Annals of the History and Philosophy of Biology

180
Annals of the History and Philosophy of Biology, Vol. 10 (2005)
Michael Ruse
population geneticists like Ronald A. Fisher (1930) in Britain and Sewall Wright (1931,
1932) in America melded Darwinian selection with Mendelian genetics to make the new
theory, so called neo-Darwinism or the synthetic theory of evolution. Hence in major
respects even if you grant that there was a revolution it was not very Darwinian. Indeed
the historian Peter Bowler has gone so far as to write a book with the title, The non-
Darwinian Revolution! (Adding to the negative case, let us not forget that the way to any
favourable reception of the Origin needed to be prepared by others, for instance by the
enthusiasts for Higher Criticism who were blasting the stuffing out of conventional theology,
especially literal readings of Genesis.)
As it happens, Bowler (1996) and I (Ruse 1996) have a major difference in interpretation
about the history of evolutionary theory after the Origin. He thinks that good, professional-quality
work was done – in Britain, Germany, France, and increasingly in
America – and that this led into the synthetic theory. It was just that the work was not
very Darwinian, in the sense of using natural selection. I think that the years after the
Origin, measured by the standards of mature professional science, were generally speaking
an absolute disaster. I do not deny that there was some professional work, but I think it
tended to the decidedly second-rate – phylogeny tracing -- and it was increasingly out of
touch with reality. I think that the main use that was made of evolution – by Darwin’s
supporters like Thomas Henry Huxley – was as a kind of Christianity substitute, a sort of
secular religion, to promote the kind of society that they wanted to create. There was no
wonder that Herbert Spencer, who was right into this sort of thing, was more influential
than Darwin.
I would also say that I am not convinced that natural selection fell absolutely flat. After
Darwin, Wallace (1870) and above all H. W. Bates (1862) did wonderful work on
Lepidoptera and their markings, using selection as a tool of research. Then later in the
century we find others also using selection – E. B. Poulton (1890) at Oxford and Raphael
Weldon (1898) then in London, to name but two. Also I am inclined to think that, even
if people did not accept selection – and everyone thought it had some little role – the
very fact of having a mechanism, even if not accepted, helped. It showed how things
could be done, if not done properly.
Having said this, one must agree that natural selection was not a great success. Scientists
generally did not pick it up and use it. There was not a new field of selection studies.
Partly, this non-development was scientific. There were perceived problems with selection.
Without a good theory of heredity, no one could see how the effects of selection
could be long lasting (Vorzimmer 1970). Also the age of the earth was a problem. Not
knowing about radio-active decay and its warming effects, physicists thought that the
earth is much younger than it really is, and it seemed that a leisurely process like selection
would never get the job done in time (Burchfield 1975). Partly, there were other factors
for the non-development, some in science and some outside. Someone like Huxley was
never really that interested in adaptation and design, so for him selection was not really
needed anyway (Desmond 1994, 1997). Evolution was what he needed. Outside science,
the religious were happy to accept evolution, but they still wanted a bit of guidance to get
organisms, especially humans. So they were into directed mutations and so forth, and
eschewed the full implications of the blind, cruel process of selection.