Notes on Michael Ruse: The Darwinian Revolution

Kevin T. Kelly

Department of Philosophy

Carnegie Mellon University

Chapter I: Background

Empedocles: selectionist argument for randomly assembled body parts.

Ancient impediments to evolutionism

Plato: Can't be half-way in between a Form.

Christianity: Genesis

Turning tide:

Herschel and Laplace: Nebular hypothesis for the formation of the solar system

Geology findings against the flood and against recent creation (pebbles within pebbles) (Platonic response: Fossils are inorganic manifestations of the forms)

Late 18th c: evolutionary theories.

Lamarck:

Converted at 56 in 1800.

Professor of insects, worms, and microscopic animals at Natural History Museum in Paris.

Argument for evolution of advanced forms:

• Some fossil shells have no living counterpart.
• Protected things like Shellfish shouldn't go extinct.
• Hence, they must have changed into something else.

Argument for spontaneous generation of primitive forms:

• Some microorganisms do not go extinct.
• Surely such fragile things would go extinct.
• Hence, they must be continuously spontaneously generated.

"Lamarckism"

escalator evolution: steady-state ascent of the scale of being.

Ascent driven by needs that excite fluids that accentuate growth of relevant structures.

Use or disuse and environmental changes also lead to gaps of development (ducks lose flight). Ad hoc explanation of species as opposed to continuous scale of being.

Inheritance of acquired changes

Georges Cuvier (anti-evolutionist comparative anatomist)

1790. First to make the case for extinction.

Aristotelian: organisms as functional wholes.

Teleology:

Conditions of existence shape animal parts.

Correlation of parts: changes in one part affect other parts.

Antievolutionary consequence: great changes would destroy correlation of parts (Recall Kuhn's argument that a paradigm must change holistically!)

Rejected scale of being (except maybe for man).

Four basic body plans: vertebrates, mollusks, articulata, radiata.

Evidence against evolution

• Egyptian animal mummies are like ours.
• No crossovers observed between four basic plans.
• No analogies between four basic plans.
• Limits to breeding: can't make a pig of a horse.
• Gaps in fossil record would be there if evolution were true.

No appeals to God or Genesis. The religious debate occurred in Britain.

Chapter II: British Society and the Scientific Community

British Paradox of 1830:

Industrial revolution advanced

• Agricultural revolution (enclosures)
• Urbanization

Political feudalism

• domination by aristocrats (Whigs) and gentry (Tories).
• rotten boroughs (tiny voting districts under lord's control)
• house of Lords
• corn laws (food tax on poor to benefit gentry)
• No vote for most, or for any women.
• Thomas Malthus: feeding the poor only makes more.
• work houses to punish poor.

Anglican church part of establishment

• Salary: high prelate 19,000 pounds. Policeman 50 pounds.
• government appointments.
• tax supported.
• considered essential for social stability.
• attacks on church considered seditious.

University: Oxford or Cambridge

• male Anglicans only
• lecturers nearly all ordained ministers.
• colleges held the power (already in Newton's time)
• not for serious scholarship (alreadyin Newton's time).
• one path for scholars: to be "wrangler" or top score in mathematics honors exam.
• no connection to industry.
• no exams in chemistry, botany, or geology.

Change 1820's:

• Herschel, Babbage, Peacock finally introduced continental mathematics to replace Newton's techniques at Cambridge.
• Some chairs in geology, minerology, botany.
• Lectures began to be taken seriously.

Scientific Network

Rev. William "Billy Whistle" Whewell (1794-1866)

• Tory
• Bully
• Father was carpenter
• Professor of Minerology at Cambridge, Trinity College
• 1816 Second Wrangler at Trinity College (following Newton).
• 1842 Master of Trinity
• Mediocre scientist
• Invented the nifty Greek names for other scientist's concepts: e.g., anode, cathode (somebody had to).
• Broad interests and knowledge.
• History of the Inductive Sciences
• Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences
• Consilience of inductions = When one theory unifies several different lower-level laws.
• Consilience results from a superadded conception.
• Since the conception is added, it cannot be wrong (neo-Kantian thesis).

Rev. Adam Sedgwick (1785-1883)

• Whig
• friendly
• Prof. of Geology at Cambridge, Trinity College
• election slogan for professorship: "I have turned no stone but if elected I will leave no stone unturned". Oppenent knew geology but came from less prestigious college.
• quickly one of the best field geologists.
• concentration on Cambrian.

Rev. John Stevens Henslow (1796-1861)

• Prof. of Botany at Cambridge, St. John's College.
• nice
• rebuilt herbarium, botanical gardens
• lectured with success
• service to parishioners (rare)

Rev. Charles Babbage (1792-1871)

• Lucasian Prof of Math, Cambridge (Newton's chair)
• introduced continental analysis.
• invented a calculating machine. Funding cut. Bitter.
• gave no lectures.
• hated organ grinders.

Rev William Buckland (1784-1856)

• Prof. of Geology, Oxford
• flambuoyant lecturer
• knowledgable about geology
• became dean of Westminster

Rev. Baden Powell (1796 -1860)

• Prof. of geometry, Oxford
• 14 sons. Youngest founded boy scouts.
• Brilliant mathematician.
• Wrote on history and philosophy of science
• Loved inter-college religious controversy

F.W. Herschell (1792-1871)

• Son of astronomer William Herschell.
• First Wrangler at St. Johns, Cambridge.
• helped introduce continental mathematics into England
• astronomer; mapped nebulae.
• crystallography, magnetism, geology, photography innovator.
• famous for A Preliminary Discourse on the Study of Natural Philosophy
• Expounded Newton's "true cause" doctrine: only causes seen operating in nature may be invoked as explanations. Influenced Lyell's uniformitarian geology.
• public's image of a scientist.
• made baron

Charles Lyell (1797-1875)

• Professor of Geology, King's College, London.
• studied, Exeter college, Oxford.
• studied law, eyesight precluded career.
• Buckland interested him in geology.
• Principles of Geology 1830
• annoyed Whewell by criticizing university lectures.
• made baron.
• fond of highly placed friends.

Richard Owen (1804-1892)

• Classmate of Whewell
• surgeon (by apprenticeship)
• comparative anatomy
• focus on marsupial reproduction.
• catalogued Hunterian Collection at Royal College of Surgeons.
• superintendant of natural history at British Museum
• swtitched to paleontology
• studied Cuvier on comparative anatomy.
• vilified by Huxley and the Darwinians

Scientific Societies

Cambridge weekly informal meetings

Cambridge philosphical society (papers)

Royal Society (decadent in 1830) Duke of Sussex chosen over F.W. Herschell as president.

Special Societies

Linnean

Astronomical

Zoological

Geological Whewell, Sedgwick, Herschel, Lyell, Buckland, Henslow, Owen, Babbage, Baden Powell.

Royal Institution Public lectures, supported Faraday and Sir Humphrey Davy.

British Association for the Advancement of Science Public lectures, 1832 Buckland president, Baden Powell, 1833 Sedgwick president, Whewell gives keynote address.

Science as a profession

• making a living
• advanced degree
• professional society
• enthusiasm for subject
• publications in journals (not too popular)

Criteria not met in Britain in this period

Darwin (1809-1892)

Comfortable birth

• Erasmus Darwin: paternal grandfather, physician, evolutionary speculator (Anglican)
• Josiah Wedgewood: maternal grandfather, pottery magnate (Unitarian).
• Robert Darwin: father, physician (Atheist).
• Emma Wedgewood: wife. More pottery money.

Pottery wealth

Father's profession launders wealth.

Nominal Anglican.

Academic career

mediocre beginnings.

sent to medical school at Edinburgh. Hated lectures and dissections.

church training at Christ's College, Cambridge (fast crowd, horse racing enthusasts).

formal record mediocre:

"wasted three years"

Studied Paley's Evidences of Christianity (natural theology focused on biology).

informal facts more favorable:

Academic success began in honors mathematics. Darwin was not a mathematician.

Rich students didn't have to succeed in the honors program in order to secure a decent Church living.

No degree programs in "science".

Intuimate interaction with Cambridge scientists

Fired up to do a career in science after reading Herschell's Preliminary Discourse and Humboldt's travel books.

Sedgwick took him on a geology field course in Wales.

Henslow secured passage for Darwin as naturalist on H.M.S. Beagle.

Beetle collection.

Close contact with Henslow.

Letters read at Cambridge Philosophical Society.

Visited Herschell in Cape Town.

Lyell wished to meet him.

On return, Henslow and Whewell got him on the council of the Geological Society.

Effusive praise from Whewell in society's presidential address.

Publication on geology in Transactions of the Royal Society.

Whewell pressured him to publish the Beagle voyage diary.

Became intimate with non-Cambridge scientists: Lyell, Babbage, Herschell.

Owen volunteered to help arrange Beagle collections.

Conclusion: Darwin was a full member of the geological community after the Beagle voyage.