Notes on Michael Ruse: The Darwinian Revolution

Kevin T. Kelly

Department of Philosophy

Carnegie Mellon University

Chapter 4: Mystery of Mysteries

Lyell's Volume 1of Principles of Geology.

• no progression of species
• progressions are illusions caused by imperfections in fossil record.
• man is recent
• man is morally special but not biologically special.

Voume 2 (1832): focus on organic world:

• attack on Lamarck using Cuvier's arguments: mummies, limits to breeding, feral domesticated animals
• species are static.
• mistake: Lamarck never appealed to progress in the fossil record. His argument was based on disappearance in the fossil record. Thereafter, public thought that evolution is supposed to explain progress (Victorian preoccupation).
• focus on geographic distribution of species
• different forms in similar circumstances.
• means of distribution (carrying seeds in hair or stomach)
• one original pair + distribution explains current distribution.
• extinction in steady state: struggle of existence (Malthus, Augustin de Candolle).
• No need for Lamarck's explanation of disappearance
• irony: struggle for existence is an argument against evolution.
• in steady state, must be some natural, steady-state replacement of species (hazy position).
• everybody read Lyell as requiring a lawlike account of appearance of new types of organisms.

reasons for position

scientific

Stonesfield dig: mammal fossils much earlier than progressionists thought. Progressionists simply revised the date of first appearance.

measurement: steady-state extinction and creation allows one to measure the age of strata by the ratio of extinct species present (?? why couldn't Lamarck use ratio of altered species?)

philosophical

evolution contradicted steady-state geology.

change of species not "true cause"; never observed.

design: natural process of change wouldn't produce adaptation.

religious

steady-state fits with deistic religion.

special status of man: evolution would bring man down to ordinary organism status. Lyell was a progressionist until he read Lamarck and saw the implications for man.

if natural evolution worked, design argument would fail.

Lyell's dilemma:

• steady state creation requires laws
• lawlike creation of adapted species undercuts natural theology. Close to miraculous creation.

Reactions to Lyell

Herschell (letter from Cape of Good Hope).

origin of species = "mystery of mysteries"

read Lyell as proposing law-like causal mechanism for new speies.

God operates through intermediate causes

agreed with actualism, not anti-progressionism.

agreement based on "true cause" philosophy of science (he said so explicitly).

Baden-Powell

also agreed with Lyell except for anti-progressionism.

Babbage

similar to Herschell and Baden-Powell.

extra idea on origins based on calcuating machine.

• Calculating machine can count from 0 to a million and then start producing suprising gaps.
• Thus, miracles and chaos can be built into laws.(Remember this when we get to chaos!)
• More dignified than God stepping in to produce particular miracles. (This argument actually goes back to Leibniz: any finite number N of points can be connected by a polynomial of order N-1).
• Origins of new species could be governed by such a law.
• Deism: God as big industrialist who designed the machine of nature.
• Ultimately, positive religious influence for evolution.
• Lyell liked this idea. (What, then, is uniformitarianism?)

Sedgwick

Urged outright miracles.

adjusting power outside nature.

New species created usually after catastrophes, but miracles nonetheless.

Man is culmination of a long series.

Hence, species are no longer being created.

design argument.

Lawyer's argument: but even if creation is lawlike, it still shows design.

Billy Whistle

Each geological event has a sufficient cause.

So if we haven't seen a cause sufficient for a known effect, we may have to invoke supernatural causes.

Arguments against natural laws of species generation:

• repeats Lyell's arguments from Cuvier (the mummies again).
• Lamarck's theory too complex to count as a consilience.
• Lyell's Babbage-like laws are also too complex.

Conclusion: God creates according to his own, non-natural laws.

• Miracles stand above natural law, they don't violate it.
• Things follow laws after they are created.

directionalist who denied directionality in the fossil record (?)

Difference with Cuvier:

• For Cuvier, impossible for species to change.
• For Whewell, that would be a constraint on God's freedom (old debate: Aristote's "immanent" essences vs. Plato's "patterns" for creation). Instead, ignorance of a sufficient cause pushes us to posit miraculous origins.

Summary:

Frame of debate = ancient theological tension:

• Liberals: Aloof Aristotelian God bound by laws. (in Medieval period: Averroism)
• Conservatives: Immanent, supreme, Platonic God actively engaged in creation. (in Medieval period: Ockhamism)

Defect in the debate: Liberals equivocal about the standing of the laws governing creation. Both sides too concerned to preserve man's uniqueness and dignity.