therefore, as the variability is, we are not free to assume that successive variations of the same kind can be accumulated. There is no experimental reason for believing that the limit would be removed to a great distance, or passed, simply because it was approached by very slow degrees, instead of by more rapid steps. There is no reason to believe that a fresh variability is acquired by long selection of one form; on the contrary, we know that with the oldest breeds it is easier to bring about a diminution than an increase in the points of excellence.

Would our mystery guest sign in please ...

I have read Darwin's book. It is clever, and calmly written; and therefore the more mischievous, if its principles be false; and I believe them utterly false. It is the system of the author of the Vestiges stripped of its ignorant absurdities. It repudiates all reasoning from final causes; and seems to shut the door upon any view (however feeble) of the God of Nature as manifested in His works. From first to last it is a dish of rank materialism cleverly cooked and served up. As a system of philosophy it is not unlike the Tower of Babel, so daring in its high aim as to seek a shelter against God's anger; but it is like a pyramid poised on its apex. It is a system embracing all living nature, vegetable and animal; yet contradicting -– point blank -– the vast treasure of facts that the Author of Nature has, during the past two or three thousand years, revealed to our senses. And why is this done? For no other solid reason, I am sure, except to make us independent of a Creator.

Here is more from David L. Hull's book, Darwin and His Critics: The Reception of Darwin's Theory of Evolution by the Scientific Community (Oh, get used to it! The man 's work is that good!) from p. 451:

One of the most fundamental principles of both deductive and inductive logic is that the goodness of a line of reasoning is independent of the truth of the resulting conclusion. It is possible for a logically impeccable argument to lead to a false conclusion and an incredibly bad argument to lead to a true conclusion. The premises supporting evolutionary theory in Darwin's day were riddled with errors. Many of those errors have since been corrected. Similarly, most of the factual objections have since been met and the theological objections discounted. Nevertheless, it does not follow that those men who opposed evolutionary theory on mistaken factual grounds were narrow-minded bigots. One should also be cautious in condemning those who opposed evolutionary theory for extra-scientific reasons. Although the scientific community is now in general agreement that theological considerations are irrelevant to the acceptance of a scientific theory, other extra-scientific considerations still do enter into science.

Cardboard history lacks all nourishment, no matter which side it is made to serve.
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From David L. Hull's book, Darwin and His Critics: The Reception of Darwin's Theory of Evolution by the Scientific Community (p. 408-15), comes this lesson on the danger of trying to be in two camps at once. St. George Jackson Mivart was an anatomist who studied under both Richard Owen and Thomas Huxley.

Mivart practiced for his conversion to evolution by, at age sixteen, becoming a Catholic, then a very minority and mostly disfavored religion in England. Mivart accepted common descent but argued, like Huxley, that species evolved by saltation or sudden evolutionary leaps, directed by some unknown "internal innate force." At least part of the impetus for his position was a desire to reconcile evolution with his Catholic faith. One punishment for his pains was to be sarcastically lectured on Catholic theology by that arch-agnostic, Huxley. That wasn't the end of it, however. Mivart was eventually excommunicated from the Church and denied burial in consecrated ground. As Hull puts it:

The final break between Mivart and the Darwinians had occurred [in 1874] over a slur on the character of Darwin's son, George. Mivart had great difficulty in distinguishing between a man and his ideas. According to the mores of Victorian society, one could deal as harshly as one wished with a man's views but one had to be extremely careful to avoid personal slurs of any kind. Mivart stepped over this line once too often in alluding to the immoral implications of some of George Darwin's ideas on eugenics. Just as Mivart was being excommunicated from the Catholic Church because of his article on [the possibility of] happiness in hell, he was being excluded from the scientific community by Darwin and his associates. In the end, Mivart's attempts to reconcile science and the Catholic Church led him to be excommunicated from both.

It's not easy being between. The final indignity, though, came from his friends, as described in the 1913 Catholic Encyclopedia:

After his decease his friends, persuaded that the gravity and nature of the illness from which he suffered offered a complete explanation of the amazing inconsistency of Dr. Mivart's final position with that which he had maintained during the greater part of his life, approached the authorities with a view to securing for him burial in consecrated ground. Sir William Broadbent gave medical testimony as to the nature of his malady [diabetes] amply sufficient to free his late patient from the responsibility of the heterodox opinions which he had put forward and the attitude he had taken with regard to his superiors. His disease, not his will, was the cause of his aberration.

That phrase, "attitude he had taken with regard to his superiors," is a nice euphemism. Just remember that some "friends" will swear you're crazy merely for spitting in a cardinal's eye.
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Here are additional good thoughts from David L. Hull's book, Darwin and His Critics: The Reception of Darwin's Theory of Evolution by the Scientific Community (1973), p. 63-64:

Here is a nice quote from the philosopher of science, David L. Hull, as to why creationist carping about the alleged lack of evidence for evolution, particularly direct observation of speciation, is mere misdirection. This comes from Hull's book, Darwin and His Critics: The Reception of Darwin's Theory of Evolution by the Scientific Community (1973), p. 50-51:

One note should be made: although Hull compares the state of Darwin's theory against that of special creation, that contrast has none of the aspects of the reliance on a "contrived dualism" by Intelligent Design advocates that Judge Jones rightly excoriated in his decision in Kitzmiller. There is no suggestion by Hull that the failure of evidence for creationism was or is somehow evidence in favor of evolution. Nor is creationism's failure to provide evidence even held up as counting against its truth. The only weight that failure is given is that which tips the scales against creation ever being on the same scientific footing as evolutionary theory.