before Darwin
04/23/2009 10:51
a few more notes from Millhauser’s Before Darwin
The idea that evolution was “in the air” is supported: “it had recently made a considerable stir in France, with that infidel Lamarck and his party, and all the authority of Cuvier had been needed to put it down. Lyell was obliged to devote a good many pages of his Principles of Geology to repudiating it…for geology, blink the fact or gloze over it as one would, contradicted Scripture.”
The reluctance of major scientific figures doesn’t necessarily represent the feeling of all scientists (unless you subscribe to the “great man” theory and think they were all the scientists). Lyell was a knight and baronet. Cuvier was a baron. Erasmus Darwin delayed publishing his theory of evolution from 1770 to 1796, and he didn’t have the personal attachment to religion that his grandson did. It’s interesting, though. They’re willing to go only so far.
“since the turn of the [19th] century…the theory has had no outstanding, serious, and determined popular apologist or representative…Among the informed few the idea is detested: a disgusting and exploded folly, kept alive only in atheistic, revolutionary France; it may also be a little feared.” (71) Millhauser’s impressionistic style seems to capture some interesting clues. There’s a relationship between popular, out-loud debate and acceptance of new ideas (even among the elite). All kinds of things may be believed by “the informed few,” but they’re not dangerous unless spoken of. Reminds me of J.S. Mill and birth control.
“About the middle of the seventeenth century, James Ussher, Archbishop of Armargh, carefully computed the date of creation and set it at 4004 B.C.” (194, n. 2) (Fall of the House of Ussher?)
If I need to go back to the primary sources on geology, here are the ones Millhauser talks about:
Whewell, Indications of Creator
John Woodward, An Essay Towards a Natural History of the Earth, ~1670
Thomas Burnet, the Sacred Theory of the Earth, 1684
William Whiston, A New Theory of the Earth, 1696
W. Worthington, The Scripture-Theory of the Earth, 1773
James Hutton, Theory of the Earth, 1785, gradualist
John Whitehurst, Inquiry into the Original State and Formation of the Earth
Lyell, Principles of Geology, 1830-3, “uniformitarian”
Archbishop Sumner, Treatise on the Records of Creation, 1816
Granville Penn, Comparative Estimate of the Mineral and Mosaic Geologies, 1822
William Paley, A View of the Evidences of Christianity and Natural Theology
Vestiges was reviewed in G.J. Holyoake’s Movement and Anti-Persecution Gazette (119 no reference given) (Jan 8 1845, 9-12 by William Chilton; Feb 26, Mar 5 & 19 1845)
Also: “The compositor and former bricklayer William Chilton recognized Vestiges as an attempt to remove the radical edge from the weapons of materialism; see his “ ‘Materialism’ and the Author of the ‘Vestiges’,” Reasoner 1 (1846): 7-8.
“Francis Bowen, a philosophical conservative at war with Kant, Mill, Comte, and much besides, devoted some fifty-odd pages of his North American Review to a technical refutation of Vestiges, fortified by an exposure of its atheistic tendencies” (119-20).
Even those you’d expect to support Vestiges, didn’t. “Thomas Henry Huxley begins with a tart remark that Vestiges continues to appear although exploded, and continues enthusiastically in this key.” as always, Huxley is ambivalent about the impact on the public’s understanding of the issues. “Darwin feared ridicule; as early as 1844, in a letter that spoke a little superciliously of Lamarck’s ‘absurd though clever work,’ he anticipated comparison with this inept new version of it...When he published, then, he indicated his disapproval of Vestiges in terms that contrasted markedly with his courtesy toward such minor precursors as Matthews.” (148-9) But then, by the same token, he totally ignored his most significant precursor, his grandfather. So in a sense, bad treatment by Darwin is high praise.
“Wallace (who had once found the book stimulating to his own mind [and wasn’t above admitting it!]) always spoke of it with the respect due a pioneer” (150).
“Huxely…did not see it giving a substantial hint to Schopenhauer, or confirming Emerson’s intuition of nature, or intruding an argument or two into the contemptuous Spencer’s ‘Development Hypothesis,’ or gripping the attention of Lincoln as had only a half dozen books in his career. He did not see the first breach in the wall.” (151)
The idea that evolution was “in the air” is supported: “it had recently made a considerable stir in France, with that infidel Lamarck and his party, and all the authority of Cuvier had been needed to put it down. Lyell was obliged to devote a good many pages of his Principles of Geology to repudiating it…for geology, blink the fact or gloze over it as one would, contradicted Scripture.”
The reluctance of major scientific figures doesn’t necessarily represent the feeling of all scientists (unless you subscribe to the “great man” theory and think they were all the scientists). Lyell was a knight and baronet. Cuvier was a baron. Erasmus Darwin delayed publishing his theory of evolution from 1770 to 1796, and he didn’t have the personal attachment to religion that his grandson did. It’s interesting, though. They’re willing to go only so far.
“since the turn of the [19th] century…the theory has had no outstanding, serious, and determined popular apologist or representative…Among the informed few the idea is detested: a disgusting and exploded folly, kept alive only in atheistic, revolutionary France; it may also be a little feared.” (71) Millhauser’s impressionistic style seems to capture some interesting clues. There’s a relationship between popular, out-loud debate and acceptance of new ideas (even among the elite). All kinds of things may be believed by “the informed few,” but they’re not dangerous unless spoken of. Reminds me of J.S. Mill and birth control.
“About the middle of the seventeenth century, James Ussher, Archbishop of Armargh, carefully computed the date of creation and set it at 4004 B.C.” (194, n. 2) (Fall of the House of Ussher?)
If I need to go back to the primary sources on geology, here are the ones Millhauser talks about:
Whewell, Indications of Creator
John Woodward, An Essay Towards a Natural History of the Earth, ~1670
Thomas Burnet, the Sacred Theory of the Earth, 1684
William Whiston, A New Theory of the Earth, 1696
W. Worthington, The Scripture-Theory of the Earth, 1773
James Hutton, Theory of the Earth, 1785, gradualist
John Whitehurst, Inquiry into the Original State and Formation of the Earth
Lyell, Principles of Geology, 1830-3, “uniformitarian”
Archbishop Sumner, Treatise on the Records of Creation, 1816
Granville Penn, Comparative Estimate of the Mineral and Mosaic Geologies, 1822
William Paley, A View of the Evidences of Christianity and Natural Theology
Vestiges was reviewed in G.J. Holyoake’s Movement and Anti-Persecution Gazette (119 no reference given) (Jan 8 1845, 9-12 by William Chilton; Feb 26, Mar 5 & 19 1845)
Also: “The compositor and former bricklayer William Chilton recognized Vestiges as an attempt to remove the radical edge from the weapons of materialism; see his “ ‘Materialism’ and the Author of the ‘Vestiges’,” Reasoner 1 (1846): 7-8.
“Francis Bowen, a philosophical conservative at war with Kant, Mill, Comte, and much besides, devoted some fifty-odd pages of his North American Review to a technical refutation of Vestiges, fortified by an exposure of its atheistic tendencies” (119-20).
Even those you’d expect to support Vestiges, didn’t. “Thomas Henry Huxley begins with a tart remark that Vestiges continues to appear although exploded, and continues enthusiastically in this key.” as always, Huxley is ambivalent about the impact on the public’s understanding of the issues. “Darwin feared ridicule; as early as 1844, in a letter that spoke a little superciliously of Lamarck’s ‘absurd though clever work,’ he anticipated comparison with this inept new version of it...When he published, then, he indicated his disapproval of Vestiges in terms that contrasted markedly with his courtesy toward such minor precursors as Matthews.” (148-9) But then, by the same token, he totally ignored his most significant precursor, his grandfather. So in a sense, bad treatment by Darwin is high praise.
“Wallace (who had once found the book stimulating to his own mind [and wasn’t above admitting it!]) always spoke of it with the respect due a pioneer” (150).
“Huxely…did not see it giving a substantial hint to Schopenhauer, or confirming Emerson’s intuition of nature, or intruding an argument or two into the contemptuous Spencer’s ‘Development Hypothesis,’ or gripping the attention of Lincoln as had only a half dozen books in his career. He did not see the first breach in the wall.” (151)
