Notes on Michael Ruse: The Darwinian Revolution

Kevin T. Kelly

Department of Philosophy

Carnegie Mellon University

Chapter 3: Beliefs: Geological, Philosophical, and Religious

Geology

Catastrophism vs. Uniformitarianism (Whewell's terms)

Catastrophism

precursors: Neptunists

exceptional causes: floods of unprecedented size.

historical direction: flood ---> precipitation ---> coal beds ---> fire ---> volcanoes.

young Earth: extraordinary causes work fast.

last catastrophe = biblical flood (Cuvier didn't claim this, Buckland hinted).

exponents:

• France: Cuivier.
• England: Henslow, Buckland, Sedgwick, Whewell.

evidence:

• successions of freshwater and saltwater fossils in Paris basin.
• mammoths in Russia frozen suddenly.
• cave full of bones of extinct animals in Yorkshire.
• Cuvier's directedness of animal history.
• thermodynamics: Fourrier's theory that Earth is cooling from incandescent state.
• similarly, fossils show progression from tropical climate.

Uniformitarianism:

precursors: Vulcanists (Scottish geologists).

James Hutton's Theory of the Earth (1795).

ordinary causes: weathering and vulanism.

steady cycle of change: weathering ---> sediment ---> igneous fusion ---> vulcanism ---> weathering... etc.

old Earth: ordinary causes are slow. "no vestige of a beginning, --- no prospect of an end".

chief exponenent Lyell's Principles of Geology

Aims

1. actualism: "true causes" (Newton ---> Herschell)
2. uniformitarianism: causs same in degree.
3. steady-statism: do sign of direction or progression in geology or biology.

Structure:

biased history of geology favoring uniformitarians

attack on cooling Earth: temperature is governed by ratio of land are to watter area. This fluctuates due to erosion and vulcanism. So temperature fluctuates. Cooling Europe is just one fluctuation.

attack on progression in fossil record: illusion based on imperfaction of record. Man is a moral advance, but not a physical advance.

true causes:

aequeous (Neptunist)

• fluvial (freshwater)
• marine (currents and tides)
• deposition
• erosion

igneous (Vulcanist)

• volcanic
• seismic (earthquakes caused by liquid rock)

causes of elevation and subsidence in balance (convoluted argument)

Debate:

Sedgwick: best field geologist ofhis day. Catastrophes not necessarily supernatural or flood related.

• No evidence for uniformitarianism. Elie de Beaumont: alps raised by unprecedented paraxisms because recent fossils are on top.
• steady statism wrong: Earth clearly cooling off; thermodynamical argument. Mirrored in organic progrss.

Lyell: reclassified alleged catastrophes as slow oscillations around equilibirum. Refused to be refuted.

Whewell: more sophisticated attack.

1. actualism is arbitrary: it would be a miracle if we had seen all the relevant causes already.
• Lyell: tidal anomalies would be explained with known causes.
• Whewell: no advantage to extending gravity to the heavens until Newton showed that the forces were in fact the same.
2. uniformitarianism is arbitrary: unlimited time is as much a liberty as unlimited force.
3. steady-statism is implausible: nebular hypothesis of astronomy suggests historical development.

Herschell: more sympathetic because uniformitatianism reflected his philospophy of science.

Darwin the geologist

catastrophist training.

• lectures by Robert Jameson, Cuvier's British editor.
• field training with Sedgwick.

uniformitarian conversion:

Beagle voyage: brought along Lyell's Principles to read at Henslow's suggestion, with warning.

St. Jago in Cape Verde Archipelago: vocanic island deposited on sedimentary strata, bowing them downward under the load.

Conversion hypothesis: catastrophists were still committed to minimizing catastrophes.

But catastrophists wouldn't emphasize subsidence and elevation as much.

South America: proportion of extinct shells to extant shells indicates age of stratum. Implies elevation.

Pacific atolls:

• Improbable that so many volcanoes would rise to the same height.
• Atolls must result from subsidence.
• Coral keeps growing at ocean surface as volcano subsides.
• Independent evidence of subsidence.

Parallel "roads" of Glen Roy (2 yrs. after Beagle)

• roads are beaches showing elevation over ocean level.
• analogous to "parallel roads of Coquimbo" in Chile.
• analogous to parallel roads in Beagle channel, clearly cut by sea.
• "erratic" boulders brought by icebergs.
• absence of marine fossils blamed on the record.

wrong!

• Louis Agassiz: lakes dammed by glaciers and dams broke.
• Darwin: "great failure; shameful"

South America was cold when Europe was hot: evidence against directional temperature change.

Not ostracized from catastrophist community: praise in fact.

Philosophy of Science in the 1830's

Herschell's Preliminary Discourse:

Model of good science: Newtonian astronomy

theories = axiom systems.

axioms are lawlike: universal and physically necessary.

laws:

empirical: mere generalizations (Kepler's laws)

causal laws. explain empirical laws (Newtonian force laws).

best causes are forces.

forces make things happen.

ultimately, all force is will-force (maybe God's).

main idea: rue causes: if two phenomena are similar and the cause of one is known, then it is scarecely possible to refuse to admit an analogous cause in the other.

Whewell's Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences

Herschell's analogical method would prevent us from ever discovering new causes.

main idea: consilience of inductions:

different branches of science are brought together under a single explanatory theory.

mark of truth, because the explaining theory involves a "new conception" imposed on experience and what is imposed is certain (Kantianism).

better insofar as unified facts are surprising.

any causes involved in consilience are true causes.

better account of the wave theory of light, involvinginvisible waves in an invisible medium. Herschell was embarrased by this example

Geological influcence

Uniformitarian causes are Herchell's true causes.

Herschell was an early proponent of Lyell.

Whewell thought the use of known causes is unnecessary so long as there is consilience. Upturned strata indicate big causes.

Darwin read Herschell's book in 1831, and was wildly enthusiastic.

Darwin also emphasized the role of consilience.

Religion

two sources of religion:

• scripture: revealed religion
• observation: natural religion

revealed religion:

Bible taken very seriously by scientific professionals

• Must be Anglican to graduate Oxford and Cambridge.
• Must be ordained to remain and teach.

studied Archdeacon Paley's text Evidences of Christianity.

• Miracles imply divinity
• Disciples wouldn't have died for their belief in miracles if it weren't true.
• External sources attest to these deaths.
• Hence, Christ was divine.

threats within revealed religion:

German skeptical influence: form criticism of the New Testament. Understand Bible as a natural product.

Carlyle: mystical rebuke of rationalist arguments.

science and revealed religion:

Conservatism: Judeo-Christian God with all the trimmings.

Buckland, Sedgwick, Whewell

• Whewell: natural science has free rein with natural history prior to man.
• Six days of creation are six long periods.
• Man is only 6000 years old but the Earth is older (Sedgwick).
• 1823: Buckland saw evidence of flood. 1830: concensus running against.
• Smaller flood suffiicent.
• Important thing is that man is last.
• cooling Earth leads to Man.
• Whewell: scientific method "snaps in our fingers" when we ask about origins.

liberalism: deists = God as unmoved mover

Herschel, Lyell, Babbage, Baden-Powell.

• Herschell: miracles are not true causes by definition: not observed in operation (also Hume's argument against miracles).
• Herschell: to give linguistics time to operate, push patriarchs back 50,000 years.
• Baden-Powell: outright contradictions between science and scripture.

natural theology

1830's high water mark of natural theology in Britain.

David Hume's devastating critique of 1779 was ignored.

Palely getting dated.

Bridgwater Treatises: new didactic treatises commissioned by Earl of Bridgwater.

• Buckland on geology:
• God had man (Britons) in mind in His placement of iron and coal in Britain.
• Whewell on astronomy:
• can't be coincidence that plant cycle is one year. Adjustment by God. (note: design still shown in biological systems).
• Neo-Kantianism: can't even look at organisms without seeing design (sound familiar?)
• law is itself evidence of design.

Lyell: steady-state universe best reflects Deistic God.