Great Ideas of Philosophy

Lecture Forty-ThreeDarwin and Nature’s “Purposes”Scope: Though not without earlier foreshadowings, the Darwinian revolution or theory would install a set ofprecepts at variance with both classical and Enlightenment assumptions. It was also at variance with thesophisticated judgments of those who were at once good Christians and scientifically informed. The theoryallowed for the creation and disappearance of entire species; it called for a span of geological time that didnot appear to match up with the data; and its predictions seemed contradicted by the fossil record, not tomention by centuries of selective breeding that never succeeded in producing a new species.But with growing scientific support, the theory was installed as the most authoritative and coherent accountscience had ever produced on the question of man’s place in nature and was soon applied (more arguably)to human societies and nations, as well. Against the background of benevolent egalitarianism espoused bythe Victorian reformers, evolutionary theory gave support to the notion of exceptional types who carriedthe burden of preserving the race. Those unable to keep up with changing conditions and new demandswould be replaced quite naturally and by processes not obedient to the rational schemes of our or any otherspecies. Nature might be blind, but there was no other engine of progress.OutlineI. Charles Darwin revolutionized modern thought and, in the process, revolutionized much in the traditionalsubject matter of philosophy. His influence stretches across the humanities and the social sciences, biology andgenetics, ethics and political theory.A. As a result of the Darwinian perspective, the traditional problems of knowledge, conduct, and governancerefer not to abstract principles but to various modes of adaptation to environmental pressures.B. However, Darwin comes out of what is very much an Enlightenment context. The Enlightenment, after all,is a period that venerated the idea of progress through conflict and competition.C. Darwin’s early influences provide a picture of the context in which his own ideas formed.1. Darwin was born in Shrewsbury in 1809 to a physician father and to the daughter of JosiahWedgwood. the family famous for porcelain china.2. He entered Edinburgh with a view toward medicine, then moved to Cambridge with a plan to study forthe ministry. There, however, he befriended John Henslow, who helped turn Darwin’s attention tobiological subjects.3. Darwin took field trips with the geologist Adam Sedgwick.4. Encouraged by Henslow, Darwin served as Naturalist on H.M.S. Beagle from 1831 to 1836. At theconclusion of the long voyage, he had a mountain of notes and a thoroughly focused mind.5. In considering the influences on Darwin’s thought, we mustn’t overlook his grandfather, ErasmusDarwin (1731–1802), a physician who studied at Edinburgh and Cambridge, as well as anaccomplished poet and inventor, who theorized that all varieties of living things evolved from anoriginal type.II. These influences do not lessen Darwin’s originality. Although others had written about the plan and order ofnature, the fitness of plants and animals to meet the challenges of the natural world, Darwin proposed theconcept of design without a designer—a theological theory about ends being served by variation but notcontrived by some providential super-intelligence.A. Darwin published Origin of Species in 1859. The allegedly great and hostile controversy that surroundedits appearance is largely fiction. Critical reviews were remarkably detailed and highly positive.B. Eleven years later, The Descent of Man saw quite a different reception.1. There is an argumentative tone in Descent of Man, and of course, there is that great inductive leapaccording to which the particular characteristics of our humanity are to be understood as lying alongthe same continuum that covers all of animal life.©2004 The Teaching Company Limited Partnership 17