Darwinism

“ What if the orbit of Darwinism should be a little too circular? What if species should offer residual phænomena, here and there, not explicable by natural selection? Twenty years hence naturalists may be in a position to say whether this is, or is not, the case; but in either event they will owe the author of "The Origin of Species" an immense debt of gratitude. ”

“ Darwinism has revolutionized our conceptions of nature. Darwin placed upon a satisfactory basis a new order of interpretation of the organic world. By it other interpretations have been supplanted. And now this new conception is undergoing evolution, not without some divergence.
In this chapter we have seen how evolution is possible under natural conditions. If the law of increase be true, if more are born than can survive to procreate their kind, natural selection is a logical necessity. ”

“ Thus the name of Darwin will often no doubt be tacked on to what are in reality the principles of Lamarck.
Every day, however, in spite of such half-ignorant adherents, the effects of true Darwinism are widening and deepening. One group of earnest workers is using it now as a guide to physiological, embryological, and anatomical researches. ”

“ But the entire inadequacy of Darwinism to account for the primitive origin of life forms, for the original diversity in the different branches of the tree of life forms, the interdependence of the creation of ancient faunas and floras on geological revolutions, and consequent sudden changes in the environment of organisms, has convinced us that Darwinism is but one of a number of factors of a true evolution theory ”

“ To deal with the problem, we must, it seems, first of all distinguish the more general conclusions in regard to the evolution of living beings, which are the outcome of Darwinism, from the particular explanations it offers of the ways and means by which that evolution is effected. That is to say, we must, as far as possible, estimate separately the influence of Darwin as an evolutionist and Darwin as a selectionist. ”

“ The suspicion and dislike which are aroused in some minds by the very name of Darwinism cannot be retained by those who read Mr. Darwin’s own description of his theory and the grounds which slowly led him to adopt it. Few readers can be dull enough to feel no charm at finding the most unlooked-for results deduced from the simplest illustrations, from old familiar facts, from every-day occurrences, or at finding whativ seem examples of the most special and varied contrivance reconciled to the simplicity of a single general law. ”

“ Only from this point onwards does the doctrine of evolution, which is not in itself necessarily committed to any theory of the factors, become definitely Darwinian or anti-Darwinian. And it is this problem that is mainly concerned in the discussions taking place to-day as to whether Darwin was right, or whether Darwinism as a hypothesis has not broken down. ”

“ It was not until Darwin was brought out into the open, it was not until the absurdities of Darwin had made his explanations the laughing stock, that they began to try to distinguish between Darwinism and evolution. They explained that evolutionists had discarded Darwin's idea of sexual selection—I should think they would discard it, and they are discarding the doctrine of natural selection. ”

“ There were biological evolutionists before ever he published the 'Origin of Species;' there are biological evolutionists even now who refuse to accept the truth of his great discovery, and who cling firmly to the primitive faith set forth in earlier and cruder shapes by Erasmus Darwin, by Lamarck, or by Robert Chambers.
Much more, then, must Darwinism and the entire theory of organic development to which it belongs be carefully discriminated, as a part or factor, from evolution at large, as a universal and all-embracing cosmical system. ”

“ Darwin certainly was impressed with the view that natural selection and variation together formed a mechanism, the central product of which was adaptation. From the Butlerian side, too, came the most urgent opposition to Darwinism. How is it possible, it was said, that fortuitous variations can furnish the material for the precise and balanced adaptations that all nature reveals? Selection cannot create the materials on which it is supposed to operate; the beginnings of new organs, the initial stages of new functions cannot be supposed to have been useful. ”

“ Again and again, in popular as well as scientific publications, men are raising and answering the question: “Is Darwinism dead?” Manifold and various are the answers given, but none of them appears to take the form of an unqualified affirmation or negation. Some reply by drawing a distinction between Darwinism, as a synonym for the theory of evolution in general, and Darwinism, in the sense of the particular form of that theory which had Darwin for its author. ”

“ Darwinism, as has already been stated, is not the doctrine of evolution; it is, however, a successful attempt to explain the law or manner of evolution. The law of natural selection, pointed [Pg 91] out by Darwin, is called by Herbert Spencer, The struggle for existence. Darwin discovered that natural selection produces fitness between organisms and their circumstances, which explains the law of the survival of the fittest. ”

“ Such hazy and indistinct thinkers as these are still really at the prior stage of Lamarckian evolutionism. It is probable that in the future, while a formal acceptance of Darwinism becomes general, the special theory of natural selection will be thoroughly understood and assimilated only by the more abstract and philosophical minds. Our children will be taught as a matter of course the doctrine of development or of descent with modification ”

“ What is opposed to Darwinism in the biological investigations of the experts of to-day is in part simple criticism of the Darwinian position as a whole or in some of its details, and in part constructive individual theories and interpretations of the evolution of organisms. ”

“ It was indeed one of their boasts that they had finally eliminated all teleology from Nature. The great and immediate success which Darwinism had among the younger generation of biologists and among scientific men in general was due in large part to the fact that it fitted in well with the prevailing materialism of the day, and gave solid ground for the hope that in time a complete mechanistic explanation of life would be forthcoming. ”

“ The progress of investigation, establishing the universality of natural law and, in every province, the gradual character of change was, before Darwin, as it has been since his work, in the direction of such a theory, as was shown by the ready acceptance with which Darwinism met, if not by the world at large, at least by the majority of scientists. In England, France, and Germany, there were others at work under the influence of thoughts similar to if not identical with those that inspired the researches and experiments of Darwin ”

“ Your correspondent ‘Xn’ will find both his pleasure and his profit in reading the chapter on Instinct in ‘Darwin’s Origin of Species.’ It will give him some idea, I say not, how the reasoning faculty was first acquired, but how it may have been gradually developed. By a careful study of the same work he, and many others who need the knowledge, will see that in accordance with Darwinism the deterioration of a species is quite possible. ”

“ And when they come to illustrate these views by an appeal to palaeontology or morphology, we find that a far simpler and more complete explanation of the facts is afforded by the established principles of variation and natural selection. The confidence with which these new ideas are enunciated, and the repeated assertion that without them Darwinism is powerless to explain the origin of organic forms, renders it necessary to bestow a little more time on the explanations they give us of well-known phenomena with which, they assert, other theories are incompetent to grapple. ”

“ The theory of organic evolution relates to the history of animal and plant life, while Darwin's theory of natural selection is only one of the various attempts to point out the causes for that history's being what it is. An attack upon Darwinism is not, in itself, an attack upon the general theory, but upon the adequacy of his explanation of the way in which nature has brought about the diversity of animal and plant life. ”

“ In the doctrine of the origination of species through natural selection, these adaptations appear as the outcome rather than as the motive, as final results rather than final causes. Adaptation to use, although the very essence of Darwinism, is not a fixed and inflexible adaptation, realized once for all at the outset; it includes a long progression and succession of modifications, adjusting themselves to changing circumstances, under which they may be more and more diversified, specialized, and in a just sense perfected. ”

“ But those who accept Darwinism as applied to the animal and vegetable kingdoms, implying as that theory does the progress of organic life from low to higher, from simple to more complex forms and functions—these can hardly resist the conclusion that man also, as to his physical part at least, is but a highly-developed member of the animal kingdom. ”

“ If one, therefore, calls modification through natural selection 'Darwinism,' a new name must be introduced for the undoubtedly demonstrable occurrence of phenomena in the whole living world which have no relation to their owners or are occasionally harmful to them, and hence are certainly not the result of selection. ”

“ They are much mistaken who suppose that Darwinism is only of speculative importance, and perhaps transient interest. In its working applications it has proved to be a new power, eminently practical and fruitful. ”

“ As one of those persons who for many years past had made a pretty free use of the comfortable word ‘evolution,’ let him remind them that 34 years ago a considerable discussion, to which the President had referred, took place in one of their sectional meetings upon what people frequently called the ‘Darwinism question,’ but which on that occasion was not the Darwinism question, but the very much deeper question which lay beneath the Darwinism question—he meant the question of evolution.... ”

“ HOW ONE TOUCH OF DARWIN MAKES THE WHOLE WORLD KIN Another humanitarian interest in Darwinism was that Darwin popularized Evolution generally, as well as making his own special contribution to it. ”

“ One must say advisedly, naturalists who are specialists in Darwinism, because, while the literature of Darwinism has become a department of science in itself, there are nowadays many naturalists who, without having paid any close attention to the subject, deem themselves entitled to hold authoritative opinions with regard to it. ”

“ To reach a definition that will include these {96} let us begin by fixing our attention on that order of facts which formed the special study of Darwin, and in connection with which the theory of evolution became first known to the world; and let us ask what was the greatest and the most notorious effect produced by Darwinism on human thought generally. Its greatest and most notorious effect was to disprove, or rather render superfluous, the old theory which explained the varieties of organic life by referring them to the design of some quasi-human intelligence. ”

“ Professor of Social Philosophy in the University of Toulouse and Deputy-Professor at the Sorbonne, Paris
How has our conception of social phenomena, and of their history, been affected by Darwin's conception of Nature and the laws of its transformation? To what extent and in what particular respects have the discoveries and hypotheses of the author of The Origin of Species aided the efforts of those who have sought to construct a science of society?
To such a question it is certainly not easy to give any brief or precise answer. We find traces of Darwinism almost everywhere. ”

“ In this system the forms and species, in all their variety, are not mere ends in themselves, but the whole a series of means and ends, in the contemplation of which we may obtain higher and more comprehensive, and perhaps worthier, as well as more consistent, views of design in Nature than heretofore. At least, it would appear that in Darwinian evolution we may have a theory that accords with if it does not explain the principal facts, and a teleology that is free from the common objections. ”

“ Darwin's philosophy may be, or whether he has any, is a matter of no consequence at all, compared with the important questions, whether a theory to account for the origination and diversification of animal and vegetable forms through the operation of secondary causes does or does not exclude design; and whether the establishment by adequate evidence of Darwin's particular theory of diversification through variation and natural selection would essentially alter the present scientific and philosophical grounds for theistic views of Nature. ”

“ So the Darwinian theory, once getting a foothold, marches; boldly on, follows the supposed near ancestors of our present species farther and yet farther back into the dim past, and ends with an analogical inference which "makes the whole world kin." ”

“ The fact that, in all domestic animals, variations do occur, rendering them swifter or stronger, larger or smaller, stouter or slenderer, and that such variations can be separately selected and accumulated for man's purposes, is sufficient to render it certain that similar or even greater changes may be effected by natural selection, which, as Darwin well remarks, "acts on every internal organ, on every shade of constitututional difference, on the whole machinery of life." ”