Annals of the History and Philosophy of Biology

Was there a Darwinian Revolution?
philosophy, of explaining the past by reference to causes now in operation, was the ruling
method that Darwin used in his evolutionary theorizing. And complementing this
was the influence first of the empiricist philosopher John F W Herschel (1830, 1841),
whose writings probably drove Darwin to make so much in the Origin of the artificialnatural
selection analogy. Plus the rationalist philosopher William Whewell (1837, 1840),
whose argument that the best science shows a “consilience of inductions” – different
areas of science brought together under one causal hypothesis – is precisely the argument
of the second half of the Origin. Darwin surveys instinct, paleontology, biogeography,
morphology, embryology, systematics, arguing that all of these are explained by evolution
through selection and in turn all of them make plausible evolution through selection. A
classic consilience and Darwin was proud of the fact.
One could keep going. Recently Robert J Richards (2004) and I (Ruse 2004) have
been arguing about the influence on Darwin of German thought, he claiming that it was
the major influence on Darwin and I denying this fact and going for British influences.
This is an argument about degree. Neither of us denies that Darwin was influenced by
German thinking, either directly or through others, notably Richard Owen’s theory of
archetypes.
So, having poured so much water on the altar, what can one say in response. Simply
that Darwin’s genius was to take so many different ideas and to make something of
them. Others set the problem. Evolution: right or wrong? The “mystery of mysteries,” as
Herschel called it. There may have been many evolutionists. No one had come up with a
way to make the idea plausible. It was very much in the realm of what I have called
“pseudo science,” like phrenology and mesmerism. Darwin made the idea of evolution
not just plausible but, for most folks, absolutely compelling. The way he tied everything
together in a consilience was definitive – back then and now. Darwin did this in the Origin.
The same is true of natural selection. Darwin may have borrowed from others but it
was he who made something of it all. Take Malthus. He was using the struggle to argue
that there can be no overall, lasting change! He argued that any attempts at state help,
trying to improve the general status of humankind, were simply bound to make things
worse. You feed the poor in this generation and you have more of them in the next.
Darwin turned this on its head, showing how the struggle can make for ongoing change.
Similarly with artificial selection. It was the standard argument against the possibility of
ongoing change. You cannot turn horses into cows. Indeed, in his essay, Wallace (1858)
devoted much time to arguing that we should not take the analogy seriously and thus it is
no bar to evolution! Again, Darwin saw the potential and used it – used it moreover to
make an experienced case of change to argue for unexperienced change, just the kind of
argument that the empiricist Herschel was demanding.
Any fool can take pigments and paint a picture of flowers. It took Van Gogh to paint
the sunflowers. It took Darwin to write the Origin. This now takes us to the time after the
Origin. Agreed that Darwin put together the idea of evolution and made it compelling,
and that it was because of him (together with his various supporters) that people were
converted to the idea of evolution. However, after the Origin, it is well known that natural
selection was a flop. No one took it up, and it languished until the 1930s, when the
Annals of the History and Philosophy of Biology, Vol. 10 (2005)
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