Annals of the History and Philosophy of Biology

166
Annals of the History and Philosophy of Biology, Vol. 10 (2005)
Nicolaas A. Rupke
Of course, Darwin scholarship has greatly diversified since, yet the mid-nineteenth century
autochthonists, whether Christian or materialist, have escaped the attention of recent
as well as early Darwin scholars.
What was the purpose of Darwin and his followers to compose an ever lengthening
list of predecessors? One could argue that it was intended by Darwin himself to give fair
credit to those who had preceded him. To the later historians of particular forerunners,
the purpose may have been to demonstrate the significance of their heroes and of the
city, the region or the country to which they belonged. More in general, historians have
treated forerunners as part of the context of discovery of Darwin's theory. Yet there
existed a further aspect to the forerunner frenzy. The oversimplification of "creation-vsevolution,"
the misidentification of autochthonists as "creationists" or "evolutionists,"
and the making up of a long list of "forerunners," served the politics of institutionalisation.
First, it strengthened Darwin's position by contrasting his theory with the straw
man doctrine of creationism, which among Europe's leading scientists was by then a
long-slain dragon. Second, it kept the many supporters of autochthonous generation,
who for the most part joined the Darwinian cause, out of the firing line. Darwin's ridicule
of the belief in an instantaneous origin of species was directed against the creationists,
not the autochthonists, even though his words could, mutatis mutandis, just as well
have applied to them: "These authors seem no more startled at a miraculous act of creation
than at an ordinary birth. But do they really believe that at innumerable periods in
the earth's history certain elemental atoms have been commanded suddenly to flash into
living tissues? Do they believe that at each supposed act of creation one individual or
many were produced? Were all the infinitely numerous kinds of animals and plants created
as eggs or seed, or as full grown? And in the case of mammals, were they created
bearing the false marks of nourishment from their mother's womb?" (Darwin 1959, 483).
A discussion of the theory of autochthonous generation was censored from the start
of the Darwinian historiography of evolutionary theory. Whereas "evolution-vs-creation"
was a useful construct, "evolution-vs-spontaneous mega-generation" was not, because – I
repeat – the autochthonists by and large joined the Darwinian camp, and it served no
purpose to attack or ridicule the past views of comrades-in-arms by exposing their in
retrospect bizarre and fanciful doctrines. Nearly to a man, the autochthonists were appropriated
on behalf of the Darwinian cause, together with their scientific possessions
and valuables. Thus an army of Darwinian foot soldiers was recruited from the historical
past to advance Darwinism. The scientific accomplishments that were theirs now became
the legitimate inheritance of the evolutionary Weltanschauung. Darwin undercut the
belief in a teleological development of life, yet no such anti-teleology was put in practice
when it came to the historical evolution of the evolution theory, Darwinism retrospectively
being made to look like the logical-rational outcome of the mainstream of nineteenth-century
science. The historiography of Darwinism was an integral part of the
process of its institutionalisation, and excising from the historical record the pages on
autochthonous generation served the "politics of Darwinian evolution theory."
Such partisan appropriation of the past by Darwin scholarship is not unique and
similar to what has gone on in, for example, Humboldt scholarship (Rupke 2005). It calls
for a metahistorical examination of the purposes – political as well as scientific – of the