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Home , Bernhard Rensch, Cathay Building, Ernst Mayr, Erwin Stresemann, George Gaylord Simpson, Hermann Detzner

WORLD VIEWS IN COLLISION: THE DIALOGUE BETWEEN JOHN GREENE AND (1959-2005)

By

STEWART EDWARD KREITZER

A DISSERTATION PRESENTED TO THE GRADUATE SCHOOL OF THE UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY

UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA

2013

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© 2013 Stewart Edward Kreitzer

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To everyone I have had an opportunity to learn from along the path.

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ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

First and foremost, I would like to thank the faculty and staff of the University of Florida

History Department, especially Betty Smocovitis, Fred Gregory, and Bob Hatch, my professors in the History of , as well as committee members, Sean Adams and Rebecca Kimball. In particular I wish to acknowledge Betty Smocovitis, who served as chair for my committee, for all her assistance and encouragement; she has been extraordinarily patient.

In addition, I would like to offer my appreciation to the archivists and librarians at the

University of Connecticut Thomas J. Dodd Research Center, The Library

Archives, and Harvard’s Ernst Mayr Library of the Museum of Comparative . In particular I would like to offer a special thanks to Betsy Pitman, UConn’s University Archivist responsible for the Greene Papers, and Mayr Sears, Head of Public Services/Reference at the

Ernst Mayr Library. I would also like to offer a special thanks to Dr. Walter Bock, Columbia

University Professor of Evolutionary and former graduate student of Ernst Mayr, who graciously spent his afternoon sharing his thoughts and perspectives with me about Mayr as well as John Greene, who he worked with organizing Mayr’s festschrift seminar at the International

Society for the History, Philosophy and Social Studies of Biology meetings held at Brandeis

University in 1993 and published the following year in Biology and Philosophy. And foremost, I would like to thank John C. Greene for inviting me to participate with him in two sets of interviews held in 2007 and 2008 at his home near Monterey, California, during which he shared his recollections of his productive career and long relationship with Ernst Mayr.

At the same time, I would like to offer an all-encompassing “thank you” to all those who offered advice and encouragement. Specifically I would like to recognize Ken Solomon, Kathryn

Bellach, Eric Bernasek, Chris Beetle, Tom Guild, the hospitality of Howard Brown, the Marks

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, Frank and Joni Lenna, and especially my daughter Jessica Kreitzer, my father Sidney

Kreitzer, and his wife Judy.

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

page

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ...... 4

ABSTRACT ...... 8

CHAPTER

1 INTRODUCTION ...... 9

2 GOING FOR THE : MAYR’S FORMATIVE YEARS IN ...... 24

Family and Education ...... 24 Birds and Bicycles ...... 34 Clubbing, and a Well-Cooked Carp ...... 36 A Fortuitous Red Duck Leads Young Mayr to Germany’s Leading Ornithologist ...... 40 Birding in the South Pacific ...... 51 Mayr and the Missionaries ...... 59 Sailing the South Seas ...... 64

3 THE DARWIN OF THE 20TH CENTURY: MAYR AND HIS CAREER IN ...... 69

The American Museum of ...... 69 Birding in the USA ...... 77 A Turn to Evolution ...... 87 The Founding of the Society for the Study of Evolution...... 98 The Biology of Birds Takes Flight; Mayr Migrates North ...... 102 The Harvard Professorship, Mr. Darwin’s Birthday, and an Eastern Expedition ...... 111 Ernst Goes to ...... 124

4 THE MAKING OF “A HISTORIAN’S HISTORIAN OF SCIENCE”: JOHN C. GREENE* ...... 132

It’s All in the Family ...... 134 Belle & Edward & Harvard & Helen ...... 138 Home on the Prairie: Vermillion, South Dakota ...... 142 Life Among The Coyotes ...... 149 The Advisor Professor Josey ...... 151 Bert James Loewenberg and Mr. Darwin ...... 155 Harvard and The Society of Fellows ...... 159 Spanning the Globe with Uncle Sam ...... 166 Back in the U.S.A...... 176

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5 CORRESPONDING COLLEAGUES: MAYR AND GREENE ...... 189

Greene Tackles “Progress” ...... 193 Dobzhansky and Greene: Making Sense of Evolution ...... 198 Disciplinary Boundaries ...... 209 Darwin & Spencer: As Seen by Harris, Freeman, Mayr, Greene, et al...... 215 Common Grounds ...... 224 On The History of Biological Revolutions ...... 227 Anthropology, Ideology, and World View ...... 232 Simpson, Ideology, and World View ...... 234 A Response from G. G. Simpson ...... 241

6 WORLD VIEWS IN COLLISION ...... 249

The Correspondence Thickens ...... 249 Mayr’s Critique of Greene’s Science, Ideology, and World View ...... 254 Mayr’s Recommendation ...... 260 From Huxley to Huxley: “Transformations in the Darwinian Credo” ...... 264 The Growth of Biological Thought ...... 277 The International Congress of at Berkeley ...... 286 Jacques Roger and the Revue de Synthèse ...... 293 Roger Recruits Mayr ...... 297 Moving Towards Publication ...... 305 The Revue in Print ...... 307 Two Old Intellectual Troopers...... 312 Happy Birthday Ernst ...... 322

7 UNDERSTANDING THE EXCHANGE AND SUMMING IT ALL UP ...... 329

APPENDIX: ADDITIONAL GREENE FAMILY HISTORY* ...... 353

The Treat Family of Helen Carter Greene ...... 355 Greene’s Green Family Ancestry ...... 359

LIST OF REFERENCES ...... 374

BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH ...... 389

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Abstract of Dissertation Presented to the Graduate School of the University of Florida in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy

WORLD VIEWS IN COLLISION: THE DIALOGUE BETWEEN JOHN GREENE AND ERNST MAYR (1959-2005)

By Stewart Kreitzer

August 2013

Chair: Vassiliki Betty Smocovitis Major: History

This dissertation is a focused historical examination of a famous series of exchanges between two leading scholars of the history of in the middle to late decades of the twentieth century. Spanning nearly fifty years, the relationship and conversation between

Ernst Mayr and John Greene took place in person, and more significantly, in private correspondence and official publications in response to each other. Raising a series of concerns about professionalization and identity, science and political belief, science and its philosophical context, and ultimately science and religion, this “epistolary exchange,” which varied from productive exchange to healthy argument to downright confrontation, makes for an ideal focus to explore complex themes in the history, philosophy and sociology of science.

In support of these objectives, this dissertation explores the many factors that shaped their worldviews and ideological proclivities. Through an examination of their lives, as well as a detailed examination of their many, and varied exchanges, this dissertation gives us a deeper understanding of what John Greene himself described as “the interplay of science, ideology, and worldview,” and most important, its latent influence on the relationship between science and religion in a wider cultural setting.

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CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION

In a celebrated 1986 review mediating two papers, and an exchange, by historian John

Greene and evolutionary and historian Ernst Mayr, the late Stephen J. Gould wrote:

The exchange between Greene and Mayr is a double pleasure to read because it represents a commentary about history by two men who have, through the excellence of their own works, helped to shape the history of evolutionary thought. Yet I find that both men are talking largely past rather than to each other. Mayr writes to defend the specific mechanics of ; Greene is questioning the philosophical underpinnings of Darwin’s worldview.1

This famous dispute between these two leading scholars of the history of evolutionary biology makes a good starting point for historical examination. Published in the Revue de

Synthèse, Mayr and Greene’s contesting views inspired formal commentaries from a number of leading scholars of evolution such as Gould, as well as François Jacob, the winner of the Nobel

Prize in (1965), the University of Paris zoologist Charles Devillers, and the French intellectual historian Jacques Roger. Though such formal critiques and responses are not uncommon in academic culture, these exchanges of 1986 went beyond the comfortable level of civil discourse and at times amounted to dismissive ad hominem attacks, especially from Ernst

Mayr, who at one point claimed that Greene “seemed to want to prove the death of Darwin . . .

[i]s there any substance to Greene’s endeavor to demonstrate the obsolescence of Darwin’s theories and ideas? A Darwinian reading Greene’s arguments is overcome by a feeling of frustration,” he duly noted.2

What, precisely, had been stated by Greene that triggered this response from Mayr? Why was there so much emotion involved? And what was the background context for this article?

Was it only an exploration of ’s “philosophical underpinnings,” as Gould considered

1 , “Commentary on Greene and Mayr,” Revue de Synthèse 107 (1986): 239.

2 Ernst Mayr, “The Death of Darwin?” Revue de Synthèse 107 (1986): 229.

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it to be, or was there more involved? Was it perhaps that Greene’s analysis somehow questioned the status of evolutionary biology and its legitimacy as a proper science, a criticism Mayr surely would have felt, having dedicated so much of his life to successfully establishing, promoting, and defending the proper science of evolutionary biology? Or was there some other fundamental difference between the two men that lay hidden from view? Was it perhaps a difference in worldview, or ideology, or perhaps even what constituted the proper of scientific, as well as historical inquiry, and all set against the backdrop of a wider culture that itself was seeing frequent clashes in the realms of politics, social values, beliefs, as well as the celebrated

“conflict” between a science like evolution and religion as it was unfolding in the of America.3

This dissertation attempts to answer these questions by focusing on the two protagonists, and this particular clash, as a way of understanding wider concerns that emerge from what John

Greene himself described as the “interplay of science, ideology, and world view.” It tracks their own intellectual development by focusing on their educations, family, and backgrounds, as well as analyzing closely the nature of their long and complex relationship seen in both their formal correspondence as well as their many publications.

The Mayr-Greene exchange (referring here not only the correspondence but also to the professional relationship between the two men), actually had a long history. Not without surprise, it began in the year 1959, the year of the Darwin Centennial at the University of

Chicago which hosted the largest and grandest of all celebrations commemorating the 100th year

3 John Hedley Brooke is one of the prominent historians of science advocating the complexity thesis to describe the historical relationship between science and religion. See John Hedley Brooke, Science and Religion: Some Historical Perspectives (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1991). For more on the historical complexity in the relationship between science and religion, see David C. Lindberg and Ronald L. Numbers have edited a volume highlighting the historical complexity latent in the relationship between science and Christianity in: God and Nature: Historical on the Encounter between Christianity and Science (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986).

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of the publication of Darwin’s On the Origin of and the 150th year of his birth. The occasion also celebrated the emergence of evolutionary biology as a legitimate scientific discipline whose purpose was to serve a “unifying” function, following the historical event known as “the evolutionary synthesis.”4 As explained by Betty Smocovitis:

In the wake of the evolutionary synthesis of the 1930s and 1940s, the anniversary of 1959, coming twelve years after the 1947 Princeton meetings (during which evolutionists celebrated the reconfiguration of biological disciplines around the new science of evolutionary biology), was perfectly timed to reassess the state of the art by the community of individuals who had worked to create a synthetic, unified science of evolution.5

It also provided an occasion for a number of proponents of the neo-Darwinian synthesis to proclaim its success far and wide through newsprint, radio and the new medium of television, thereby capturing an enormous international audience. Most noteworthy, it offered an opportune time to announce the new mingling of evolution, secular belief, and progress known as

“evolutionary humanism” (later amended to secular humanism). This was most clearly and indeed explicitly articulated by , one of the leading architects of, and spokespersons for the “modern” synthesis,6 who delivered his celebrated “secular sermon” from the pulpit of the University of Chicago’s Rockefeller chapel. As described by Smocovitis, his

4 Ernst Mayr, “Prologue: Some Thoughts on the History of the Evolutionary Synthesis.” In The Evolutionary Synthesis: Perspectives on the Unification of Biology, eds. Ernst Mayr and William B. Provine (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1980), 1–48. The historical background to the evolutionary synthesis and the emergence of the scientific discipline of evolutionary biology is also discussed in Vassiliki Betty Smocovitis, Unifying Biology: The Evolutionary Synthesis and Evolutionary Biology (Princeton: Press, 1996). The evolutionary synthesis, also referred to as neo-Darwinian synthesis, brought together within a unified theory, featuring the mechanism of natural selection and random , Mendelian and Darwinian theory as well as a host of other biological disciplines.

5 Vassiliki Betty Smocovitis, “The 1959 Darwin Centennial Celebration in America,” Osiris 2nd Series 14 (1999): 278.

6 According to Smocovitis: “If any one person . . . could summarize the modern evolutionary ‘state of the art’ in palatable form for a wide audience of readers, that person was Julian Huxley.” Vassiliki Betty Smocovitis, Unifying Biology: The Evolutionary Synthesis and Evolutionary Biology, (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1996), p. 141.

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sermon “boldly decreed that the time had come for a ‘new organization of thought’ based on the new evolutionary vision.” In one rousing passage Huxley proclaimed:

Evolutionary man can no longer take refuge from his loneliness in the arms of a divinized father-figure whom he has himself created, nor escape the responsibility of making decisions by sheltering under the umbrella of Divine Authority, nor absolve himself from the hard task of meeting his present problems and planning his future by relying on the will of an omniscient, but unfortunately inscrutable Providence.”7

Picked up by a variety of media and distributed to a community known for its evangelical sympathies, Huxley’s presentation catalyzed and helped unify the movement known as

“scientific creationism.”8

Though Mayr and Greene were both actively involved at the Darwin Centennial, Greene missed Huxley’s secular sermon. At the time, both men were middle-aged scholars (Mayr being the senior by a decade), and both would claim that the centennial significantly influenced their later careers. For Mayr, the festivities proved to be inspirational, marking the beginning of a period during which he actively pursued research into the history and philosophy of science.

Greene, in contrast, left the celebrations feeling all the more concerned by what he already

7 As cited in Smocovitis, “ The 1959 Darwin Centennial Celebration in America,” pp. 303–304.

8 Smocovitis noted in her essay on the Darwin Centennial that shortly thereafter a fresh barrage of anti-evolution literature began to appear, most notably John C. Whitcomb’s and Henry Morris’s The Genesis Flood (Philadelphia: Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Co., 1961). Morris commented that while the Scopes Trial embarrassed the creationist movement, “The Great Darwinian Centennial with its “worship service” had a “catalyzing and unifying effect.” See Smocovitis, “1959 Darwin Centennial,” p. 315. The American historian Edward Larson echoes this insight: “you go back to the 1950s and ’60s, you can find people reacting to Julian Huxley’s grand statements about the meaning of evolution.” Quoted in Peter Dizikes, “Evolution War: In The Ongoing Struggle Between Evolution and Creationism, Says Philosopher , Darwinians May Be Their Own Worst Enemy,” The Boston Globe, May 1, 2005. The significance of the Darwin centennial as a rallying point in a resurgent creationist movement is also considered in James Moore, “The Creationist of Protestant Fundamentalism,” in Fundamentalisms and Society, eds. E. Mary and R. Scott Appleby (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993), pp. 42–72; Wlllard Gatewood, Jr., “From Scopes to Creation Science,” The Proceedings and Papers of the Georgia Association of Historians, 1983, pp. 1–18; and James Gilbert, Redeeming Culture: American Religion in the Age of Science (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1970). Nonetheless, Huxley’s convocation address and the Darwin Centennial Celebrations were but one event in a long history. For a backdrop to the creationist movement as a whole see Ronald Numbers, The Creationists: From Scientific Creationism to Intelligent Design (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2006). This volume is the expanded 2nd edition of the original work published in 1992.

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viewed as a growing affinity for the casual mixing of science and broadly construed religious belief – in this instance, a “religion” of secular humanism. In part influenced by the centennial celebrations, Greene made it a point throughout the rest of his career to explore the interplay of science, ideology, and worldview. So successful was he at this that the very conjunction of those terms would come to be closely associated with his career.9

Greene’s half-century of correspondence with Mayr began shortly after the conclusion of the centennial festivities. In a similar exchange that began at the same time and lasted through the 1960s, Greene corresponded with , another architect of the evolutionary synthesis. With Dobzhansky, Greene argued that concepts of progress mixed with

Christian metaphysics should be avoided in natural analyses, while with Mayr, Greene argued that progressive expressions of evolutionary humanism undermined scientific integrity. The dialogue between Mayr and Greene that began in the 1960s, intensified during the 1970s, finally culminating in their 1986 publication in the Revue de Synthèse.

Their debate had a number of interesting and unexpected consequences. For one, Greene became a life-long friend of Mayr’s, going so far as to organize an entire symposium for him on the occasion of his ninetieth birth year.10 The debate also led to a series of publications by

Greene on Mayr’s historical and philosophical analyses of evolutionary theory.11 Though often critical, Greene’s critique reinforced the view that Mayr had emerged as one of the leading historians and philosophers of evolutionary thought. Mayr, in turn, came to appreciate some of

9 Among his most important works in this area are Science, Ideology, and World View (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1981), and Debating Darwin: Adventures of a Scholar (Claremont, CA: Regina Press, 1999).

10 See “Special Issue on Ernst Mayr at Ninety,” Biology & Philosophy 9 (1994): 263–435.

11 Most notably, “From to Darwin: Reflections on Ernst Mayr’s Interpretation in The Growth of Biological Thought,” Journal of the 25 (1992): 257–284, and “Science, Philosophy, and Metaphor in Ernst Mayr’s Writings,” Journal of the History of Biology, 27 (1994): 311–348.

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Greene’s perspectives on the frequently underlying elements that link evolutionary science to ideological and philosophical commitments, including religious belief.

This study thus examines the lives of these two prominent scholars whose intellectual interests and career paths overlapped, with each participant entering the dialogue from significantly different backgrounds. Whereas Mayr’s views on the history of biological thought were rooted in German culture and his experience as a scientist, Greene’s views were rooted in his experience as an American intellectual historian and in Protestant American culture. For

Mayr, therefore, intellectual history and history of science involved the triumphant march of progress based on rational, objective inquiry, culminating with the acceptance of Darwinian theory. In contrast, Greene saw far more sophisticated and broad historical and cultural elements converging in the arrival of Darwinism during the late nineteenth century. Though Greene appreciated Darwinian theory’s scientific legitimacy, he also appreciated the extent to which it had become enmeshed in non-scientific issues, especially at the handling of a number of evolutionary keen to reach out to a popular press. In short, the two held different views of the proper domains of scientific inquiry, and the extent to which science extended into domains other than science proper. The study therefore offers a sharp contrast in views of science and its legitimate domains.

Yet another contrast is in the views of history and in their professionalization as scholars.

Trained in American intellectual history, Greene made the transition to history of science with his influential publication of 1959, The Death of Adam: Evolution and Its Impact on Western

Thought. Mayr, in contrast, was a biologist having made the transition to the history of science.

To what extent was Mayr’s apparent hostility and dismissiveness due to the fact that Greene was

“just” a historian, while Mayr was more “legitimately” a “real” scientist? Regarding the 1986

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dispute, how much can be attributed to difference in professionalization, which brought out differences in identity between a scientist and a scientist-turned-historian, and a historian who turned to science? Given the celebrated distinction between “internalist” and “externalist” approaches to the history of science, furthermore, to what extent was the relationship between these two individuals shaped by the fact that Mayr, as first and foremost a scientist, could be seen as an internalist while Greene, with a background in intellectual history, could be seen as an externalist? And following this, could in fact the mutual appreciation that seemed to grow between the two men have come about from the recognition that something called “context” was appropriate to the writing of history, a view Mayr only slowly began to accept in the 1990s?12

In keeping with the focus on worldviews, this project also examines the specifics of Mayr and Greene’s religious beliefs, and assesses the extent to which those beliefs shaped their worldview and their views of science, and contributed to the dispute between them. For example,

Mayr once said that he assumed his parents were agnostics who “were quite anxious to gives us a good religious upbringing.”13 During his teens, with Germany embroiled in negotiating the aftermath of WWI, Mayr “decided that the Bible was quite ridiculous, and that what was going on in the world could not be reconciled with the concept of a just God.”14 Concerning Greene’s religious views – to what degree could there have been, as Mayr suggested, a hidden agenda (or perhaps even an overt one) to defend a traditional religious worldview? A similar question can be asked concerning Mayr’s admittedly “religious” perspectives.

12 See as one example Mayr’s brief review, “What was the Evolutionary Synthesis?” Trends in Ecology and Evolution 8 (1993): 31–34. Though he acknowledged the legitimacy of social and political histories of science, he maintained his interests in internalist history. Mayr declined to participate formally in the session titled “Contextualizing Darwin” held at the International History Philosophy and Social Studies of Biology meetings at in 1993. He did, however, attend the session fully and participated in the question and answer period.

13 Ernst Mayr, letter to John C. Greene, May 1, 1989. Quoted in Greene, Debating Darwin, 231.

14 Ibid.

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Fortunately for the historian, both Greene and Mayr left their correspondence for public use at the University of Connecticut and Harvard University Archives respectively. This study makes extensive use of these materials, as well as others located in places like the Library of the

American Philosophical Society (APS), in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. These include a collection of Mayr’s papers featuring documents pertaining to a conference bringing together the leading evolutionary biologists and architects of the evolutionary synthesis, as well as historians and philosophers of science, among them including John Greene.15 The APS also includes the correspondence of figures like Theodosius Dobzhansky and G. G. Simpson, in addition to the foundational documents of the Society for the Study of Evolution, which included significant correspondence by the first editor of Evolution, namely Ernst Mayr. Other materials consulted include videos, recorded interviews available in archives or on-line that offer valuable insights into the personal history and character of Mayr. For German sources, the project relies heavily on the research amassed by Jürgen Haffer, one of Mayr’s biographers.16 In addition to the papers

Greene deposited at the University of Connecticut, there are additional sources that include a number of interviews and autobiographical recollections included in Debating Darwin:

Adventures of a Scholar (1999), and in the edited collection dedicated to his life-work titled

History, Humanity and Evolution (1989). Greene also agreed to a series of oral history interviews with the author.17

15 Mayr and Provine’s edited account of the conference offered a list of over three-dozen participants that included leading evolutionary biologists such as C. D. Darlington, Theodosius Dobzhansky, E. B. Ford, Bentley Glass, Stephen Jay Gould, I. Michael Lerner, Richard C. Lewontin, Everett C. Olson, G. Ledyard Stebbins, and Robert L. Trivers. Historians and philosophers of science included Mark. B. Adams, Garland E. Allen, Richard W. Burkhardt, Michael Ghiselin, , David L. Hull, Camille Limoges, and Frank Sulloway. The full list of attendees is presented in The Evolutionary Synthesis, p. 468.

16 Jürgen Haffer, , Evolution, and Philosophy: The Life and Science of Ernst Mayr 1904–2005 (New York: Springer, 2005). Haffer presented extensive research culled from these archives in his biography of Mayr.

17 Greene made himself available for two extended and recorded oral history sessions with the author at Greene’s home near Monterey, California during August 2007 and May 2008. The author intends to donate digital copies to

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In considering these issues, the study will use Greene’s definition of science, ideology, and worldview. Greene considered ideology a well-studied conception of beliefs “oriented toward programs of social action.” He defined science as “an activity grounded partly in intellectual curiosity, the desire to know for the sake of knowing,” and worldview “a set of assumptions (accompanied by feeling tone), sometimes explicit but generally implicit in figures of speech, concerning reality.”18 Although the goal of this project is to locate these two thinkers in the complex constellation of beliefs and ideologies, the objective is not so much to reduce their mature beliefs to competing ideologies, but to explore how their views on science were inextricably linked to worldviews and ideological commitments that were either tacit or not entirely well articulated.

In summary, the goals of this project are therefore five-fold: 1) To understand the development of each scholar’s ideas in order to determine their intellectual commitments to the history and to the philosophy of science; 2) To understand their ideological commitments and worldview, either as explicitly articulated in their private correspondence and published works, or as they inherited them based on lived experiences; 3) To understand their professional backgrounds and to determine the extent to which differences in points of view were shaped by their training as historians and scientists; 4) To understand the specifics of their religious beliefs,

the John C. Greene Papers held at the Thomas J. Dodd Research Center, University of Connecticut, Storrs, CT. Greene passed away on November 12, 2008. In addition, Walter Bock, professor of evolutionary biology and one of Mayr’s early graduate students, graciously made himself available for a recorded session with the author discussing his views on the relationship between Mayr and Greene, as well as his experience working with both scholars. Bock worked with Greene to organize both the presentations, and the papers for publication from a session held at the 1993 International Society for the History, Philosophy and Social Studies of Biology devoted to “Mayr’s contributions to , evolutionary theory, and the history and ,” and subsequently published as a “Special Issue on Ernst Mayr at Ninety,” in Biology & Philosophy 9 (1994). Bock has also published a number of biographical essays on the life and science of Ernst Mayr listed in the bibliography of this dissertation.

18 Greene, “The History of Ideas Revisited,” Revue de Synthèse 107 (1986): p. 202. Greene’s term “feeling tone” likely refers to “assumptions” laden with an emotional investment.

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and how those beliefs may have shaped their views of science, its history and philosophy, and may have contributed to the dispute between them; and most importantly, 5) To reconstruct, in historical detail, the relationship between these two men based on empirical research, and to explore how this exchange brought issues that engaged the roles of science, ideology, and worldview sharply into focus. These components of the exchange between Mayr and Greene may give insight into the nature of intellectual disputes in the history and philosophy of science while providing a deeper appreciation of the undergirding influences that too often exacerbate the so-called conflict between science and religion.19 This dissertation will thus present a fuller understanding of how the interplay of “science, ideology and world view” has shaped our current appreciation of the history of evolutionary science. This is not insignificant given the on-going debates pertaining to evolution, especially in American popular culture. More modestly, this study will help scholars of the evolutionary synthesis learn more about its metaphysical foundations, especially by its focus on Ernst Mayr, whose metaphysical beliefs have been incompletely studied.20

19 The literature on arguments and controversies is vast and the approaches are diverse. For examples See Martin Rudwick, The Great Devonian Controversy: The Shaping of Scientific Knowledge Among Gentlemanly Specialists, (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1985); Bruno Latour, Science in Action: How to Follow Scientists and Engineers through Society, (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1987); and Ullica Segerstråle, Defenders of the Truth: The Sociobiology Debate, (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000).

20 The “architects” of the evolutionary synthesis held complex and individualistic beliefs. For and pansychism see William B. Provine, Sewall Wright and Evolutionary Biology (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989), and David Steffes, “Sewall Wright’s Panpsychic : A Philosophy of Complex Systems,” Journal of the History of Biology 40 (2007): 327–361. For Dobzhansky see Costas Krimbas, “The Evolutionary Worldview of Theodosius Dobzhansky,” in The Evolution of Theodosius Dobzhansky, ed. Mark B. Adams (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994), 179–193. For Julian Huxley see John C. Greene, “The Interaction of Science and World View in Sir Julian Huxley’s Evolutionary Biology,” Journal of the History of Biology 23 (1990): 39–55, and Vassiliki Betty Smocovitis, Unifying Biology: The Evolutionary Synthesis and Evolutionary Biology, (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996). For Ronald Fisher see Joan Fisher Box, R. A. Fisher: The Life of a Scientist (New York: Wiley, 1978) and John Hodge’s essay titled, “Biology and Philosophy (including Ideology): A Study of Fisher, in The Founders of Evolutionary Biology: A Centenary Reappraisal, ed. Sahotra Sarkar (Boston: Kluwer Publications, 1992), 231–93. See also Jonathan Harwood’s “Metaphysical Foundations of the Evolutionary Synthesis,” Journal of the History of Biology 27 (1994): 1–20.

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Perhaps Greene himself said it best when he stated that “these are old questions, as old as philosophy itself . . . Shall we not, then, resume the age-old quest for knowledge of reality in a humbler spirit, acknowledging our debt to science for all it can tell us about ourselves and nature but realizing that the ultimate intelligibility of things, if there is one, is not scientific in the sense that we understand the word today.”21 In yet another source, Greene echoes an argument that will be made in this study:

To ignore the difference between science, philosophy, and religion and roll them all into one evolutionary gospel claiming to disclose the meaning of existence is as dangerous an idea to science as it is to philosophy and religion. If scientists aspire to be prophets and preachers, they cannot expect society to grant them the relative autonomy they have enjoyed in Western culture in recent centuries. The current misguided campaign to require the teaching of ‘creationist biology’ alongside evolutionary biology is sufficient evidence of that. The hard-won ideal of disinterested inquiry guided by insight and logic but rigorously controlled by generally accepted methods of empirical testing is too precious an acquisition of the human spirit to be sacrificed to grandiose but delusory and self-destructive dreams of an omnicompetent science of nature-history, society, and human duty and destiny. As a student of the history of ideas, I am convinced that science, ideology, and worldview will forever be intertwined and interacting. As a citizen concerned for the welfare of science and of mankind generally, however, I cannot but hope that scientists will recognize where science ends and other things begin.22

The organization of the dissertation follows logically from the questions posed; the initial chapters present biographical sketches of the two scholars. These chapters help us understand the development of the ideological commitments expressed during their careers, careers that spanned

For a comprehensive analysis of “the intimate connection between evolution and the secular ideology of progress” within the writings of the architects of the modern synthesis and other leading evolutionary biologists, see Michael Ruse, : the Concept of Progress in Evolutionary Biology (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1996).

21 John C. Greene, “From Huxley to Huxley: Transformation in the Darwinian Credo,” Science, Ideology, and World View: Essays in the History of Evolutionary Ideas (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1981), pp. 188– 89.

22 John C. Greene, “Postscript,” Science, Ideology, and World View: Essays in the History of Evolutionary Ideas (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1981), p. 197.

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important events in the growth of the modern disciplines of evolutionary biology and the history of science. This study will also lean heavily on the written and spoken words of these scholars, as they offer direct insight into not only into the personality of each individual, but also into the relationship inherent to their exchanges. There is a saying that gentlemen say what they mean and mean what they say – suffice it to say, these gentlemen used their words wisely.

Appreciating the element of personal context could prove as significant as the ideas themselves, with much of the biographical evidence offered in this analysis not comprehensively presented elsewhere.23

Chapter 2 (“Going for the Birds: Mayr’s Formative Years in Germany”) examines

Mayr’s formative years in Germany growing up in an educated upper class family with a love for the natural world and a deep appreciation of the German Bildung tradition. It explores his youthful interest in bird watching that brought him in contact with a number of respected naturalists that included Europe’s leading ornithologist, , who subsequently guided Mayr’s graduate education and early career, including his travels and expeditions to New

Guinea and the South Sea islands.

Chapter 3 (“The Darwin of the 20th Century: Mayr and his Career in Evolution”) studies

Mayr’s period at the American Museum of Natural History beginning in the early 1930s. Those were the years that Mayr came in contact with leading evolutionary biologists such as

Theodosius Dobzhansky and who helped inspire his new evolutionary thinking that lead to his monumental Systematics and the Origins of Species from the Viewpoint of a Zoologist (1941). Recognized as a leading evolutionary biologist in his own right, Mayr

23 The dissertation will present extensive use of direct quotations from Greene’s and Mayr’s interviews and letters, to allow the reader direct access to their speech and writings. Undoubtedly there is much to be unpacked in their modes of expression. There are also occasional short biographical sketches included of influential persons. Extensive analysis will be offered in the concluding chapter.

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worked toward establishing institutions and disciplinary standards dedicated to the scientific respectability of the neo-Darwinian synthesis. This led to his growing interest in the history and philosophy of biology during the 1950s as a professor at Harvard University. Shortly after the conclusion of the Darwin Centennial of 1959, these interests brought him into contact with the intellectual historian of evolutionary thought, John C. Greene.

Chapter 4 (“The Making of ‘A Historian’s Historian of Science’: John C. Greene”) explores how Greene’s interest in intellectual history brought him to consider similar questions in the history and philosophy of science that had begun to fascinate Ernst Mayr. The chapter examines Greene’s life growing up in a liberal Protestant academic family living in the Midwest, and his early academic career that included graduate studies at Harvard University where he came in regular contact with numerous leading scholars. His research in American intellectual history led to his interest in the transformation of modern thought from a static worldview to a dynamic evolutionary perspective. He explored this thesis in his influential work, The Death of

Adam: Evolution and its Impact on Western Thought (1959), which established him as a prominent historian in what eventually became known as the “.”24

Chapter 5 (“Corresponding Colleagues: Mayr and Greene”) moves directly toward the celebrated epistolary exchange of these two scholars. Intriguingly, during the 1960s, Greene also engaged in an extended exchange with another leading evolutionary biologist, Theodosius

Dobzhansky, on issues that complemented his interactions with Mayr. The chapter then examines a variety of historical concerns discussed by Greene and Mayr during the 1970s as

24 The “Darwin Industry” refers to the large community of historians of science working on the life, work, and influence of . The occasion of the 1959 centennial celebrations marked a significant increase in scholarship. See: Timothy Lenoir, “Essay Review: The Darwin Industry,” Journal of the History of Biology 20 (1987): 115–130; Michael Ruse, “The Darwin Industry: A Guide,” Victorian Studies 39 (1996): 217–235; Maura C. Flannery, “The Darwin Industry,” The American Biology Teacher 68 (2006): 163–166. See also John C. Greene, “Reflections on the Progress of Darwin Studies,” Journal of the History of Biology 8 (1975): 243–273.

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their exchange began to focus on the influence of science, ideology, and worldview in the writings of modern evolutionary biologists. Of particular significance was Greene’s participation with Mayr and other leading historians of science and evolutionary biologists at the AAAS sponsored conference Mayr organized to study the historical significance of the evolutionary synthesis.

Chapter 6 (“World Views in Collision”) investigates Mayr and Greene’s intensifying relationship as they continued to share perspectives. Greene’s views attracted the attention of the

French intellectual historian of science, Jacques Roger, who invited Greene and Mayr to publish essays in a special edition of the Revue de Synthèse that also invited commentaries from prominent evolutionary biologists. Examined will be the sharp contrast in perspectives published in the Revue, with an obvious focus on Greene’s presentation offering a historical analysis of the role of biological thinking within the broad setting of Western intellectual history, and Mayr’s reaction based on his concentrated experience as an evolutionary biologist, and in which he defended his concept of the historical significance of the scientific achievements of his generation. Though severely tested, the relationship between the two scholars soon improved as the two made amends, and as Mayr and Greene continued to correspond throughout their senior years on shared interests in biological thought.

Chapter 7 (“Understanding the Exchange and Summing It All Up”) offers a comprehensive analysis of Mayr and Greene’s decades-long interaction on the history of evolutionary thought in light of the long-standing debates in the relationship between science and religion. Finally, the project draws to a close by examining the complex relationship between science and religion set against the backdrop of American popular culture. Materials related to

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the fascinating Protestant “elite” genealogy in the Greene family are included in an additional appendix.

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CHAPTER 2 GOING FOR THE BIRDS: MAYR’S FORMATIVE YEARS IN GERMANY

Family and Education

Scientists are human beings, and human beings not only hold worldviews, they also sometimes pursue ideologies. Ernst Mayr, the human being, was an exemplary biologist known as the “greatest evolutionary biologist of the 20th Century” and “The Darwin of the 20th

Century.”1 He was also venerated among the top one hundred “most influential scientists, past and present.”2 This chapter will explore Mayr’s formative years, focusing on experiences that influenced his adult perspective. In doing so, special emphasis will be placed on Mayr’s writings and interviews with an aim of showing how he saw himself and the world around him.

Mayr was born on the 5th of July 1904, in Kempten, Germany, a town at the foothills of the Bavarian Alps and a history dating back to the Romans. Mayr’s childhood overlapped with the life of Alfred Russel Wallace, Charles Darwin’s contemporary and the co-founder of modern evolutionary theory. At the time, Wallace was considered “the grand old man of biology,” a sobriquet that would come to identify Mayr nearly a century later.3

Ernst’s father, Otto Mayr, came from a well-to-do medical family, a professional lineage that began with Otto’s two grandfathers. Nonetheless, Otto chose to become a magistrate in the

Bavarian court system, a job that required his family to relocate every several years; first, in

1 Carol Kaesuk Yoon, “Long Evolution of ‘Darwin of 20th Century,’” New York Times, April 15, 1997; Lauren Gravitz, “Ernst Mayr’s Scientific Legacy Shines After Nearly a Century” Christian Science Monitor, August 17, 2000; “Ernst Mayr, Ph.D. | The Darwin of the 20th Century,” 2001, Academy of Achievement: A Museum of Living History, accessed May 1, 2012, www.achievement.org/autodoc/page/may1int-1; Jürgen Haffer, Ornithology, Evolution, and Philosophy: The Life and Science of Ernst Mayr, 1904–2005 (NY: Springer, 2007), pp. 318–19, 378– 79.

2 John C. Greene, quoted in John Simmons, The Scientific 100: A Ranking of the Most Influential Scientists, Past and Present (Secaucus, N.J.: Citadel Press, 1996), p. 304.

3 Michael Shermer and Frank J. Sulloway, “The Grand Old Man of Evolution: An Interview with Evolutionary Biologist Ernst Mayr,” Skeptic 8 (2000): 76–82.

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1908 when Ernst was four, to Würzburg, where Otto served as the District Prosecuting Attorney, and then to Munich in 1913 following Otto’s promotion to Associate Justice at the Supreme

Court of Bavaria.4 In 1917 Otto “was to be appointed” to the Reichsgericht (German Supreme

Court) in .5 Unfortunately, he succumbed to cancer that year at age 49. His death occurred only a few days before Ernst’s thirteenth birthday.6

Ernst’s mother, Helen, came from a family of affluent merchants and medical men. In the early 1800s one of her grandfathers arrived in from northern (hence her maiden name of Pusinelli) to help manage his brother’s restaurant, an establishment he came to own a few years later. In the 1840s Helen’s father established a successful import-export business in

France, but a few decades later the Franco-Prussian War forced his return to Dresden where he became a bank director. An uncle of Helen’s, also living in Dresden, experienced success as a doctor to the Saxon court and, incidentally, an associate of , the late-romantic operatic composer.7

4 Ernst Mayr, “1. Early life and education,” 1997, Web of Stories, accessed May 1, 2012, www.webofstories.com/play/99; Haffer, Ornithology, Evolution, and Philosophy, p. 12; Thomas Junker, “Factors Shaping Ernst Mayr’s Concepts in the History of Biology,” Journal of the History of Biology 29 (1996): 4.

5 Haffer, Ornithology, Evolution, and Philosophy, p. 9.

6 Junker, “Factors Shaping Ernst Mayr,” p. 4. Otto Mayr succumbed to cancer of the kidneys. Though Ernst otherwise enjoyed generally outstanding good health throughout his long life, in the 1930s he suffered a kidney ailment. Not long after his arrival in the United States, the discovery of a nonmalignant tumor necessitated the removal of his entire left kidney due to the difficulty of the procedure at the time.

7 Haffer, Ornithology, Evolution, and Philosophy, 9. Jürgen Haffer’s 2007 work offers a comprehensive and thoroughly researched biography of Mayr, who he had personally known since the early 1960s. Haffer worked as “a German oil geologist and amateur ornithologist” whose scholarly interests focused on “the history of in ornithology, the development of European schools of avian systematics, and the career of Professor Stresemann” (Walter J. Bock, “Ernst Mayr, Naturalist: His Contributions to Systematics and Evolution,” Biology & Philosophy 9 (1994): 272). Walter Bock is an accomplished evolutionary biologist and ornithologist at Columbia University who has also written on the history and philosophy of biology. He was an early graduate student of Mayr’s at Harvard University, and subsequently “maintained close contacts with Ernst as a mentor and close friend for the rest of his life.” Bock has written extensively on Mayr’s life in a series of published essays, with a special emphasis on Mayr’s scientific work. See Walter J. Bock, “Ernst Walter Mayr. 5 July 1904 – 3 February 2005,” Biographical Memoirs of the Royal Society 52 (2006): 170; Bock, “Ernst Mayr: 5 July 1904 – 3 February 2005,” Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 151 (2007): 359.

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Both the Mayrs and Pusinellis originally came from Catholic backgrounds, though

Ernst’s grandmother was Protestant, and she raised his father, Otto, in that tradition. In Dresden, the Pusinellis adopted the reformed Protestant church. Mayr considered his mother “an exemplary representative of the best Protestant ethics: generous, hardworking, full of ideals, and with a wonderful sense of humor.”8 Mayr recalled that his father “was not at all severe with us children,” and rather that he “had the feeling that my mother was more or less running the show.”9

Mayr presumed that both his parents were agnostic, but that they were “quite anxious” to give their children “a good religious upbringing.” He remembered that as “small children we said a prayer when going to bed, and we had religious instruction in school and went to church occasionally, not regularly. . . . Protestant ethics, however, had been preached so strongly by my parents that they have lasted all my life.”10 His mother was a frequent churchgoer often attending church on Sunday’s to hear the sermon as “she thought that the minister gave such interesting sermons.” Mayr also remembered attending “the regular school curriculum of religious education and we read the Bible and religious texts. It wasn’t the findings of science that made me turn away from religion eventually, but simply what I considered the implausibility of all the things that Christianity preached like resurrection of the dead and heaven, miracles, that sort of thing.”11

About “that sort of thing” Mayr would remark more conclusively, “I don’t think I was more than

13 years old when I became very rebellious about all the miracles and other seemingly

8 Haffer, Ornithology, Evolution, and Philosophy, p. 13.

9 Ibid., p. 9.

10 Ernst Mayr to John C. Greene, 01 May 1989, in John C. Green, Debating Darwin: Adventures of a Scholar (Claremont, CA: Regina Books, 1999), p. 231.

11 “Interview with Ernst Mayr,” BioEssays 24 (2002): 970.

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improbable events that were reported. . . . In later years I always said that I fully supported the ethics of Christianity but not its metaphysics.”12

Mayr was the middle son born between his older brother Otto (a popular name in the

Mayr family!), who was three years his senior, and Hans, nearly two years younger. Ernst fondly remembered his father taking the entire family on hikes nearly every Sunday: “We usually took the train somewhere away from Würzburg and then walked cross-country to some other train station or to the terminal of the electric tram near Würzburg. It was on these trips that we collected flowers, mushrooms, fossils in some quarry, or did other natural history studies. When my father heard of a heron colony north of the Aumeister near Munich we also visited it.

Otherwise, perhaps more through the interests of my mother, we visited old towns, castles, and villages on weekends and during vacations.”13 Mayr fondly remembered his father as “a great student of the classics and history and philosophy, at the same time he was a friend of nature and this was equally true of my mother. . . . So I had a very good all around education in natural history. In fact, I can say that I was a naturalist from the time on that I could walk.”14

12 Quoted in Junker, “Factors Shaping Ernst Mayr,” p. 58 fn. 108. Junker described the source for the quotation as an unpublished manuscript written by Mayr, titled Autobiographical Notes, which covered “his personal recollections of his family, friends and many other personal and scientific details.” Junker also describes a second 200-page document, Scientific Autobiography, along with two additional manuscripts, titled Reminiscences and Travel Notes. Junker explained, “These autobiographical notes have not been published, but [Mayr] made them . . . readily available to me and other interested friends,” in Thomas Junker, “Ernst Mayr (1904–2005) and the New Philosophy of Biology,” Journal for General Philosophy of Science 38 (2007): 2, fn. 1. Haffer similarly references much of his extensive use of quotations, to “publications, personal letters and autobiographical notes as well as letters rendered in English” (Ibid.)

13 Quoted in Haffer, Ornithology, Evolution, and Philosophy, p. 12.

14 Mayr, “4. The importance of being a true naturalist,” Web of Stories, www.webofstories.com/play/102. Haffer reported that Otto’s “library comprised several thousand volumes, particularly the subjects of history, philosophy, and the classics. On Sundays he would read Homer in the Greek original, without a dictionary.” Mayr personally recalled: “He was a gymnast belonging to the local sports club, was one of the pioneers of skiing in Germany (he bought his skis in Norway) and he was an enthusiastic mountaineer.” (Haffer, Ornithology, Evolution, and Philosophy, p. 9.)

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Ernst fondly remembered: “My older brother [Otto] had an aquarium, which we jointly took care of, and we caught little fish and little sticklebacks in the streams and ponds of the neighborhood, and snails and things.” They eagerly “watched all the water life, the larvae of insects living in the water.”15 Meanwhile, Ernst considered younger brother Hans his

“inseparable companion.” Of Hans, Ernst said, “As far back as I can remember, Hans and I always did things together. We played together. We spent several vacations together in Lindau.”

Ernst added, giving some intimation of his own disposition, “Hans was quite different from me.

He was easy-going, but since he was very bright, studying was no problem for him. He was always in good humor, ready to make jokes, and to laugh at adversity.”16

Mayr spoke positively of his youth: “I had on the whole a very happy childhood. . . . I had two brothers with whom I got along very well, and everybody was healthy so nothing could have been more wonderful. . . . The world as a whole was peaceful and prosperous.”17 Though

Ernst’s family was considered members of an academic upper-middle class, they lived a frugal lifestyle by today’s standards. During Ernst’s youth modern household conveniences such as a telephone and refrigerator, running hot water, or even gas lighting were not widely available in

Germany. Though the Mayrs had a servant, sometimes two, they did not own their home,

15 “Ernst Mayr, Ph.D.,” www.achievement.org/autodoc/page/may1int-1.

16 Quoted in Haffer, Ornithology, Evolution, and Philosophy, p. 15. Haffer also reported that during his college years in , Mayr shared a room with his younger brother, Hans. His brother subsequently passed his bar exam and served as prosecuting attorney in Bautzen, Saxony. Unfortunately during WWII, he developed “severe symptoms of multiple sclerosis” while serving on the Russian front, and required constant hospitalization until his death in 1954. Meanwhile, older brother Otto, after exploring interests in “historical studies,” pursued an engineering career “with several mining companies.” He married and raised four children in northwestern Germany. (Ibid.)

17 “Ernst Mayr, Ph.D.,” www.achievement.org/autodoc/page/may1int-1.

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preferring to live in a large apartment in the city. Similarly, Ernst’s family did not own an automobile, but rather depended on the tram.18

Mayr recalled that his family’s status was “remarkably well described in a book by a sociologist as the ‘German Mandarins.’ And [the author] points out that there was a social stratum in Germany in which everybody had to go to the Humanistisches Gymnasium, and so did

I and so had my father and my grandfather, and I had nine years of Latin and seven years of

Greek and a great deal of history and other subjects like that. It was a very thorough education.”19 The gymnasium is equivalent to an American high school, and the schools to which

Otto and Helen sent their boys were considered among the elite.20 Commenting on the ethos of his youth, Mayr said, “In the upper class families of Germany an almost exaggerated emphasis was placed on ‘Bildung’ [self-cultivation]. Not only was the humanistic gymnasium considered the best possible school but one was constantly encouraged to read good books and a couple of good books were usually what one got on one’s birthdays.”21 He considered the attitude of his parents to be “very much that of upper-class Germans, that one should never stop trying to add to one’s ‘Bildung.’”22 Mayr summed up his schooling as “a broad education . . . I had to take a

18 Haffer, Ornithology, Evolution, and Philosophy, p. 13.

19 Mayr, “1. Early life and education,” Web of Stories, http://www.webofstories.com/play/99. Mayr is likely referring to the work of Fritz Ringer, The Decline of the German Mandarins: The German Academic Community, 1890–1933 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1969). Ringer defined the “mandarins” as “a social class and cultural elite that owes its status primarily to educational qualifications, rather than to hereditary rights or wealth” (Ringer, 5).

20 “Ernst Mayr, Ph.D.,” www.achievement.org/autodoc/page/may1int-1; Haffer, Ornithology, Evolution, and Philosophy, p. 13.

21 Quoted in Junker, “Ernst Mayr & the New Philosophy of Biology,” p. 4. Bock described Bildung as “education and a general knowledge of culture” In Walter Bock, “Ernst Mayr at 100: A Life Inside and Outside of Ornithology,” Ornithological Monographs 58 (2005): 4.

22 Quoted in Junker, “Factors Shaping Ernst Mayr,” pp. 34–35, fn. 18.

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minor in philosophy to get my Ph.D. Moreover, I came from a family whose interests [were] wide-ranging.”23

Mayr fondly remembered that his father’s “wonderful library,” commenting that his family “always bought books galore.” Of his own reading habits and the effect his reading had on him, Mayr observed, “I devoured all the books of explorers that went to various places in the world. I admired what Humboldt had done and Bates and Darwin and the Swedish explorers,

Sven Hedin [to Tibet] and others. I was dreaming all the time about someday being an explorer, going to the tropics, going to the jungles, seeing new things, discovering strange animals and so forth, but of course it was a dream world.”24 His father’s personal library reflected a keen interest in history and philosophy. Ernst read widely in , anthropology, and art history, so much so that Mayr’s biographer, Jürgen Haffer, reported that for a time Ernst considered the study of art history as a professional pursuit.25 The Mayrs also subscribed to Kosmos, the well known

German monthly for amateur naturalists, and frequently ordered books from the Kosmos Library series.26

During his teen years, Ernst demonstrated a proclivity for a youthful rebellion toward formal religious instruction. He would later recall that he “forever raised questions which embarrassed the teacher. Most of my class was behind me and I would try to get some reading that would strengthen my hand. Unfortunately I found in my father’s library a copy of Haeckel’s

Welträtsel [The Riddle of the Universe] with numerous references to the apocryphal parts of the

23 Ernst Mayr, “Ernst Mayr: Darwinian Flights,” in The Omni Interviews, ed. Pamela Weintraub (New York: Omni Publications International, Ltd., 1984), p.55.

24 “Ernst Mayr, Ph.D.,” www.achievement.org/autodoc/page/may1int-1.

25 Haffer, Ornithology, Evolution, and Philosophy, p. 16.

26 Ibid., p. 15.

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Bible. I read Haeckel for this and probably more or less ignored his evolutionary discussions.”27

Mayr admitted, “I have no recollection of when I first learned about evolution,” but he remembered reading “Haeckel’s Welsträtsel naively and avidly, not as a guide to evolutionary studies but to have ammunition in arguments about the Bible and religion!”28

After Mayr’s father died during the war, his mother insisted that he be confirmed, forcing him to attend confirmation classes for most of the year. Nevertheless, he decided that “the Bible was quite ridiculous, and that what was going on in the world could not be reconciled with the concept of a just God.” Even so, Mayr reported that the “minister was an extreme liberal, and managed to make Christianity palatable to me. I came back to Christianity for a while, but this did not last long. I have been an atheist all my adult life.”29

Aside from his rebelliousness in the matter of religious education, Mayr’s teachers otherwise considered him a good student. Among his subjects, Ernst enjoyed biology most, a natural enthusiasm reflected in his independent reading. He even took a course that taught him to identify local flowers.”30 Among the teachers, Mayr fondly recalled was his high school natural history teacher, Mr. Löwe, who Mayr said “was beloved by every pupil in class.” Mayr later

27 Quoted in Junker, “Factors Shaping Ernst Mayr,” pp. 58–59, fn. 108. ’s influential and controversial Die Welträtsel (1901), translated into English as The Riddle of the Universe. Haeckel presented Darwinian theory in a mix of science and philosophical speculation, while also promoting Darwinian theory as part of a cosmic worldview supplanting traditional religious belief. Junker additionally presented an account of Haeckel similarly influencing the famed German evolutionary biologist, Richard Goldschmidt, “who . . . gave a vivid description of the anti-religious zeal of his youth, which was also inspired by Haeckel’s writings. See also Richard Goldschmidt, Portraits from Memory: Recollections of a Zoologist (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1956), pp. 34–36.”

28 Ernst Mayr, “How I Became a Darwinian,” in The Evolutionary Synthesis: Perspectives on the Unification of Biology, eds. Ernst Mayr and William B. Provine (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1980), p. 413.

29 Mayr to Greene, 1 May 1989, in Greene, Debating Darwin, p. 231. Haffer mentioned that in 1928, Mayr became “totally immersed in a Christian atmosphere” while staying with missionaries in . According to Haffer, “He was quite serious in testing once more his position on Christianity.” Mayr concluded in his diary soon thereafter, “I fear I simply cannot accept the Christian dogma. It demands too much sacrifice from one’s reasoning” (Haffer, Ornithology, Evolution, and Philosophy, p. 69).

30 Ibid.

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recalled Löwe saying that, while “they could be as lazy as they wanted to while in the gymnasium, as long as they passed on to the next higher grade but afterwards, at the university they had to work like hell.” Haffer commented that Ernst “followed that advice to great success”!31

Ernst was only ten years old at the start of , which he referred to as “the great catastrophe,” remarking that at that time, “things got from bad to worse.” Several of Mayr’s cousins and other friends were killed in the war, but the greatest personal catastrophe occurred in

1917, when his father died from cancer, leaving his mother to raise him and his brothers by herself during difficult times. Of these times, Mayr recalled that during “the post-1918 famine . . . we really starved. We didn’t have enough to eat. And then came the 1923 inflation in which the whole family fortune was wiped out.” Still, Mayr claimed to have had a happy childhood: “In spite of all these misfortunes and difficulties, the childhood was still a rather happy one because my mother was an absolutely marvelous person who coped with all these difficulties, and I had hobbies and things that I was interested in.”32

After her husband’s death, Helen moved with her three boys to Dresden, to live close by her two brothers and three sisters. Though Helen depended primarily on her husband’s modest pension, her sons were able to study at Dresden’s respected Staatsgymnasium. Ernst at times found the transition difficult. He remembered, “Owing to my father’s promotions and death I found myself several times a stranger in a new school. When I arrived in Munich in 1914 I spoke the Franconian dialect which was very different from the Munich Bavarian dialect. It took quite some time before I was acculturated in this new environment. In 1917 we moved to Dresden in

31 Ibid., p. 37.

32 “Ernst Mayr, Ph.D.,” www.achievement.org/autodoc/page/may1int-1.

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Saxony and again I was an alien element in my class and it took some time to become adjusted and make friends.”33

The Mayr boys later attended college on scholarships, with some help from their Aunt

Gunny. Though the family no longer had the means to rent a vacation home for summers and school holidays, they received invitations from family and friends: from Uncle Karl Pusinelli to join him at his country place in the Eblsandstein Mountains southwest of Dresden, and from a friend of their father’s who owned a hotel in the Alps. Aunt Gunny also invited Ernst and his younger brother Hans to spend time at her summer home in the Ammer Valley.34

As a boy, with the help of his older brother, Otto, Mayr learned the names of the common birds in the Würzburg area. Though Ernst and Otto shared interests as amateur naturalists, they also at times felt intensely competitive, especially in academics. Mayr recalled this about the rivalry: “[The] minute my father died my older brother felt it was his duty to become the father of the family. But this was the last thing I wanted – I wasn’t going to let him tell me what to do and what not to do. And, of course, I wanted to excel over him.”35 At one point, Ernst’s grandmother Minna told Otto: “Watch out well, little Ernsty will pass you.”36 Mayr later recalled, “through much of my early life I found myself again and again at the bottom of the totem pole and had to fight my way up. The oldest had all sorts of privileges and so did the youngest. There never was a special privilege for the middle brother even though my mother

33 Haffer, Ornithology, Evolution, and Philosophy, p. 287.

34 Ibid., p. 13.

35 Schermer and Sulloway, p. 77.

36 Haffer, Ornithology, Evolution, and Philosophy, p. 13.

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tried to be as just as possible. Being later born perhaps predestined me to be somewhat rebellious.”37 It was Mayr opinion that these experiences fueled his lifelong competitive spirit.

Birds and Bicycles

Ernst became a passionate bird watcher around the age of fourteen, at which time he began a “most active ornithological period,” as he described it. Regarding the genesis of that period, Ernst said that it was “stimulated, I am embarrassed to admit, by competition with another student in my class in the Gymnasium who bragged about his knowledge of birds. That was more then I could endure.”38 He added, “Like so many people my age, I was a passionate bird-watcher. When I say passionate, I really mean it. I went bird watching nearly everyday. This was the era before the dominance of the automobile, and most of my watching was done by bicycling to some favorite locality.”39 One of Ernst’s friends whose father worked as a forester in

Moritzburg also invited him out on excursions.

Ernst remembered traveling to Lausitz (Lusatia), Moritzburg, and to the mountains east and south of Dresden: “Once I got word that a nightingale was singing about twenty kilometers from Dresden, I immediately got on my bicycle and was more than elated actually to hear the bird singing.”40 In his latter teens, he began to systematically study birds on a daily basis in convenient areas such as Dresden’s Grosse Garten park. Ernst depended on guidebooks like

Alwin Voigt’s Excursion Book for the Study of Birdsongs, which offered descriptions of

37 Ibid., p. 287. Mayr referred to Frank Sulloway’s 1996 study as evidence. See Frank J. Sulloway, Born to Rebel: Birth Order, Family Dynamics, and Creative Lives (New York: Pantheon Books, 1996).

38 Haffer, Ornithology, Evolution, and Philosophy, p. 16.

39 Ernst Mayr, “Reminiscences from the First Curator of the Whitney-Rothschild Collection,” BioEssays 19 (1997): 175.

40 Haffer, Ornithology, Evolution, and Philosophy, p. 16.

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birdsong with musical symbols.41 He entered in his personal notebooks twenty-five detailed bicycle routes that he found favorable for bird watching.42

Later in life, Mayr wrote to an associate at the American Museum of Natural History: “I used to be an enthusiastic bicyclist myself while I was a bird student in Germany. The poor bike certainly suffered very much. I used to take it through swamps and over the beach, through woods and over fences. It is really much handier for birding than the automobile, and after a while one gets so good at it that one can ride almost anywhere. Besides it is good exercise.”43

Mayr also recalled: “I had been a very ardent bird-watcher in those days. Every day I was out watching birds and I made all sorts of locally interesting observations. I’d bicycle to nearby lakes, to the streams . . . of the Alba and other rivers, to the mountains nearby, watching birds almost every day.”44

When Mayr was in his early twenties, he took a bicycle trip on his own for over a week through much of southwestern Germany. On portions of his adventure he kept a personal journal that described, among many events, his first night sleeping in a barn, waking before dawn to start again under the stars. During poor weather he used the train. On his way to Lindau, by chance he spent a night at the home of a woman who turned out to be the former housekeeper of his Uncle

Hermann. He aspired to examine the local church records in the villages of his great- grandparents.45

41 The Hathi Trust Digital Library offers digital copies of the 1909 and 1913 editions likely used by young Ernst, of Alwin Voigt’s, Excursiosbuch zum Studium der Vogelstimmen, at http://hdl.handle.net/2027/uc1.b3319955 and http://hdl.handle.net/2027/njp.32101076036456.

42 Haffer, Ornithology, Evolution, and Philosophy, p. 16.

43 Mayr to J. P. Chapin, 1 December 1936, in Ibid.

44 Mayr, “2. Bird watching: an exciting observation,” Web of Stories, www.webofstories.com/play/100.

45 Haffer, Ornithology, Evolution, and Philosophy, pp. 17–18.

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Bird Clubbing, and a Well-Cooked Carp

While still in high school, Ernst joined the recently founded Saxony Ornithologists’

Association.46 He attended their annual meetings, sometimes travelling long distances by bicycle when necessary. On one occasion, a friendly member paid for his train ticket home after the weather turned bad. Mayr later noted how the Saxony bird club members specialized in studying bird fauna, as compared to the compilation of lists that were popular among American ornithologists when he arrived in the United States in the 1930s.47

At the Saxony club meetings, Ernst met Rudolf Zimmermann, the editor of the society’s journal. Zimmermann was a colorful character, someone Mayr fondly remembered as both his

“chief ornithological mentor during my high school days,” and “one of the most extraordinary, lovable eccentric people one can imagine”! Zimmermann was recognized as an expert naturalist, and through Ernst’s relationship with Zimmermann he “learned more than from anyone else,” especially a familiarity with the relevant literature and leading Saxon ornithologists. 48 For Ernst,

Zimmerman became a father figure.

Zimmermann was born in the shadows of Rochlitzer mountain where his father served as a “Tower Manager” (Turmverwalters), watching over the forests. Fortunately, young Rudolf found himself at home in the Saxony forests as his family’s modest means did not facilitate extensive schooling. Nonetheless, Rudolf showed talent as a writer. He apprenticed at a law firm and worked for a while with an insurance company. Described as “carefree and confident,”

46 Otherwise known as the Saxony Bird Club (Walter Bock, “Ernst Walter Mayr,” Biographical Memoirs of the Royal Society 52 (2006): 171).

47 Haffer, Ornithology, Evolution, and Philosophy, p. 19. In other words, Mayr observed that the Germans were studying the behavior of the birds in their natural habitat, while in America, spending time outdoors while making lists of birds they had sighted seemed sufficient.

48 Ibid., p. 20.

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Zimmerman’s first love remained the natural world. He chose to leave behind a work-a-day life in favor of a humble living as a nature writer and photographer. While still in his twenties, he served as editor for the Monthly Magazine for Minerals, Rocks, and Fossils, published in

Stuttgart.49

During WWI, Zimmerman served on the staff of the Military Forest Service in

Bialowieza, a primeval European forest along the Polish border once owned by the Russian nobility as a hunting preserve. During the turmoil of war, the last of the wild European wisents

(bison) were poached to , though shortly thereafter a new population was successfully reintroduced from wisent previously sent abroad as royal gifts. Zimmermann became involved with the fate of these animals during his time in the Bialowieza.50

During the difficult interwar years, Zimmermann gained a reputation for his nature photography, writing essays and editing for scientific journals and nature publications. He became a leading organizer of the Saxony Ornithologists’ Association, serving as the editor of the society’s journal. During his later years he served the Natural History Museum of Vienna as a field photographer in the Lake Neusiedl region. Paul Matchie, the director of the Zoological

Museum of Berlin, named a field mouse, Pitymys zimmermanni, in his honor.51

Though a life-long bachelor, Zimmermann maintained an extensive correspondence and received numerous visitors, even while on research expeditions. He was a popular lecturer at science clubs with his beautiful nature photography even though he suffered from a speech

49 Rich Heyder, “Rudolf Zimmermann,” Journal of Ornithology 92 (1944): 140. See also www.minrec.org/labels.asp?colid=986 & www.minrec.org/libdetail.asp?id=1552.

50 Ibid., p. 141.

51 Ibid., p. 144. See also http://eunis.eea.europa.eu/species/11973.

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impediment – he stammered at times. Zimmermann was fond of children and was well known for inspiring enthusiasm for nature among young people, as well as adults.52

One such youth was Ernst Mayr, who recalled his frequent visits to hear Zimmermann share his “many interesting stories about birds and their lives. He never ceased emphasizing how important it was to study the living bird, that one needed patience, that one should sit by a nest or watch a displaying bird by the hour and only thus could one get the exact details of what was going on. Most importantly, he took me along on some of his excursions to the Lausitz region

[east of Dresden] with its innumerable ponds and marvelous bird life. Here he showed me how to find the nests of all sorts of birds, . . . [He] was not concerned with records and rarities but with the living bird and its behavior.”53

Mayr remembered Zimmerman as having “a long, dark brown beard and . . . always dressed for the outdoors. I believe just about all of his income came from writing popular nature articles for various magazines and from his nature photography. He was a very good photographer, even in the technical matters of developing his films or plates.” Mayr added that he presumed “he had finished some kind of high school, but that was all. Everything he knew

(and he had an enormous amount of knowledge) was acquired by reading.”54 Zimmermann’s personal library filled the walls, tables, and chairs, leaving the impression of chaotic stacks of printed matter. But to Zimmermann, it was well organized, for at a moment he could find whatever was needed. He had a passion for books, and a pronounced taste for book design.55

Mayr would recall that Zimmerman’s was “a splendid library . . . in a one room apartment

52 Ibid.

53 Haffer, Ornithology, Evolution, and Philosophy, p. 21.

54 Ibid.

55 Heyder, p. 143.

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largely filled with books and periodicals. He had no kitchen, only an alcohol burner on which he made his simple meals if he happened to have enough foodstuff. If not, he simply smoked cigars.”56

Mayr recalled one special excursion: “We came to a fish pond that had just been emptied in order to catch all the carp that were in the pond. However, in one of the drainage ditches

Zimmermann spotted a carp that had been forgotten. He picked it up and put it somewhere, presumably in his pocket. After much more birding, we finally caught the last train back to

Dresden. It was too late for me to go home, I think it was about midnight, so I went to

Zimmermann’s room. There he cooked the carp on the alcohol burner and we had a delicious meal at about 1:00 a.m. Then I laid down on the floor and slept soundly until about 6:00 a.m. I said goodbye to Zimmermann and walked to my own house, where my mother was astonished when I appeared ringing the bell at 7:00 a.m.”57

Though Ernst had other “fatherly friends” at the Saxony Ornithologists’ Association,

Mayr fondly remembered Zimmerman as the “chief ornithological mentor during my high school days.” Indeed he insisted that “the lessons Zimmermann taught me at my most impressionable age have stayed with me all my life.”58 Mayr maintained his correspondence with his “fatherly birding companion” throughout his life.59

56 Haffer, Ornithology, Evolution, and Philosophy, p. 20.

57 Ibid., p. 21.

58 Ibid., p. 20, 21. Another fatherly figure to young Ernst was Richard Heyder, considered “the dean of Saxon ornithologists” (Ibid., pp. 137, 20).

59 Ibid., p. 130, 137. Haffer added: “Mayr lost his father when he was not yet 13 years old but he was lucky to meet, through his birding activities, fatherly friends with whom he established close personal relationships.” (Ibid., 283). Thomas Junker noted: “One of the few spheres of social life remaining comparatively unshaken during that time was science” (Thomas Junker, “Factors Shaping Ernst Mayr,” p. 35).

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A Fortuitous Red Duck Leads Young Mayr to Germany’s Leading Ornithologist

In 1923, upon completion of his high school final exams, the Abitur, Ernst’s mother presented him with a new pair of binoculars. Over the next few weeks Ernst used the gift on daily excursions. While bicycling by “the ponds of Moritzburg, the former hunting palace of the kings of Saxony, . . . he observed a pair of ducks that were new to him and not mentioned in the guide books.”60 He later recalled:

As I looked across a wall of ducks on this lake I suddenly saw a pair of ducks like I had never seen before. The male had a red bill. Well no German duck had a red bill, I knew that, and I made a very detailed description of this bird – it was male and a female – in my daily ornithological diary, and then I dashed back on my bicycle to Dresden to get somebody else to confirm my observation because I was quite sure nobody would believe me if somebody else wouldn’t see it. But it was unfortunately a weekday and I, of course, not going to school any more could travel on weekdays, but everybody else who knew anything about birds had a job . . . Well, by next Sunday, of course, the birds where gone. Well, I finally found out from the books that this bird was the Red Crested Pochard, and so far as I could determine it was . . . this was 1923 . . . this was the first observation in central Europe since the year 1846.

So the next week I went to the ornithological society of Dresden. Of course nobody believed me because people had gone out the past Sunday and hadn’t been able to find it, and I was very much distressed. But by pure chance there was a pediatrician [Raimund Schelcher] at this meeting who said, “Oh, I studied with a fellow who is now Germany’s leading ornithologist.”61

The pediatrician wrote Ernst a letter of introduction and suggested that, when passing through

Berlin, he pay the man a visit.62

Mayr had been preparing for a medical career, but he opted for the University of

Greifswald “for no other reason than, of all German Universities, it was situated in the

60 Bock, “Ernst Walter Mayr,” pp. 171–72. Bock reported: “Later in 1923, Red-crested Pochards were reported from a number of localities in Germany, suggesting that the pair observed by Mayr were part of a recolonization of the southern coast of the Baltic Sea where they still breed today.” (Bock, “Ernst Mayr, Naturalist,” p. 273.)

61 Mayr, “2. Bird watching: An exciting observation,” Web of Stories, www.webofstories.com/play/100.

62 “Ernst Mayr, Ph.D.,” www.achievement.org/autodoc/page/may1int-1.

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ornithologically most interesting area. Even though I was described as a medical student, I was first and foremost an ornithologist.”63 Coincidentally, the train ride from Dresden to Greifswald passed through Berlin, where Mayr remembered taking his time changing trains and then going to “Professor Stresemann’s office.”64 He described his memory of their meeting:

I went to the museum and I met Professor Stresemann. . . . He was only thirty-four years old at the time. He demanded that he could see my daily notebooks of my bird observations, which I kept very carefully and made all sorts of sketches and everything else. Then he asked me questions about birds, one after the other, then he showed me specimens, and that was the hardest part because the specimens in the trays at the museum didn’t look at all like the birds in the field. But anyhow when it was all finished, he said, “Well yes, I believe you, and I’m going to publish your observation.”

And he said, “What you saw was a Red-crested Pochard. That’s a Mediterranean duck. Every once in a while one of them strays across the Alps to Central Europe. The last one that did so before your observation . . . was in 1846.” So it really was a strange thing. So he published it and a little friendship developed between myself and Stresemann . . . in fact, it was my first publication, [in] 1923.65

In 1994, during a celebration of Mayr’s 90th birthday, a participant asked: “Is it really true that we would never have heard of you if you had not spotted those two ducks which Professor

Bock mentioned?” Mayr responded:

Well, at the time I was absolutely determined to study medicine. . . . Actually, seeing a rare duck which hadn’t been seen since 1846 in this part of Germany was of interest only for faunistic studies. However, at first nobody believed me. They said, “Oh, these . . . high school kids, they always come up with things that are just inventions,” and that criticism really annoyed me and that’s why I wanted to get it really nailed down and establish that, by golly, yes, this kid Ernst Mayr did see a

63 Mayr, “How I became a Darwinian,” p. 413. Haffer also described: “He went birdwatching in the forest and along the beach of the Baltic Sea almost every day, mostly alone or in the company of his friend” (Haffer, Ornithology, Evolution, and Philosophy, p. 24). Concerning his choice of career, Mayr stated, “I was to prepare myself for a medical career because my family was definitely a medical family. My father’s brother was a medical man. There were three generations of doctors prior to my father’s generation, and I was to be the doctor of my generation. I didn’t mind that at all. I liked the idea. When my father died of cancer it confirmed my desire to be a doctor because I said, ‘Surely something could have been done to save his life.’ As a young person, one is full of such ideas” (“Ernst Mayr, Ph.D.,” http://www.achievement.org/autodoc/page/may1int-1).

64 Mayr, “3. My effort to complete my doctorate,” Web of Stories, www.webofstories.com/play/101.

65 “Ernst Mayr, Ph.D.,” http://www.achievement.org/autodoc/page/may1int-1.

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Red-Crested Pochard. So I finally had to push my way all the way up to Stresemann to achieve this. Then when I fell into Stresemann’s hands he was a very ambitious guy, and he said “Oh, I am going to get this kid into my field, and he is going to do great things for ornithology.”66

Dr. Erwin Stresemann was no ordinary European ornithologist. Jürgen Haffer, who authored biographies of both Mayr and Stresemann, described Stresemann as the “Secretary

General, President, and honorary President of the Deutsche Ornithologen-Gesellschaft (DO-G) for 50 years.”67 The DO-G, or in English, the German Ornithologists’ Society, founded in 1850, remains one of “the oldest scientific societies worldwide.”68

Haffer explained that during “the 1920s and 1930s, [Stresemann] led the transformation of ornithology as an occupation for taxonomic and faunistic specialists into a branch of modern biological science. . . . He accomplished this transformation by adding avian physiology, ecology and behavior to the narrower older ornithology when he published his masterpiece, the lasting volume on Aves (1924–1934) in the Handbuch er Zoologie (Handbook of Zoology), skillfully edited two ornithological journals, supervised a long series of Ph.D. dissertations and encouraged a number of other major ornithological projects.”69

Of the professor, Mayr described: “None of [Stresemann’s] contemporaries had as great an impact . . . on the study of birds and on the development of ornithology as an integral part of biological science. In 1921 when he took over the bird department at the Zoological Museum in

Berlin, ornithology was without intellectual leadership.” When he became Mayr’s mentor,

66 Ernst Mayr, “Response to Walter Bock,” Biology & Philosophy 9 (1994): 330. Elsewhere Bock noted: “During the , if ornithologists possessed an advanced degree, it was a medical degree.” In Walter Bock, “Contributions of Central European Ornithology to World Ornithology,” Journal für Ornithology, 142 (2001): 97.

67 Jürgen Haffer, “The Genesis of Erwin Stresemann’s Aves (1927–1934) in the Handbuch der Zoologies, and His Contribution to the Evolutionary Synthesis,” Archives of Natural History 21 (1994): 201.

68 German Ornithologists´ Society, accessed May 1, 2012, www.do-g.de/index.php?id=34&L=1.

69 Haffer, “The Genesis of Erwin Stresemann’s Aves,” p. 201.

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Stresemann was the world’s leading ornithologist. About his mentor, Mayr observed that

Stresemann’s “extraordinary breadth, his enthusiasm for research, and his magnetic personality made him an ideal teacher.”70

Stresemann was born into a family of well-to-do pharmacists. His grandfather, Theodor

Stresemann, owned a pharmacy in Berlin called the Red Eagle. His father, Richard, studied medicine in Leipzig, and then along with his brother, Gustav, acquired the Mohr Pharmacy in

Dresden in 1876. From the beginning of his life, young Irwin Stresemann was surrounded by an environment of academic tradition and scientific thinking.71 Mayr would write that Stresemann

“had an excellent education in a culturally stimulating atmosphere. From his earliest youth he kept living animals in his parents’ house and built up a collection of bird skins.”72

Much of Stresemann’s career would be reflected in Mayr’s later accomplishments: both initially studied medicine but later traveled on birding expeditions to the South-West Pacific, and both first prepared for their journeys with a visit to Lord Rothschild’s famed Zoological Museum at Tring. In Stresemann’s case he was one of a company of three, on what became known as the

Moluccas Expedition traveling to areas then under German control (1910–12). Alfred Russel

Wallace, among others, had previously explored this region.

New Zealand ornithologist K. E. Westerskov described the Moluccas Expedition as, “the highlight of Stresemann’s experience.” It helped build his scientific reputation, and also “enabled him to plan and guide the preparation of future expeditions of the ‘school’ he developed around

70 Ernst Mayr, “Obituary: Erwin Stresemann,” Ibis 115 (1973): 282. Mayr also commented that Stresemann was “a man who was not only highly intelligent, but very hard working.” See Mayr, “5. Working at the museum with Stresemann and Rensch,” Web of Stories, www.webofstories.com/play/103.

71 Rolf Nöhring, “Erwin Stresemann,” Journal für Ornitholgie 114 (1973): 455.

72 Ernst Mayr, “Erwin Stresemann,” in Dictionary of Scientific Biography, vol. 18, supplement 2, ed. Frederic L. Holmes (NY: Scribner’s, 1990), pp. 888–890. See also “Stresemann, Erwin,” Complete Dictionary of Scientific Biography, accessed May 01, 2012, http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1G2-2830905353.html.

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him when he was later appointed Curator of Birds at the Berlin Museum.” Among the associates

Stresemann guided on expeditions that brought back large collections to the museum,

Westerskov listed “his star pupil Ernst Mayr, and [Gerd] Heinrich, [Georg H. W.] Stein and

[Victor] von Plessen.”73 Upon returning from his own expedition in 1912, Stresemann initially returned to his medical studies, though he soon left to work with Rothschild’s curator, Ernst

Hartert, on the Moluccas collections at the Tring museum, where Stresemann skills as “a fast methodological worker with a flair for writing and an ability to concentrate on essentials” served him well.74

In 1914, Stresemann was invited to contribute a volume on birds in a comprehensive collection edited by Willy Georg Kükenthal, titled, Handbuch der Zoologie. Though Stresemann had yet to complete his degree, his reputation had already been established from his expedition work and his published papers. Perhaps it helped that Kükenthal had earlier, in the 1890s, been on expedition in the Moluccas. Stresemann’s new project would evolve into his classic work,

Aves, but that had to wait until after the war. During the war, while working with a rangefinder from an anchored field-airship to help direct artillery fire along the Western front, Stresemann simultaneously spent time observing the “height of the flight of Swifts.” In 1917, as a result of his field-airship experience, Stresemann published three papers examining “the height of the

Swifts in flight, mixed bird flocks, and the use of rangefinders in determining flying height of birds.”75

73 K. E. Westerskov, “Professor Erwin Stresemann and His Contribution to Australasian Ornithology,” Notornis 23 (1976): 141.

74 Mayr, “Obituary: Erwin Stresemann,” p. 282.

75 Westerskov, p. 143.

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Stresemann earned his degree in 1920, majoring in zoology at Munich. After the war he also focused on his work on Aves, among other projects. In another turn of fortuitous luck,

Kükenthal, the editor for Aves, had been recently appointed Director of the Zoological Museum in Berlin and he was looking for a successor to the senior Curator of Birds, who was soon to retire. The following year, Stresemann earned the appointment in a “meteoric rise to the most influential post in professional ornithology in the Weimar Republic,” one that “was watched with surprise and envy by a few.”76 For Stresemann, the interwar period, “was undoubtedly [his] finest hour: with industry, intelligence and efficient planning plus stick-to-it-ness he wrote and had published his major book, Aves, edited two journals, served as Secretary General of the

Ornithological Society, supervised between 1925 and 1939 a total of 22 Ph.D. candidates . . . administered and developed the Bird Room of the Museum . . . in addition to an annual production of a dozen research papers or more.”77

On a more personal note, British ornithologist David Armitage Bannerman remembered

Stresemann as “a striking-looking man, he was always – when ‘out of school’ – gay and lively and imbued with a great sense of fun. . . . In those carefree [interwar] days he was a great favorite with the opposite sex and delighted in dancing. Clad in tail coat and white waistcoat he was always ready to take the floor with a partner of his choice.”78 To this Mayr added:

“Stresemann had a charismatic personality and was able to charm (and often deeply influence) anyone he encountered. His phenomenal memory, his ability to cut through complex obscurities

76 Ibid.

77 Ibid.

78 David A. Bannerman, “Obituary: Erwin Stresemann,” Ibis 115 (1973): 284.

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to reach clear formulations, the elegance of his written work, and his clear vision of desirable goals had an extraordinary impact on his associates and on ornithology as a whole.”79

But Ernst Mayr would impress his mentor, in turn. Mayr recalled that Stresemann:

Took to me and saw my enthusiasm. . . . He said, “Would you be interested, in your college vacations, to come here to the museum as a volunteer?” I thought somebody had given me a key to paradise. I said, “Of course, I would,” and I did. And he put me to work unpacking new collections that came from expeditions in various places of the world and I was permitted to identify specimens that hadn’t been yet identified and so forth.

I had a wonderful time, and I had opportunity to talk with Stresemann about all sorts of things. And one day he said to me, after I talked about my dreams about the tropics expeditions and the jungles and all that, he said to me very seriously, “Now look here, young man. If you become a medical doctor you will never have a chance to go to the tropics, you will be far too busy.”

When he saw how my face fell, he said, “Well, but there is an alternative. Let me make a proposal. Suppose, after you finish your first half of the medical study . . . ” – in Germany the preclinical period and the clinical period are sharply separated – “ . . . After you’ve finished your preclinical period, why don’t you stop studying medicine, take a degree in zoology, a Ph.D., and when you have that then I can find a place for you in an expedition somewhere, I’m quite sure.”80

Mayr suggested that Stresemann did not mean to “convert” him from medicine to zoology. He had Mayr’s best interests at heart: “He really was trying to do me a favor. I was such an enthusiast at the time. Anyhow, I talked it over with my mother and she said, ‘Well, if that’s what you want, go right ahead.’ She was a wonderful woman. And so I did.”81

79 Mayr, “Erwin Stresemann,” in DSB, p. 889. Mayr mentioned Stresemann was also known for a short temper when not suffering fools patiently.

80 “Ernst Mayr, Ph.D.,” www.achievement.org/autodoc/page/may1int-2. On another occasion, Mayr similarly related how: “During coffee breaks, I would rave about the wonderful tropics and the expeditions of Humboldt and Bates and Darwin” (“Interview with Ernst Mayr,” BioEssays 24 (2002): 961).

81 “Ernst Mayr, Ph.D.,” www.achievement.org/autodoc/page/may1int-2. Significant among the friends Mayr made while still at Greifswald was Martin Hennig, someone he corresponded with throughout his life. Mayr commented: “It is somewhat ironic that the best friend of my student days should be a theologian. But except for a few Christian dogmas, our thinking about man’s obligations, about ethics, about all practical philosophy and wisdom where very much the same” (quoted in Haffer, Ornithology, Evolution, and Philosophy, pp. 33–34).

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Mayr remembered this time of his life: “[As] soon as I had my candidate of medicine degree, I stopped medicine and I went into zoology, and I did something that is almost unbelievable. In 16 months I fulfilled all the requirements of a Ph.D. candidate in zoology . . .

[and had] written my thesis in that time. I was ready for my examination, and on the 24th of June my oral examinations were all completed and I was awarded a Ph.D. in zoology.”82 The dissertation was “a biogeographical one. In a way, it was connected with that duck . . . But this dealt with a small finch-like bird . . . which in the years between about 1770 and the present time, had spread from the Mediterranean on both sides of the Alps into Central Europe. The argument among the ornithologists was that maybe it had been there all along . . . My thesis was to trace the movement through all the natural history literature of all the little local societies and whatnot, and then try to explain it in ecological terms.”83 Mayr’s thesis was “a very convincing story, and mapped the spread of the bird in 25-year periods and developed a number of ecological theories about spreading. . . . It was printed the next year in a big German ornithological journal.”84

Ernst still aimed to go on an expedition to the South Seas as he had since a young boy, and Stresemann’s promise served an inspiration to Ernst in pursuit of his degree in zoology.

Mayr later recalled that Stresemann “was quite serious about that and he tried very hard. There

82 “Ernst Mayr Ph.D.,” www.achievement.org/autodoc/page/may1int-2. As an aside, Haffer reported that Stresemann “knew that an assistantship would open up at the museum on 1 July 1926”, and therefore “chose a thesis that Mayr could finish in little more than a year provided he worked very hard.” Haffer noted, “By working day and night Mayr accomplished all the course requirements, finished his thesis on time and passed his PhD examination summa cum laude 24 June 1926. He also obtained the position at the museum starting work a few days later on 1 July. His monthly salary was 330.54 Reichsmark.” (Haffer, Ornithology, Evolution, and Philosophy, 34.) Walter Bock adds, “Mayr rushed to complete his degree in June 1926 (at a young age of 21) because there was a vacant assistantship available at the museum that he could obtain only if he had received his Ph.D. Positions were scare in Germany at that time.” In Bock, “Ernst Mayr at 100,” 5.

83 “Ernst Mayr, Ph.D.,” www.achievement.org/autodoc/page/may1int-2.

84 Ibid.

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was an expedition going to Cameroon in Africa and that didn’t work out. Another one was to

Peru in connection with some American oil explorations, and that didn’t work out. Finally

Stresemann persuaded Lord Rothschild of England – the famous owner of the largest private bird collection – that he should have a collector in New Guinea. Actually Rothschild had a collector there but he had a stroke and had to give up working, so there was a vacancy.”85

Mayr would later admit that Stresemann needed to first persuade Rothschild to take him on, and Rothschild agreed on the condition that Mayr find specimens of “so-called rare birds of paradise.” Rothschild had connections with dealers in the burgeoning plumage and hat industry centered in Rotterdam and Paris, and they had sent him a few unique varieties that so far no one could identify. This proved “a great puzzle” that multiple expeditions to New Guinea had so far not solved. A handful of northern mountain ranges had yet to be thoroughly explored; that was

Mayr’s task on behalf of Lord Rothschild. Mayr confessed: “I had no experience, of course. I had never shot a bird. I had never skinned a bird. Stresemann was very – how shall I say – optimistic about the whole thing, but I got a rush job training in some of these things and I went over to England and I talked it over with Rothschild and his curator [Hartert] about further matters of collecting.”86

Mayr would later reflect on the overall importance of Stresemann in his life, acknowledging that,

In the course of time Stresemann had become a replacement father figure for me. As the average son would turn to his father for advice, so I always turned to Stresemann when in need. . . . He greatly honored me in 1930 (after my return from the expedition) by, so to speak, moving me up to the rank of younger brother. . . . He was my close friend, indeed I had no other close friend. Stresemann was clearly my closest friend until my friendship with Dobzhansky developed. For Stresemann

85 “Ernst Mayr, Ph.D.,” www.achievement.org/autodoc/page/may1int-3.

86 Ibid.

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I was not only a friend but even more so a disciple. He was delighted when I was invited to come to New York and work on the collections because it would mean that his influence would now begin to spread to America.”87

Walter Bock, the Columbia University evolutionary biologist who studied under Mayr at

Harvard, concurred: “Stresemann was most fortunate to have an outstanding student in Ernst

Mayr who understood the new developments being advanced by Stresemann and who was in the right place at the right time, in this case in North America – starting in 1931 – where he could advocate and push the New Avian Biology. . . . [Mayr] was willing and ready to introduce these ideas to North American ornithologists.”88

About his mentor and friend, Mayr opined, “I think one can say truthfully that no one in the last 100 years has had as profound an impact on the world of ornithology as Erwin

Stresemann.”89 Mayr also pointed out that “perhaps . . . more then anyone else [Stresemann helped bring about a] shift of the position of ornithology from being merely a hobby, to being a legitimate branch of zoology,”90 adding that Stresemann “instigated and supervised a large series

87 Quoted in Haffer, Ornithology, Evolution, and Philosophy, p. 41. In correspondences, Stresemann began referring to Mayr with the Malay term ‘adek’, meaning younger brother; while in turn Mayr called Stresemann ‘kaka’ – older brother, along with informal German pronouns.

88 Bock, “Contributions of Central European Ornithology,” p. 104. Bock describes Mayr’s importance in increasing the influence of Stresemann’s groundbreaking work in ornithology: “Clearly the “New Avian Biology” must be credited to E. Stresemann with the publication of his Aves volume and appearance in the Journal für Ornithologie of an important series of diverse studies in biological ornithology including doctoral theses done under Stresemann’s direction. Less clear is how these ideas reached the rest of the world. I suggest that this was achieved because the time was ripe for these new ideas and because of the proselytizing by Ernst Mayr, the leading student of Stresemann who was fortunately located in New York City since the beginning of 1931” (Ibid., p. 94). Haffer coined the term “Stresemann revolution” to describe Stresemann’s leadership from “the 1920s onward” when “central European ornithology changed rapidly and general biological studies were emphasized over earlier systematic-faunistic work.” This revolution was characterized by the “integration of the two previously separated research traditions and to a paradigm change, which had a worldwide impact.” Stresemann’s “New Avian Biology” offered a synthesis of “systematic ornithology and field ornithology” that “recognized that the bird is a well-suited subject for studies into the problems of functional morphology, physiology, behavior, and orientation of animals.” In Jürgen Haffer, “The Development of Ornithology in,” Journal für Ornithologie 148 (2007): 125–126.

89 Quoted in Haffer, “The Development of Ornithology in Central Europe,” p. 141.

90 Quoted in Jürgen Haffer, “Ornithological Research Traditions in Central Europe during the 19th and 20th Centuries,” Journal für Ornithologie 142 (2001): 63.

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of dissertations on avian morphology, embryology, histology, physiology, bird flight, feather structure and coloration . . . most of them published [under his editorship] in the Journal für

Ornithologie during the 1930s.”91 Mayr noted: “The numerous young ornithologists whom he trained, as zoologists, at the University of Berlin, formed the first school of genuine scientific ornithologists.”92

Mayr also recalled that while working under Stresemann at the Museum of Natural

History in Berlin he found a colleague in :

[He] very much influenced me because he wrote a book on , . And even though I didn’t agree with every detail, it made me think about all the problems involved there and much of what he said influenced me and I followed it. In fact in some ways he influenced me more than Stresemann had because Stresemann and I didn’t talk as much about such matters.93

Mayr noted that “Professor Rensch” influenced him “a great deal,” often talking at length about the issues raised in his book on systematics concerning “all the problems that would . . . or at least most of the problems that would occupy [Mayr’s] mind in later years.”94 In the early 1940s, when Mayr worked on his own foundational contribution to the evolutionary synthesis, he confided in a letter to Stresemann, “I am presently busy preparing my book manuscript on

Systematics and the Origin of Species. One cannot deal with this topic without noticing all the time, how much the solution or at least the clear exposition of these problems owes to our friend

91 Ibid., p. 59.

92 Quoted in Ibid. This would be an important example Stresemann set for Mayr on how to build a serious scientific discipline out of a disparate set of studies.

93 Mayr, “5. Working at the museum with Stresemann and Rensch,” Web of Stories, www.webofstories.com/play/103.

94 Mayr, “6. Rensch's influence: Working in the library and department of entomology,” Web of Stories, www.webofstories.com/play/104. Mayr described how his former colleague would become “[i]nternationally celebrated as one of the architects of the evolutionary synthesis and for his many contributions to allometry, learning and memory in animals, climatic rules, the evolution of man, and the philosophy of biology, [in addition to his] numerous contributions to ornithology.” In Ernst Mayr, “In Memoriam: Bernhard Rensch, 1900–1990,” The Auk 109 (1992): 188.

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Rensch.”95 Mayr added, “I greatly admired his 1929 book, which I read when I returned from the

Solomon Islands.”96Rensch had similarly undertaken “a very successful expedition” in 1928 to the Lesser Sunda Islands north of while working at the Berlin Museum.97

Birding in the South Pacific

Mayr’s expedition began a year later, not long after Stresemann had introduced Ernst to

Lord Walter Rothschild at the International Zoological Congress held in Budapest in 1927. The expedition along the north coast of New Guinea would be funded both by Rothschild and the

American Museum of Natural History (AMNH). Dr. Leonard Sanford, an active patron of the

Department of Ornithology at the AMNH, was another member of Stresemann’s international network of ornithological contacts. The Berlin Museum financed a second portion of the trip to the former German colony in northeastern New Guinea, then under Australian mandate since the end of WWI. After he arrived, the AMNH requested Mayr continue another year assisting the Whitney South Seas Expedition in the , to the east of New Guinea.

Mayr recollected, “Now came a very hectic time for me to get prepared for this, get all the equipment, learn how to skin birds, etc., etc.”98 He traveled to Rothschild’s estate and museum at Tring in November 1927, and received further training from ,

Rothschild’s curator and museum director.99 Mayr added, “My instruction sessions with Hartert

95 Mayr to Erwin Stresemann, 6 June 1941, in Haffer, Ornithology, Evolution, and Philosophy, p. 207.

96 Mayr, “How I Became a Darwinian,” p. 416.

97 Mayr, “In Memoriam: Bernhard Rensch,” p. 188.

98 Mayr, “7. My first expedition: New Guinea,” Web of Stories, www.webofstories.com/play/105.

99 Mayr considered Hartert “one of the greatest ornithologists of all times,” who during his 38 years as director at Tring, served with “great persistence and the harmonious cooperation of Lord Rothschild” and “built up a collection which was not only by far the largest private bird collection of the world, but also better balanced and representative of the bird fauna of the whole world than the collection of any other museum.” In Ernst Mayr, “Ernst Johann Otto Hartert,” The Auk 51 (1934): 283–285.

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went fine with one exception. One time he took a gun, and gave me a gun, and said, lets go out and shoot some pheasants. To be honest, I virtually never before had a gun in my hands, and of course had never shot at a flying bird. The result could have been predicted. . . . I rather suspect that Hartert began to doubt my success as a bird collector, but it was really too late to reverse history.”100

Fortunately, Ernst was right. The die had been cast: “In February 1928 I was ready to leave first for Genoa where I was supposed to take the steamer on from there on all the way east.

Well, Stresemann and the whole bird department in Berlin went to the train station . . . to see me off, and I still remember how they looked at me sort of with a feeling, ‘Well, are we going to see him again, or is this the final goodbye,’ because at that time there was a high mortality of people who went to New Guinea from diseases, trouble with the natives, etc.”101 Not that Ernst was himself wholly unconcerned! Upon arriving in Genoa he confided in a letter to his mother: “I told myself all the time that if on this trip something really should happen to me it would be in the midst of a beautiful experience and in the midst of the most important phase of my profession, that is, in free research and that under such circumstances death would be a glorious end to my life . . . I am not terrorized by the thought of death after a life which, up to now, has been innerlich so happy. Actually, I am quite convinced that I will return in full health, and so it will be. I have penned down the previous sentences only in order to tell you what my own principles are in this situation.”102

The steamer, the “Fulda,” carried 160 passengers on the first leg of the journey to

Columbo, Sri Lanka. While on board, Mayr learned Malay from some of his fellow passengers

100 Quoted in Haffer, Ornithology, Evolution, and Philosophy, pp. 50–51.

101 Mayr, “7. My first expedition: New Guinea,” Web of Stories, www.webofstories.com/play/105.

102 Ernst Mayr to Helen Mayr, 5 February 1928, in Haffer, Ornithology, Evolution, and Philosophy, pp. 53–54.

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and wrote a travelogue to his mother. Ever the competitor, Ernst won first prize in an “obstacle run” held on deck. Upon arriving at Columbo, he did some exploring, visiting a number of local

Hindu and Buddhist temples. The next stop was , with a final call on March 4th in

Jakarta, Java.103

Mayr recalled that, “the most fortunate thing was that I stopped in Java at the Dutch

Colonial Museum . . . [where they] . . . helped me a great deal. They taught me a good deal about what to wear and what equipment I needed in New Guinea, and they even lent me three Javanese assistants [mantris] who had been on previous expeditions and were very good bird skinners, so that now I could – with a good deal more confidence – get going to New Guinea.” 104 About his assistants, Ernst added, “These ‘mantris’ were of invaluable service to me and proved themselves faithful and hardworking companions during the six months I stayed in Dutch New Guinea.”105

From Java, Mayr and his crew took a succession of steamers on their way to New

Guinea. He considered the straights around the northern Moluccas most impressive, especially the view of the “volcano of Ternate . . . smoking and covered with dense vegetation almost to the top.”106 Then, on April 5th, he “arrived at the main port of Dutch New Guinea and unloaded [the] expedition and from there we went in a small fleet of canoes, outrigger canoes, across a wide

103 Ibid.

104 “Ernst Mayr, Ph.D.,” www.achievement.org/autodoc/page/may1int-3; Mayr, “7. My first expedition: New Guinea,” Web of Stories, www.webofstories.com/play/105. Mayr reported the formal name of the museum as “The Zoological Museum, of the Department of Agriculture in Buitenzorg, Java.”

105 Ernst Mayr, “A Tenderfoot Explorer in New Guinea: Reminiscences of an Expedition for Birds in the Primeval Forests of the Arfak Mountains,” Natural History Magazine 32 (1932): 84; see also Mayr, “Tenderfoot Explorer.”

106 Haffer, Ornithology, Evolution, and Philosophy, p. 54.

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bay,”107 while, in the distance, he saw “the towering Arfak Mountains, rising abruptly to an altitude of 9000 feet on the other side of the Dorei Bay! The summits were hidden in clouds.”108

After a few days preparation at the base of the mountain, the expedition entered the rainforest. Haffer described the excitement: “New calls were everywhere. It was quite a sensation when Mayr saw the first brilliant bird of paradise . . . alive, a species which he had known so far only as a museum skin.”109 Haffer continued, “Mayr felt absolutely fantastic when he entered the forests. He stepped from the shore into the tropical jungle and at the time New

Guinea was virtually untouched. Walking into the interior, he came to villages where no white man had ever been. And to wake up in the morning and hear those tropical birds calling and singing around the camp was an overwhelming experience.”110 Mayr offered his own personal recollection: “It was really untouched nature and the flowers were also most overwhelmingly rich and . . . and astonishing, and the bird life was incredible.”111

Mayr later recalled that as they travelled up the mountain their column of a few dozen carriers “lengthened very much and I was alone at its head accompanied by a number of Papuans fully armed with knives, bows, and arrows.”112 Then, suddenly:

I was startled by a noise that began at the end of my caravan and ran along the string of carriers toward me, increasing rapidly until it became a blood-curdling series of screams and yells. I was frightened, feeling certain that this was a signal to attack, and I expected every moment to feel the knives of the carriers in my back. I

107 Mayr, “7. My first expedition: New Guinea,” Web of Stories, www.webofstories.com/play/105.

108 Mayr, “Tenderfoot Explorer,” p. 84. Mayr described the “main port”, Manokwari, as “the capital of Dutch New Guinea” with “a white population of twelve, . . . no railroads, no motor cars, not even and mules . . . all the carrying was done by natives.”

109 Haffer, Ornithology, Evolution, and Philosophy, p. 55.

110 Ibid., p. 57.

111 Mayr, “8. The natives,” Web of Stories, www.webofstories.com/play/106.

112 Haffer, Ornithology, Evolution, and Philosophy, p. 57.

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look cautiously back to Basi [a local “powerful chief” who assisted Mayr while in the Arfak Mountains], but he, apparently guessing my worries, assured me there was no danger. As it turned out, it was really the war-cry of the Manikion tribe, but on this occasion it was uttered only to inspire the energy of the carriers. With increasing experience I grew surer of myself, but on this first occasion I showed that I was a thorough greenhorn.113

No matter the excitement on the trail, that night Mayr reported, “I slept peacefully in my tent.”114 He wrote, “No words can describe the concerts produced by the cicadas, locusts, tree- frogs and night birds, a symphony of peculiar and deeply impressive harmony. Listening and dreaming, I lay awake for a long time in spite of the fatigue caused by the march and all the exciting experiences of the day.”115 After a good night’s rest, Ernst rose early the next morning to find the Papuans at camp alive with “much chatter and noise,” yet once he stepped out of his tent, he found himself greeted with a sudden “complete silence.” Mayr admitted, “If that doesn’t give one megalomania, I don’t know what will. I simply can’t get used to playing the role of tuan besar (big master).”116

Mayr recalled that they “established camps in various altitudes and in various villages, and collected, and collected, and collected. In due time I learned from these three Javanese

[mantri assistants] whatever there is to be known about life in the jungle and in the mountains and how to make a camp and how to deal with the natives. . . . The main reason for my great success was that I knew how to make use of the natives.”117 Mayr thought that the “natives of the

Arfak Mountains were rather keen hunters and had a marvelous knowledge of the habit of the various species. . . . It was easy for me to get hunters, but most of the natives were inclined to go

113 Mayr, “Tenderfoot Explorer,” pp. 86–87.

114 Haffer, Ornithology, Evolution, and Philosophy, p. 57.

115 Mayr, “Tenderfoot Explorer,” p. 87.

116 Haffer, Ornithology, Evolution, and Philosophy, p. 57.

117 “Ernst Mayr, Ph.D.,” www.achievement.org/autodoc/page/may1int-3.

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too close to the birds and shot them to pieces. It took me quite a long time to teach them to shoot from a proper distance.”118

Mayr initially felt disappointed with what he considered a lack of intellectual imagination on the part of the natives: “They are not at all impressed by the fact that I can write letters.” They were rather more impressed by athletic feats: “When I toss a heavy rock a whole meter or more, further than even the strongest among them, then they really are full of admiration.”119 In an additional example illustrating his point, a serious young Ernst wrote the following in a report published after he returned:

I remember a little incident that happened during an eclipse of the moon. The moon became more and more covered by shadow, it grew darker and darker, but the natives showed no signs of interest or excitement. I asked them if they had no myth about it. I told them the myths of our own country and the myths believed by the Chinese and Javanese, and asked them what they considered as the cause of the sudden darkness. Not getting any response to my questions, I really became quite excited in my efforts to get some information about their belief.

Suddenly one of the men slapped my shoulder in a fatherly fashion and said soothingly:

“Don’t worry, master, it will become light again very soon.”

That cured me and I never again tried to acquire any information that was not given willingly. Their realism toward the mysteries of nature was sometimes quite appalling.120

118 Ernst Mayr, “My Dutch New Guinea Expedition,” Novitates Zoologicae 36 (1930): 21. In a series of activities that sounded typical of his routine, Mayr described events around the time of his 24th birthday: “I waited in Momi from the 30th of June to the 4th of July without getting any news of my provisions. In the meantime the Griffioen [“a small motorboat belonging to the Dutch Government,” (p. 20)] had arrived to take me to Wasior . . . On the 4th of July I left Momi with my skinners and all the outfit and arrived at Wasior after a very interesting voyage . . . on the morning of the 5th. The high steep and isolated range of the Wandammen Mountains was visible far away and promised a good collection. On the 5th I packed my loads, tried to get some sago and dried fish cured by natives (I had neither rice nor meat tins nor any other provisions on account of the canoe disaster), and started for the mountains on the morning of the 6th of July” (p. 24).

119 Quoted in Haffer, Ornithology, Evolution, and Philosophy, p. 59.

120 Mayr, “Tenderfoot Explorer,” p. 92.

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Mayr would come to repeat, over and over again, tales from these early adventures. For instance, M. Ross Lein, Mayr’s graduate student, would later reminisce how “students and friends . . . have fond memories of the occasions when [Mayr] could be persuaded to recount his adventures during these expeditions.” This particular story developed quite a punch line that evolved with retelling!121 One of Mayr’s closest friends, the biologist and historian of science,

John A. Moore,122 shared a different version on the occasion Mayr’s 90th birthday:

[Mayr had a] wonderful sense of humor – even telling stories on himself, of which I will mention two, one from long ago . . . One expedition found him in a remote area of New Guinea. Upon checking his almanac, he found that an eclipse of the moon was about to occur in a week or so. Thinking he could vastly increase his standing with the natives, he announced (through an interpreter), that in a few days the moon would go dark. This pronouncement produced no effect of interest or concern. With each passing day, he repeated his prophesy with increasing vigor. No response. Finally the night of the eclipsed arrived, but Ernst was alone in his interest and concern. Finally, the moon did start to become dark and Ernst reached his crescendo: “The moon is getting dark!” The old chief put his arm around Ernst and said, “Don’t worry, my son, it will soon get light again.”123

Mayr recalled another fond memory, which occurred while collecting along the shores of

Lake Anggi Giji in the Arfak Mountains of western Dutch New Guinea: “The five days I spent on the lake easily surpasses all my New Guinea memories. The beauty of the landscape, the splendid scientific success . . . and the hospitality of these primitive and supposedly savage

121 M. Ross Lein, “Ernst Mayr as a Life-Long Naturalist,” in Ornithological Monographs 58 (2005): 20. Lein noted, “Although he was urged by many to publish an extensive history of these events, Mayr felt he had more important things to write about, and he wrote only a few, short articles about his experiences. . . . A full account of his experiences would not be out of place beside the writings of Wallace and Bates.”

122 About Moore, Mayr recollected, “I first met Moore [in 1931 at the AMNH,] and now, more than 60 years later, he is not only my oldest living acquaintance in America, but in the meantime since Dobzhansky’s death the person whom I consider my best friend. . . . What is perhaps most outstanding about Moore is his wonderful sense of humor. When I am with him we never stop fooling with each other” (quoted in Haffer, Ornithology, Evolution, and Philosophy, pp. 297–98).

123 John A. Moore, “Some Personal Recollections of Ernst Mayr,” Evolution 48 (1994): 11. The “old chief” appeared to be “Basi, the local chief who provided porters” for Mayr during his time in the Arfak Mountains. Haffer described how the chief developed a strong affection for Mayr, even offering his 12-year-old daughter as a bride and a mountain home where the tribe “would plant his fields, and provide everything I need for living.” (Haffer, Ornithology, Evolution, and Philosophy, pp. 60–61.)

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natives made me very loath to leave. When my party departed, all the women and girls of the village were lined up along the road, shedding copious tears, according to a custom widely distributed over New Guinea. However, as it was the first time that I experienced this proof of hospitality, I was deeply touched, and felt almost like joining in.”124

Mayr admitted there were times he found negotiating tropical disease and other adventures in the wilds of New Guinea overwhelming. Letters from family, and well-wishers like Stresemann, Hartert, and others, lifted his spirits. Further, Mayr noted, “The joy over the success of my collecting activity was a great help to me in overcoming the many difficulties that sometimes almost crushed my energy and will-power.”125

Among those difficulties, Mayr’s major disappointment involved his apparent inability to find “the home of these rare species of Birds of Paradise” that Rothschild aspired to locate. Mayr later explained that the problem was eventually resolved after Stresemann closely examined the collection and concluded the missing birds must be cross-breeds “between two other different species of Birds of Paradise.” This conclusion allowed Mayr to look on his failure as a sort of success: “ . . . Even though I failed to find their home I was instrumental in solving the problem of the rare, unique species of Birds of Paradise.”126

124 Mayr, “Tenderfoot Explorer,” p. 97. The well-known photograph of Mayr with his mantri assistant, Sario, was taken at Lake Anggi Gidji. Of contemporary interest, the website for PapauExpeditions.com promotes their expeditions to the Anggi Lakes basin with a reference to Mayr’s visit: “The twin mountain lakes of Anggi Giji and Anggi Gita, situated at 1,860 m elevation in the Sougb-country of the southern Arfak Mountains, were first visited by a western naturalist in 1904, but it was a young Ernst Mayr who in 1928, at the beginning of an extremely productive career in ornithology and evolutionary biology, discovered the area’s paramount ornithological attraction on the eastern shores of Anggi Giji: an entirely new species of munia, which E. Hartert names Lonchura vana, and which is now more commonly known as the Grey-banded Munia.” The outfit offers a four-day guided birding tour of the Anggi Lakes basin described at: www.bird-watching-papua-adventure-travel.com/bextanggi.html (accessed May 1, 2012).

125 Mayr, “Tenderfoot Explorer,” p. 91. Mayr added, “Few people can realize what a strain it was to me to have to overcome alone all these difficulties, with no companion to talk to. Every situation was new to me and require careful consideration, especially the handling of the natives, who were very touchy and have many taboos that must be respected” (Ibid.)

126 Mayr, “9. Searching for the birds-of-paradise,” Web of Stories, www.webofstories.com/play/107.

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Otherwise, Ernst’s expedition to Dutch New Guinea was a tremendous success. Hartert reported in a published account of Mayr’s expedition: “It was for us the greatest importance to get [these birds] from Arfak, for very often we had fine material for other parts of New

Guinea . . . but needed series from Arfak, from where we often had only single poor specimens, or none at all. . . . Naturally the large collections . . . made here by Dr. Mayr were of the greatest interest, and contained quite a number of new forms. . . . He collected 2,700 specimens of 352 species and . His material has greatly enlarged our knowledge of the birds of New

Guinea.”127

In a report Ernst published shortly after returning, he took the opportunity to reminisce:

“Looking back on my first expedition, I value more than the discovery of many species and facts new to science, the education that it was for me. The daily fight with unknown difficulties, the need for initiative, the contact with the strange psychology of primitive people, and all the other odds and ends of such an expedition, accomplish a development of character that cannot be had in the routine of civilized life. And this combined with a treasury of memories, is ample pay for all the hardships, worries, and troubles that so often lead us to the verge of desperation in the scientific work that takes us into the field.’”128

Mayr and the Missionaries

The first portion of Mayr’s expedition along the northwestern coast of Dutch New

Guinea focused on exploring the Arfak Mountains. Next on the itinerary were the Wondiwoi

Mountains further south along the Wandammen Peninsula on the expansive Geelvinkbaii, now known as Cederawasih Bay, “Bird of Paradise Bay.” From there Mayr took a steamer east along

127 Ernst Hartert, “On a Collection of Birds Made by Dr. Ernst Mayr in Northern Dutch New Guinea,” Novitates Zoologicae 36 (1930): 18–19.

128 Mayr, “Tenderfoot Explorer,” p. 97.

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the north coast toward the center of the island, to Hollandia (now Jayapura), not far from the border with the former German colony of . While on the steamer, Mayr received news that the German Research Council had increased his funding for expeditions in northeastern New Guinea.

For Mayr, the next challenge was getting there – there was no direct transport along the north coast between the two separately governed halves of the island, even though the closest port was only a hundred and twenty-five miles away. Mayr exclaimed:

I would have had to go from Dutch New Guinea back to Java, from there down to Australia, and then from Australia up to eastern New Guinea. And the trip would have cost more than the money I had available for my whole . . . expedition to eastern New Guinea. So what should I do?”

The answer: rustle some outrigger canoes. Mayr admitted, “I said, ‘I’m going to just walk over there and take canoes or something like that.’ Every person said: ‘You can’t do it. The natives are not friendly and you will have trouble getting canoes and you will definitely perish.’ I just didn’t listen and I went ahead and I nearly did perish! But I finally talked my way through.”129

Challenges included a coastline that was “very exposed” with “tremendous surf,” making it difficult to travel by canoe, especially to bring the small crafts safely to shore. At one point,

Mayr recalled, “Going through the surf, my canoe capsized but fortunately the natives – they were very clever and very good – they put me sideways out of the canoe so it would not fall on me and I got ashore. . . . My equipment that was in that canoe of course was in the water, but they were able by diving down to get all of it out and the damage wasn’t too great because much of it I had packed waterproof.” Mayr added, “the last seventy miles I had to walk on the shore,

129 Claudia Driefus, “A Conversation with: Ernst Mayr. An insatiably curious observer looks back on a life in evolution,” New York Times, April 16, 2002.

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no trail, in the hot sun all day, and I finally got to the first port in the [Australian] Mandated

Territory. This was the most difficult, most dangerous, most unpleasant experience I ever had in my whole life.”130

Mayr arrived at the port, Aitape, in early November, 1928. From there his plans involved taking a scheduled steamer to the capital of the territory, , on the island of New Britain, and then to eastern New Guinea. Once in Aitape, “everybody was quite astonished.” Mayr recalled: “Nobody had ever come from Dutch New Guinea by land, and the first person I met was a German missionary. . . . I was coming through the woods and I came to his house and I stepped in and I found from the natives that his name was, I think was Father Paul . . . so I stepped inside. There, a white man suddenly appearing before this man, and I said, in German

‘Grüss Gott, Vater Paul’ and he was utterly astonished. The funniest part was he came from a village that I knew quite well on the outskirts of Würzburg where I had been a boy.”131 Haffer reported, “The father almost fell off his chair” in wonder at how this visitor had arrived at his mission.132

German missionaries had been active in Papua New Guinea since the late 1800s, with the

Lutherans arriving a few years before the Catholics. Initially, the colonial administration considered the missionaries assisting their “civilizing” mission, though tensions arose between the missionaries, who aspired to educate and save souls, and the planters, who needed compliant labor for palm and rubber tree plantations.133 After WWI, the Australians demanded the

130 Mayr, “11. Arriving at Aitape,” Web of Stories, www.webofstories.com/play/108.

131 Mayr, “10. From Dutch New Guinea to the Mandated Territory of New Guinea,” Web of Stories, www.webofstories.com/play/109.

132 Quoted in Haffer, Ornithology, Evolution, and Philosophy, p. 67.

133 Copra appears to have been the most successful crop. Copra is the dried inner kernel, or meat of the coconut, used for extracting coconut oil.

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expulsion of the German missionaries as foreign subversives, but the church successfully delayed the law’s implementation, eventually having it overturned. Father Paul’s station in

Aitape was in an area in which the Catholic Church found initial success in New Guinea.134

Mayr received an invitation from another missionary, Father Otto Meyer, a well- published naturalist in contact with the Berlin Museum and based near Rabaul.135 Father Meyer specialized in Melanesian ornithology and archeology, and lured Mayr to his Waton Island settlement with the enticement: “You must come, because I just got 40 eggs of Megapodius [a chicken-like scrub fowl] which need to be examined by a scientist – afterwards as an omelet!”136

From there, Mayr’s steamer reached Finschhlafen, on the Huon Gulf on the eastern side of New Guinea, in early December. Haffer reported that his crew was “received most friendly by the Protestant-Lutheran Neuedettelsauer Mission.” Mayr spent the next few weeks with the missionaries in Sattelberg. Haffer described that, while there, Mayr became “totally immersed in a Christian atmosphere. He participated wholeheartedly because he was quite serious in testing once more his position toward Christianity.”137

134 Patrick Matbob, “Fr. Eberhard Limbrock, leader of the first SVD mission in New Guinea,” accessed December 25, 2010, www.catholicpng.org.pg/history/Limbrock.html.

135 Rabaul was the headquarters of on the northeast coast. After WWI, Rabaul became the capital of the Australian mandated Territory of New Guinea until a catastrophic volcanic explosion took place in the late 1930s. An even more severe volcanic eruption destroyed the town in 1994.

136 Quoted in Haffer, Ornithology, Evolution, and Philosophy, p. 68. Hartert named one of the subspecies of birds Mayr collected on the expedition, “IIypotaenidia philiippensis meyeri, in honour of Father Otto Meyer, who has done so much for the knowledge of New Britain and the neighboring small islands.” (Hartert, “List of Birds,” p. 121.) Father Otto Meyer published a number of essays in German scientific journals. For an English translation from the original German of an often cited archeological paper by Meyer, see Dimitri Anson, “Appendix 1: The archaeological excavations of Father Otto Meyer on Watom Island,” New Zealand Journal of 20 (1998): 18–20.

137 Quoted in Haffer, Ornithology, Evolution, and Philosophy, pp. 68–69. Perhaps this could be the situation Mayr alluded to in a letter to Greene (1 May 1989), when he stated: “I came back to Christianity for a while, but this did not last long.”

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The first Lutheran missionary in New Guinea, Johann Flierl, trained at the

Neuendettelsau Seminary in Germany before arriving on the island via Australia in 1886. He established the Sattelberg mission in the early 1890s. Flierl personally revealed that it was his intention to evangelize the Papuans “[so] that the white settler [in New Guinea] may not drive them, too, from the land of their fathers, as he has done with the American Indian and Australian native.”138 With the arrival of Christian Keysser, the mission experienced a breakthrough.

Keysser had a socio-cultural insight that the Papuans considered themselves as members of extended families and clans, first, and thus felt disinclined toward Christianity, as individuals.

Keysser’s program of group conversion and communal baptism proved successful, and he became the second director of the mission in 1905.139 Kessler also explored and published on the local mountain ranges and native dialects. After Mayr returned to Germany, he allied with

Keysser in a dispute with over accounts involving naturalist studies in the New

Guinea interior.140

Mayr described that while at the Snake River Valley in the Hertzog Mountain range, his companion, “a German missionary who was taking care of me and was very nice . . . said ‘You are very lucky because in this valley . . . I’m going to have a big christening one of these days.

For three years we have been teaching the natives . . . all about . . . Christendom and they are all prepared now to be baptized. This will take place next week and there’s going to be great festivals and all sorts of things. You will be most excited.’” About this Mayr recalled:

138 P. G. Sack, “Flierl, Johann (1858–1947),” Australian Dictionary of Biography, National Centre of Biography, Australian National University, accessed May 1, 2012, http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/flierl-johann- 6196/text10367.

139 John Garrett, Footsteps in the Sea: Christianity in to World War II (Suva, Fiji: Institute of Pacific Studies, University of the South Pacific, 1992), pp. 10–13.

140 Haffer, Ornithology, Evolution, and Philosophy, pp. 73–74.

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Well, the actual teaching Christianity to these people had been done by native missionaries from the coast. They were Melanesians, great big tall fellows with a fuzzy-wuzzy head and only a . . . a red loin cloth, they didn’t wear anything else, and they taught these mountain Papuans. And so that went through two languages, and final the day came and they had put up a platform and great big sort of like a circus tent where the . . . all the people sat that were to be christened, and I sat on a platform together with the German missionary and the Melanesian missionaries. And they gave big sermons and all that, and all of a sudden the German missionary turns to me and said, “Oh, these people all want now a sermon from you.” And I said, “Well, what can I do?” He said, “Oh,” he said, “it doesn’t matter, just say something in German, I will do the translating. Nobody here knows any German.”

So naturally I had to get up and say something that would please the missionary, so I gave a little sermon that I’m sure didn’t take more than five minutes, that they should behave like the good Christians now and not fight with each other and not steal and not . . . and keep a nice clean village and a few other proper sentiments. After that the German missionary got up and he translated that into the Melanesian of the coastal people, of the coastal missionaries, and of course he presented it with the proper gestures of a . . . of a minister . . . of a preacher, and it lasted at least ten minutes.

[Mayr’s eyes now widen with a twinkle, and his gestures becomes very animate.]

And then got up one of these Melanesian coastal missionaries who now translated my sermon into the native language of the valley out there. And he got up and he jumped up and he stamped the platform with his heels and he yelled at them in the loudest tones and the whole thing lasted about 20 minutes, and I would give anything in the world if I had the actual translation of my sermon into that language!141

Despite his initial success as a jungle preacher, the youthful Ernst nonetheless confided in his diary, “However . . . I fear I simply cannot accept the Christian dogma. It demands too much sacrifice from one’s reasoning.”142

Sailing the South Seas

Mayr would recall, “One morning as I was sitting there” at camp:

141 Mayr, “12. Mass baptism at Snake River Valley,” Web of Stories, www.webofstories.com/play/110

142 Quoted in Haffer, Ornithology, Evolution, and Philosophy, 69. Haffer reported that Mayr’s “detailed diaries which have been preserved . . . are deposited in the archives of the Staatsbibliothek Berlin (Mayr Papers).” (Haffer, Ornithology, Evolution, and Philosophy, 54, fn. 5.) Perhaps more information on this topic can be gleamed from these archives.

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Suddenly a . . . runner came into my . . . my little hut with a telegram, and the telegram said that – it came from Stresemann – he said that the Whitney South Sea expedition which had a schooner operating in this area, their leader had become ill . . . and they desperately needed a… an ornithologist because they had only some Yale college boys on board, but they knew nothing about birds. “Please”, and Stresemann said, “I know you’re . . . you’re ready to come home, but this may be very important for your . . . for your future, and furthermore the American Museum has promised to give me some specimens from this area if you join the expedition.” So whether I liked it or not I had to say yes, and I made my way down to the coast.”143

Of the unplanned detour, Mayr remembered, “This was the beginning. . . . The next nine months

I was on this schooner collecting birds in the Solomon Islands.”144 His condition was not ideal, but Mayr pushed on: “Even though I was rather weary, owing to malaria, dysentery and general expedition fatigue, how could I resist this opportunity?”145

Mayr met the Whitney expedition ship, the France, at the port of Samarai, on the southeast coast of New Guinea, on July 3rd. It was a few days before his 24th birthday. The

France was an old 76-ton “copra carrying freighter schooner” that Mayr acknowledged was “a remarkably sturdy sailing craft with a temperamental motor which was out of commission most of the time.”146 Similarly dismissive of the vessel, Mayr noted, “It was not a glorious expedition in any sense of the word as most people think who are used to these millionaires cruises that go to the South Sea Islands. Well anyhow, however, ornithologically it was very successful.”147

143 Mayr, “13. Joining the Whitney expedition,” Web of Stories, www.webofstories.com/play/111. It sounded that otherwise Mayr felt just about ready to return to Germany. Mayr also admitted he had gotten an impression he would be filling the responsibilities of the expedition leader who he was replacing. Unfortunately, crossed communications over long distance cables between the various parties disrupted the implementation of those plans. (Haffer, Ornithology, Evolution, and Philosophy, 77–79, 79, fn. 11.)

144 Mayr, “13. Joining the Whitney expedition,” Web of Stories, www.webofstories.com/play/111.

145 Mayr, “Reminiscences,” p. 176.

146 Ernst Mayr, “A Journey to the Solomons,” Natural History 52 (1943): 30.

147 Mayr, “13. Joining the Whitney expedition,” Web of Stories, www.webofstories.com/play/111.

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Regarding the locale, he was more enthusiastic: “There is probably no island group in the world that surpasses the Solomon Islands for variety.”148

Among the creature comforts lacking on the France were a flushing toilet, ventilation below deck, and an above-board deck awning that did not leak. Mayr complained also about the cuisine: “Our diet was equally unsatisfactory; canned, low-grade Alaska salmon and rice. The only redeeming feature was that the natives had discovered mangrove oysters and had filled a gunnysack with live oysters. We dragged this sack on a long rope behind the boat and pulled it up whenever we felt like a dish of oysters.”149

Nonetheless, the voyage had its benefits, as Mayr admitted, “Ultimately, it was my participation on the WSSE that permitted me to place my foot, so to speak, in the door to

America. But I was a rather disappointed young man in the first months after joining the

‘France.” The unpleasant situation was made worse by a jaw operation and dengue fever.”150

There was one high point on the South Seas:

The redeeming feature of the Solomon Islands, at the lighter side, was that whenever we landed somewhere there was a coconut plantation, the fellow who was running the plantation usually – they were all Australians – was bored to tears with his job, hadn’t seen a white person in maybe four months, five months, six months, and was just happy as could be to have us aboard. And of course the way in the Solomon Islands you celebrate anything is with lots and lots of whisky. . . . [The] Australians all were the most helpful, most jolly people but they sure love their whisky. And I must say I . . . I drank more whiskey in those nine months in the Solomon Islands than I have ever since in the rest of my life.151

Though at times relations got testy on board the cramped schooner, Mayr and his knowledge of birds won the admiration of his crewmates as well as Hannibal Hamlin, the co-

148 Mayr, “Journey to the Solomons,” p. 30.

149 Quoted in Haffer, Ornithology, Evolution, and Philosophy, p. 83.

150 Quoted in Ibid., p. 80. Mayr needed a wisdom tooth extracted.

151 Mayr, “14. Drinking whiskey with the plantation managers,” Web of Stories, www.webofstories.com/play/112.

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leader of the expedition. Mayr recalled, “Hamlin became one of the best friends of my life, and together we collected successfully in . . . the Solomon Islands, until . . . I returned to Berlin.”152

Experiences like these helped his reputation with the Whitney Expedition directors back at the

AMNH. On January 1, 1930, Mayr wrote in his diary: “The first day of the new year. I wonder what it will bring me. If I’m not very much mistaken it may well turn out to be the most important year of my life – when it will be decided whether I can obtain a good position outside of Germany or remain an untenured assistant in Berlin without pension rights.”153

On February 15th Mayr received permission from the AMNH to return to Germany before the conclusion of his one-year contract, something Stresemann had encouraged him to do in a letter Ernst received the month before. Though Stresemann suggested Mayr book a steamer that would take him through New York, Mayr could not find an economical ticket and instead resorted to a direct route to France.154

Mayr considered that his experiences in the tropics contributed “an immense amount to my education, to the development of my character, to the development of all sorts of insights into both and the workings of our society that I wouldn’t have had if . . . I had not gone on these expeditions.”155 He would later sum up his career as a “lifelong naturalist” fascinated by the “well-nigh inconceivable diversity of the living world, its origins and its meaning,” concluding:

152 Mayr, “Reminiscences,” pp. 176–177.

153 Quoted in Haffer, Ornithology, Evolution, and Philosophy, p. 83.

154 Mayr later wrote an upbeat travelogue account of his Solomon Island experience in the American Museum of Natural History magazine, Natural History. It was published in the June 1943 edition, a few months after the conclusion of the pivotal WWII Battle of Guadalcanal on the Solomon Islands.

155 Mayr, “44. The decision to leave medicine and go to Berlin,” Web of Stories, www.webofstories.com/play/142.

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To study the life of the tropics, as had Humboldt, Wallace, and Darwin, as well as my teachers Stresemann and Rensch, was the greatest ambition of my youth. I fulfilled it when I lived as a naturalist and collector for two years and a half (1928– 1930) in the interior of New Guinea and the Solomon Islands; this experience had an impact on my thinking that cannot be exaggerated.156

156 Ernst Mayr, “General Introduction,” in Evolution and the Diversity of Life (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1976), p. 1.

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CHAPTER 3 THE DARWIN OF THE 20TH CENTURY: MAYR AND HIS CAREER IN EVOLUTION

The American Museum of Natural History

Mayr’s adventures in the South Seas led him to New York City, where at the American

Museum of Natural History (AMNH) he began to emerge as “one of the 20th century’s greatest scientists and a principal author of the modern theory of evolution,”1 frequently referred to by the term “neo-Darwinism.” Having returned to Europe from the Solomon Islands, Mayr returned to his family and his colleagues: “[I went] home to see my mother in Dresden and then immediately went off to Berlin to start working on my collections that I had made in the Mandated Territory.

And I worked there quite hard but I realized I had to see the material of other museums.”2 In addition to visiting collections in Paris, London, and Holland (at Leiden), he spent time at the

Tring Museum comparing his research with Hartert. In June, Mayr attended the 7th International

Ornithological Congress in Amsterdam, where he “met many of the luminaries in ornithology,” among them, Frank M. Chapman, chief curator at the Department of Ornithology at the

American Museum of Natural History.”3

A few months later, Chapman offered Mayr an opportunity to work as a visiting Research

Associate at the AMNH, organizing the Whitney South Seas collection that Mayr had been involved in collecting. In Mayr’s opinion, the AMNH possessed, “by far the most outstanding bird department in the entire world.”4 He recalled that at the time: “I had about two thirds

1 Jody Hey, Walter M. Fitch, and Francisco J. Ayala, ed., preface to Systematics and the Origin of Species: On Ernst Mayr’s 100th Anniversary (Washington, D.C.: The National Academies Press, 2005), p. v.

2 Ernst Mayr, “16. Getting back to Europe. Invitation to work in New York,” 1997, Web of Stories, accessed May 1, 2012, www.webofstories.com/play/114.

3 Quoted in Jürgen Haffer, Ornithology, Evolution, and Philosophy: The Life and Science of Ernst Mayr, 1904– 2005 (NY: Springer, 2007), p. 65.

4 Ernst Mayr, “Reminiscences from the First Curator of the Whitney-Rothschild Collection,” BioEssays 19 (1997): 177.

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finished my report on my collections [in Europe] when a letter arrived from Doctor Chapman asking me whether I would be interested to come to the American Museum in New York for one year to work on the unworked collections of the Whitney South Sea expedition. It was a rather nominal salary and no tenure; of course, it was going to be for one year, not renewable. Well, this was of course, very exciting . . . and I said, ‘Well, if you can wait until January, by that time

I’ll have finished my report on the Mandated Territory, and then I’ll be glad to come.’ Well,

Chapman accepted that and on the 19th of January [1931] I arrived in New York where I settled down at the International House, near Columbia University.”5

The International House was forty blocks north (two miles) of the AMNH, which Mayr could reach either by subway or by foot, if time and weather permitted. Mayr reminisced, “I arrived as a bachelor in New York and I lived in the International House . . . And since I was at that time a German, of course I joined the German group, so I met quite a few nice young fellows, some of them studying at Columbia, some at NYU, some of them just living there and actually working for businesses down in Wall Street. Well I finally got together with two other fellows and we . . . took ourselves an apartment . . . and we had a lot more freedom there, and I lived there until I got married in 1935.”6

The day after his arrival, Mayr reported at the museum. He would later remember Frank

Chapman, the chairman of the department, being “away in Panama to do studies on tropical birds, but the rest of the department received me with open arms.”7 For an initial assignment, he recalled settling on, “a collection from an island called Rennell Island which had never been

5 Mayr, “16. Getting back to Europe. Invitation to work in New York,” Web of Stories, www.webofstories.com/play/114.

6 Mayr, “23. Arriving in New York,” Web of Stories, www.webofstories.com/play/121.

7 See Mayr, “23. Arriving in New York,” Web of Stories, www.webofstories.com/play/121.

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collected before and I knew from Hamlin, who had been there collecting, that it had all sorts of exciting things.”8 Mayr added, “Well, by the time I finished that collection, Chapman had returned from Panama and I went to him and I said, ‘Doctor Chapman, here I am. Now what do you want me to work on?’ And he looked at me with a sort of puzzled look and he said, ‘Why should I tell you? We hired you as a specialist on the birds of this region. You ought to know what to work on.’ Well, he was the boss, and having had the German background where the boss always told everybody below him what to do and what not to do, I was astonished and delighted with this freedom of the American Museum, and that was typical for everything I did at the

American Museum. It was a place where . . . where really everybody was tolerant of everybody else and [there was] a great deal of freedom and a great deal of pleasant interchange among us colleagues.”9

From an evolutionary point of view, Mayr would later admit:

It is indeed true that at the time when I started working at the American Museum of Natural History in 1931, that I was still a Lamarckian, believing in the inheritance of acquired characteristics and there were good reasons for that which are usually forgotten by the historians of genetics. When in 1900 Mendel was rediscovered, there were three geneticists who were particularly interested in the evolutionary aspects of genetics. . . . and all three of them rejected natural selection . . . This is what we, the naturalists, were fighting in particular. We all knew that speciation and evolution was a gradual process and since geneticists [at the time] believed it had to be by , we had to find a different answer for the gradualness. The only answer that was available was Lamarckian gradual acquisition of new characteristics by use and disuse, etc. . . .

For me, a crucial interaction was with an ornithologist at the American Museum of Natural History, namely James P. Chapin who had got a PhD at Columbia University in 1920 dealing with bird geography and ecology. He was, of course, fully familiar with the modern genetics of T.H. Morgan, who was in the same department. He and I had numerous conversations on evolution and he convinced me of the importance of the findings about the effects of small , etc. and

8 Mayr, “18. Working at the American Museum,” Web of Stories, www.webofstories.com/play/116.

9 Ibid.

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of the invalidity of any belief in inheritance of acquired characteristics. Most importantly, he helped me to see that gradual evolution that we naturalists had insisted on could be explained by the new genetics of Fisher and the other modern geneticists and didn’t require any of the saltational interpretations of the early Mendelians.10

Mayr added, “The one person from whom I learnt the most was undoubtedly Chapin . . . because he was the only one who understood modern genetics and who was a confirmed Darwinian. And

I at the time still had a good many Lamarckian inclinations and Chapin was the one who talked me out of them. And so by 1933 I too was a confirmed Darwinian, and I have been ever since.”11

Dr. Leonard C. Sanford was another influential person who Mayr described as “one of the key people in my life.” Mayr explained: “He was a wealthy trustee of the American Museum.

He was a medical doctor . . . [and] a sportsman . . . [who] originally had his own private collection which he eventually gave to the museum. But the most important thing is he was a friend of so many multi-millionaires . . . [and a] fascinating raconteur. Everybody loved him and he eventually had become very much interested in the museum, in the bird collection, in the growth of these collections.”12 Mayr referred to Sanford as “the driving power behind the

Whitney Expedition.”13 In fact, it was Sanford who secured support from the Whitney family to

10 “Interview with Ernst Mayr,” BioEssays 24 (2002): 960. Saltation refers to abrupt evolutionary changes resulting from large-scale mutations.

11 Mayr, “18. Working at the American Museum,” Web of Stories, www.webofstories.com/play/116. See also Ernst Mayr, “How I Became a Darwinian,” in The Evolutionary Synthesis: Perspectives on the Unification of Biology, eds. Ernst Mayr and William B. Provine (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1980), pp. 413–423.

12 Mayr, “20. Doctor Leonard C. Sanford,” Web of Stories, www.webofstories.com/play/118. Bock reports, “A brief, but good impression of Sanford can be obtained from “The Talk of the Town” in the June 3, 1950 New Yorker, in which the writer described his experience in Ernst Mayr’s office in the AMNH with Sanford, Mayr and J. L. Hallstrom, an Australian industrialist who presented the museum with its first specimen of the ribbon-tailed bird of paradise . . . in Dr. Sanford’s name.” Walter Bock, “Ernst Mayr, Naturalist: His Contributions to Systematics and Evolution,” Biology & Philosophy 9 (1994): 275.

13 Mayr, “Reminiscences,” p. 177.

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finance Mayr’s salary to study and publish on the expedition’s collections. Bock considered that,

“In many ways, Sanford is the knight in shining armor of this tale.”14

Regarding Sanford’s central role in the AMNH, Mayr added:

It was quite well known in New York circles that Sanford was soliciting anybody to get money for the bird department at the American Museum. My colleague Murphy once had a cocktail with Sanford in the University Club when one of Sanford’s buddies walked by and whispered to Murphy, “Don’t give him a cent more then $10,000.” Actually, Sanford never wanted anything for himself. His great ambition was to build up the collection of the American Museum and he was unbelievably successful in this ambition.15

Sanford was in competition with Dr. Thomas Barbour, his friend and director of the

Museum of Comparative Zoology at Harvard, to see which “museum would eventually have the better collection.” Mayr remembered this rivalry: “Well that spurred Sanford to the ultimate efforts and in no time at all did he build up a collection that vastly outranked the Tom Barber’s

[sic] collection at the Museum of Comparative Zoology. And of course he relied on me to always tell him where to get another collection and where there was an area when an expedition should be sent, and he was most anxious to have the collections worked out and so he was very pleased with me for producing so many papers.”16 Mayr would publish his first paper on the American

Museum collections only two months after arriving, completing twelve in his first year.

Sanford and Mayr developed a close relationship. Mayr recalled, “eventually he took me on as if I was another son of his and he was absolutely marvelous to me. . . . And it was really

14 Walter Bock, “Ernst Mayr at 100: A Life Inside and Outside Ornithology,” in Ornithological Monographs 58 (2005): 5.

15 Quoted in Haffer, p. 101.

16 Mayr, “20. Doctor Leonard C. Sanford,” Web of Stories, www.webofstories.com/play/118. Robert Cushman Murphy, considered “the number two man in the department,” noted that Sanford “particularly enjoyed possessing things which the other fellow did not have and partly because the other fellow did not have them. If he could acquire for us an excessively rare bird, that was splendid; but if he also knew that his friend Tom Barbour . . . could not get a specimen of the same bird, then Sanford’s joy was doubled and redoubled!” Quoted in Mary LeCroy, “Ernst Mayr at The Museum of Natural History,” Ornithological Monographs 58 (2005): 33.

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absolutely marvelous how he . . . he . . . really I can say how he loved me and looked out after me. Well, in a way, this could have been a problem for me, because . . . when I moved to

Harvard [in 1953] . . . I went to his competing institution, and I couldn’t have accepted the job in

Harvard if Sanford had still been alive.”17

Mayr further recalled how, back in 1934: “I developed a medical problem and on 13th of

April my left kidney had to be removed. Sanford could not have been more solicitous if he had been my own father. He continued to inquire about me, and as soon as I was mobile he invited me to his home in New Haven to spend some days there to recover even more, also under the care of Mrs. Sanford, a lovely lady. After that he sent me to his trout fishing camp in the

Catskills . . . taking care of all my expenses, etc. And in 1944 it was he who went to the director finding out how strange it was that I had never been made a full curator when several younger people with less distinction had been promoted to that rank. Needless to say, I was likewise promoted within half an hour.”18

Sanford’s support also proved critical for raising money to construct the American

Museum’s Whitney Wing, intended to house the Ornithology Department’s “large incoming collections and new public galleries.” His relationship with the Whitney family proved productive time and again, especially when Walter Rothschild wished to sell his private collection (the largest in the world) due to debts accrued under mysterious circumstances.

Sanford was a friend of both Rothschild and Stresemann, and once he was able to secure the quarter-of-a-million-dollar donation needed, he purchased Rothschild’s 280,000-specimen collection and had it packed and shipped to New York.

17 Mayr, “20. Doctor Leonard C. Sanford,” Web of Stories, www.webofstories.com/play/118.

18 Quoted in Haffer, p. 101.

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The mysterious circumstances surrounding Rothschild’s difficulties deeply affected

Mayr’s career. Rothschild, of course, had funded much of the initial leg of Mayr’s expedition to

New Guinea, which Rothschild “proclaimed . . . a triumph,” for it “yielded 7,000 specimens for the modest sum of £1,017.”19 With Hartert soon to retire, Rothschild considered Mayr a possible successor at Tring, that is, until his personal finances were compromised. At that point, hiring anyone was out of the question.

In her essay describing Mayr at the American Museum, Mary LeCroy, a research associate working with the AMNH, writes, “At the time, AMNH staff believed that the sale had to do with taxes that the British Government was demanding and that Rothschild did not have the cash to pay. Only after Miriam Rothschild published a biography of her uncle did we learn that he had been blackmailed for 40 years.”20 According to Miriam Rothschild, (herself an accomplished biologists and author), the peeress hounding Rothschild proved to be “a charming, witty, aristocratic, ruthless blackmailer who at one time had been Walter’s mistress, and aided and abetted by her husband, had ruined him financially.”21 Apparently, Rothschild feared that

“news of the indiscretion . . . might so shock his mother as to kill her. In fact she proved hardy, living to the advanced age of ninety-one, long enough for the blackmailer to ruin Walter almost entirely.”22

19 Tim Flannery, “A Bird’s-Eye View of Evolution,” review of The Birds of Northern Melanesia: Speciation, Ecology, and Biogeography, by Ernst Mayr and , The New York Review of Books 49, June 27, 2002, accessed June 1, 2012, http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2002/jun/27/a-birds-eye-view-of-evolution/; Miriam Rothschild, Dear Lord Rothschild: Birds, Butterflies and History (Philadelphia: Balaban Publishers, 1983), p. 302.

20 LeCroy, p. 40.

21 Rothschild, p. 92. Miriam Rothschild added, “circumstance has imposed restrictions upon me as a biographer, for there are certain confidences I cannot disregard. Thus I feel compelled to respect Walter’s desire to keep the identity of the blackmailing couple secret – and I must reflect in silence upon the fact that retribution on an unimaginable scale descended on the surviving member of this unsavory pair” (M. Rothschild, p. xvi).

22 Flannery, “Bird’s-Eye View”; Rothschild, p. 139.

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Mayr described that the “great strength” of Rothschild’s collection “was in Australia,

South Sea Islands, [and] – all these were areas that [the] American museum had nothing and . . . nobody on the staff there had any knowledge of this area. So, lo and behold, all of a sudden, the American Museum was forced to hire me as a curator and in the second year of the non-renewable contract I was appointed Associate Curator of the Rothschild-Whitney collections.”23 He added, “Even though it had looked at first as if the titled lady had prevented me from becoming curator of the Rothschild Collection, by a twist of fate she was ultimately the cause of my appointment as the curator of the Whitney-Rothschild Collection, this time in New

York, which is a university town [unlike Tring, the town where Rothschild held his collection].

And indeed, the presence of Columbia University was of great importance, not only for my own development, but also for the utilization of the Whitney-Rothschild collection by others.”24

Mayr readily acknowledged that the “importance of this well-ordered collection . . . went far beyond ornithology. It represented a matchless material for the study of the origin of organic diversity. Realizing this, I took up contact with the Zoology Department at Columbia University, where I met Professors F. Schrader and L. C. Dunn, and various younger geneticists.”25 Tim

Flannery, a prominent Australian paleontologist and environmentalist, described how, over the next twenty years, Mayr “immersed himself in the specimens and records in New York, describing nearly 450 new species and subspecies of birds – more than any other living

23 Mayr, “19. Acquiring Lord Rothschild’s collection,” Web of Stories, www.webofstories.com/play/117.

24 Mayr, “Reminiscences,” p. 178.

25 Ibid., 178. Haffer noted that it was through the University of Connecticut that Mayr came in regular contact with geneticists: “Early in his work on South Sea island birds, Mayr encountered several cases of conspicuous geographic variation in sexual dimorphism and corresponded about hormonal and/or genetic control of bird plumages with Walter Landauer at the University of Connecticut at Storrs who worked on such problems with chickens. He introduced Mayr to L. C. Dunn, geneticist at the Department of Zoology of Columbia University (New York), in late 1931 or early 1932, and from then on Mayr participated at first occasionally and later regularly, in the genetics seminars” (Haffer, p. 132).

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researcher. Indeed it was this unparalleled richness of material that led Mayr to his greatest discoveries in evolutionary theory.”26

Mayr would also recall how his position at the AMNH likely saved him from a dark fate.

He noted that, during his early years at the museum, back in Germany “the Communists and the

Nazis were fighting, and the Weimar Republic was trying to hang on, and there was a lot of turmoil. I came to America in January of 1931 and although my position at the American

Museum of Natural History was a temporary one, I was very anti-Nazi. So there was no way I could return. Fortunately, the museum bought the greatest bird collection in the world from Lord

Rothschild in England – 280,000 bird skins – and they needed a curator, so it immediately dropped into my lap.”27

Birding in the USA

Among those colleagues at the AMNH closer to his age, Mayr described the “number two man in the department,” Robert Cushman Murphy, as “the world’s leading specialist in oceanic birds.” In addition,” said Mayr, “he was an outstandingly successful speaker . . . He had a command of the English language, both in writing and in speaking, that is achieved by very few people. He had the great kindness to criticize my first manuscripts and I learned from him a great deal about how to write well in English.”28 Mayr had earlier met Murphy at the Berlin

Museum when Ernst was working there as a volunteer assigned to assist Murphy during a visit.

They had also corresponded while Mayr worked with the Whitney South Seas Expedition, as

Murphy served as the project’s general manager from New York.

26 Flannery, “Bird’s-Eye View.” See also Mark V. Barrow, Jr., A Passion for Birds: American Ornithology After Audubon (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1998).

27 Michael Shermer and Frank J. Sulloway, “The Grand Old Man of Evolution: An Interview with Evolutionary Biologist Ernst Mayr,” Skeptic 8 (2000): 77.

28 Mayr, “Reminiscences,” p. 177.

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Mayr later recalled a humorous exchange between himself and Murphy shortly after arriving at his new job:

[Back at the Berlin Museum] I worked in Stresemann’s graduate student lab surrounded by a gang of PhD candidates of about my age. At the AMNH I was by almost a generation, the youngest staff member. After I had been there a week or two, Murphy came to my little cubicle and asked me jovially:

“Well, Ernst, how do you like it here?”

“Oh,” I said, “everything is just wonderful. The only thing I miss is that there are no young people here.”

At this, Murphy pulled himself up to the full 6 feet and 7 inches of his stature and asked in deliberate slang, “Well, ain’t I young?”

As I later calculated, he was all of 44 years old, and seen from my present perspective [in 1997], he had every right to think he was still very young.29

Mayr did meet people closer in age to himself among the graduate students and young professionals living at the International House, and among the naturalists at the Linnaean

Society, a well-established local bird club. It was there he met an enthusiastic group of birders who formed their own select group, the Bronx County Bird Club (BCBC). John Farrand explained in a historical essay published in the journal, American Birds, “The BCBC had two unwritten membership requirements: you had to live in the Bronx, and you had to be good.”30

Mayr had his own memories of the BCBC: “The Bronx County Bird Club was . . . [an] informal gathering of about seven young – originally teenage, later in their early twenties – ornithologists, bird watchers, who . . . none of them was an academic, but they were having a wonderful time and they loved to get together. . . . And the Bronx had . . . [an] interesting reputation around the country and particularly in New York. Now, I was also a member of the

29 Ibid., p. 176.

30 John Farrand, Jr., “The Bronx County Bird Club: Memories of Ten Boys And an Era That Shaped American Birding,” American Birds 45 (1991): 377.

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Bronx County Bird Club, not having been born in the Bronx, but so I was made an honorary member. And another honorary member was Roger Tory Peterson [the famed author of Field

Guide to Birds of North America], and a third honorary member was Bill Vogt [who later served as editor for Audubon Magazine]; we were the three honorary members. Well, we went together for Christmas censuses and . . . [often] came together again. It was just a . . . somewhat rowdy group of youngsters who were having a wonderful time.”31

Farrand described how for the BCBC members: “The major event for those who stayed in

New York was the arrival of Ernst Mayr. . . . He was eager to learn about American birds, and the Bronx boys were just as eager to teach him. So ‘Ernie,’ who would one day be this century’s leading evolutionary theorist, was soon out in the field with the BCBC.” Farrand added:

The BCBC introduced Ernst to American birds, and he repaid them by introducing them to scientific ornithology. Several members attended Mayr’s monthly seminars for amateurs, where together they reviewed the ornithological literature – chiefly German, Joe [Hickey] recalls. “Everyone should have a problem,” Mayr was fond of saying, by which he meant a research topic. Before long, Dick Herbert was studying Peregrines on the Palisades and Irv Kassoy was spending nights with the Barn Owls in the old Huntington Mansion at Pelham Bay.32

M. Ross Lein noted that Mayr had a considerable impact on Joe Hickey, who expressed that “the greatest influence on me as an adult was Uncle Ernst.”33 Though Hickey already had a history degree from New York University and a good job at Consolidated Edison, Mayr convinced him to return to NYU to study biology at night school. Hickey went on to complete his master’s degree at the University of Wisconsin under the direction of the modern pioneer of the American environmental movement, . He pursued his Ph.D. at the University of Michigan with the respected ornithologist, Josselyn Van Tyne. In 1947 Hickey returned to

31 Mayr, “58. The Bronx County Bird Club,” Web of Stories, www.webofstories.com/play/156.

32 Farrand, pp. 379–80.

33 Ibid., p. 380.

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Wisconsin to join Leopold’s Department of Wildlife Management, following Leopold to become head of the department. Among his accomplishments, Hickey’s studies on the ecologically devastating impact of DDT pesticides and their effect on populations led to the falcon’s successful recovery in North America. Hickey also served as the AOU’s President in the early 1970s.34

Hickey recalled Mayr’s methodology for studying individual bird behavior, and how

“Ernst Mayr persuaded me to undertake this form of bird watching in the lower Hudson River

Valley.”35 Hickey confessed that, “in the past, my birding had been more or less a competition for rarities. Now, for the first time, I felt what I think Thoreau once called ‘the sweet comradeship of nature.’”36

Recalling his years with these young American bird watchers, Mayr later reminisced:

I have always, somehow or other, been a teacher. I love teaching, I loved . . . gathering people around me and teach. For instance, when I came to New York first, I went to the ornithological society there . . . and I found that all they did was report on early arrivals and rare birds and so there was no real ornithology, it was all a game of bird watching. And so I established what I called an ornithological seminar for those who would like to attend, and this was mostly young people, and what I did at these seminars, report on the current . . . ornithological literature. . . . I mean, I didn’t get paid for it, I didn’t get any . . . but I was so taken by the enthusiasm of these young fellows that this was enough of a reward for me.37

Mayr was also involved with the New York Linnaean Society, a more formal outfit than the Bronx birders, though many of the BCBC were members of both. The Secretary of the

Linnaean Society noted in his 1932–33 report that “perhaps the most noteworthy event in the

34 M. Ross Lein, “Ernst Mayr as a Life-Long Naturalist,” in Ornithological Monographs 58 (2005): 21. See also Stanley A. Temple and John T. Emlen, “In Memoriam: Joseph J. Hickey, 1907–1993,” The Auk 111 (1994): 450– 452.

35 Joseph James Hickey, A Guide to Bird Watching (NY: Oxford University Press, 1943), p. 80.

36 Ibid., p. 81.

37 Mayr, “57. Teaching Ornithology,” Web of Stories, www.webofstories.com/play/155.

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year’s history of the Society was the establishment, under the leadership of Dr. Ernst Mayr, of a monthly seminar for the abstracting and discussion of current papers concerned with field ornithology.”38 Mayr also served as officer and council member for the Society. Historian Mark

V. Barrow noted that Mayr’s tenure as editor of the Linnaean journal between 1934–1941 offered him “valuable experience that he put to use again when he founded the Society for the

Study of Evolution and began editing Evolution in the mid-1940s.”39

Mayr also encouraged a noted ornithologist, , to produce the monograph Studies in the Life History of the (1937, 1942) by raising support from the society to publish her two-volume work that established Nice as one of the world’s leading ornithologists.40 Mayr later wrote, “I have always felt that she, almost single-handedly, initiated a new era in American ornithology and the only effective countermovement against the list chasing movement. She early recognized the importance of a study of bird individuals because this is the only method to get reliable life history data.”41

Mayr began attending the American Ornithological Union (AOU) national meetings as well, not long after he arrived. His initial impressions of the society inspired him to introduce reforms based on his experience with Stresemann and the German Ornithological Society. Over the next few years Mayr allied with younger like-minded ornithologists to help revitalize the

AOU. Through their influence, the emphasis of American ornithology “slowly shifted in an entirely different direction” toward modern “ornithological practice and the rigor with which it is

38 Quoted in LeCroy, p. 45.

39 Barrow, p. 198.

40 Mayr, “Reminiscences,” p. 110.

41 Milton B. Trautman, “In Memoriam: Margaret Morse Nice,” The Auk 94 (1977): 438. Trautman wrote, “In a recent letter to me Ernst Mayr wrote of her work and especially of the Song Sparrow.”

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pursued.”42 In addition, during these years Mayr worked on a number of AOU committees.

Among his interests was the reduction of the “number of taxonomic topics . . . in favor of life history, behavior and ecology.”43 Mayr recollected:

The American Ornithologists Union is the biggest organization of American Ornithologists, founded in 1883, so quite distinguished and all that. But when I [first] looked at their journal . . . I was rather appalled at the low quality, and then I went to their first annual meeting in the fall of 1931 . . . and after I had sat through two or three or four of these lectures, one more uninteresting than the other, I decided I am wasting my time and I went to the library to read the current journals, or something like that. And . . . there was a lady sitting there, and it turned out that she had been to the meetings and had exactly the same experience and she was just too utterly bored to attend any more, and this his how I met Margaret Morse Nice . . .

So after a couple of years of the AOU, I was sick and tired of the way it was run. It was run by a clique in Washington DC, they were all federal employees in the Biological Survey or similar institutions and they had finagled the constitution in such a way that they could elect the treasurer and the secretary and the president and, and all the major fellows. And so I studied the constitutional aspects and I found a way to defeat them . . . [Then] at one of the particular meetings I suddenly had all the votes to defeat the Washington people and we certainly did defeat them thoroughly and the society was from that point taken over by the real ornithologists and not by these civil service people and Washington. And the AOU for many years . . . was an important force in ornithology.44

In the late 1950s, Mary would serve as AOU’s President, leading the “planning and invitation of international guest speakers for the Society’s 75th anniversary in October 1958.” Haffer concluded that, “through his activities in the AOU and the Linnaean Society of New York Mayr contributed effectively to ‘biologize’ North American ornithology.”45

42 Haffer, p. 123, 124. In 1937, Mayr introduced an ambitious list of reforms to upgrade the AOU’s scientific standing. See Barrow, 198–205, and Haffer, 122–126.

43 Haffer, p. 123.

44 Mayr, “60. The American Ornithologists’ Union,” Web of Stories, www.webofstories.com/play/158. In his recollection, Mayr specifically referred to Barrow’s A Passion for Birds as offering a thorough history of events.

45 Haffer, p. 126.

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Mayr later admitted that during his time at the AMNH: “[When] I was chained to my desk working very hard on these collections I probably learned a great deal more.” Though he never had the opportunity to return for another expedition to New Guinea he claimed, “I don’t think . . . that I . . . lost a great deal. I lost great deal of fun, but I didn’t lose very much scientifically, is at least my feeling.”46

Mayr did, however, take the opportunity for “active field work” closer to home. On one outing in the New York area, Ernest Holt led Mayr and a friend on an excursion into the Ramapo

Mountains. Mayr recalled how Holt, who had been on numerous birding expeditions to South

America in the 1920s, “knew all the trails there, and we would have a wonderful time. . . . The height of the fall coloring was already past because it was the middle of October, and it was quite sunny early in the morning. But toward noontime it clouded up and in the later afternoon it was obviously time to get back to the car. But Holt got confused with the trails and pretty soon was utterly at a loss which way to turn.”47 As it got dark and began to rain, the three made a makeshift camp with a large bonfire started by matches borrowed earlier in the day from a passing hiker. Mayr remembered, “We spent a miserable night being hot from the fire on one side and freezing in the back. . . . Poor Holt was terribly upset because he was married and he knew his wife would worry.” Fortunately, with the break of dawn, “in due time we found a way out to the road and eventually to our car. The story, of course, got around that the two famous explorers, Holt of Brazil fame and Mayr of New Guinea fame had gotten lost ‘in the outskirts of

New York City’ and this finally led to a write up of our adventure even in the New Yorker.”48

46 Mayr, “43. Chained to the desk,” Web of Stories, www.webofstories.com/play/141.

47 Quoted in Haffer, pp. 105–06.

48 Ibid., p. 106.

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In a New Yorker “Talk of the Town” piece credited to Joseph Kastner and the famed

James Thurber, the sophisticates of New York soon learned:

Our snickering authority . . . says that he himself knows both principles. They are no less than Mr. Ernest Holt, who but recently resigned as Director of Sanctuaries of the National Association of Audubon Societies, and Dr. Ernest Mayr [sic], of the American Museum of Natural History. Both of these gentlemen are explorers of courage and accomplishment. Mr. Holt has been way up the Amazon, and also fought his way close to the headwaters of the Orinoco. Dr. Mayr has browsed around in the middle of Africa and has spent a lot of time in lonely and unexplored Borneo and Samoa looking for strange birds.

Well, these two distinguished adventurers went out walking in the Ramapos a few Sundays ago. The Ramapos, you must know, are our mountains, poor things but our own . . . They are not very tall and not very mysterious or dangerous, but they razzle-dazzled Mr. Holt and Dr. Mayr, who had become so interested in looking for chickadees and fox sparrows and goldfinches that they just plain got lost . . .

The very next Sunday (they found their way out, of course, when it got day), they started for the same mountains, undaunted by their distressing experience of the week before. This time, however, Herr Doktor Mayr had remembered to take his compass with him. As soon as the two explorers got well into the mountains, he pulled out the compass to get his bearings. Out of the compass case fluttered a little piece of paper. Mr. Holt picked it up. On it was this sentence in Mrs. Mayr’s firm, competent handwriting: “If lost, please return to the Museum of Natural History.”49

While some of the details of The New Yorker’s report might invite questioning, the story does not appear to suffer for it!

In November 1931, Mayr took his first ornithological field trip outside the Northeast, to the Southeast – to southern Georgia and Florida. Mayr befriended , a wealthy research associate in the Department of , who subsequently invited Mayr, all expenses paid, to his family’s quail hunting reserve in Thomasville, Georgia. Archbold purchased tickets on a small airline that stopped in nearly every state along the way from New York. They

49 Joseph Kastner and James Thurber, “The Talk of the Town | Explorers,” The New Yorker, January 6, 1934, p. 17. According to Mayr’s biographer, Jürgen Haffer, Mayr married Gretel Simon on May 4, 1935, which would be more than a year after the article was printed. In other words, there was no “Mrs. Ernst Mayr” when The New Yorker published its essay, though the couple had been seeing each other for some time. Perhaps this is an instance of not letting details get in the way of a good “Talk of the Town” story! For information on Ernst and Gretel Mayr’s wedding, see Haffer, p. 102.

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persuaded the pilot to fly low over the coastal salt marshes to see the wintering waterfowl, eventually landing in Jacksonville where a limousine waited. At Archbold’s father’s estate they went on daily birding excursions, then a field trip to the Gulf Coast passing through Tallahassee on the way to Shell Point. Mayr commented on this trip in a letter to Stresemann: “With its sandy soil and extensive pine forests, the region reminded me of the surroundings of Berlin.

Ornithological tidbits included Aramus, Anhinga and, at the Gulf of Mexico, pelicans and many interesting songbirds.”50

In 1933, another coworker from a wealthy family, Sterling Rockefeller, invited Mayr to participate in a bird census on Kent Island, in the Bay of Fundy halfway between northern Maine and Nova Scotia. Rockefeller had recently purchased the island and intended to donate it to

Bowdoin College as a nature reserve and field station.51 Haffer reported that “They wished they could stay longer on Kent, but Mayr was anxious to get back to New York because Gretel Simon was due to leave for Germany. Two years later she became his wife.”52

Mayr first met Gretel at a Christmas party at the International House in 1932. Gretel was an exchange student attending Wheaton College in Norton, Massachusetts. She also happened to be the niece of a well-known Long Island family. Mayr proposed to Gretel the following year, not long after she returned to Germany from the United States. They spent the summer in

50 Mayr to Stresemann, 12 November 1931, quoted in Haffer, p. 111. Richard Archbold was the grandson of John Dustin Archbold, an early American oil refiner and competitor of John D. Rockefeller who later became his business associate. Richard Archbold was a lifelong zoologist who funded numerous expeditions to New Guinea for the AMNH, and founded the Archbold Biological Station in Lake Placid, Florida. See “Richard Archbold: Patron of Science,” Archbold Biological Station, accessed June 1, 2112, http://www.archbold- station.org/station/html/aboutus/r_archbold/archbold.html.

51 Nathaniel T. Wheelwright, “First, There Was an Albatross,” Bowdoin Magazine (Winter 2008): 28, 30. See also, http://www.bowdoin.edu/bowdoinmagazine/archives/features/004943.shtml, accessed June 1, 2112. John Sterling Rockefeller was the grandson of William Rockefeller, the younger brother and sometimes business associate of John D. Rockefeller.

52 Haffer, p. 112.

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Europe, where Mayr also attended the International Ornithological Congress held that year in

Oxford and presided over by Stresemann as President. The following spring Mayr returned and the couple married in a wedding ceremony officiated by Gretel’s brother, a minister. Her younger brother played the organ in the church where their father had previously been minister.

After a short honeymoon in the Alps, Ernst and Gretel returned to America aboard the famous ocean liner, the SS .53 A close friend remembered the pair as “a warm and understanding couple.”54

Haffer reported that after the birth of their second daughter, Susan, in 1937 (an older sister, Christa, arrived the previous year), Ernst and Gretel moved from their park side apartment in northern Manhattan to a modest home in a then still semi-rural area just across the Hudson

River in Tenafly, NJ. 55 Mayr and Gretel attempted a vegetable garden, but rabbits soon overran the project.56 Mayr recalled:

The natural surroundings were very attractive because . . . our house was in an old apple orchard . . . and in our garden . . . a pair of flickers nested. There were barred white quails in the back yard. It was real nature, and furthermore, I had to drive only ten minutes or fifteen minutes by car to get into . . . a big swamp, and other interesting areas and I could do a great deal of field work, ornithological field work, satisfying my instincts as a naturalist.

[I]n these years that I was there in Tenafly raising my family . . . I really had a wonderful time with one exception: every morning I had to spend one hour to get from there to the American Museum, and every evening I had to spend one hour

53 Ibid., pp. 102–03. The SS Bremen’s sister ship was the equally famous SS Europa. The Bremen won the Blue Riband as the fastest passenger liner on the transatlantic sea route. It must have been an exciting return voyage for the young couple.

54 John A. Moore, “Some Personal Recollections of Ernst Mayr,” Evolution 48 (1994): 11.

55 Their apartment was on 55 Payson Street across from Inwood Park (Haffer, p. 103).

56 Haffer, pp. 103–04.

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getting home again. So this seventeen years of commuting was something that I considered very much wasted time, which of course it also was.57

François Vuilleumier, one of Mayr’s former Harvard graduate students who was a curator at the

AMNH Department of Ornithology, also lived in Tenafly. A fellow ornithologist humorously recalled visiting him in Tenafly and wanting to see Mayr’s old home. The two colleagues affectionately referred to it as “The Shrine.”58

A Turn to Evolution

During Mayr’s time at the American Museum of Natural History, their bird collections were considered “the most comprehensive and most representative in the world and the

Department of Ornithology the foremost center of research.” The department occupied “the entire eight-story building” known as the Whitney Wing. Built in the early 1930s, the Wing officially opened in 1939 with the completion of the “adjacent ‘Rotunda,’” the Theodore

Roosevelt Memorial. The museum collections currently “comprise ca. 1 million specimens representing more than 99% of all known species of birds.”59 In 1993, while speaking at the 50- year Jubilee celebration of the founding of the Whitney Wing, Mayr reminisced: “My memories of that stage of the history of the bird department are still as vivid as if this had happened only 10 or 15 years ago. What an exciting event this move was, what a challenge, and what an opportunity! It was the first time in history that a museum had a special wing only for its bird

57 Mayr, “25. The pros and cons of living in Tenafly, New Jersey,” Web of Stories, www.webofstories.com/play/123.

58 François Vuilleumier, “In Memoriam: John Farrand, Jr., 1937-1994,” The Auk 112 (1995): 756. Tenafly is also the home of Walter Bock, another former graduate student of Mayr’s.

59 Haffer, p. 113. Haffer references Wesley E. Lanyon, “Ornithology at the American Museum of Natural History,” in Contributions to the History of North American Ornithology, ed. William E. Davis and Jerome A. Jackson Jr., Memoirs of the Nuttall Ornithological Club 12 (1995): 113–144; François Vuilleumier, “The American Museum of Natural History,” in Calypso Log 2001, pp. 30–35, Calypso Log 2002, pp. 12–15.

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department.”60 Summing up his years as an AMNH curator, Mayr stated, “Everything I have achieved in my professional life I owe to the opportunities I was given by this appointment.”61

Mayr’s study of the bird collection began to raise questions about their evolutionary history and mechanism of speciation, and that brought him in contact with a number of prominent geneticists. Haffer reported that while working “on the South Sea island birds,” Mayr

“encountered several cases of conspicuous geographic variation in sexual dimorphism and corresponded about hormonal and/or genetic control of bird plumages” with a geneticist at the

University of Connecticut “who worked on such problems with chickens.”62 Mayr remembered:

“While I was at the American Museum I was interested not only in bird , but also in other aspects of birds. For instance, I discovered that there was a geographic variation . . . in several species of these island birds . . . [and] this could not be due to the sex hormones as was at that time believed by everybody, it has to have another meaning. So I got in touch with [the geneticists at UConn] . . . and they in turn got me . . . in contact with Professor L. C. Dunn at

Columbia University, a geneticist who was interested in such questions. And Dunn invited me to come to seminars, to Columbia University . . . and I became more and more friendly with the department there.”63 At this time Mayr began incorporating genetic information into his own work. In 1941, L. C. Dunn invited Mayr to give the Columbia Jesup Lectures along with the botanist, . Beginning in 1943, Mayr began regularly attending the summer meetings with the geneticists at Cold Spring Harbor, Long Island.

60 Mayr, “Reminiscences,” p. 175.

61 Ibid., p. 179.

62 Haffer, p. 132.

63 Mayr, “26. Geographic species variation in birds,” Web of Stories, www.webofstories.com/play/124.

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Mayr’s interest in genetics brought him in contact with the famous Russian geneticist and evolutionary biologist, Theodosius Dobzhansky, who he first met at a Columbia lectures series in

1936. Mayr remembered, “Professor Dobzhansky arrived from California, from Pasadena . . .

[where he] worked in T. H. Morgan’s laboratory to give the Jesup Lectures in 1936. And I invited him to come to the Museum and study my wonderful cases of geographic speciation of birds and he was quite excited about this, and I was excited about his lectures, and we became good friends.”64 Though he had earlier corresponded with Dobzhansky and had then felt he had found “a geneticist who understands us taxonomists,” Mayr found himself particularly affected when “Dobzhansky gave the Jesup lectures . . . it was an intellectual honeymoon for me.”65

Dobzhansky’s influential book, Genetics and the Origin of Species (1937), offered Mayr a perspective on genetics and taxonomy similar to his own. In considering the significance of their friendship, philosopher of science Michael Ruse explained: “In Dobzhansky and his writings . . .

Mayr saw a kindred spirit.” 66

It was Dobzhansky who invited Mayr to Cold Spring Harbor to discuss genetics and evolution. They had previously discussed Mayr’s interest in “pair formation in birds, because this plays an important role in speciation.” Previously Mayr had got ahold of some finches and, with the help of an assistant, bred them to study pairing and imprinting, but the care of the animals became too complicated and the experiment was given up. Mayr recalled:

I told this to Dobzhansky, my friend Professor Dobzhansky [now] at Columbia University, and he said, “Look here, why don’t you do that with [the fruit fly] Drosophila? It’s much easier.” So, he said “I’m going to spend next summer,” this was the summer of 1943, “I’m going to spend next summer in Cold Spring Harbor

64 Mayr, “26. Geographic species variation in birds,” Web of Stories, www.webofstories.com/play/124. Dobzhansky’s presentation was technically not a Jesup lecture, but it shared similar themes.

65 Ernst Mayr, “How I Became a Darwinian,” in The Evolutionary Synthesis, p. 419.

66 Michael Ruse, “Booknotes,” Biology & Philosophy 9 (1994): 430.

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and why don’t you spend the summer there too and, and we do – we make this experiment? I introduce [you to] Drosophila technique and you do what you want to do.” And so it was done and then my family joined me too.67

Mayr returned the next summer when Dobzhansky was there, and Gretel and the girls became so enchanted the family returned every summer while they lived in New York. Mayr recalled that scientifically speaking, “The great advantage of Cold, Spring Harbor was that this was the time when molecular biology was being born and Cold Spring Harbor was one of the major places where it developed.”68

It was a few years earlier in 1939, not long after Dobzhansky moved from California

(where he had worked with Thomas Hunt Morgan’s Division of Biology at Caltech) to rejoin

Columbia, that Dobzhansky asked Mayr to participate as a speaker in a symposium he was organizing on “Speciation.” It was scheduled at meetings of the American Association for the

Advancement of Science in Columbus, Ohio, and jointly sponsored by the American Society of

Naturalists and the Genetics Society of America. Haffer reported that this opportunity provided

Mayr with “the first time that he generalized on aspects of geographic variation and speciation in birds using many of his examples from the Pacific islands and New Guinea.”69 Of the meetings,

Mayr recalled:

The person who talked before me was a famous geneticists with the name Sewall Wright who was famous for being a terrible speaker. And there we were let into this . . . auditorium, the biggest one that Ohio State had, and the platform was huge because they had . . . their orchestras played there and the audience seated three thousand people. And in front of that platform was a lectern with a fixed microphone. And Sewall Wright was the speaker just before me. He went to this microphone and he talked to it . . . into it a little bit, but then after a very short time

67 Mayr, “61. Experimenting with imprinting on hatchlings,” Web of Stories, www.webofstories.com/play/159.

68 Mayr, “62. Learning molecular biology at Cold Spring Harbor,” Web of Stories, www.webofstories.com/play/160.

69 Haffer, p. 189. Dobzhansky returned to Columbia after 10 years working at Caltech in Thomas Morgan’s genetics laboratory.

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he left his place, he went to the other end, the back of the . . . big platform where a series of blackboards were, because he’s a mathematician and he had to put mathematical formulae there. Nobody understood a word he said, and he talked to this blackboard all the time. Every once in a while he would go sort of halfway back to the . . . lectern and talk to the audience. They still didn’t hear him because he wasn’t anywhere near the microphone. Then he overstayed his time.

Anyhow . . . it was about as bad a lecture as you can imagine, and however the people had heard the famous Sewall Wright and most of them left after that lecture, but those who stayed heard me. And I was glued to the lectern and the microphone, I had beautiful slides – this was in the days before Kodachromes, but we had . . . an artist at the American Museum [of Natural History] who was very good at coloring glass slides, and he colored these beautiful glass slides of geographic variation in my south Sea Island birds. And I talked for only 25 minutes instead of, like Sewall Wright, about 45 minutes, and after Sewall Wright’s lecture, my lecture seemed to be a marvelous lecture. And a very short time afterwards Professor Dunn came up to me and said would I be willing to give some of the famous Jesup lectures at Columbia University?70

Mayr remembered, “I was scared stiff by the challenge to give these prestigious lectures, but what else could I do but accept? Normally the four Jesup lectures are given by a single lecturer, but fortunately this time there would be two speakers, I to give two lectures on speciation in animals, and Professor Edgar Anderson of Washington University, to give two lectures on speciation in plants. I was to get an honorarium of $500 but no royalties for my part of the book containing the lectures.”71 Fortunately for Mayr, “everything went fine except that

Edgar Anderson was manic depressive and he got into a depressive state and didn’t deliver his manuscript. So Columbia University Press came to me and they said could I expand my two

70 Mayr, “27. Lucky accidents that led to fame,” Web of Stories, www.webofstories.com/play/125. Haffer characterized Mayr’s account of his lecture presented after Sewall Wright’s as “spiced with a slight bit of malice” (Haffer, p. 189). Perhaps Mayr may have also resented the attention Dobzhansky paid to Wright, whose mathematical skills Dobhzansky prized. Furthermore, many of Dobzhansky’s and Wright’s metaphysical assumptions appeared to philosophically align in ways Dobzhansky’s and Mayr’s did not, as suggested by Dobzhansky’s and Wright’s essay contributions to John B. Cobb, Jr.’s and David Ray Griffin’s edited volume. See John B. Cobb and David Ray Griffin, eds., Mind and Nature: Essays on the Interface of Science and Philosophy (Washington, D.C.: University Press of America, 1978). For a comprehensive overview of the competitive relationship between Mayr and Wright in their scientific careers, see William Provine, Sewall Wright and Evolutionary Biology (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1986), pp. 477–484.

71 Mayr, “Reminiscences,” p. 179.

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lectures into a whole book, and well, I said, yes, I’ll do it, and I did, and that his how my book

Systematics and the Origin of Species originated.”72

Mayr described the importance of the book, as “one of the foundations of the evolutionary synthesis . . . still considered a classic and still being published.” He added:

When I look back on it now, many people consider it a book on evolution and indeed it was also a book of evolution; but it was at the same time very much a book on the principles and methods of systematics. And in fact it was the first pronouncement . . . the first real . . . certainly in English language . . . presentation of the so-called new systematics, that’s the species level systematics. And I introduced a lot of concepts which were certainly new to the American audience, even though some of them were things that I had learned from [Erwin] Stresemann and from Rensch and other European authors. . . .

And the other half, of course, was that I used this new knowledge of species and speciation to show how this contributes to an understanding of one of the two great areas of evolutionary biology . . . the origin of . . . organic diversity, of biodiversity and that includes the whole thing of species, speciation and a connection between that and macro-evolution, that means the evolution of higher categories, of higher types, of evolutionary novelties of . . . all the things that go over long periods of time and that, for instance, also interest the paleontologists.73

Walter Bock describes the significance of Mayr’s work in a similar way. He explains, for example, that the “title of this book was carefully chosen to place stress on systematics, to tie it into the title of Darwin’s 1859 book and to synchronize it with the title of Dobzhansky’s

Genetics and the Origin of Species.”74 Bock adds, “Systematics and the Origin of Species is a book written by a systematist for and about systematists. Mayr’s primary objective in writing it was to examine the origin of organic diversity, and in particular speciation, ‘From the viewpoint of a zoologist.’ For ‘zoologist,’ read ‘systematist.’”75

72 Mayr, “27. Lucky accidents that led to fame,” Web of Stories, www.webofstories.com/play/125.

73 Mayr, “28. Systematics and the Origin of the Species,” Web of Stories, www.webofstories.com/play/126.

74 Bock, “Ernst Mayr, Naturalist,” p. 296.

75 Ibid., pp. 296–97.

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In summarizing the specific importance of this work within the modern evolutionary synthesis, Bock comments:

In writing Systematics and the Origin of Species, Mayr’s primary intent was to bring decisively the ideas about the origin of organic diversity into the evolutionary synthesis. Mayr was interested in explaining a major set of phenomena on individual and geographical variation in natural populations, geographic variation, the species concept, speciation, the action of selection on populations, and the role of species in major evolutionary changes, these being ideas central in the research of systematists and indispensable for a full understanding of evolution. Variation in natural populations and population thinking were central Mayr’s 1942 book. Mayr did not deal with genetic theory because this had been thoroughly covered by Dobzhansky (1937) just a few years earlier. Mayr felt that his book was a continuation of the thinking expressed in Dobzhansky’s book, which is generally considered to be the beginning of the evolutionary synthesis (1937 to 1948).76

Mayr summarized his own view of this scientific achievement in a 1984 Omni interview:

“We had two main branches of evolutionary biology – the laboratory geneticists and the field naturalists – and each was highly ignorant of what the other knew. As a result, they were both one-sided in their explanations. The geneticists had always concentrated on a single pool.

They very much neglected what I call horizontal evolution; that is, species formation and geographic variation among groups separated by space and time. By contrast, the naturalist knew what happened to the organism in the real world. Bringing the two branches together led to a broader, more sophisticated, more mature interpretation of evolution, though it was still within the Darwinian framework.”77

76 Ibid., p. 297.

77 Ernst Mayr, “Darwinian Flights,” in The Omni Interviews, ed. Pamela Weintraub (New York: Omni Publications International, Ltd. 1984), p. 47. Mayr wrote a number of summaries analyzing the significance of the evolutionary synthesis. Good examples include his preface to the second edition of The Evolutionary Synthesis (1998), pp. ix–xiii, and his “Prologue: Some Thoughts on the History of the Evolutionary Synthesis,” pp. 1–48, offered in both the 1980 and 1998 edition. Mayr also discusses the synthesis in The Growth of Biological Thought (Cambridge: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1982), pp. 119–120, 567–570. See also Ernst Mayr, “What was the Evolutionary Synthesis.” Trends in Ecology and Evolution 8 (1993): 31–34.

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Mayr considered it unusual that many of the leading participants, such as Dobzhansky,

Julian Huxley, George Gaylord Simpson, and himself, “didn’t sit down together and forge a synthesis. We all had the same goal, which was simply to understand fully the evolutionary process.”78 Mayr continued: “Since we all worked in somewhat different areas of the field –

Dobzhansky in genetics, I in systematics, Simpson in , and Huxley in various areas of zoology – we approached it from somewhat different directions and therefore made the contribution that our particular specialized knowledge permitted. Prior to the synthesis, the people in various fields had specialized views that were often in conflict with those of others. By combining our knowledge, we managed to straighten out all the conflicts and disagreements so that finally a united picture of evolution emerged.”79

Nonetheless, Mayr gave special credit to “the achievement of a single person, Theodosius

Dobzhansky,” as “the architect of the first great bridge between the two camps. He was able to do this because he had the unique qualification of being a member of both camps,” the geneticists and naturalists.80 Mayr also mentioned that in 1936, when “the great evolutionist

Theodosius Dobzhansky was in New York to give the Jesup Lectures, I invited him to see the beautiful series of South Sea Island birds . . . which demonstrated geographic speciation so

78 Ibid.

79 Ibid. Mayr noted: “The impact of this synthesis was far greater than anybody had realized at first. The historian Betty Smocovitis has shown how it contributed to a unification of all of biology” (Ernst Mayr, “The Establishment of Evolutionary Biology as a Discrete Discipline,” BioEssays 19 (1997): 264). See also V. B. Smocovitis, “Unifying Biology: the Evolutionary Synthesis and Evolutionary Biology,” Journal of the History of Biology 25 (1992): 1–65; “Disciplining Evolutionary Biology: Ernst Mayr and the Founding of the Society for the Study of Evolution and Evolution (1939–1950)” Evolution 48 (1994): 1–8; “Organizing Evolution: Founding the Society for the Study of Evolution (1939–1950)” Journal of the History of Biology 27 (1994): 241–309; and Unifying Biology: The Evolutionary Synthesis and Evolutionary Biology (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1996).

80 Mayr, “Establishment of Evolutionary Biology,” p. 264.

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beautifully. He was greatly impressed and it contributed to his decision to discuss geographic speciation at length in his famous book Genetics and the Origins of Species published in 1937.”81

Mayr recalled how up to this time, “Evolution was really very much neglected. I mean, you would have a list of the different fields of biology and evolution would not be included.

There was no society for evolution; there was no journal dealing with evolution; most colleges and universities had no courses dealing with evolution, and those of us who were very much interested in evolution were quite dismayed about it and wondered what to do about it.”82

Historian of science Betty Smocovitis has pointed out how Dobzhansky’s publication of

Genetics and the Origin of Species, “served as a foundation for the consolidation of the network that would increasingly draw in a greater number of biologists.” For example, “Along with the consensus that evolutionists shared this common ground there simultaneously came a consensus that the new practices should be secured, sustained, and institutionalized through a collaborative and cooperative organization.”83 Dobzhansky’s previously mentioned “Species” symposium was an early effort that led to Mayr’s opportunity to present the Jesup lectures the following year at

Columbia University.84

Julian Huxley, the grandson of Darwin’s “Bulldog” Thomas Henry Huxley, was another leading architect of “the modern synthesis,” and was also credited with coining the term.85

Huxley attended Dobzhansky’s symposium while “visiting the United States on behalf of

81 Mayr, “Reminiscences,” p. 178.

82 Mayr, “70. The position of evolution in American science,” Web of Stories, www.webofstories.com/play/168.

83 Smocovitis, “Organizing Evolution,” p. 245.

84 See fn. 69.

85 Dobzhansky, Mayr, G. G. Simpson, G. Ledyard Stebbins, and Bernhard Rensch, and others are also credited among the leading architects, with Ronald Fisher, Sewall Wright, and J. B. S. Haldane providing the mathematical foundation in .

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European war efforts,” and encouraged Dobzhansky, Mayr, and other notable participants to form “an official society to study speciation.” This led to the establishment of “The Society for the Study of Speciation,” whose formation was announced in The American Naturalist in 1941.86

Alfred E. Emerson, an entomologist at the University of Chicago who “strongly encouraged interdisciplinary cooperation in his capacity as editor of Ecology (1930–1939),”87 became secretary for the new society and took responsibility for “issuing a questionnaire to gauge support for a cooperative organization that would serve as an informal information service, distributing notes, news, and bibliographies on recent work from laboratories and museums across the country.”88 Emerson wrote in 1941, that the “major field of interest is the dynamics of the origin of species,” and that there “would be no limitation on the inclusion of any phase of evolution that contributes to an understanding of the central problem of the origin of species.” He readily admitted that while it was not yet “desired” to establish a “more formal organization . . . the need [was] felt for an informal cooperative group of scientists willing to pass information from one to the other.”89 Emerson noted that there were many good ideas for developing the society’s future potential, and promised that the “secretary, within the limits of his time, will attempt to bring the constructive suggestions before the society for consideration and democratic action.”90 Unfortunately, the initial enthusiasm surrounding the society lost its momentum during the war, which “distracted further collaboration and interrupted international communications.”91

86 Ibid.

87 Joseph Allen Cain, “Common Problems and Cooperative Solutions: Organizational Activity in Evolutionary Studies, 1936–1947,” Isis 84 (1993): 6.

88 Smocovitis, “Organizing Evolution,” p. 246.

89 Alfred E. Emerson, “Evolution News,” The American Naturalist 75 (1941): 88–89.

90 Emerson, p. 89.

91 Smocovitis, “Organizing Evolution,” p. 248.

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Other informal groups of like-minded biologists with varying backgrounds also began to organize. One with the name “Biosystematics” developed in the San Francisco Bay Area, and it kept in contact with biologists on the East Coast.

A third initiative emerged in the New York area, centering on the American Museum and

Columbia University. Historian Joseph Cain has noted that, “Beginning around 1940, the core of this ‘New York Circle’ worked aggressively to construct a common-problems research community in evolutionary studies and to establish themselves as this community’s center.”92

Leaders of this group included Dobzhansky, Dunn, and Walter Bucher at Columbia, along with

Mayr and Simpson from the AMNH.93 Dunn played an important role “selecting speakers and choosing topics” for the influential Jesup lecture series, and for editing the Columbia

[University] Biological Series, which published these lectures in book form.94

Walter Bucher, a professor of geology and, in 1942, chair of the Division of Geology and

Geography at the National Research Council, encouraged Simpson and Dobzhansky to submit a proposal “to form an NRC-sponsored committee that would study common problems in paleontology and genetics and thus possibly fuse the two disciplines together.” Following

“Bucher’s initiative, a group of geneticists, paleontologists, and systematists met” later that year

“to form an evolutionary organization . . . which would help solve the common problems between genetics and evolution.”95 By 1944 the group became known as the “Committee on

Common Problems in Genetics, Paleontology, and Systematics,” functioning under the auspices

92 Cain, p. 10.

93 Smocovitis, “Organizing Evolution,” 249–50.

94 Ibid., 250.

95 Ibid., 251.

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of the National Research Council. It worked closely with biologists on both coasts. Mayr explained:

[The] organization established by the National Research Council, [was] a committee on the common problems. . . . [Its] primary [goal] was . . . to bring together the paleontologists with the other evolutionists. And then, again the war broke out and in order to keep some contact on the members I suggested an informal news bulletin going around where people could raise evolutionary questions which somebody else in this group then would try to answer. And I was the editor of this and I brought out, I think, four issues during the war and by the end of that time with Dobzhansky’s book out, my book out, and in England Julian Huxley having brought out a book and in Germany [Bernhard] Rensch having brought out a book, . . . and [George Gaylord] Simpson having brought out a book in 1944, it was becoming quite clear that this gap between the different camps of the evolutionists had now been closed, that they really were agreeing with each other, were talking the same language.96

The Founding of the Society for the Study of Evolution

In 1944, George Gaylord Simpson returned from WWII after a two-year tour of duty as an intelligence officer serving General Eisenhower in the Mediterranean Theater. For a period of time he also worked on General Patton’s staff in Sicily.97 Until Simpson returned in 1944, much of his chairmanship for the “Committee on Common Problems of Genetics, Paleontology, and

Systematics” was managed in absentia; Simpson credited Mayr as the actual head of the organization, the person who “kept it going.”98 In the Committee’s final mimeographed bulletin,

Simpson noted:

This series of bulletins, compiled and edited by Dr. Mayr who continues this task, has accomplished a great deal more than the expression of a few facts and opinions, useful as these have also been. From the whole series of letters in the bulletin there has emerged concrete evidence that a field common to the disciplines of genetics,

96 Mayr, “70. The position of evolution in American science,” Web of Stories, www.webofstories.com/play/168.

97 George Gaylord Simpson, Concession to the Improbable: An Unconventional Autobiography (New Haven, CT: Press: 1978), pp. 121–126.

98 Ibid., 130.

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paleontology, and systematics does really exist and this field is beginning to be clearly defined.99

Smocovitis points out: “By this time, too, the Columbia Biological Series [now featuring books from Dobzhansky, Huxley, Mayr, Simpson, and others] was beginning to reach the wider biological audience to garner further support and belief in the emergence of a common field of evolutionary studies. . . . But it was only after the war that major moves could be made to redirect available resources to the planning of major conferences and the formation of new societies. It was the editor of the bulletins, Ernst Mayr, who began to play the most active role in facilitating the communication that would lead to the founding of the central organ of the community, the Society for the Study of Evolution.”100

In his own recollections, Simpson’s concurred:

I was active among the founders and was the first president of this society . . . Ernst Mayr was the effective leader in the group that initially (before the war) was the informal Society for the Study of Speciation but that broadened its scope and changed its name to include all aspects of (organic) evolution when it was formally founded in March 1946. The society has held annual meetings ever since, but its main activity is the publication of the quarterly journal, Evolution: International Journal of Organic Evolution. This was started in 1947 with an enabling grant from the American Philosophical Society – I did arrange that. Mayr was the first editor and continued in that onerous position for some years.101

Mayr also recalled:

At the end of the war a group of evolutionists with Dobzhansky, myself [and others] . . . got together and managed, after overcoming numerous obstacles, to found the Evolution Society at the St. Louis meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) in June 1946. The founding meeting was

99 Introductory remarks by G. G. Simpson, Bulletin no. 4, November 13, 1944, in Smocovitis, “Organizing Evolution,” 252–53.

100 Smocovitis, “Organizing Evolution,” 252.

101 Simpson, Concession to the Improbable,” p. 129. Simpson wrote in a letter to Curt Stern, 20 June 1946: “My own feeling is that Ernst Mayr is the ideal man for this job. I am sure that he would do it very well, and he has done more than anyone else in laying plans for the Society and for the journal and is familiar with the problems and needs involved” (quoted in Smocovitis, “Organizing Evolution,” pp. 278–79, fn. 100.) The archives for the Society for the Study of Evolution are held at the Library of the American Philosophical Society, Philadelphia.

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attended by 59 people . . . [and it] was voted that this society’s purpose would be ‘the promotion of the study of organic evolution and the integration of the various fields of biology.’ A slate of officers, proposed by Dobzhansky and myself, was adopted with George Gaylord Simpson as president, and myself as secretary. . . . The new society voted to hold its next meeting during the December 1946 AAAS meetings.102

Mayr continued: “The time had come, I felt, and so did others, to found an evolution society to give a little more prominence to the field. And this has been written up in great detail, the steps by which this was accomplished by Joe Cain and by Betty Smocovitis. To make a long story short, we founded the society, [and] I became the first secretary to help bring people together.”103

Mayr investigated a variety of possibilities for publication, and with Simpson’s help, secured a grant from the American Philosophical Society, “for $3000 to get the journal going.

And we got the journal going. We had a lot of trouble first to get enough manuscripts because this was 1947, right after the war, and everybody . . . nobody had done any . . . done much research during the war. And however, we got over that”.104 Regarding the printing of the journal’s first issue, Mayr said, “The council voted it should be [a] printed edition of 500. And I was young and optimistic and idealistic and I-don’t-know-what-istic, and I said, ‘500, that’s much too few,’ and ‘it doesn’t cost very much more to order 1500.’ So I . . . without . . . well, actually in . . . in conflict with what the council had ordered, I ordered 1500 copies and everyone

102 Mayr, “Establishment of Evolutionary Biology,” pp. 264–65.

103 Mayr, “71. Founding the Evolutionary Society and establishing the journal,” Web of Stories, www.webofstories.com/play/169. See also Cain, “Common Problems and Cooperative Solutions: Organization Activity in Evolutionary Studies, 1936–1947,” Isis 84 (1993): 1–25; “Ernst Mayr as Community Architect: Launching the Society for the Study of Evolution and the Journal Evolution,” Biology and Philosophy 9 (1994): 387–427. For a list of Smocovitis’ works referenced by Mayr, see fn. 85.

104 Mayr, “71. Founding the Evolutionary Society and establishing the journal,” Web of Stories, www.webofstories.com/play/169. Mayr received early complaints that his selection of articles leaned heavily to genetics, a situation he actively sought to resolve. As a sample of one response, Joseph Cain noted Mayr sent at least twelve versions of the following letter to various officers and contributors: “It is planned to keep the scope of the journal as broad as possible. The disproportionate representation of Drosophila in the first is due to a shortage of manuscripts in other fields. This will change since a considerable number of papers from the fields of anthropology, paleontology, and taxonomy have been promised to the Editor.” Mayr to J. B. S. Haldane, 6 August 1947, quoted in Cain, “Mayr as Community Architect,” p. 416.

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thought I was crazy. And about four years later these extra thousand copies had all been sold, because when the journal finally became well known, better established, all the libraries had to get that journal.” As a result, “the founding of the evolution society and the establishment of the journal was a great success and now you will find that many of the old departments of biology or zoology are called biologies of evolutionary and environmental biology, or something like that.”105

After the war, Princeton University hosted a number of colloquia as part of its

Bicentennial Conferences series. One invitee was the International Conference on Genetics,

Paleontology, and Evolution, which held its final symposium there on January 2 and 3, 1947, only a week after the “First Annual Meeting at Boston” of the Society for the Study of Evolution, whose “success and permanence seem to be assured.”106 Smocovitis notes, “The mood of the conference was optimistic and cheerful, if not ebullient. Members of the committee had reason to rejoice as they brought in a new year: the brutal war was over, a new journal-issuing society for the study of evolution had been established, and participants could finally agree that a convergence between their disciplines had taken place.”107 Smocovitis notes too that the edited volume from the proceedings suggested that, “The end result of this fusion was a new and higher type through a process of synthesis: the synthetic type of evolutionist. What had begun as a disparate set of moves to reconfigure evolutionary practice and integrate paleontology, genetics, and systematics had led to the emergence of a synthetic evolutionary practice. In fact, the

105 Mayr, “71. Founding the Evolutionary Society and establishing the journal,” Web of Stories, www.webofstories.com/play/169.

106 George Gaylord Simpson’s statement announced at the Princeton Meetings was quoted in Smocovitis, “Organizing Evolution,” p. 283. Originally cited in Glenn L. Jepson, forward to Genetics, Paleontology, and Evolution, eds. Glenn L. Jepson, Ernst Mayr, and George Gaylord Simpson (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1949), p. viii.

107 Smocovitis, “Organizing Evolution,” p. 284.

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meetings were such a celebration of convergence of disciplines that they came down in the history of evolutionary biology as simply the ‘Princeton meetings.’”108

Mayr similarly recalled that, “1947 was a very important year for evolutionary biology in the United States. In January, the so-called Princeton Conference took place, which wound up the work of the National Research Council Committee on the Common Problems of

Paleontology, Genetics and Systematics. This meeting showed that a synthesis indeed had taken place and that a real consensus had been achieved among geneticists, paleontologist and systematists.”109 On another occasion Mayr stated that, “Everybody at the meeting agreed with everybody. There . . . seemingly were no disagreements anymore. In fact some people wrote to me and said there are no more disagreements, . . . To the outside world that’s indeed the way it looked.”110

The Biology of Birds Takes Flight; Mayr Migrates North

As a humorous aside in the history of science, during these years Ernst Mayr wrote a scientific paper with a leading American ornithologist by the name of Bond – James Bond, and the namesake of the famous British secret agent (this will shortly be explained.) In his humble life as a zoologist, Bond authored the definitive Checklist of Birds of the West Indies (1936,

1947, 1950, 1956).111 Ernst Mayr collaborated with Bond “to combine information from the two fields of morphology and field ornithology in order to arrive at a more natural classification” of

108 Ibid., p. 285. Smocovitis referenced H. J. Muller, “The Reintegration of the Symposium on Genetics, Paleontology, and Evolution,” in Genetics, Paleontology, and Evolution, ed. Glenn L. Jepsen, Ernst Mayr, and George Gaylord Simpson (1949; repr. New York: Atheneum, 1963), p. 422.

109 Mayr, “Establishment of Evolutionary Biology,” p. 265.

110 Mayr, “72. Disagreement between geneticists and naturalists,” Web of Stories, www.webofstories.com/play/170. Mayr noted that through the 1970s, geneticists continued to insist the gene was the target of selection. Since then, naturalists’ emphasis on the individual as a whole as the target of selection, won out.

111 Kenneth C. Parkes, “In Memoriam: James Bond,” Auk 106 (1989): 718–720.

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the “Swallows, Hirundinidæ.”112 Mayr recalled, “I saw that some swallows were classified on . .

. primarily I guess their color. . . . And so I reorganized the swallows . . . [with] the help of a worker on American birds, and South America in particular, James Bond – incidentally, he gave the name to the famous James Bond – and between James Bond and myself we worked out the classification of the swallows primarily on the nesting habits. . . . This classification based on behavior has now been almost completely confirmed.”113

Ian Fleming, the creator of the fictional secret agent, was a life-long bird watcher who considered the ornithological Bond’s field guide, the Birds of West Indies, “one of the Bibles of his youth.”114 He explained in a letter to James Bond’s wife, Mary, that he had used her husband’s name because he felt, “this brief, unromantic, Anglo-Saxon and yet very masculine name was just what I needed.”115 The Bonds had begun to suspect the existence of an alter ego after reading “a London newspaper review of [Bond’s] revision of the field guide” containing

“cryptic reference” to “sadomasochism, Smith and Wesson guns, and other aspects of a life” suggesting a “dashing, womanizing counterspy.”116 Fleming apologized, writing to Mary that in return, “I can only offer you or James Bond unlimited use of the name Ian Fleming for any purposes you may think fit”!117

112 Ernst Mayr and James Bond, “Notes on the Generic Classification of the Swallows, Hirundinidæ,” Ibis 85 (1943): 334.

113 Mayr, “42. Re-classifying swallows with James Bond,” Web of Stories, www.webofstories.com/play/140.

114 George T. Hellman, “The Talk of the Town | ‘Bond’s Creator,’” The New Yorker, April 21, 1962, p. 32.

115 The Associated Press, “James Bond, Ornithologist, 89; Fleming Adopted Name for 007,” The New York Times, February 17, 1989, p. D19.

116 Parkes, p. 719. The real James Bond married Mary Fanning Wickham Porcher Lewis. She was the “widow of a prominent Philadelphia lawyer . . . [and] a published poet and novelist” who “subsequently wrote several books about her life with James Bond,” the ornithologist.

117 Associated Press, “James Bond, Ornithologist, 89.”

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Perhaps Mayr would have welcomed a superhero’s help after he had taken charge of opening the American Museum’s “Biology of Birds” exhibit for the recently built Whitney

Wing. Frank Chapman, the chairman of the ornithology department, assigned Mayr responsibility for planning the Sanford Hall, an entire floor dedicated in honor of the AMNH patron to whom Mayr felt personally indebted. Mary LeCroy notes, “The Sanford Hall of the

Biology of Birds . . . gave expression to Mayr’s concept of the museum hall as a teaching tool and fit right into Chapman’s goal of informing the public. A synoptic series of more then 1,000 specimens of birds of the world was planned, with alcoves presenting the latest results of studies of bird biology – behavior, migration, morphology, nesting and so forth . . . Each member of the staff contributed material for the alcoves, but Mayr was responsible for coordinating it into a whole.”118

In the museum’s journal, Natural History, Mayr promoted “The New Sanford Hall,” as a place where “Art and science join to create the world’s most comprehensive and fascinating series of exhibits on the broad subject of how birds live.” He stated, “The museum of today wants to be not only attractive but also instructive. These principles are applied to the Sanford

Hall.”119 Mayr concluded by saying:

A trip to Sanford Hall is really necessary to appreciate the vast range of the exhibits it contains. Courtship and display, reproduction and egg-laying, parental care and feeding, birds and their environment are among the other topics presented [in addition to prehistoric species and their extinction, morphology, migration, and evolution] in an effort to acquaint the student, as well as the layman, with the principal aspects of bird life. For anyone already interested in observing birds, the Hall will provide a broad background of understanding, and [for beginners] . . . it

118 LeCroy, p. 42. LeCroy reported that Mayr’s exhibit remained on display until 1999 when a “geology hall in connection with a new planetarium building” replaced it.

119 Ernst Mayr, “The New Sanford Hall,” Natural History 57 (1948): 248.

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would be hard to recommend a more stimulating introduction than these attractive, comprehensive, and skillfully designed exhibits.120

Years later, Mayr would reflect on the museum’s decision “to have a hall on the biology of birds, to be dedicated to Doctor Sanford.” It seemed a begrudging confession:

This was one of the most thankless jobs that I ever had in my life, because nobody cooperated and I had much too small a budget and I had too tight a schedule. And everything always went wrong, and less and less money and less and less time was available. And finally, by hook and crook on the 25th May, or whatever the date was, of 1948, I opened the Hall. And it . . . it had a lot of very interesting things because I had all sorts of ideas to demonstrate how birds fly. I had good model- makers . . . but my colleagues were hopeless.

. . . And there were many other aspects [of the] biology birds illustrated in this hall, but in a week after that I had – and most people don’t know that and don’t realize it – I had really what . . . what was a nervous breakdown and I had trouble with my heart, both tachycardia and arrhythmia. I felt weak and I took several years before I felt reasonably normal again, and I still have difficulties with my heart occasionally, but they all date back to that breakdown. It was the release after this intense stress and so forth, and finally the thing was opened up and I must have let myself go and, and had this . . . this breakdown. So I always think back with . . . with sort of horror to the time that I was struggling with that hall.121

Haffer noted, “In 1948, Mayr suffered a stress-related nervous heart condition expressing itself in irregular heart beat together with general weakness. He had to take a complete rest for about a month. . . . Mayr eventually overcame the condition, but it took more then 5 years. After

1950, he was again quite healthy.”122 In September 1948, Mayr wrote in a letter to Stresemann that “the opening of the Sanford Hall, as well as various other exciting events at the museum”

120 Ibid., 254.

121 Mayr, “51. Development of the Sanford Hall of Birds,” Web of Stories, www.webofstories.com/play/149. Undoubtedly the stress of the opening could have led to strained relations. But Haffer also noted that Mayr could at times be quick to judgment when speaking of even older colleagues, to the point that Stresemann admonished Mayr in a letter dated 13 October 1937: “I almost jumped out of my shoes when you mentioned to Delacour that you consider Wetmore a dry schoolmaster with a small mind . . . By this you help nobody, but you may harm yourself badly. Bet that Wetmore will hear of it within a short while? . . . Why make enemies unnecessarily?” Mayr replied to Stresemann on 6 November 1937: “I thought I had improved which, however, apparently is not the case! I shall take pains over it in the future!” (Quoted in Haffer, 284).

122 Haffer, p. 302.

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had been among the possible contributing factors to his health setback.123 During that time Mayr had also been involved with the founding of the Society for the Study of Evolution and launching the journal Evolution, as well as editing a volume (with Jepsen and Simpson) on the proceedings of the Princeton meetings (Genetics, Paleontology, and Evolution, 1949). Further, Ernst and

Gretel were actively involved assisting and sending C.A.R.E. packages to colleagues and relatives in postwar Europe, while negotiating their own citizenship status with the US

Immigration Department.124 Months later Mayr would remark in another letter to Stresemann,

“Perhaps Delacour can tell you . . . what chicaneries I have had to go through. No wonder I have a nervous heart!”125

As an authority on evolutionary biology, Mayr felt enthused by invitations from institutions and universities to serve as a lecturer or visiting professor. Mayr recalled that for the

1949 spring session, “I got an invitation to go to the University of Minnesota as a visiting professor. . . . By that time Chapman was retired, Murphy was chairman, and most of the material of the Whitney collection had been worked out, so I got this leave of absence . . . Also they didn’t have to pay for me during that time . . . [during a] leave of absence to go to

Minnesota where a Professor Minnich sort of took care of me.”126

Dwight E. Minnich, an entomologist who was the chairman of the Department of

Zoology at the University of Minnesota, assisted Mayr with his initial experience teaching a full semester. Of this new venture, Mayr recalled, “Of course I wasn’t familiar yet with all the tricks

123 Mayr to Stresemann, 20 September 1948, quoted in Haffer, p. 302.

124 Haffer, p. 137. For information on Mayr’s experience with the US Immigration Department, see Haffer, p. 251.

125 Mayr to Stresemann, 17 March 1950, quoted in Haffer, p. 302.

126 Mayr, “52. Invitation to become visiting professor at the University of Minnesota,” Web of Stories, www.webofstories.com/play/150. The Web of Stories transcript misspells Minnich’s name as Mennig. For the proper spelling, see Haffer, pp. 267–68.

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of a lecturer and after I’d talked for about fifteen minutes I used up all the material in my first folder.” Though Mayr attempted to slow himself down, he ended up going through three folders of material in the first class with 18–20 yet to go, and found himself “in total panic,” wondering,

“Where am I going to get the material for all these lectures?” Mayr looked to Professor Minnich for help. Mayr recalled, “He laughed and he said, ‘Well, that seems to be happening to a lot of beginners . . . Well, there’re a lot of little rules you have to learn. First of all, don’t believe that if you said something once that the students have gotten it. You’ve got to say it two and three times, and that will use up some time.’” Minnich shared “a lot of other little hints,” like drawing a “tabulation with columns and . . . and lines and all that,” on the blackboard and then filling it in.127 Mayr recalled Minnich saying, ‘If you make the right kind of table, you’ll use up fifteen minutes and keep the class fully busy all the time.” Mayr remembered having possibly used this trick on one occasion. Nonetheless, Minnich’s advice proved invaluable to Mayr, who professed,

“Professor Minnich helped this young inexperienced first-time teaching professor through a crisis.”128

Haffer reported that the “manuscript for [Mayr’s] course on ‘Evolution and Speciation’ at the University of Minnesota in 1949 . . . [turned into] . . . the very first draft for a new book which eventually appeared in 1963”: Animal Species and Evolution.129 Mayr confided in a letter to Stresemann, “My visit to Minnesota was very stimulating and has induced me to consider whether or not I should take up teaching more seriously. Life in a university town would certainly be more pleasant then in New York and far less strenuous than the daily commuting.

127 Mayr, “52. Invitation to become visiting professor at the University of Minnesota,” Web of Stories, www.webofstories.com/play/150.

128 Haffer, p. 260.

129 Ibid., p. 275.

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However, it would break Dr. Sanford’s heart if I should leave here, and I don’t expect at the present time to make any changes, even though I had two additional offers.”130 Mayr also considered, “One of the reasons why I have been tempted to go into teaching . . . [is] I feel it is very necessary to provide some counterbalance against the strictly physiological, bio-chemical trend in our zoology departments.”131

Mayr would also come to teach as a lecturer at the Philadelphia Academy of Science, and in the early 1950s, as an adjunct professor at Columbia University (forty blocks north of the

AMNH), where he served on a number of graduate committees. In addition, Haffer listed Mayr as a visiting professor at the University of Pavia, Italy in 1951.132

In 1952, Mayr received an offer to teach a course on species and speciation from the

University of Washington, where he taught on alternating days with “Richard Goldschmidt, a famous German biologist” who “opposed” aspects of the Darwinian consensus established during the evolutionary synthesis. The two lecturers frequently presented differing views before a large lecture hall, whose audience ranged from “full professors” to undergraduates. Mayr remembered, “Well, naturally he . . . Goldschmidt and I, we contradicted each other continuously and the professors and all the people really knowing something about the field were immensely amused . . . in fact that was the whole reason why they brought the two of us together at the same time. But the poor undergraduates couldn’t understand it at all.”133 Nonetheless, their “personal

130 Mayr to Stresemann, 15 June 1949, quoted in Haffer, p. 260.

131 Mayr to Stresemann, August 8, 1949, quoted in Ibid.

132 Haffer, p. 402.

133 Mayr, “54. Opposing views on evolution,” Web of Stories, www.webofstories.com/play/152. Mayr expressed concern that the undergraduates likely questioned how two visiting professors and experts in their field “disagreed in their interpretations” (Haffer, p. 260). Mayr added: “So I don’t know whether these students ever solved that puzzle and you might even go so far as to say there was a little truth in this question of the students” (Mayr, “Opposing views”).

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relations where very cordial.”134 As Mayr’s biographer Jürgen Haffer noted of his attitude toward intellectual adversaries, Mayr “never took personally any criticism of his work and maintained friendly relations with his main opponents such as Richard Goldschmidt and John C. Greene.”135

While he was in Washington, Mayr received a telephone call from Alfred Romer, the director of Harvard’s Museum of Comparative Zoology (MCZ). Mayr would later remember the call: “He asked me whether I was interested in being appointed an Alexander Agassiz Professor at Harvard University. To say that I would be interested would be the understatement of the week!” Shortly after Mayr’s return in early 1953, “Romer passed through New York and we met at Grand Central Station where he told me the conditions under which I would be working at

Harvard. I agreed with everything and I soon received notice I had been appointed.”136

Mayr later remembered the immediate aftermath of his decision to take the job at

Harvard: “My wife and I . . . we actually drove down from Seattle through the Redwood Groves, all the way down to southern California . . . [and] then back to New York . . . I went to the director of the American Museum to give him the bad news and he tried very hard to keep me there.” 137 On another occasion Mayr continued the recollection: “Well, finally he [the director] said, ‘Now, what other condition . . . would you want?’ And I said, ‘Take the museum out of

New York, I’d like to be in a smaller university town.’ Well anyhow, I went there but . . . we parted quite amiably and I was appointed an honorary curator of the bird department. And I’m still asked by the bird department every year to submit my annual report to be included in theirs.

134 Haffer, p. 260.

135 Haffer, p. 284.

136 Haffer, p. 255.

137 Mayr, “56. Getting a professorship at Harvard,” Web of Stories, www.webofstories.com/play/154.

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And in later years I was twice serving at the American Museum as a trustee.”138 Mayr would also write to Stresemann shortly thereafter about how he looked forward to “exchanging New York for a pleasant and stimulating university town which perhaps has more of a European character than any other town in the United States. I will be able to walk to work, instead of standing for an hour in a crowded train or bus. I still plan to spend several months every year at the American

Museum, although my official association will be with the Museum of Comparative Zoology.”139

Mary LeCroy notes, “Sanford’s death in December 1950 had freed Mayr from obligations, both real and perceived, associated with so many of Sanford’s projects [at the

AMNH]. The Bird Department was settled in its new building, with its tremendous collection of birds well arranged; the bird halls were mostly completed; and Mayr had contributed enormously to publishing the results of the Whitney Expedition and of a great many other AMNH expeditions . . . And so, when Harvard University offered him an Alexander Agassiz Research

Professorship, he decided to accept, and resigned from the AMNH in 1953, which he called ‘one of the hardest decisions’ he ever had to make.”140

Walter Bock provides further insight as to why Mayr decided to make this change: “[At] the beginning of the 1950s, Mayr was becoming more and more frustrated with his lack of contact with students. . . . Moreover, his interests were drifting from systematic and biogeographic studies of birds to more purely evolutionary work. The invitation in 1953 to join the MCZ . . . came just at the right time. . . . Although he had not begun to exhaust the research

138 Mayr, “84. The phone call that changed my life,” Web of Stories, www.webofstories.com/play/4242.

139 Mayr to Stresemann, 25 March 1953, quoted in Haffer, p. 256.

140 LeCroy, p. 46.

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possibilities of [AMNH’s Whitney-Rothschild] collection, it was time to move on to other work, largely outside ornithology.”141

The Harvard Professorship, Mr. Darwin’s Birthday, and an Eastern Expedition

Mayr later explained that the “Alexander Agassiz professor . . . is not tied to any particular department in the Museum of Comparative Zoology and I was definitely not a member of the bird department, even though my office was on the same floor of the museum. My major occupation, as they expected, was research and writing, but I was also expected to teach but primarily at the graduate level. I did give, occasionally, undergraduate courses and in particular there was a period of a couple of years where I gave six major lectures in one of the big Harvard courses in anthropology . . . but otherwise I gave mostly smaller courses to graduate students.”142

Haffer noted that when Mayr first arrived at Harvard in 1953, “he learned that evolution had not been taught there in many years.”143 Perhaps one of the last times was in 1947, when as a

Harvard graduate student John Greene had audited Alfred Romer’s course on the subject. Greene recalled that among the assigned readers were Ernst Mayr’s Systematics and the Origin of

Species, Simpson’s Tempo and Mode in Evolution, and Dobzhansky’s Genetics and the Origin of

Species.144

Haffer reported that Mayr’s graduate courses were titled “Principles of Evolutionary

Biology” and “Methods and Principles of Systematic Biology” and were offered biennially.145 In

1955, Mayr offered another course, “Systematics and Evolution,” with a laboratory section.

141 Bock, “Ernst Mayr at 100,” p. 9.

142 Mayr, “85. The Alexander Agassiz professorship,” Web of Stories, www.webofstories.com/play/4243.

143 Haffer, p. 260.

144 John C. Greene and James R. Moore, “Introductory Conversation,” in History, Humanity and Evolution, ed. James R. Moore (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1989), pp. 8–9.

145 Haffer, p. 260.

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Mayr also occasionally guest lectured in more general courses normally taught by a colleague.

Mayr remembered, “I concentrated on teaching evolution, and it was more or less always given as a form of a seminar course with me teaching . . . the first six or so . . . occasions where we met, and then the students took over with term papers. And the main idea of the course always was a very active interchange between professor and students. . . . I was lucky in some years that

I would have students that would constantly try to contradict me, and the one who was most lively and I would have loved to have had him every single year was Roger Milkman who is now

Professor at the University of Iowa.”146

Mayr further recalled of his early days at Harvard: “Eventually I developed a new way of giving a course . . . It was still the basic idea of a term paper being discussed, but what I did was that the first student scheduled for his term paper, I took his paper, had it . . . mimeographed, and then . . . a week before he was to perform . . . I gave a copy to each member of the class and each member . . . had to submit in writing to me three criticisms of the paper. And then the actual class consisted in the author of the paper just sitting there and defending himself against these criticisms. The result was . . . not only was the entire class immensely interested in what was going on, also they all had read that . . . that term paper so they knew about the particular subject, and they learned by arguing with each other a great deal about scientific methodology.”147 The course and the new format were a great success. Mayr recalled, “I had a lot of applications from other students, could they sit in, in the back of the room and watch the proceedings, and I said

146 Mayr, “87. Teaching evolution,” Web of Stories, www.webofstories.com/play/4245. The interview took place in 1997.

147 Ibid.

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yes and we supplied about 20 chairs or so, but pretty soon this was not enough and we had to move to a larger room.”148

Mayr further reminisced, “I had of course students, graduate students, including Professor

[Walter] Bock who’s sitting here [during this interview]. Altogether . . . I think 19 students took their PhD under me, under . . . with a great variety of subjects, and, interestingly enough, the most common subject chosen by students of mine were papers on behavior, various kinds of behavior. . . . But the other students took it on various aspects of systematics or evolutionary biology and so forth. All of them are now teaching, with the exception of one . . . [a] student who went into politics or journalism or something like that.”149

During these years Mayr remained involved in ornithology. Among his numerous interests and commitments, he contributed “more then half the material” to a massive 16-volume

Check-list of Birds of the World (completed in 1987), while also serving as President of the

American Ornithologist’s Union between 1957–59.150 In 1962 Mayr served as President of the

13th International Ornithological Congress, held that year in Ithaca, NY. He spoke on “the role of ornithology research in biology.”151

In 1959, Mayr actively participated in a variety of celebrations for the centennial of the publication of On the Origin of Species and the 150th anniversary of Darwin’s birthday. At the time Mayr wrote to J. B. S. Haldane, a leading evolutionary biologist whose mathematical work in population genetics helped establish a foundation for the modern evolutionary synthesis, remarking that “No one seems to give us poor evolutionists a chance to be lazy and inert in this

148 Ibid.

149 Mayr, “88. Graduate students,” Web of Stories, www.webofstories.com/play/4246.

150 Haffer, p. 256.

151 Haffer, p. 138.

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year 1959. Traveling from one evolution conference to the next, I feel like the old-time vaudeville performer who traveled from convention to convention and from county fair to county fair. At least he had the advantage of showing the same tricks to ever-new audiences, while I am supposed to say something new each time because every word I utter is going to be published.”152

Mayr later explained that during the centennial year, “A number of celebrations were organized, the most elaborate one was in Chicago and a series of three volumes issued from the symposia and lectures and what not that took place on that occasion. Julian Huxley gave a . . . famous speech that caused some eyebrow-raising and everybody who was anybody in evolution attended. I attended it, too, on the way to Australia where in Melbourne I had to give a lecture celebrating the 100th anniversary of The Origin of Species.”153

Thomas Junker, a historian of the biological , notes that much of the enthusiasm behind the 1959 Darwin centennial celebration resulted “at least in part, because the architects of the modern synthesis saw Darwin as the founder of their research program.”154 Historian of science Richard Burkhardt, Jr., adds, “If any year was a watershed in Mayr’s development as a historian, it was 1959. It was in this year, the centenary of the publication of the Origin of

Species, that he produced his first two papers on Darwin: ‘Darwin and the Evolutionary Theory of Biology’ and ‘Agassiz, Darwin, and Evolution.’ It was in the latter paper that he first referred to the work of Arthur O. Lovejoy, the founder of the discipline of the history of ideas. It was

152 Mayr to Haldane, 13 April 1959, quoted in Haffer, p. 342. See also Mayr to Haldane, 13 April 1959, Mayr Papers.

153 Mayr, “128. Celebrating the 100th anniversary of On the Origin of Species,” Web of Stories, www.webofstories.com/play/4286. See also Smocovitis, “The 1959 Darwin Centennial Celebration in America,” Osiris 14, 2nd Series (1999): 274–323.

154 Thomas Junker, “Factors Shaping Ernst Mayr’s Concepts in the History of Biology,” Journal of the History of Biology 29 (1996): 39.

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Lovejoy, he later said, who aroused his interest in the history of science and who inspired him ‘to think that history of science should be a history of ideas.’”155

A much younger intellectual historian of science, John C. Greene, also attended the

Darwin Centennial at the University of Chicago that year. At the time a professor at the

University of Iowa, he had earlier taught at the University of Chicago while finishing his dissertation and knew many of the scholars there organizing the celebration. In a letter to

Smocovitis (researching the Chicago celebration at the time), Greene noted he had previously been a “roving intellectual historian [in a] graduate course in anthropology taught by Sol Tax,

Sherwood Washburn, and Robert Braidwood” while at the University of Chicago.156 In addition,

Bert James Loewenburg, the director for the international Darwin Anniversary Committee, had been Greene’s undergraduate mentor at the University of South Dakota. It was Loewenburg who initially influenced Greene toward Darwin studies and entering the Harvard graduate program.157

Most significantly, Greene’s influential book, The Death of Adam: Evolution and Its Impact on

Western Thought, had been published just prior to the Chicago celebrations.

Greene later noted, “Beginning about the time of the Darwinian centennial celebration in

1958–1959, Mayr turned his attention increasingly to the history and philosophy of biology. His

155 Richard W. Burkhardt, Jr., “Ernst Mayr: Biologist-Historian,” Biology and Philosophy 9 (1994): 363. Mayr’s history of science essays published during the centennial were “Darwin and the Evolutionary Theory in Biology,” in Evolution and Anthropology: A Centennial Appraisal (Washington, D.C.: Anthropological Society of Washington, 1959), pp. 3–13; “Agassiz, Darwin, and Evolution,” Harvard Library Bulletin 13 (1959), pp. 165–194.

156 Greene to Smocovitis, 13 March 1996, John C. Greene Papers, Thomas J. Dodd Research Center, University of Connecticut, Storrs, CT. (hereafter cited as Greene Papers). Sol Tax was considered the “mastermind” organizing the University of Chicago celebration. Along with fellow anthropologists Braidwood, Washburn, and others, he had been developing courses offering “an integrated approach to culture and evolution” since the mid 1940s. See Smocovitis, “Darwin Centennial Celebration,” pp. 287, 289–90.

157 Smocovitis, “Darwin Centennial Celebration,” pp. 275, 280–281. Loewenberg’s scholarly interests focused on American history and its reception of Darwinian theory. The Darwin Anniversary Committee, Inc. included prominent descendants of Charles Darwin as honorary members. Though initially formed in the mid-1950s “to oversee anniversary activities,” as 1959 approached, “it became more and more of a clearing house of activities, rather then a focus of organization efforts.” The Bert Loewenberg Papers, held at the American Philosophical Society, contains papers from the committee.

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extensive researches culminated in a series of books and articles defining his position scientifically, philosophically, and historically with respect to the relations among science, philosophy, religion, ideology, and worldview and placing Darwin at the center of the intellectual revolution implicit in twentieth century evolutionary biology.” Of himself, he added,

“In those same years . . . I was moving from my earlier studies of the interaction of science and world view in the pre Darwinian period to an analysis of a similar set of interactions in the writings of twentieth century biologists. Not surprisingly, the trajectory of my research and writing intersected with Mayr’s, and a correspondence sprang up between us.”158

Mayr actively participated at the conference as a member of the discussion group, “Panel

2: The Evolution of Life.” The “panel included many of the ‘architects’ of the evolutionary synthesis and other leading evolutionary biologists,” such as Dobzhansky and Sewall Wright, and chaired by Julian Huxley and Alfred Emerson. It addressed the “current understanding of evolutionary processes with natural selection as the dominant process.”159 Mayr also spoke on the topic of the “emergence of evolutionary novelties,” which “stressed the importance of change in function and the fact that evolutionary novelties are in most cases acquired gradually”160 as a result of “selection pressure in favor of . . . structural modification” that is “greatly increased by a shift into a new ecological niche, by the acquisition of a new habit, or both.”161

Immediately after the meetings, Mayr travelled to Australia, where he had been invited as the keynote speaker for the “Centenary Symposium” held by the Royal Society of Victoria, on

158 John C. Greene, Debating Darwin: Adventures of a Scholar (Claremont, CA: Regina Books, 1999), pp. 17–18.

159 Smocovitis, “Darwin Centennial Celebration,” pp. 296–97.

160 Haffer, p. 278. See Mayr, “The Emergence of Evolutionary Novelties,” in The Evolution of Life: Evolution after Darwin volume 1, ed. Sol Tax (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1959), pp. 349–380. Also reprinted in, Mayr, Evolution and the Diversity of Life: Selected Essays (Cambridge: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1976), pp. 88–113.

161 Ernst Mayr, Evolution and the Diversity of Life, p. 111.

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December 7–11.162 The organizers were “delighted” by the topic he had proposed to speak on:

“Accident and Design, the Great Paradox of Evolution.” They noted, “As you suggested to develop this theme, it will have both objective experimental information and philosophical content. It is wide in its appeal yet pertinent to the present.”163 Mayr’s presentation would be given as the “Tiegs Memorial Oration,” opening the conference as an honor to Oscar Werner

Tiegs, the highly respected Australian zoologist who had recently passed away. Mayr actively participated in conference discussions and sessions, and was thanked for his “skillful summing- up at the end of the Symposium.”164 The Centennial Symposium additionally celebrated the

Royal Society of Victoria’s 100th anniversary, and the University of Melbourne took the opportunity to honor their guest with a degree. Haffer noted that at the Australian conferences,

Mayr began experimenting with a presentation technique that later proved “highly popular,” involving leading “informal sessions from the lecture platform” where he “answered questions by students and fellow scientists and often enlarged upon the respective subject matter for several minutes.”165

During the previous spring, when Mayr had been still planning his trip to Australia, he wrote to Stresemann, “You may not realize it, but I have had an unusual series of duties and commitments for the last 25 years which has made it impossible all these years to do expeditions and extensive foreign travels. I have just now reached the point to consider this and will start

162 Haffer, p. 314; Edmund D. Gill to Mayr, 21 October 1958, Papers of Ernst Mayr, Harvard University Archives, Cambridge, Massachusetts. Note: Haffer refers to the institution as the “Royal Society of Melbourne,” but Gill’s letterhead reads “Royal Society of Victoria.” Melbourne is the state capital of Victoria.

163 Gill to Mayr, 7 May 1959, Mayr Papers.

164 Gill to Mayr, 21 December 1959, Mayr Papers.

165 Haffer, 303.

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with a trip to Australia next winter.”166 The previous month, Haldane had written Mayr from his research institute in India asking for advice how to best solve a research issue some of his students were working on, and Mayr quickly responded:

I have been planning to write you for the longest time and I am glad that you have shaken me out of my inertia. . . . I shall celebrate the passing of this trying [centennial] year by going to Australia and if all goes well, I hope to pass through India on the way home. This will not be until March or April 1960, and there will be plenty of time to discuss my forthcoming visit. I have long wanted to come to India where I have quite good friends and I hope this will finally be possible. Not the least reason will be to see you and Helen [Helen Spurway, Haldane’s wife] again. The grapevine has it that you both are enjoying India and that you are well and prospering. It will be a pleasure to be able to confirm this in person.167

Mayr concluded his letter by noting that he and Gretel had just “spent the last weekend at our retreat in New Hampshire where a beaver colony established itself within 150 yards of our house. There is where I would like to spend my time rather than down here in Cambridge. Too bad that one had official duties! – With the best wishes to both of you, Yours, Ernst Mayr.”168

Mayr was also making plans to spend time with Loke Wan Tho, the wealthy Singapore businessman noted for developing the Malaysian entertainment industry. Of more significant interest to Mayr, Wan Tho was a highly respected nature photographer specializing in ornithology. With that, Mayr’s overseas expedition itinerary, his first since his days as a “twenty- something” in New Guinea, began to shape up. After the Royal Society celebrations, Mayr would spend much of January on ornithological expeditions with friends, often camping in the outback of New South Wales and Western Australia, followed by a trip in February to the

Malaysian jungle highlands with Loke Wan Tho. Next, it was off to the Haldane’s in Kolkata

(Calcutta), where he would tour the local zoological gardens, followed by birding and sight-

166 Stresemann to Mayr, 27 May 1959, quoted in Haffer, p. 319.

167 Mayr to Haldane, 13 April 1959, Mayr Papers.

168 Ibid.

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seeing expeditions in Bhubaneswar and rural Odisha (Orissa). His trip home in early March would include a stop in to visit Stresemann and other associates before finally landing in Boston.

During his four months “in the field,” Ernst wrote home to Gretel with regular updates. In his first letter, from Victoria dated December 27, 1959, Mayr reported he was enjoying “a very pleasant stay” with “the Browns” and their family of “two boys and two girls.” Mayr added,

“Not only was I shown every bird conceivable at this locality, but I was given all the local hospitality. Not too much party-life either, so that I could rest and relax.” Mayr sounded relieved that he “was not asked” to attend “morning church services” for Christmas, but enjoyed the “big turkey dinner topped off with plum pudding” afterwards.169 Ernst wrote that the weather was

“cool and rainy which has interfered with photography. . . . Saw again a wild Kangaroo yesterday. Parrots are everywhere. There are lots of intriguing birds and seeing them in life has solved some puzzles for me. Yesterday we visited the eucalyptus forest of the Otway Peninsula.

Some real giants. . . . On NY Eve I will be in Canberra, thinking of you, lovingly.”170

Mayr wrote again to Gretel while in Canberra, that he dutifully “decided to go to bed at

10pm instead of celebrating [New Years] with strangers. Just had 3 very nice days in Western

NSW where I studied the Mallee fauna and that of the sterile flats. Saw flocks of kangaroos and emus, and all sorts of interesting birds. . . . One night we camped in the open and it was amusing to wake up at 3:00 AM to find Orion upside down and Sirius directly overhead. . . . There is a real charm to sleeping outdoors. Even though we were in [the] desert there were some mosquitos.”171

169 Ernst Mayr to Gretel Mayr, 27 December 1959, Mayr Papers.

170 Ibid.

171 Ernst Mayr to Gretel Mayr, 7 January 1960, Mayr Papers.

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Shortly after arriving in Sydney on January 7th, Mayr reported that he “was met by Allen

Keast [his Harvard graduate student]. Am now getting ready for an excursion locally, which, however, will take me all the way to Queensland.” J. Allen Keast held a position at the

Australian Museum as the Curator of Birds, Reptiles and Amphibians. He was still working on his dissertation on “Bird Speciation on the Australian Continent,” which he completed in 1961.

On January 21st, Ernst expressed concern about the weather in Europe where Gretel had been travelling – there were reports of severe snowstorms. He mentioned that similarly in

Australia, at Coff’s Harbor where he had been three days prior, the “morning’s paper” reported

“10 inches of rain” and floods that had “broken the highway in several places and made it completely impassible.” He told Gretel his next stop would be in Adelaide, for two days, and then off to Perth, Western Australia, to stay with the eminent Australian ornithologist, Dominic

L. Serventy.172

Mayr wrote on January 30th to his wife: “I am sitting on the veranda of Nedlands Hotel overlooking Perth Harbor and reading your letters from Bremen and Holland. It all seems a bit unreal since I returned only 2 hours ago from the bush where I had not slept under a roof for a week nor had a decent wash.” Mayr reported that his trip to the interior took place during a heat wave, and “at one point the temp. inside our Land Rover reached 130º!! . . . Yet, I stood it splendidly and enjoyed myself immensely. I now have a totally new conception of the Austr. fauna, flora and geography. I have kept detailed notes which I shall bring with me.” He reported that his tentative plans for India included going “through manuscripts with Biswas, visit some wildlife areas and the Orissa temples. I need a min. of a week (in spite of Jack and Helen! you understand!) I’ll do all I can to rush matters. I am as eager to be back with you as you may be to

172 Ernst Mayr to Gretel Mayr, 21 January 1960, Mayr Papers.

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have me back!”173 Then on Feb. 9th from Perth: “I am afraid you have not heard from me for some time, but I have been in the bush for the last 5 days. Again we slept in the open air every night, camping wherever we found a suitable spot. One night we spent in the ‘Karri Gums,’ a forest of gigantic eucalypts. It was all very interesting ornithologically and otherwise. In the morning of the 11th I will be off to Singapore and before long I will be home.”174

There was more news from Singapore on the 13th: “It seems quite like a dream, but here I sit in my own apartment in the top floor of one skyscraper , overlooking

Singapore. It is a bit steamy but not more so than NY on a sticky summer day. Yesterday afternoon I went birding with Loke Wan Tho to the mainland (Johor) and this afternoon I am supposed to give a lecture in the Zool. Dept.”175 Building, the first, and at seventeen stories, the tallest skyscraper in Malaysia, was built by Loke Wan Tho in 1939 as a fashionable hotel. The building included the highly regarded Cathay Restaurant and the famous Cathay

Cinema, a plush 1300-seat theater (the first to be air conditioned) that served as a centerpiece to

Wan Tho’s extended network of cinemas, film studios, and other business interests. Wan Tho was also known as a philanthropist. His wife, Christina Loke, shared his interests and skill as an accomplished nature photographer specializing in bird life. Both had published book projects with Malcolm MacDonald, an amateur naturalist better known as the high-ranking British

173 Ernst Mayr to Gretel Mayr, 30 January 1960, Mayr Papers. Perhaps part of Mayr’s regular assurance to Gretel of his intent to hurry back could have some connection to the following comments by Sahotra Sarkar, Professor of Integrative Biology and Philosophy at the University of Texas: “Mayr’s fondness for Haldane . . . was genuine. He visited Haldane in Kolkata in 1959 and they went birdwatching in Odisha. Haldane’s wife, Helen Spurway, was apparently infatuated with Mayr, much to Haldane’s (and Mayr’s wife’s) amusement. Haldane actively encouraged the infatuation. Some forty years later, the episode still embarrassed Mayr. (Because I was working on a scientific biography of Haldane at the time, Mayr produced for me a four-page typescript of his encounters with Haldane – it remains one of my more cherished possessions.)” Sahotra Sarkar, “In memoriam: Ernst Mayr (1904–2005)” Journal of Biosciences 30 (2005): 416.

174 Ernst Mayr to Gretel Mayr, 9 February 1960, Mayr Papers.

175 Ernst Mayr to Gretel Mayr, 13 February 1960, Mayr Papers.

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diplomat and son of the former British Prime minister, Ramsey MacDonald.176 Loke Wan Tho was also a close friend of , a leading expert on birds in India. The two first met during

WWII in Bombay where Loke lived in exile during the Japanese occupation of Singapore.177

Ernst wrote to Gretel that that he had been invited by Loke Wan Tho “to accompany him on a 2-day visit to the mountains of the Malay Peninsula. This is a unique opportunity. In addition, he really begged me to go with him. The poor fellow is in the midst of starting divorce proceedings against his wife and is all broke up and despondent. Birds seem a distraction for him.”178 Unfortunately, not long before Mayr’s visit, Wan Tho’s preoccupation with business and Christina’s extended photography session in Delhi working on an ornithology project, led to

176 There appeared to be a genuine, close friendship among the three parties – if at least until Loke Wan Tho initiated divorce proceedings. Included among the three’s various joint projects are the following: Malcolm MacDonald, Angkor, with one hundred and twelve photographs by Loke Wan Tho and the author (London: Jonathan Cape, Ltd., 1958), reprinted as Malcolm MacDonald and Loke Wan Tho, Angkor and the Khmers (New York: Oxford University Press, 1987); Malcolm MacDonald and Christina Loke, Birds in My Indian Garden (London: Jonathan Cape, Ltd., 1960); Right Hon. Malcolm MacDonald and Christina Loke, Birds in the Sun. Photographs by Christina Loke (London: H. F. & G. Witherby, Ltd., 1962); Malcolm MacDonald and Christina Loke, Treasures of Kenya (New York: Putnam [1st American Edition], 1966, ©1965). Kenneth C. Parks reviewed Birds in the Sun for The Auk 81 (1964): 102–03. Parks wrote, “Christina Loke, whose husband Loke Wan Tho is also a world-famous bird photographer, is ranked by Roger Tory Peterson in a dust-jacket blurb as ‘ahead of any other female bird photographer in the world.’ This reviewer believes that Dr. Peterson, ordinarily among the most gallant of gentlemen, was unnecessarily restrictive in his statement.” Parks noted that the photographs were taken during “the summer of 1959.”

177 Salim Ali dedicated a chapter of his autobiography to his relationship with Loke Wan Tho, in The Fall of a Sparrow (1985). Ali also worked closely with the Bombay Natural History Society, which recently helped reprint Loke Wan Tho’s 1957 autobiography as, Loke Wan Tho’s Birds with Extracts from His Diaries and from A Company of Birds (Mumbai, India: Bombay Natural History Society; New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2008). Wan Tho’s philanthropic interests in India included the BNHS and Salim Ali’s research. In 1962, Ali and Wan Tho travelled to the International Ornithological Congress in Ithaca, NY, as “Members of the Executive Committee of the I.O.C. Index.” Mayr was President of the Congress that year. There is a group photo of the Executive Committee in Haffer, p. 258. Dom Serventy, Mayr’s host at Perth, is also in the photo. While in America, Salim Ali and Loke Wan Tho visited Mayr at his New Hampshire farm (Haffer, 307).

178 The couple’s divorce proceedings made front-page news in Singapore’s The Straits Times, on May 16, 1961, as well as in subsequent articles.

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rumors of infidelity. The embroiled third party was Malcolm MacDonald, whose reputation suffered as a result.179 Salim Ali offered this telling description of the couple:

Wan Tho had an eye for beauty – beautiful mountains and natural scenery, beautiful flowers and birds . . . beautiful everything . . . His first wife Christina was a very beautiful woman . . . I fear I was not popular with Christina . . . not being a courtier . . . Although Chris could be disarmingly charming when she chose . . . their temperaments and outlooks on major issues had seemed to me so different from the beginning . . . his so quiet and scholastic, hers so flashy and gaiety- loving . . . [that] after ten or so uneasy years of ‘terrible storm and treacherous calm’ the end came.180

Despite the local intrigue, Ernst enjoyed himself. He wrote to Gretel: “Being back in

Singapore really makes this a ‘sentimental journey!’ I am living on real Chinese food (incl.

‘rotten eggs’) and am having a wonderful time.”181 He mentioned in another letter, “Malaysia was real fun and the excursion to Kuala Lumpur, unplanned and unexpected, was one of the most worthwhile things I have done on my whole trip. And to get into real undisturbed tropical jungle was a wonderful experience. So much for today. Will write again when back from Orissa.”182

179 Clyde Sanger, Malcolm MacDonald: Bringing an End to Empire (Buffalo: McGill-Queens University Press, 1995), pp. 316–318.

180 Salim Ali, The Fall of a Sparrow (Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1985), pp. 125–26. Christina Loke’s sense of fashion was acknowledged in Vogue magazine. See Aubrey Menen, “Singapore: Where Everything Comes Up Orchids,” Vogue, May 1965. See also Debby Kwong, “Revisiting the Cheongsam,” Designaré Magazine : Design & Living, April 12, 2012, p. 166, accessed June 1, 2012, http://issuu.com/debbykwong/docs/p166-designare-d- l_evolution-of-the-cheongsam.

181 Ernst Mayr to Gretel Mayr, 13 February 13 1960, Mayr Papers. There are two letters from Loke Wan Tho to Mayr, written shortly after Mayr’s return to Boston; dated 12 April and 13 July 1960, Mayr Papers. The “subject matter” is “expeditions” and “Cameron Highlands.” Cameron Highlands was originally a hill station established by the British that became a resort destination offering “a rich biodiversity inhabited by a wide variety of flora and fauna endemic to the Montane Rainforest.” See “Eco Cameron,” accessed June 1, 2012, http://www.ecocameron.com/. The family apparently owned property there. For example, see “Christina Loke Chalet (of / Loke Wan Tho-Sir Malcolm Macdonald fame),” in column two, paragraph one, of “The Story of the Smokehouse Hotel, Cameron Highlands,” accessed June 1, 2012, http://www.swctevents.com/index_art_03_smokehse.html.

182 Ernst Mayr to Gretel Mayr, 18 February1960, Mayr Papers.

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Ernst Goes to India

After arriving in India, Ernst wrote to Gretel: “Calcutta and the Haldanes are quite the adventure I expected it to be. Greenwich Village at its oriental height. . . . The conversations are quite like at Basel, and yet I rather enjoy it. Tomorrow we all go on to Orissa, where we will be for 3½ days. This is the real India. We will visit native villages of several crafts, temple[s]

(ancient + more recent) etc. Our guide and mentor will be Prof. [N. K.] Bose, head of the anthropol. insitute, India’s leading anthropologists. I don’t know how I come to the honor, but it will be an unforgettable experience! Susie in her letter wrote I should mix with the real Indians and this is what I really do. I have not yet met any Britishers except the Haldanes.”183

The Haldane’s felt similarly enthused by Mayr’s visit. Haldane had previously written requesting Mayr to “give us plenty of notice” so he could arrange birding expeditions to either

“Darjeeling” or the “Sanderbands” (now Sunderbans National Park, established in the Ganges estuary and deltaic islands) or “anywhere else where you may see an ecology more ‘natural’ than that of the neighbourhood of Calcutta, though we are not badly off for birds here.”184 Haldane tempted Mayr with the following: “Our garden contains spiders which weave webs whose threads are arranged in rectangles. I bet they haven’t got such a web in the Zoological Survey! So try to stay with us.” Ernst wrote to Gretel about the wildlife in Kolkata: “4:00 AM [I woke up] to witness a famous sight: the return of the 10,000s of Whistle Teal [ducks] from their feeding

183 Ibid. Suzie is Ernst and Gretel’s younger daughter, at the time in college. Mayr’s mentioning of Basel likely refers to the important cultural city in Switzerland that hosted the 1954 International Ornithological Congress, which Mayr attended. Helen Spurway presented a paper, “The sub-human capacities for species recognition and their correlation with ,” which was published in the conference proceedings (Acta XI Congr. Int. Orn. Basel, 1954: 340-349.) Perhaps Haldane attended as well.

184 Haldane to Mayr, 18 November 1959, Mayr Papers.

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places to a roosting lake in Calcutta Zoo (which occurs each morning at day break) and likewise the return of the fruit bats.”185

Mayr appeared to have his mind on Odisha (Orissa), the east coast state about two hundred miles south of Kolkata, known for its magnificent temples and areas of natural beauty.186 In a letter dated December 30th Haldane wrote:

We are delighted to hear that you are coming in February. It is the nicest month in Calcutta, though beginning to warm up in Orissa. A draft program for Orissa is:

2 hours flight from Calcutta to Bhubaneshwar. See (a) large group of Hindu temples (no admission to largest, but lots to see elsewhere), (b) a group of Jain caves and a modern Jain temple.

Car to Konorak [Konark]. Monstrous temple of Sun, completely covered in sculpture. This is largely “erotic”, but I should call it acrobatic. Car then to Puri.

Puri. Bathe. See several temples from outside and possibly car[t] of Jagannath. Buy souvenirs (sculpture, textiles, playing cards for a very queer game.) Return Bhubaneshwar.

We can probably do it all in two days [Mayr wrote on Feb. 18th it would be 3½ days]. If, as I hope, you want to do some bird-watching, there are Bhubaneshwar (1) Low hills with deciduous trees, (2) Dry shrubby country, (3) permanent water near temples. Puri is a good deal moister, and Konorak intermediate.187

Without a doubt, Haldane could be considered among the most exotic of scientists making a major contribution to the modern evolutionary synthesis. How he “went native” after growing up as a British aristocrat and how he then pursued a prominent career in population genetics and evolutionary biology makes for an intriguing story. Ramachandra Guha, the noted journalist and historian wrote:

185 Ernst Mayr to Gretel Mayr, 18 February 1960, Mayr Papers.

186 Helen Spurway wrote to Mayr on February 8th: “ It was very felicitous of you to express interest in Orissa; we share it, and can play good hosts.” She mentioned that two of Haldane’s students, Biswas and Dronamraju, were coming too. Spurway to Mayr, 8 February 1960, Mayr Papers.

187 Haldane to Mayr, 30 December 1959, Mayr Papers.

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The conventional wisdom is that Haldane left England after the Suez crisis, not wishing to live any more in that ‘imperialist’ country. The French historian of science Francis Zimmerman has speculated that he wanted to take biology out of the laboratory and root it in the soil of the tropics. His sister, the novelist and travel-writer Naomi Mitchison, thinks he was attracted to the decency and moderation of the Indian leaders of the day . . . After the Lysenko fiasco Haldane was also disillusioned with the Soviet Union, and the figure of Nehru seemed more appealing than Stalin or Churchill could ever be.

Anyway, when Haldane moved to Calcutta with his biologist wife he became totally Indian. He converted to vegetarianism and learned adequate Sanskrit to shame his Brahmin students. He wore Indian dress, even on his visits back to Europe. For a Royal Society reception in London in 1961 he put on a saffron dhoti, with Naomi Mitchison inserting the safety pins.188

Fréderique Apffel-Marglin, Professor Emerita of Anthropology from Smith College, offered an analysis of how Haldane’s scientific interests led more esoteric philosophical positions: “Though Haldane was one of the pioneers in applying statistics to population genetics, and therefore part of the classical, tough-minded tradition in population genetics, the central piece of the Darwinian legacy for him was not fitness and the idea of ‘the survival of the fittest.’ . . . For Haldane the concept of diversity in Darwin was of far greater importance than that of evolution. Haldane ascribed the greater influence of Darwin’s ideas of evolution to its challenge to Christian theology, which drew a sharp distinction between humans and other living beings. He recognized that such a division had not been made in Hindu, Buddhist, and Jain .”189

Haldane expanded on this point in his 1959 essay, “An Indian Perspective of Darwin,” which he noted he “ . . . could not have written . . . before [he] became an Indian”:

188 Ramachandra Guha, Anthropology Among the Marxists (Delhi: Permanent Black, 2001), p. 134.

189 Fréderique Apffel-Marglin, “Introduction: Rationality and the World,” in Decolonizing Knowledge: From Development to Dialogue, ed. Frédérique Apffel-Marglin and Stephen A. Marglin (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996), p. 28. See also Francis Zimmermann, “Why Haldane Went to India: Modern Genetics in Quest of Tradition,” in Decolonizing Knowledge, pp. 279–305.

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To Europeans and Americans, it inevitably seems that Darwin’s greatest achievement has been to convince educated men and women that biological evolution is a fact, that living plant and animal species are all descended from ancestral species very unlike themselves, and, in particular, that men are descended from animals. This was an important event in the intellectual life of Europe, because Christian theologians had drawn a sharp distinction between men and other living beings. In view of Jesus’ remarks about sheep, sparrows, and lilies, this sharp distinction may well be a perversion of the essence of Christianity. St. Francis seems to have thought so.

But in India and China this distinction has not been made, and, according to Hindu, Buddhist, and Jain ethics, animals have rights and duties. My wife has stated categorically that Darwin converted Europe to Hinduism. This is, I think, an exaggeration, but is nearer to the truth than it sounds. Hinduism is not a religion as this term is understood by the adherents of proselytizing religions. It is an attitude toward the universe compatible with a variety of religious and philosophical beliefs.190

Apparently Mayr felt undeterred by Haldane’s philosophical perspectives, as he referenced the biological aspects of Haldane’s essay more than once in his own work. For example, Mayr drew on Haldane’s writings for support when he noted, “Darwin would be remembered as an outstanding scientist even if he had never written a word about evolution. Indeed, J. B. S.

Haldane has gone so far as to say, ‘In my opinion, Darwin’s most original contribution to biology is not the theory of evolution, but his great series of books on experimental published in the latter part of his life.’” Mayr added, “This achievement is little known among nonbiologists.”191

190 J. B. S. Haldane, “An Indian Perspective of Darwin,” Centennial Review 3 (1959): 357–363; reprinted as “Darwin in Indian Perspective,” in J. B. S. Haldane and Krishna R. Dronamraju, What I Require From Life: Writings on Science and Life from J.B.S. Haldane (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009), p. 211–216. For two recent studies on the relationship between Darwinian theory and Hindu thought, see Jonathan Edelmann, Hindu Theology and Biology: The Bhāgavata Purāṇa and Contemporary Theory (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012); Cheever Mackenzie Brown, Hindu Perspectives on Evolution: Darwin, Dharma, and Design (New York: Routledge, 2012).

191 Ernst Mayr, “Darwin, Intellectual Revolutionary,” in Evolution from Molecules to Men, ed. D. S. Bendall (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1983), p. 39; reprinted in Toward a New Philosophy of Biology (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1988), p. 181; Mayr, “Who is Darwin?” in One Long Argument: Charles Darwin and the Genesis of Modern Evolutionary Thought (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1991), p. 2. Mayr referenced the quotation from Haldane’s essay, “An Indian perspective of Darwin,” published in 1959 and appearing on page 358. See fn. 187.

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It would be interesting to know exactly how Mayr responded to Haldane’s musings, though Mayr did humorously mention in the Christian Science Monitor that: “I’m very comfortable with the idea of Indian incarnations.”192 More certain were Mayr’s views expressed in a heated debate about the prominence of the mathematical aspects of population genetics, something he derisively termed “beanbag genetics.” Though Haldane engaged Mayr in a spirited defense of his mathematical work, along with the contributions of Sewall Wright and R. A.

Fisher, the two maintained a genuine friendship.193 The zoologist John G. T. Anderson wrote in an informal review of a recent edition of Haldane’s Possible Worlds (1927): “I once asked Ernst

Mayr what he thought of Haldane and he replied, ‘Oh, he was a LOVELY man.’ That about says it all.”194

Mayr also admired his friend as a born naturalist:

I never knew Haldane was such a good outdoors man until one day when I visited him in Calcutta he took me to Orissa and we stayed overnight at the government guesthouse in Bubaneswar. The guesthouse was right at the edge of town, and right next to us were fields and a little native village and really untouched Indian nature.

. . . In the morning at about 5am I was out there and there were the most marvelous birds, also a jackal feeding on mice, the natives came out of their huts. It was a brilliant morning and I was just absolutely inebriated by the beautiful landscape. I came back to the guesthouse at 7 AM for breakfast and I was still full of

192 Lauren Gravitz, “Ernst Mayr’s Scientific Legacy Shines After Nearly a Century,” Christian Science Monitor, August 17, 2000.

193 For two recent studies on the scientific debate between Haldane and Mayr, see Veena Rao and Vidyanand Nanjundiah, “J. B. S. Haldane, Ernst Mayr and the Beanbag Genetics Dispute,” Journal of the History of Biology 44 (2011): 233–281; Krishna Dronamraju, Haldane, Mayr, and Beanbag Genetics (NY: Oxford University Press, 2011). Krishna Dronamraju, a former student of Haldane’s who specializes in human population genetics, has written extensively on Haldane’s life and work, and in particular on his latter years while in India. See Krishna Dronamraju, “J. B. S. Haldane’s Last Years: His Life and Work in India (1957–1964),” Genetics 185 (2010): 5–10; “On Some Aspects of the Life and Work of John Burdon Sanderson Haldane, F.R.S., in India,” Notes and Records of the Royal Society of London 41 (1987): 211–237; Haldane: The Life and Work of J. B. S. Haldane with Special Reference to India (Aberdeen: Aberdeen University Press, 1985).

194 John Anderson, “YES!” Amazon Customer Reviews for Possible Worlds [paperback] (2001), accessed June 1, 2012, http://www.amazon.com/Possible-Worlds-J-B-S- Haldane/dp/0765807157/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1337885852&sr=8-1.

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enthusiasm and I held forth on how wonderful it was and all that. Suddenly Haldane interrupted me rudely saying ‘Ernst, why didn’t you take me along?’ I said ‘Well, I didn’t know you’d be interested’ and he said ‘of course’.

So the next morning the arrangement was that he would knock at my door at 5 AM and he surely did and I took him out and we saw all these wonderful things again the next morning and he was just as enthusiastic as I was. We came home and we had the most wonderful outdoor excursion and ever since that time I realized that in addition to all his and physiology, how much he was basically also a naturalist.195

Coincidently, Theodosius Dobzhansky and his wife, Natasha (also a biologist), had been touring India and visited the Haldanes just prior to Mayr’s arrival. They initially met at the

“forty-seventh session of the Indian Science Congress” held in Bombay that January.

Dobzhansky described the Congress as “the homologue” of the American Academy of Arts and

Science. Prime Minister Nehru “very graciously” opened the scientific meetings. Dobzhansky, however, doubted President Eisenhower would have time to do the same.196

In his published travel accounts, Dobzhansky confided:

To write more about the Congress and people I met there might be boring, but I must gossip a bit about J. B. S. Haldane. A year or so ago he wrote me that he was not sure that I would like to wear Indian dress while in India, but added, “I do.” So he does. It is Benghali garb – pajama pants and a loose white shirt. Other Indian scientists, including the very nice group of students who came from Calcutta with Haldane, wear mostly nondescript western-style clothes. . . . But Haldane has liked all his life to be conspicuous, and he continues to be. . . . Yet the variety of Indian dress he wears is perhaps the least attractive one. If I were to dress like an Indian I would rather choose the flaming-red turban of a Maharashtrian peasant – those are really spectacular. And Indian saris are, I feel, the most simple and beautiful feminine dresses invented, yet Mrs. Haldane does not wear a sari.197

195 Ernst Mayr, “Interview with Ernst Mayr,” BioEssays 24 (2002): 963–64.

196 Theodosius Dobzhansky and Bentley Glass, The Roving Naturalist: Travel Letters of Theodosius Dobzhansky (Philadelphia: The American Philosophical Society, 1980), p. 275.

197 Ibid., pp. 277–78. “Mrs. Haldane” generally signed her personal letters and scientific papers as Helen Spurway.

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Haldane arranged for the couple to travel with his wife and some of his students to

Darjeeling, where they trekked in the Himalayan Mountains – an enjoyable time for all.198 In

Calcutta, Haldane brought them to “the Indian Museum and the Zoo which he regarded as a

‘must’ for the visiting scientists.” 199 Dobzhansky also lectured at the Indian Statistical Institute.

Helen expressed anxiety about getting the Dobzhanskys to the airport on time to catch their flight to Indonesia – Nikita Khrushchev was in town and many roads were blocked. She also wanted to prepare the recently hired household staff for Mayr’s visit.200

As his trip wound down, Ernst wrote Gretel that he had bought a ticket for the Thursday plane to Frankfurt, the only direct flight from Calcutta. He anticipated spending five days in

Germany before returning to Boston around March 2nd or 3rd. He noted his timetable was “a rough guess,” adding, “Stresemann’s retirement seems to cause considerable upheavals in

Germany and – confidentially – Niethammer and Frank want to see me while I am in Frankfurt, but even so, I should be able to squeeze everything into 5 days.”201

Haffer pointed out, “Similar to , Charles Darwin, and Erwin

Stresemann . . . [who all] traveled in the tropics as young men and never visited these areas again,” Mayr’s early expedition to New Guinea and the South Seas “formed the basis of much theoretical work in later years.”202 Perhaps for Mayr, that intense year of Darwin celebrations in

1959 coupled with his return to the far East on expedition, served as a bookend to his initial chapter as a highly accomplished scientist, and helped him reassess his life’s achievements up to

198 Dobzhansky and Glass, pp. 293–297; Dronamraju, Life and Work of J. B. S. Haldane, p. 147.

199 Dronamraju, Haldane: Life and Work of J. B. S. Haldane, p. 147.

200 Helen Spurway to Ernst Mayr, 8 February 1960, Mayr Papers.

201 Ernst Mayr to Helen Mayr, 18 February 1960, Mayr Papers.

202 Haffer, p. 90.

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the midlife point. Coincidently, it was at this point that Mayr began a marked shift from practicing science towards an interest in the history and philosophy of that discipline, the success and well-being of which meant so much to him.

A collection of correspondence was waiting for Mayr back at Harvard on his return.

Among the stack was a typewritten letter from John C. Greene. He wished to thank Mayr for sending him a copy of his essay, “Agassiz, Darwin, and Evolution,” one of Mayr’s early historical examinations. Greene commented, “I am most grateful to you for sending me a reprint

. . . It is a splendid example of the approach to the history of science in terms of general intellectual history which I try to use myself.”203 Greene concluded, “I intended to introduce myself to you at the recent meetings in Chicago . . . I hope the opportunity will present itself again in the near future.” 204 This letter marked the beginning of the Mayr-Greene epistolary exchange.205

203 Greene to Mayr, 3 December 1959, Mayr Papers.

204 Ibid.

205 Greene did not begin to collect his letters with Mayr until much later; it was Mayr’s archives that held nearly all the copies of the earlier correspondence between the two prior to 1979. As a result, perhaps Greene may have forgotten about some of these exchanges. For example, Greene would later comment: “The Mayr-Greene epistolary dialogue . . . began in earnest in the summer and fall of 1979. It displays in bold-relief the extent to which our differences in background, training, and interests and the different routes by which we had come to the study of Darwin and Darwinism influenced the conclusions we drew from the historical record.” In Greene, Debating Darwin, p. 20.

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CHAPTER 4 THE MAKING OF “A HISTORIAN’S HISTORIAN OF SCIENCE”: JOHN C. GREENE*

Where Ernst Mayr was once proclaimed “the grand old man of evolutionary biology,”

John C. Greene was the “grand old man of the history of science,” and a “revered father figure

[to] those of us who think of ourselves as ‘Darwinians.’”1 According to Francisco J. Ayala,

Greene was a “distinguished intellectual historian who has written much and wisely about the history and significance of evolutionary ideas.”2 The historian of science James R. Moore noted in a recent biographical essay, “No scholar has done more to humanize our understanding of evolution and to set evolutionary theorizing within the broad sweep of Western intellectual history than John C. Greene.” He added that Greene’s “writing on Charles Darwin, his dialogues with leading evolutionists, his publications on , social theory, early American science, and the historiography of ideas, and his generous personal encouragement of younger scholars for over half a century made him one of the few most influential historians of the life sciences of his generation.”3

Greene’s life-long interests centered on the interplay of science, ideology, and worldview, especially in the history of evolutionary thought. His most influential book, The

Death of Adam: Evolution and Its Impact on Western Thought (1959), analyzed the transformation of a static worldview influenced by natural theology and Newtonian theory,

* Frank Sulloway to Ernst Mayr, 4 July 1974, Papers of Ernst Mayr, Harvard University Archives, Cambridge, Massachusetts.

1 Michael Shermer and Frank J. Sulloway, “The Grand Old Man of Evolution: An Interview with Evolutionary Biologist Ernst Mayr,” Skeptic 8 (2000): 76; Carol Kaesuk Yoon, “Long Evolution of ‘Darwin of 20th Century,’” New York Times, April 15, 1997; James McGeachie, review of History, Humanity and Evolution: essays for John C. Greene, in Medical History 36 (1992): 117; Michael Ruse, review of Science, Ideology, and World View: essays in the history of evolutionary ideas, in Annals of Science 39 (1982): 427.

2 Francisco J. Ayala, review of Debating Darwin: Adventures of a Scholar, in Biology and Philosophy 15 (2000): 559.

3 James Moore, “John Colton Green, 1917–2008,” Isis 103 (2012): 144.

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towards the dynamic evolutionary paradigm of the modern era influenced by Darwinian theory.

The book sold over 200,000 copies.4 Among the many other works Greene produced over a long academic career was a compilation of essays with the title Science, Ideology, and World View

(1981), published by the University of California Press. He also served for many years as an officer and president for the History of Science Society, which in 2001 awarded him its highest honor, the George Sarton Medal, for a lifetime of scholarly achievement.

Greene explained, “To me science has always seemed distinct from both ideology and world view. Science attempts to describe or to discover relationships among phenomena in a value-free way, whereas ideology is connected with social action and so involves values of all sorts.” He added, “Of course science is a form of action, but it is a form of action that stresses observation. The scientist as observer sets aside questions of religion and social values in order to understand nature as it is. At the same time, the same individual is heavily conditioned by the prevailing world view: by concepts of what science is, what nature is – ideas one takes in like mother’s milk.”5 Greene would contend that, “science, ideology, and world view will forever be intertwined and interacting, ” and he hoped that scientists might better “recognize where science ends and other things begin.”6 He felt that the “inveterate tendency” by many contemporary

“evolutionary biologists to draw all kinds of religious, social, and moral inferences” from “the scientific basis of evolution by natural selection,” was the equivalent of “getting ‘sermons from

4 Hamilton Cravens, “Memorial Resolution for John C. Greene,” May 5, 2009, Iowa State University Faculty Senate Memorial Resolutions, http://www.facsen.iastate.edu/Policies/Memorial%20Resolutions20090505.pdf, accessed August 15, 2012.

5 John Greene, “Introductory Conversation,” in History, Humanity, and Evolution: Essays for John Greene, ed. James Moore (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1989), p. 5.

6 John C. Greene, “Postscript,” in Science, Ideology, and World View: Essays in the history of evolutionary ideas (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1981), p. 197.

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stones.’”7 Potentially worse, in Greene’s opinion, it needlessly antagonized religious fundamentalists. Greene warned, “If scientists aspire to be prophets and preachers, they cannot expect society to grant them the relative autonomy they have enjoyed in Western culture in recent centuries.”8

Greene discussed these concerns with both Ernst Mayr and Theodosius Dobzhansky, two of the twentieth century’s leading evolutionary biologists. Greene brought to each conversation his classical training in the history of ideas, criticizing both for their casual interjection of metaphysical assumptions into their public presentations of evolutionary theory. Against Mayr

(and others), Greene argued that progressive expressions of evolutionary humanism undermined scientific integrity, while against Dobzhansky, Greene argued that concepts of progress and

Christian metaphysics should be avoided in natural analyses. Both conversations began in 1959, the year of the centennial celebrations of the publication of Darwin’s On The Origin of Species.

Whereas Greene’s correspondence with Dobzhansky lasted most of a decade, his dialogue with his friend Ernst Mayr lasted nearly half a century.

It’s All in the Family

A number of branches from Greene’s family’s lineage trace back to the New England

Puritans, suggesting a cultural pedigree with deep roots in the American experience.

Coincidently, he shared Puritan relations with two of the leading architects of the twentieth century Neo-Darwinian synthesis, George Ledyard Stebbins and Sewall Wright. Though Greene would critique the views of both scientists during his career, he was unaware of the fact they were cousins! Their shared forbearers were among the earliest European settlers in the

7 Greene, History, Humanity and Evolution, p. 9.

8 Greene, Science, Ideology, and World View, p. 197.

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Connecticut River Valley, where three centuries later Greene would spend much of his career at the University of Connecticut as a professor of the history of science.

Notable among Greene’s Puritan relatives were Richard (1584–1670), Matthias (1623–

1662), and Robert Treat (1624–1710), all first wave European settlers of the Hartford,

Connecticut area.9 More precisely, the Treats established Wethersfield, a neighboring town along the Connecticut River. Ironically, Greene would later joke that when he began his graduate studies at Harvard University his mother hoped he would “do a dissertation on one of those fine old New England towns like Wethersfield.”10 Perhaps she knew something about which Greene otherwise appeared unaware, or at least never referred to in his personal writings.

A number of prominent American families claim lineage to the colonial Treats. Among them were Ernst Mayr’s financial supporters at the American Museum of Natural History, the patron couple Harry Payne and Gloria Vanderbilt Whitney in whose honor the Whitney South

Seas Expedition and the museum’s Whitney Memorial Wing were named. To put it another way

– Ernst Mayr owed a critical debt of financial support to the descendants of John Greene’s ancestors!

Another member of the Hartford colony, Thomas Wright (1610–1670), was a Puritan ancestor of evolutionary geneticist, Sewall Wright. A cousin of the Puritan Wright, the Deacon

9 John Greene’s direct ancestor was Matthias Treat. Though different sources propose Matthias could be a nephew or even a son of Richard Treat, best evidence suggests Matthias was a close relation. A notation dated from 1647 in John Winthrop, Jr.’s medical journal reported how he treated the young daughter of “Mathias Treat alias Trott – a kinsman of Mr. Trott,” acknowledging Matthias’ relation to Richard Treat, as well as the variations on the spelling of the name at the time. See John Henry Treat, The Treat Family: A Genealogy of Trott, Tratt, and Treat (Salem, MA: The Salem Press, 1893), p. 534; Donald Lines Jacobus and Edgar Francis Waterman, Hale, House and Related Families: Mainly of the Connecticut River Valley (Baltimore: Genealogical Publishing Co., 1978, or. 1952), p. 764. Many notable American lineages appear able to trace lineage to the Treats.

10 John Greene, History, Humanity and Evolution, p. 12. There were numerous genealogy books written in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century that listed Helen (Greene’s mother), or at least her parents and grandparents, as descendants of a variety of Puritan family branches. Her grandfather, Robert Treat, who raised her, submitted an application on behalf of his grandfather, John Treat, as a Revolutionary War soldier to the Sons of the American Revolution. It was accepted.

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Samuel Wright (1606–1665), settled just to the north in Springfield, Massachusetts. The

Deacon’s daughter, Hannah Wright (1626–1660), married Thomas Stebbins (1620–1683), in

1645. Not only did the famed evolutionary botanist George Ledyard Stebbins directly descend from these two Wright-Stebbins, but so too did Greene’s great-grandmother, Sarah Louis

Stebbins Treat (1834–1924).11 In another branch of prominent Springfield Puritans, the

Quartermaster George Colton (c.1620–1699) lent his name to his descendent John Colton

Greene, though Greene’s grandmother, the successful author “Belle” Colton Greene (1841–

1926).12

The shared genetic connection between the three branches of Darwinian scholars can be found in the English gentryman, Sir John Wright of Kelvedon Hall (1488–1551). Sir John, who held peerage in the House of Lords during the reign of Henry VIII (1509–1547), could also claim

John Colton Greene and George Ledyard Stebbins’ Puritan “mother” (Hannah Wright Stebbins of Springfield), as well as Sewall Wright’s Puritan “father” (Thomas Wright of Wethersfield), as his descendants. Thus the early English Renaissance gentleman, Sir John Wright, who with the help of his good wife, Lady Olive, deserves acknowledgement for making this dissertation a historical possibility.13

11 Thomas Stebbins was the son of Rowland Stebbins (1594–1649). Their descendent, Sarah Louis Stebbins Treat, and her husband Robert Treat, raised Greene’s mother, Helen Carter, not long after the death of their mother (the Treat’s daughter, Alice Louisa) in the early 1890s. See Ralph Stebbins Greenlee and Robert Lemuel Greenlee, The Stebbins Genealogy in two volumes, vol. 1 (Chicago, M. A Donahue, 1904), p. 584; John Harvey Treat, The Treat Family, pp. 560, 563.

12 George Woolworth Colton, Quartermaster George Colton: A Genealogical Record of the Descendants 1644– 1911 (Philadelphia: J. M. Colton, 1912), 318. Greene’s grandmother, “Isabella C,” is listed as descendent #2235.

13 For information specifically concerning the connection of Thomas Wright (Sewall Wright’s ancestor) and Deacon Samuel Wright (one of Greene and Stebbins’ common ancestors) to Sir John Wright and that includes biographical information See Curtis Wright, Genealogical and Biographical Notices of Descendants of Sir John Wright of Kelvedon Hall, Essex, England : in America Thomas Wright, of Wethersfield, Conn., Dea. Samual Wright, of Northhampton, Mass. 1610–1670, 16141665 (Carthage, MO: Wright, 1915). A less complete source is: William Henry Wright and Gertrude Wright Ketcham, History of the Wright Family . . . showing a direct line to John Wright, Lord of Kelvedon Hall, Essex, England (Denver: Williamson-Haffner Co., 1913).

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It was Greene’s mother, Helen Carter Greene, who could trace her maternal line back to the Treats, while Helen’s father traced lineage to the well-known Puritan minister, the Reverend

Thomas Carter (1608–1684).14 At least two of her ancestors fought in the American Revolution, while a great grandfather became a noted early land prospector in Ohio’s “Erie Tract.”15 Helen’s grandfather, Robert Treat (1831–1911), established himself in Cleveland, where he took “great interest” in “commercial business,” while securing a position of “agent” connected “with the

Columbia Refining Company, New York City.”16 He eventually moved to New York with his wife, Sarah Stebbins Treat, and their two granddaughters, Helen and Alice Carter (John’s mother

14 Clara A. Carter and Sarah A. Carter, Carter: A Genealogy of the Descendants of Samuel and Thomas, Sons of Rev. Samuel Carter 1640–1886 (Clinton, MA: W. J. Coulter, 1887), pp. 7, 11, 90–91. Consider B. Carter is listed as record #825 and #998. Helen Carter is listed as record #1005. The “Rev. Samuel Carter” mentioned in the title was the son of the “Rev. Thomas Carter of Woburn.” Coincidently, Rev. Samuel Carter was a Harvard College graduate, Class of 1660. Helen’s uncle, “Marshall W. Carter, W. Adams St. Chicago,” was listed as attending a Rev. Carter family reunion in: Mrs. George I. Chaney, The Carter Family Reunion at Woburn, Mass., June 11, 1884 (Boston: Coburn Bros. & Snow, 1884), p. 51. There is a nineteenth century painting depicting Reverend Thomas Carters’ 1642 ordination hanging in the Winn Memorial Library in Winthrop, Massachusetts. Helen’s father, Consider B. Carter (1832–1910), was Marshall’s business partner in the Chicago construction firm, “Carter Bros.” Marshall took a leading role in a number of Chicago trade organizations representing the building construction industry. Consider took an interest in writing evangelical poetry and essays later in life, with many being published. Consider B. Carter’s house at the time of Helen’s birth was at 314 W. Jackson, which appears to be at the current site of the Willis Tower (formerly Sears Tower). The family of a third Carter brother in the construction business also had a home close by.

15 Treat, 548. See also Historical Society of Geauga County O. (Ohio), Pioneer and General History of Geauga County: with sketches of some of the pioneers and prominent men (Burton, Ohio: The Historical Society of Geauga County, 1880), p. 391. One of Helen’s Treat ancestors was also on the Connecticut State Legislative committee that drafted the Connecticut State Constitution.

16 Treat, 560 (page 563 mentioned Helen as Matthias Treat descendent # 412); Greenlee, 584. The Columbia Refining Company, a Broadway firm, was known as “manufacturers of cylinder oils, lubricants and greases.” See “W. Gregory & Company,” in Boston; Its Finance, Commerce and Literature (New York: The A. F. Parsons Publishing Company, 1892), p. 127.

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and aunt).17 Helen would later attend Barnard College at Columbia University, and after graduation taught high school in New York.18

It is not entirely clear to what extent Greene was aware of his New England ancestral history. For example, while making arrangements to visit Ernst Mayr’s farm in southern New

Hampshire in 1993, Greene wrote that he would like to “spend a day or two in Nashua, my father’s hometown. I have never been there, and I would like to visit the local historical society and see what records, if any, they have of my grandfather’s stationers shop and other matters connected with the Greene’s.”19 Nonetheless, these deep roots in the Protestant American cultural experience surely held a latent influence.20

Belle & Edward & Harvard & Helen

John Greene’s Grandmother Belle, whom he knew as a young boy, was a noted author perhaps best comparable to a modestly successful feminine version of Mark Twain! A two- volume “comprehensive encyclopedia of the lives and achievements of American women during the nineteenth century” (published in the 1890s), described Belle as an acclaimed humorist and

17 Helen’s and Alice’s mother died not long after younger sister Alice’s first birthday, and the two girls moved in with their maternal grandparents. Their father, Consider Carter, was about the same age as the grandparents, as the girls were his children from a third marriage. Coincidently, Consider Carter and Robert Treat were also step- brothers of sorts, as Consider’s mother had married Treats father in their later years.

18 The Crescent of Phi Beta Kappa: A Quarterly Magazine Vol. VII No. 4 (October 1907): 213. Helen is listed as an associate editor.

19 John Greene to Walter Bock, 20 February 1994, John C. Greene Papers, Archives & Special Collections at the Thomas J. Dodd Research Center, University of Connecticut, Storrs, Connecticut. As for Greene’s father’s family, they could trace their lineage back to shortly after the America Revolution, showing up on New Hampshire tax records apparently after moving from Canada. Greene’s grandfather, Martin V. B. Greene, husband of Belle C. Greene, became a successful printer and stationer in Nashua, as well as a prominent local Mason who could include among his associates a future governor of the state. (Greene employed the Governor’s son, Harry Ramsdell, for a number of years after the young man graduated high school.)

20 Greene’s grandmother, Isabelle “Belle” Greene, also claimed to have an ancestor “on her father’s side [who] married an Indian princess belonging to a Massachusetts tribe.” See, Frances E Willard and Mary A. Livermore, eds. American Women: Fifteen hundred biographies with over 1400 portraits (New York: Mast, Crowell & Kirpatrick, 1897 rev. ed.), p. 337.

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short story writer whose career began in the early 1880s.21 Among the national journals Belle frequently contributed to were Godey’s Lady’s Book, The Ladies’ Home Journal, The Continent

Weekly Magazine, and Frank Leslie’s Popular Monthly, as well as a number of newspapers. She enjoyed her greatest popularity during the last two decades of the century.

The aforementioned encyclopedia of American Women reported that when John’s

Grandma Belle “toured southern California and the Pacific Coast” during the late 1880s, “she contributed to the newspapers a series of humorous sketches founded upon the phases of the boom, which added greatly to her reputation as a humorous writer.” Other “newspaper work” involved what sounded like an exposé with the title: “the ‘Mill Papers,’ regarding the operatives in the cotton-mills, written for the Boston ‘Transcript’ in 1883 and 1884.”22 Belle also wrote a

“religious novel” titled A New England Conscience (1885) that “attracted wide comment.

Though severely denounced by some of the critics, it was regard by others as a masterpiece of condensed thought and realistic character drawing.”23

Belle found her greatest success with her humorous novels, often compilations of previously published short stories involving reoccurring characters. For example, still in print is

The Adventures of an Old Maid (1886), starring “Aunt Ruth.” Belle’s book, reported to have sold

150,000 copies, featured a rustic though innately savvy character negotiating the perils and pleasures of the then modern world.24 Perhaps it could also be said that Ruth tells the story of a

21 Ibid.

22 Ibid.

23 Ibid. The Publishers Weekly reported that the book, published by G. P. Putnam’s Sons, “chiefly aims to set for the bigotry and narrowness of the New England Methodist, in a succession of rather clever sketches of the young and old.” The Publishers Weekly 704 (July 25, 1885): 133. Since there were hardly many Methodists villages in New England, perhaps it was a critique aimed more generally at religious excess in rural New England. See Bret Harte, “Recent Fiction,” The Overland Monthly 33 (Sept. 1885): 329.

24 “News Notes,” The Bookman: A Literary Journal, vol. 1, no. 4 (May 1895), pp. 227–28.

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single Victorian woman in the city, so to speak. Her adventures included a trip out West, where at a Chicago pet shop Ruth met a live-wire evangelical “Darwinyan”! As Aunt Ruth tells it:

“Madam,” says he, “I’m a Darwinyan.” Then he went on to tell how our forefathers and foremothers way back was monkeys and baboons, till I got all out o’ patience with him. I tried to shet him up or git away from him, but he kept follerin’ me round and talk, talkin’. Finally, we stopped before an old gray-headed monkey, with a smooth face, that did look jest like a human bein’, I must confess.

The Darwin man pinted to the monkey and turned to me with a look of triump’. “There!” says he, significant.

“Yes, sir,” says I, lookin’ fust at the monkey, and then at him, “I dew see a strikin’ resemblance!” He does look enough like ye to be your twin brother, that’s a fact!” He didn’t stay long after that, and he let me alone. I guess he was satisfied; he carried his pint anyway.25

While Belle the author indulged in a trope “of monkeys and men” familiar to her audience, she

“carried the pint” with a twist of humorous complexity.

In a later essay, Belle presented a question to her readers on the front page of the journal,

The Writer: A Monthly Magazine to Interest and Help All Literary Workers:

Let us suppose that a young girl, respectably educated in the schools, aspired toward authorship. . . . What do we tell her?”

Belle’s suggested:

If you write, study and work faithfully, but also dream, feel, glow. Cultivate the emotions as well as the intellect. If you are interested in any one subject, think of it, live it, suffer it, enjoy it in your own mind and soul; make it a reality, a part of your very self, – if it is a principle, be ready to die for it, – then write, and depend upon it, you will reach the hearts of your readers, and in time you will have what your soul craves – success.26

John Greene’s grandmother Belle would travel extensively with her son, Edward, after the death of her husband (Greene’s grandfather) in 1893. Greene later recalled hearing how

25 Belle C. Greene, The Adventures of an Old Maid (New York: J. S. Ogilvie, 1886), pp. 172–73.

26 Belle C. Greene, “A Parable and A Plea,” The Writer: A Monthly Magazine To Interest And Help All Literary Workers, vol. 10, No. 9 (September, 1897), pp. 125-26.

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during his father’s (Edward’s) years at Harvard Belle had “decided that he needed a break for his health,” and the two subsequently traveled to Europe touring “Munich for a year . . . to the opera and all that sort of thing. He had some German as well as French. French was his specialty.”27

Edward would teach Romance languages at a variety of prestigious Connecticut private schools before completing his Harvard degree in 1903, followed by a master’s at the University of

Wisconsin.

Perhaps Helen Carter, John Greene’s mother, had been visiting her family relations in

Chicago when she first met Edward, who was then living in the Midwest. Edward would later reveal to his former Harvard classmates: “If you don’t believe a New Englander can profit by the acquaintance with the West, take my word for it. It was in the West that I met and married my wife, who, after my travels, has made of me, in Mr. Dooley’s phrase, ‘a converted cruiser, leading now a quiet, dacint and rayspictable life.’ Nothing like it!”28 With a degree in one hand and a fiancé in the other, Edward left for Indianapolis, with Belle and Helen soon to follow. In

1910 he took a position at Butler College as an assistant professor “teaching French and Spanish as head of the department of Romance languages.”29 John’s oldest brother, Robert, arrived in

27 John C. Greene, in an interview with the author, May 19, 2008. The “Secretary’s Fourth Report, June 1911” for the “Harvard College Class of 1896”, noted that Greene was “a student in the Lawrence Scientific School” who withdrew at the end of his junior year.

28 Edward Martin Greene, “Edward Martin Greene,” in Harvard College Class of 1903 Decennial Report, June, 1913, p. 204. “Mr. Dooley” was Finley Peter Dunne’s nationally syndicated comic character famous for his commentary on political and popular culture, with a thick Irish brogue. Belle Greene’s also portrayed her characters with dialect humor. It was a literary device popular at the time.

29 Ibid., p. 205. The 1922-23 Catalogue of the University of South Dakota listed Edward Greene worked at Butler College first as an Assistant Professor of Romance Languages between 1910–13, and then Professor from 1914– 1919. The Greene’s subsequently moved to USD in Vermillion, South Dakota. The 1912 Butler Drift calendar for the 1911–12 academic year noted that on November 23, “The wedding bel. ring for Prof. Greene” (p. 96), suggesting Helen might have arrived toward the end of the semester. In another suggestion of student affection for Greene, a poem titled, “Is That True? A College Epic,” offered the stanza: “While football raged on Turkey Day, Professor Greene was far away; We heard amidst the rooter’s yells, The echo of his wedding bells” (p. 100).

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1911, followed by Edward, Jr. in 1915. Soon thereafter, John C. followed suit at the Greene family home, about a half mile from the old Butler campus.30

Home on the Prairie: Vermillion, South Dakota

In 1919, Edward, Helen, and Grandma Belle, along with little Robert, Edward, and John, moved from “The Crossroads of America” (Indianapolis, Indiana) to a small town along the wide

Missouri seven hundred miles to the northwest, where Edward had secured “an interesting position heading the Romance Language Department at the University of South Dakota, in

Vermillion.” Edward noted in his June 1920 Harvard alumni report: “I expect the change will prove for the better in every essential way. I am glad to believe that wherever I am, I can continue to help interpret the ideals of a noble race such as the French.”31

John Greene would later describe his South Dakotan hometown as a “university and market town of about 3500 inhabitants (800 of whom were college students).”32 The family initially moved to a rented house by campus. Not long after, they bought a home on the edge of town a block or so from the eighty-foot bluffs that overlook the Vermillion River, where a broad valley stretches a few miles wide toward the hills of Nebraska beyond the Missouri River.

Greene remembered it as “a beautiful view.”33

In August 1904, Lewis and Clark’s Corps of Discovery had been the first explorers to make a record of their visit to that area. They camped along the confluence of the Vermillion and

Missouri Rivers (in their time, near where Greene’s house would be located, coincidently on

30 The March 5th 1917 event was proudly announced in the Butler Alumnal Quarterly: Founder’s Day Number, April 1917 (Vol. VI, No. 1): 55. The Greenes lived at 330 S. Emerson at the time.

31 Edward Martin Greene, “Edward Martin Greene,” Harvard College Class of 1903 Quindecennial Report, June, 1920 (Norwood, MA: Plimpton Press, 1920), p. 122.

32 Greene, Debating Darwin, p. 3.

33 Greene, History, Humanity and Evolution, p. 14. The height of the bluffs near Greene’s home were estimated from a U.S. Geological Survey map.

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Lewis St.)34 The Corp of Discovery made note of their first buffalo hunt while in the area. John

James Audubon, the famous naturalist, artist, and ornithologist, followed thirty years later birding along the Vermillion Ravine in the spring of 1843.35

Other notable Vermillion events included the founding of the University of South Dakota in 1862 during the first session of the Dakota Territorial Legislation. But with no funding available for the next twenty years, classes fortuitously had to wait until after the disastrous flood of 1881 had washed three quarters of town down the Missouri River. Suffice it to say, the flood made a convincing argument for rebuilding on top the bluffs, with the University opening its doors the following year. It appeared the USD “Coyotes” were something of an attraction, as both William Henry Taft and William Jennings Bryan made whistle stops in Vermillion during the 1908 presidential election.36

Perhaps in a bit of the mood of the early American naturalist explorers, Lewis and Clark and Audubon, a young John Greene took his turn scouting the Vermillion bluffs in what he would later call “going on nature rambles.” He later described that as he grew older, “From time to time I would also go up to [the] small [University] museum – and describe for Mr. [W. H.]

Over, the curator, some bird I had seen. Sometimes he would say, ‘There ain’t no such bird’, my descriptions not being very good, and other times he would say, ‘That’s a Bell’s vireo’, or

34 The 1930 and 1940 US Census listed the Greene’s home at 323 Lewis St., paralleling Clark St. a block away. The confluence of the Vermillion and Missouri is now about 3.5 miles southeast of Cotton Park. See “The Vermillion and Missouri Rivers Change Course,” http://www.spiritmound.com/missouririver.htm, accessed 20 September 2012.

35 “History of Vermillion,” Clay County Historical Society, Vermillion Area Visitor/Tourism, http://www.vermillionchamber.com/history.shtml, accessed 20 September 2012.

36 “Sesquicentennial Highlights,” 23 July 2008, Vermillion Plain Talk (from excerpts originally published in the Dakota Republican), http://www.plaintalk.net/cms/news/story-45563.html, accessed 20 September 2012. For a general history of Vermillion, see also Arthur L. Rusch, “Looking Back: Early Vermillion,” DowntownVermillion.com, http://www.downtownvermillion.com/looking-back/, accessed 20 September 2112.

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something like that.”37 As a prospective young ornithologist, Greene’s accomplishments undoubtedly fell significantly short of Mayr’s!

Greene recalled that though his father would call him “a spirited race ,” his “general temperament was romantic.”38 As Greene remembered it: “[In] high school, I read and memorized poetry – Wordsworth, Shelley, Keats, and others. But I read Milton on my own.”

Sometimes he would get “up at 4:30 in the morning, before sunrise, and go down by the bluff” to

“watch the sunrise and read Milton’s Paradise” before the summer heat set in.39 He enjoyed high school “very much, particularly debating and singing. And . . . had some good courses in English literature . . . [and] wrote some editorials for the high school newspaper.”40

Though his father was a university professor, Greene felt he “was not a highly intellectual person . . . not theoretically inclined at all, so I had no close intellectual relationship with him.”

Greene remembered his father “saying to me once . . . something about going to church being the

‘social thing’ to do, but what his own religious beliefs were I have no idea. I just assumed he was some kind of Christian.”41 The family attended a “rather liberal and not at all theological”

Congregational church, but Greene thought “there was nothing in my religious upbringing to predispose me strongly one way or the other.” Greene recalled, “There was very little in the way

37 Greene, History, Humanity and Evolution, p. 14. John Greene’s museum curator friend, William H. Over, sounded like a character. Though he only had an eight- grade education, Over possessed such a thorough understanding of the local natural history, that in 1912 the USD Museum offered him the position of assistant curator. The current natural history museum at the University of South Dakota is named the W. H. Over Museum. See Otto Neuhaus, “A Seed on Fertile Ground: How W. H. Over learned and taught the natural history of South Dakota,” in the South Dakota Magazine Vol. 16, No. 1 (May/June 2000), p. 33.

38 Greene told Ernst Mayr that his wife mentioned, “I never have been what my father once called me: ‘a spirited race horse’. More like old Dobbin, I should say – slow but steady.” John Greene to Ernst Mayr, 25 August 1994, Greene Papers; See also Greene, History, Humanity and Evolution, p. 14.

39 Greene, History, Humanity and Evolution, p. 14.

40 Ibid., p. 12.

41 Ibid., p. 13.

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of Bible study. In Sunday school we had little readers that would give us cases of . . . [m]oral stories for discussion.” As for his own inclinations, he wrote: “I was always a sermon taster. I always listened to the sermon. I found that the next thing to a really good sermon to make me think was a really bad sermon, and I heard quite a few really bad sermons.”42 He considered

“parts of the Bible deeply moving and the Christian conception of human nature highly realistic,” inspiring in him “a generally sympathetic view of Christian belief and theistic views of nature.”43

Greene also sang in the choir. Fifty years later he happily recalled: “I can still sing a lot of those hymns and enjoy them.”44 In correspondence with William “Doc” Farber, the influential political science professor Greene knew from his student days at the University of South Dakota,

“Doc” reminisced: “What I especially liked about your letter was to learn that you are still singing. I remember well the fantastic solos you sang in the Congregational Church.”45 In fact, as a teenager Greene won a men’s statewide voice competition. Singing remained something he enjoyed throughout his life.46

Greene spoke admiringly of his mother, Helen, and described her as “a highly educated woman, a Barnard graduate, with strong views about lots of things.” Still, “her mind did not run

42 Ibid., p. 12.

43 John C. Greene, Debating Darwin: Adventures of a Scholar (Claremont, CA: Regina Press, 1999), p. 18.

44 Greene, History, Humanity and Evolution, p. 12.

45 William “Bill” O. Farber to John C. Greene, 3 June 1997, Greene Papers. Farber added in his letter that Greene’s former college day’s Congregational Church was “incidentally . . . doing well with a young, enthusiastic minister of Moravian background.”

46 Apparently Greene’s Grandmother Belle, who lived with John during his boyhood years, was also quite a singer. The author of her biographical essay published in American Women noted that when Belle asked a friend, one Mrs. Phelps-Ward, to critique her early writings, “Mrs. Phelps replied with characteristic honesty and kindness that Mrs. Greene’s voice was doubtless her one great gift, and, as mortals were seldom blest with two, she advised her to stick to music, but added, since she must give an opinion, that she considered the humorous sketch the better of the two” (Willard and Livemore, p. 337.)

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to the subjects I became interested in. . . . She never really had any feeling for intellectual history or philosophy.”47

Helen and her younger sister, Alice Carter, remained close throughout John’s childhood.

When Helen and Edward moved to Indianapolis in 1910, Alice enrolled at the University of

Illinois a few hours away and visited on breaks. In 1915 Alice graduated with a B.A in

“household sciences,” but initially decided to work “for two years [as an] assistant to the pastor of the University Presbyterian Church, which [was] essentially a college church where her work was among the Presbyterian college girls” in Illinois.48 Alice then taught home economics for a year at Baker University in Kansas before moving to Indianapolis after John was born.49 The

University of Illinois alumni magazine recommended that any travelling “Illini coming down with the influ [sic] while at Indianapolis should insist on being whisked to the city hospital, for

Alice Carter is a dietician there.”50

When the Greenes moved to South Dakota, Alice returned to New York to serve as the

“Assistant Secretary for Young People’s Work” at the “Women’s Board of Home Missions of the Presbyterian Church.” She soon considered a move to China. In 1920, the Illinois alumni magazine reported: “Alice Carter has seized everything in education that is running loose in the

U. S., and is busily preparing to sally forth to study the lingo at Nanking for a year before starting to teach somewhere in Hunan province. Last good byes may be addressed to 16 E.

47 Greene, History, Humanity and Evolution, p. 12.

48 “Editorial Notes,” Home Mission Monthly: Published by the Woman’s Board of Home Missions of the Presbyterian Church Vol. XXXIIII, No. 10 (August, 1919), p. 231. A masthead for the organization lists “Miss Alice Carter” as an officer with the title, “Assistant Secretary for Young People’s Work.” Their headquarters were located at 156 Fifth Avenue, New York City. See also The Alumni Quarterly and Fortnightly Notes Vol. 1, No. 2 (15 October 1915), p. 70.

49 Baker University is a highly rated liberal arts college in Kansas founded in 1858 by ministers and educated advocates within the Methodist Episcopal (now United Methodist) church.

50 The Alumni Quarterly and Fortnightly Notes Vol. 5, No. 15 (15 April 1919): 286.

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Dartmouth St., Vermillion, S. Dak.”51 Helen and Edward not only assisted young John’s Aunt

Alice with the use of their home as an American base, but also vouched for her character on her passport application.

Undoubtedly young John often heard news of his Aunt Alice, as the two sisters frequently corresponded during her years in China doing good works and spreading the good word. In fact, the Yale University archives holds two volumes of their letters in the “China

Record Project Personal Papers Collection,” located in the Yale Divinity School Library.52 At that time, a “Peace Corps-like fervor to help humankind all over the world” was common among

“young women college graduates,” an aspiration the missionary societies helped facilitate.53

Alice’s adventures included studying Chinese for a year at the Nanking Language School, followed by teaching at Nanking’s Presbyterian Bible School. While working at the Presbyterian

Mission School in Siangtan, Hunan, she became involved with the local hospital.

John’s Aunt Alice returned to see her Vermillion family in 1926. Helen and Edward announced in the Butler Alumnal Quarterly to their friends back in Indianapolis that Alice would wed her fellow missionary, "the Reverend Augustus Inglesbe Nasmith, of Shaohsing, China.”54

51 Ibid., 191. The Greene’s first home was at the Dartmouth St. address.

52 See “Alice Carter,” Box 339, Folder 2-3, Guide to the China Records Project Miscellaneous Personal Papers Collection (Record Group No. 8), Yale University Library, http://drs.library.yale.edu:8083/HLTransformer/HLTransServlet?stylename=yul.ead2002.xhtml.xsl&pid=divinity:00 8&query=&clear-stylesheet- cache=yes&hlon=yes&big=&adv=&filter=&hitPageStart=&sortFields=&view=c01_1#c02.IDAHHSX, accessed 20 September 2112.

53 Agnes Nasmith Johnston and Mary Nasmith Means, eds. A Golden Glow in the East: Esther Nairn Nasmith’s Letters from China, 1910 to 1925 (New York: Writers Club Press, 2002), p. xv.

54 The Butler Alumnal Quarterly Vol. 15, No.3 (October 1926): 196.

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John Greene was nine years old at the time of the ceremony held in Vermillion. Undoubtedly his missionary relatives would leave an impression on the young boy, before their return to China.55

Compared to Alice’s adventures, the Greene household was less dramatic. Greene noted that his “folks were not highly social and my mother was partially deaf,” both lending to a quiet family life.56 About his childhood, Greene remembered, “[I was] perfectly able to amuse myself and enjoy life without much company.”57 His father’s faculty friends, furthermore, “were gentle folk mostly . . . there was nothing hurly burly or avant garde about them. They were just nice people.”58 In other words, the Greenes represented a typical Midwestern Protestant American family.

Overall, the Greene’s avoided making waves at home. John pointed out, “The convention in our family – and conventions can be very important – was that we hardly ever talked about politics or religion. There wasn’t even much general discussion at meals.” He recalled that while his parents “were brought up Republicans,” they “liked Franklin Roosevelt. How they voted I really don’t know.” The family appeared sympathetic toward FDR’s New Deal reforms implemented during the Great Depression. Greene admitted that while he had a “fairly liberal

55 Alice’s husband was a widower with three young children, one of them a boy Greene’s age who grew up in China among the expatriate community of Protestant missionaries. Undoubtedly the children attended the wedding in Vermillion (where the couple filed their marriage certificate), redoubling an impression on young John. Before the untimely death (due to cancer) of their mother, a close friend of Alice Carter, they had, like John, also referred to her as “Aunt Alice.” See Johnston and Means, eds., A Golden Glow in the East. Greene’s grandmother Belle also left that same year. She passed away while staying with her older sister in a village about thirty miles northwest of Chicago, where Belle had often spent her summers after moving with her son to the Midwest. The Cook County Herald stated in a front-page eulogy: “Mrs. Greene gave her life to literature and articles from her pen were sought after.” It appeared that Belle “was sick but a few days, but suffered no pain as she quietly entered into eternal sleep.” See “Mrs. Isabel Colton Greene,” Cook County Herald (19 March 1926): 1.

56 Greene, History, Humanity and Evolution, 18. James Moore noted that Greene’s middle brother, Edward, had a disability that contributed to the Greene family’s homebody tendencies. See Moore, 145. Greene’s older brother, Robert, was his senior by six years, which must have felt like a lifetime for growing boys.

57 Greene, History, Humanity and Evolution, p. 13.

58 Ibid., p. 14.

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upbringing,” he never felt “indoctrinated in any way” that would spark an “impulse, either external or internal, to engage with social issues.”59

Life Among The Coyotes

Greene reported that, “in 1934, while still living at home, I went on to the University of

South Dakota, which had about eight hundred students.” He often saw his father on campus, taking the senior Greene’s French course during a three-year study of the language. The 1938 yearbook showed John participating in the “Marching Coyote” Military Color Guard while pursuing a major in Government with additional interests in Phi Beta Kappa and the debate and philosophy clubs. Greene noted, “I enjoyed debating very much, working up a case.”60 It would prove to be a useful talent during his academic career.

He recalled, “I started out at the university and actually finished as a political science major. The political science department was heavily practical at the time. But I had a theoretical bent. I can remember my professor suggesting topics about public utilities for my senior thesis. I said that I would like to write on the idea of sovereignty. He replied, ‘Well, really, that stuff doesn’t get you anywhere’, but he let me do it.”61

Greene likely also took advice from Doc Farber, a “mentor to students and stalwart of

South Dakota political history” who began teaching at USD during Greene’s sophomore year.62

59 Ibid., pp. 13–14.

60 Ibid., p. 12.

61 Ibid., p. 13.

62 “Traditions & Icons: Doc Farber Statue,” University of South Dakota Alumni Association, http://www.usdalumni.com/page.aspx?pid=399, accessed 20 September 2112. Tom Brokaw, the former anchor for the NBC Nightly News, graduated from the University of South Dakota in 1962. In 2010 he did a five-minute segment on the Today Show, in which he returned to USD “to see how the spirit of his most influential professor, the late Bill Farber, lives on among the students on campus today.” The clip is viewable on the NBC News site at, http://www.educationnation.com/index.cfm?objectid=C07B669E-CD73-11DF-8853000C296BA163, accessed 20 September 2112.

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Writing to Greene years later, Farber reminisced that his former student’s letter “invited a number of pleasant memories. Vermillion in 1935 was a different world. . . . The number of good students who have made a difference and have gone to USD is amazing. From the very beginning there were you, Don Fowler, and Cliff Gross among others.”63

The 1937 Commencement Program noted that both Cliff Gross and John Greene won

“Prizes in Debating.”64 In addition, Greene earned the Philo Sherman Bennett Prize for the “best essay about the principles of free government,” though it is not entirely clear if the Philo

Sherman Bennett submission became his formal senior thesis.65 Greene recalled, “All I can remember about the thesis is my conclusion that I still did not know what sovereignty was and I didn’t think my authorities did either”! Greene recalled, “But I had a good deal of intellectual interchange in writing it . . . with Professor Josey, the philosophy professor, who also taught psychology.”66 He continued, my “main intellectual stimulus, apart from debating, came from a couple of courses in philosophy – one in the history of philosophy, the other in ethics – where we read and discussed Plato’s Republic. Also, there was a little group that met in one of the churches for weekly discussions. It included [the] philosophy professor and the former dean” of engineering, Lewis Ellsworth Akeley, who was the “brother of Carl Akeley, the African explorer.” Greene noted that Akeley was “a tremendously energetic man, full of ideas. One of his

63 William O. Farber to John C. Greene, 3 June 1997, Greene Papers.

64 “Honors, Prizes and Awards,” Fifty-Fifth Annual Commencement, University of South Dakota, June 7, 1937, http://files.usgwarchives.net/sd/clay/school/usdgrad37.txt, accessed 20 September 2112.

65 A copy of the University of South Dakota 1937 Commencement Program is viewable at, http://files.usgwarchives.net/sd/clay/school/usdgrad37.txt, accessed 20 September 2112. The USD Political Science Department describes the award on their list of scholarships on their department webpage, http://catalog.usd.edu/preview_entity.php?catoid=3&ent_oid=102&returnto=16. The University of Wyoming also offers the award (as do colleges in all fifty states) and presents additional information on the Philo Sherman Bennett Prize in Political Science at, http://www.uwyo.edu/pols/bennett/index.html, 20 September 2112. The history of this award is connected with the legacy of William Jennings Bryan, who administered the directives in Philo Sherman Bennett’s will concerning the prize.

66 Greene, History, Humanity and Evolution, p. 13.

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prize students was Ernest O. Lawrence, who invented the cyclotron.”67 Likely Doc Farber attended as well, as he later recalled, “I do think often about Josey and his discussions of the cosmos, and Akeley as well as Loewenburg [another of Greene’s USD mentors]. We did more thinking in those days than I fear faculty are doing now.”68

The Advisor Professor Josey

Dr. Josey was born in 1893 at Scotland Neck, North Carolina. He earned his Bachelors cum laude at Wake Forest in 1913, followed by an MA and Ph.D. at Columbia University. In

1921 Josey published his 75-page dissertation, The Role of Instinct in Social Philosophy, noting that the influential professor of philosophy, Frederick J. E. Woodbridge “directed the study.”69

Josey expanded the thesis in his book, The Social Philosophy of Instinct (1922), published while he taught at Dartmouth College’s Psychology Department as an assistant professor. The work received a favorable three and a half-page review in the Journal of Philosophy from a fellow student of Woodbridge who at the time was an assistant professor at Columbia.70

Josey’s next book, Race and National Solidarity (1923), hardly lacked a direct argument.

To put it bluntly, it was a racist tract promoting white supremacy. In addition, the severe economic downturn following WWI coupled with a massive influx of immigrants, likely exacerbated Josey’s concerns during an era when many intellectuals considered the respectability of social programs involving eugenics. But whatever the situation may have involved, if John

67 Greene, History, Humanity and Evolution, p. 12. The finding aid for the Lewis Ellsworth Akeley Papers held at the University of South Dakota Archives & Special Collections offers a short biographical sketch. See http://www.usd.edu/library/upload/AkeleyLE.pdf, accessed 20 September 2112.

68 William O. Farber to John C. Greene, 3 June 1997, Greene Papers.

69 Charles Conant Josey, “Acknowledgements,” The Role of Instinct in Social Philosophy (New York: The Chauncey Holt Company, 1921).

70 John Herman Randall, Jr., review of The Social Philosophy of Instinct by Charles Conant Josey, The Journal of Philosophy Vol. 20 No. 18 (Aug 30 1923): 494–497.

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Greene could be said to represent many of the better elements of Protestant American culture,

Josey’s book might well represent a darker side. For example, it is difficult to find any sympathy for Josey’s arguments presented in his concluding chapter, “The Choice Before Us”:

It must now be apparent that the dominant cultural group is confronted with grave problems.71

If we find that labor can no longer be exploited within our group on account of its growing power and our growing sympathies, there are other means available. . . . The preponderant might of the European group . . . is sufficient to impose our will on the world . . . [and] transfer the burdens of our own civilization from the backs of labor groups within, to the backs of labor groups without . . . There need be nothing unjust in this.72

We must free our minds of our ethical and moral prejudices. . . . We have found reasons for believing that many of the cultural values we deeply prize are possible only when there is a measure of exploitation. We have found reasons for believing that the exploitation of labor at home must shortly cease. We have found reason for believing that the good of the world will be best served by the domination of the whites rather then the yellows. All these values are safeguarded by the programme suggested.73

Then in his final paragraph, Josey reached a crescendo:

Can the white races be persuaded to use their power to do this? . . . When the value of strong race and national feelings is appreciated we shall have a different attitude toward race pride and “prejudice.” . . . When this has occurred there will be restored to the white races the old faith and pride . . . They will then be filled with zeal and enthusiasm to carry on the progress of man to higher and higher levels. When the consciousness of a high and noble mission dominates the white world, we may be sure . . . [to] expect another era of race expansion and creative fruitfulness that shall go a long way to satisfy the longings of all those interested in the welfare of man.74

That summer, Josey received an appointment as Professor of Philosophy at the University of South Dakota. Perhaps this happened before Race and National Solidarity left the press, as the

71 Charles Conant Josey, Race and National Solidarity (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1923), p. 198.

72 Ibid., pp. 207–08.

73 Ibid., pp. 213–14.

74 Ibid., p. 227.

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book was soon savaged in academic and popular literary reviews. Possibly Josey “toned it down” after reading such reviews from men of letters like the nationally renowned satirist and social commentator, H. L. Mencken, who stated:

In his Race and National Solidarity Prof. Josey not only proves that the benign economic and political oversight of the darker peoples is the manifest destiny of Nordic man; he also proves, in 117 pages of very eloquent stuff, that is it a highly moral business, and unquestionably pleasing to God. . . . Specifically, the professor argues at great length that it is a foolish and evil thing to take the boons of civilization to the backward races without making sure that they pay a good price for what they get. . . .

Prof. Josey, as you may have guessed, is without much humor, and so his book is rather heavy going. But I have read every word of it attentively, and commend his Message to all who desire to become privy to the most advanced thought of this era of Service. However, it will not be necessary to read his actual book. The great bond houses issue weekly and monthly bulletins, free for the asking. Ask for them, and his ideas will be set before you, backed up by a great moral passion and probably in more lascivious English.75

John Farrar, the editor for The Bookman who would later establish the prestigious publishing firm Farrar, Straus and Giroux, presented a similar opinion in a short review: “The ideas presented are by no means complex; it must be the style that makes the book such ponderous reading.”76

Since Josey’s output over the next few decades became significantly more mainstream, perhaps his academic peers preferred to consider Race and National Solidarity a youthful indiscretion, as it appears that Josey soon thereafter set aside the polemics. For example, during the years he advised Greene at USD, Josey published two essays in The Journal of Religion

75 H. L. Mencken, “The Uplift: Export Department,” The American Mercury Vol. 1, No. 1 (January 1924): 122– 23. This was the inaugural issue of the American Mercury, cofounded by Mencken. It “was considered the definitive expression of intellectual taste during the 1920s. . . . Intellectually challenging, visually stark,and anxiously anticipated every mont, the American Mercury influenced the literary, political and cultural landscape of the ‘roaring’ 1920s.” See “The American Mercury,” Newsstand: 1925; a virtual newsstand from the summer of 1925, http://uwf.edu/dearle/enewsstand/enewsstand_files/Page1019.htm, accessed 20 September 2112. Ironically, during the 1950s a series of right wing publishers gained control of the magazine, and in 1972 published a Josey essay that promoted his views on race.

76 John Farrar, ed., “Recent Books in Brief Review,” The Bookman Vol. 58, No. 6 (February 1924): 674–75.

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(published by the University of Chicago Divinity School) that exhibited a respectful moderate tone.77 Possibly the rise of totalitarianism in Europe had a contributing influence. For instance, after leaving USD for a position at Butler University shortly after Greene graduated, Josey published The Psychological Battlefront of Democracy (1944), in which he stated:

The spirit of tolerance has reached maturity. We do not believe that we have all the answers, nor do we believe that anyone else has. As a result we are willing to discuss our problems in the hope of reaching a solution agreeable to all parties concerned. We have reached the point of being willing to “live and let live.” We do not have the overwhelming desire to dominate others that is characteristic of more authoritarian ages. These are important causes of war. As we outgrow these attitudes, the prospects of peace become brighter for nations as well as individuals.78

But as Josey approached retirement in the early 1960s, during an era characterized by the rise of the Civil Rights Movement, Josey again took up the supremacists cause of race, albeit with more eloquence then when he started out as a young scholar.79 Apparently, the “spirit of tolerance” had limits.

Whatever the case, anxieties about white supremacy did not appear to have an affect on

Greene while under Josey’s tutelage at the University of South Dakota. If anything, they might have been something of an intellectual stimulus, given Greene’s claim that “the next thing to a really good sermon to make me think was a really bad sermon, and I heard quite a few really bad

77 Charles C. Josey, “The Contribution of Science to Modern Religion,” The Journal of Religion Vol. 16, No. 4 (Oct., 1936): 463–475; Charles C. Josey, “Religious Education in a Democracy,” The Journal of Religion Vol. 18, No. 1 (Jan., 1938): 19–50.

78 Charles C. Josey, The Psychological Battlefront of Democracy (Indianapolis, IN: The Butler University Press, 1944), p. 10.

79 The Mankind Quarterly website lists Josey a founding member. See “History and Philosophy,” The Mankind Quarterly, http://www.mankindquarterly.org/about.html, accessed 20 September 2112. Though it is a peer-reviewed journal, its editorial policy has been criticized for being “scientific racism’s keeper of the flame.” See William H. Tucker, The Funding of Scientific Racism: Wickliffe Draper and The Pioneer Fund (University of Illinois Press, 2002), p. 2. Concerning Josey’s specific involvement, See Tucker, p. 97, 173, 194; John P. Jackson, Jr., Science for Segregation: Race, Law, and the Case against Brown v. Board of Education (New York: NYU Press, 2005), pp. 110–11, 192, 194.

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sermons.”80 Without a doubt, Josey’s writing style could at times appear to echo “a really bad sermon.” Though in 1959 Greene dedicated his most important book to Josey, Dean Akeley, his parents, and his wife Ellen, Greene would also admit, “Looking back, I don’t think Professor

Josey was a very profound thinker, but he was always willing to talk.”81

In a biographical essay on Greene, James Moore contends, no “other influence but his own intensive reading contributed as much to [his] intellectual development as [his] time sparring with Professor Josey.” But then Moore quickly notes, “Unless it was the irrepressible young history professor who arrived in Greene’s last year at the university. Fresh from editing

Darwin’s letters to Asa Gray for a New Deal-funded project, Bert James Loewenberg had launched the study of evolution in America.”82

Bert James Loewenberg and Mr. Darwin

Loewenberg was another thing altogether. Greene wrote: “I signed up for a course in ancient history taught by a brand new Ph.D. from Harvard named Bert Loewenberg. A native of

Brookline, Massachusetts, Loewenberg had recently completed a dissertation on the reception of

Charles Darwin’s ideas in the United States in the late nineteenth century and had found a job in far away South Dakota at a time when teaching jobs were hard to find. The transition from

Brookline to Vermillion . . . cannot have been easy. Loewenberg had had a course in ancient history at Harvard, but his real love was American intellectual history, especially Darwin’s influence.”83

80 Greene, History, Humanity and Evolution, p. 12.

81 Greene, History, Humanity and Evolution, p. 13.

82 Moore, p. 145.

83 Greene, Debating Darwin, p. 4.

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Loewenberg, Greene added, “was an excellent teacher, extremely energetic, roving up and down like a caged animal as he lectured, with an explosive mode of speech. We took to each other immediately because he was interested in ideas and the history of ideas, while I tended to speak up in class, which he liked.”84 Greene wrote, “Like John Dewey, whose writings

[Loewenberg] admired greatly, he looked to Darwin as the prophet of twentieth-century revolutions in science, philosophy, and world view. I knew little or nothing about Darwin at the time, being immersed in writers like Henri Bergson and Alfred North Whitehead in my extracurricular reading, but I found Loewenberg’s conversation and teaching intensely stimulating, and I sought him out at every opportunity.”85 Since USD “was a very small university, I of course had a chance to get to know him outside class. . . . I wrote a paper for him on Bergson, which he did not like at all, but he recommended me for scholarships at six different eastern universities.”86

Excerpts from Loewenberg’s publications at the time offer insight into the tone and tenor of his analyses. They also suggest themes that Greene would later explore in the interplay of ideology and worldview in the reception of scientific thought. For example, Loewenberg noted,

“Darwinism attacked absolutisms whether of species or thought systems.” But then he added that the “Darwinian conflict was not simply a conflict between ideas, but a conflict between men. It was not a struggle between reason and emotion; it was a struggle among complex psychological states contingent on both.”87 Loewenberg argued, “In general, evolutionism was opposed, less

84 Greene, History, Humanity and Evolution, p. 15.

85 Greene, Debating Darwin, p. 4.

86 Greene, History, Humanity and Evolution, p. 15.

87 Bert Loewenberg, “Darwinism Comes to America, 1859–1900,” in The Mississippi Valley Historical Review Vol. 28 No. 3 (Dec. 1941): 357.

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because it was found to be false than because it was thought to be irreconcilable with larger universal concepts.”88

Loewenberg stated that not only did Darwinism present a “direct threat . . . to specific segments of philosophical belief,” it “combined” with the “threat of the economic revolutions to the certainties by which men lived.” Though men “fought for the preservation of philosophies associated with religion, . . . they were also actuated by the disintegration of the rural home, by the weakened status of pater familias, and by the transformed status of women in society.”89 He argued, “Darwinism combined indirectly with the forces changing civilization. . . . Darwinism was the outcome of a long biological development, but although its scientific impact is traceable in a shift of interest and in the enhanced prestige of the scientific profession, the popular debate was not a scientific one.”90

Concerning the American experience, Loewenberg specifically noted, “The Darwinian controversy . . . delineates the remotest boundaries of the national mind. . . . Theism was the

American common denominator, as important because of its social as its philosophical and theological implications. The theistic substrata of American thought cannot be evaded by the historian of ideas.”91 Loewenberg expanded on this topic in an earlier essay: “The fulminations . . . of the theological fraternity gradually forced the question of transmutation into the background in the presence of the graver issue of intellectual tolerance. The boastful certitude of the odium scientificum, on the other hand, made every religious-minded person an eager participant. A science which relegated affairs of the spirit to the limbo of myth and fable

88 Ibid., p. 356.

89 Ibid., pp. 344–45.

90 Ibid., p. 350.

91 Ibid., pp. 367–68.

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challenged these latter individuals just as a religion which stifled nascent learning provoked opposition from those who feared for freedom of thought.”92 And perhaps in what proved to be a prescient warning in 1935: “People of the twentieth century, relatively uninhibited by theological prepossessions, are in danger of minimizing the emotional struggle which occurred in the latter half of the past century.”93 Loewenberg suggested that in the “volumes which a secular era has relegated to obscurity much of the spirit of the nineteenth century is still to be found. . . . [and] there, also, are to be found the mainsprings of human action.”94 Perhaps he was suggesting, in other words, that the past is never entirely behind us.

Greene acknowledged that with Loewenberg’s helpful recommendations, “I got several offers, including one from Harvard; and since my father had a Harvard degree – in 1903 I believe

– I chose to go there. So I owe a great deal to Bert Loewenberg. I don’t know where I might have ended up or what I might be doing now except for him. As an undergraduate I didn’t know what

I wanted to do. I was interested in everything. I had some notion of going into law, but because

Loewenberg’s connections were all in history, and the scholarships were favorable, I never did.

My being in history was more or less an accident.”95

Greene dedicated his second book, Darwin and the Modern World View (1961), to his mentor:

To Professor Bert James Loewenberg, a lifelong student of Darwin and his influence, I owe much more than acknowledgement of his assistance in connection with this book. It was he who first awakened my interest in intellectual history, who persuaded Harvard University to grant me a scholarship for graduate study,

92 Bert Loewenberg, “The Controversy over Evolution in New England 1859–1873,” The New England Quarterly Vol. 8, No. 2 (Jun 1935), p. 256.

93 Ibid.

94 Ibid., p. 257.

95 Greene, History, Humanity and Evolution, p. 15.

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and who turned my thoughts toward Darwin and his role in modern thought. Throughout the years he has been a loyal friend and stimulating critic. I cannot hope that he will agree with all of the opinions expressed in these pages, nor perhaps even with my general point of view, but I know that he would be the first to bid me take my stand.96

When Loewenberg heard news of the project, he wrote to Greene, “I am delighted that you are dedicating a book to me. It makes me very proud indeed. I am also delighted to hear of your activities and share in the joy of your successes.”97Greene recalled that “eventually” Loewenberg

“went on to a long and successful career as a teacher and Darwin scholar at Sarah Lawrence

College. Meanwhile, thanks to his recommendation, I was launched on a career of graduate study in American intellectual history under his old mentor, Professor Arthur Meier Schlesinger.”98

Harvard and The Society of Fellows

About the next phase of his academic career, Greene recalled: “I went to Harvard in

American history because Loewenberg had studied under Arthur Schlesinger, Sr. The first year I took Schlesinger’s course in social and intellectual history, which was primarily about social history. He was, I must say, a tremendously impressive and loyal person with his graduate students; he was also a major scholar for whom I have the greatest respect.”99 Schlesinger would earn accolades for having “probably helped train more of the nation’s first rate historians than any other person in the first half of the century. He was also highly regarded as a staunch

96 John C. Greene, Darwin and the Modern World View (Baton Rouge, LA: Louisiana State University Press, 1961), p. viii.

97 Bert Loewenberg to John Greene, 4 June 1961, Greene Papers.

98 Greene, Debating Darwin, p. 4. Greene noted: “For a representative listing of Bert Loewenberg’s publications on Darwin and Darwinism, see the ‘Bibliography’ in James Moore, The Post-Darwinian Controversies. A Study of the Protestant Struggle to Come to Terms with Darwin in Great Britain and America 1870-1900, 431.” Greene wryly mentioned in an informal conversation, “Good old Bert Loewenberg, he smoked himself to death.” John C. Greene, in an interview with the author, May 19, 2008.

99 Greene, History, Humanity and Evolution, 15–16. Greene talks at length about his years at Harvard (in his introductory conversation with James Moore in History, Humanity, and Evolution, pp. 15–24.

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defender of liberal principles.”100 Nonetheless, Greene admitted some of Schlesinger’s interests

“did not excite me intellectually.”101 On campus, politics were in the air, and though for a while

Greene subscribed to the Socialist Party on the advice of a friend, as war appeared increasingly probable he soon relented.

Greene remembered, “Darwin was the last thing on my mind during my pre-war years at

Harvard.” He noted that “Through Crane Brinton’s course in European history I got interested in

Vilfredo Pareto’s ideas and began to audit Talcott Parson’s seminar in sociological theory and to read Parsons, Durkheim, and Max Weber, none of whom had much to say about Darwin. The door that eventually led to Darwin was opened inadvertently when I walked into Professor

Schlesinger’s office toward the close of my second year of graduate study to discuss possible topics for a doctoral dissertation. He offered quite a list of possibilities, ranging from the study of immigrant groups to the history of state lotteries, but the topic that struck my fancy was

‘Geology and Religion in the United States 1820–1860.’ . . . I suppose that my longstanding interest in relations between science and religion, and possibly my discussions with Bert

Loewenberg, influenced my choice. In any case, it was a fateful one.”102 He quickly realized that there were numerous developments in that challenged traditional views. But more significantly, “it seemed clear that the crucial Christian doctrine in relation to these sciences was the doctrine of the plenary inspiration of the Bible – not the literal truth (although many

Christians asserted this) but rather the idea held by leading [Christian] scientists . . . that

100 “Arthur M. Schlesinger Sr., Historian, Dies 77,” The New York Times, October 31, 1965, http://www.nytimes.com/books/00/11/26/specials/schlesinger-senior.html, accessed 20 September 2112.

101 Greene, History, Humanity and Evolution, p. 16.

102 Greene, Debating Darwin, pp. 3–4.

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everything in the Bible, properly interpreted, was substantially true whether it concerned moral and spiritual or historical matters.”103

Greene added that “[After] a year and a half of research I went to Professor Schlesinger and said that I thought I was ready to begin writing my dissertation, except that I had as yet done no research for the introductory chapter setting the stage for developments after 1820. I was eager to start writing as soon as possible, but he instructed me to do research for the introductory chapter before beginning to write. That, too, was a fateful decision.”104 Greene discovered that both the traditional Christian thinkers, as well as prominent Enlightenment era deists like

Thomas Jefferson and Thomas Paine, “were in perfect agreement in their view of nature as a wisely designed set of stable structures subservient to the needs . . . of intelligent moral beings.”

The deists, who otherwise rejected an orthodox interpretation of the Bible, “had retained

Christian natural theology lock, stock, and barrel.” He related, “What also struck me at the time was how different this view of nature was from the one accepted in the 1940s, and I began to wonder how the change came about. I ceased to focus on the relations of science and the Bible and, instead, set out to trace the gradual breakdown of the static view of nature in astronomy, in geology, in paleontology, in biology, in physical anthropology, and if possible philosophy also.”105 Greene found that he “became less interested in the fortunes of the doctrine of biblical inspiration and more and more interested in the structure of the static view of nature and natural science and in the causes of its gradual decline and its replacement by evolutionary views.”106

103 Ibid.

104 Ibid., pp. 4–5.

105 Greene, History, Humanity and Evolution, p. 24.

106 Greene, Debating Darwin, p. 5.

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In the meantime, Greene had also been taking courses in intellectual history with Crane

Brinton. Greene caught the professor’s attention by offering to write a paper on Vilfredo Pareto, an economist and political philosopher in favor among many of the Harvard faculty at the time.

Furthermore, he would do so by examining Pareto’s works translated in French. Greene recalled,

“Brinton was rather pleased to learn that I was reading Pareto in French, and when I turned in the paper he liked it. I also wrote a paper on [a few] eighteenth-century figures . . . Brinton was pleased with my quotations from Rousseau and Burke, which showed that some of the ideas

Pareto wrote about were present . . . It was these papers, apparently, that gave him the idea that I might be timber for the Society of Fellows.”107 When Greene showed an interest in the Society of Fellows, Brinton requested he submit some of his papers prior to his leaving “on a travelling fellowship to research the thesis topic Professor Schlesinger had proposed.” But Greene recalled that, “When I got to Philadelphia I received a notice that I should come back for an interview.”108

A “modest and tentative stocktaking” of the Society’s first fifteen years (1933–1947) published in a private printing, described the history and purpose of the fellowship:

The Society of Fellows of Harvard University has as its members about two dozen Junior Fellows and nine Senior Fellows. The Junior Fellows are men between twenty and thirty years old, chosen by the Senior Fellows from among the recent graduates of American universities for their promise of excellent contributions to knowledge and thought. For terms varying in length from three to six years, they are given their board and lodging, paid a stipend, and set at liberty to pursue any intellectual adventures that they find interesting and important. All courses, seminars, and laboratories in Harvard are open to them. Their expenses for necessary travel and equipment are met. They must fulfill no academic requirement but a negative one: during their terms they may not be candidates for a degree. The hope is that they will feel free, free to follow their bent, free from academic anxieties.109

107 Greene, History, Humanity and Evolution, p. 18.

108 Greene, History, Humanity and Evolution, p. 19.

109 George Caspar Homans and Orville T. Bailey, The Society of Fellows (Cambridge, Mass: The University, 1948): 2, 3.

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Credit for the impetus behind the society went to Lawrence Joseph Henderson, who coincidently helped establish the History of Science Society by assisting George Sarton in finding a Harvard home for his journal Isis (which became the Society’s official organ), and by serving as the Society’s first president after it was formally established in 1924.110 Among his many intellectual activities, Henderson was a Professor of Biological Chemistry who became

“one of the most exciting stimulators of work in sociobiology.” Two early junior fellows described that “Though Henderson’s beard was red, . . . his politics were staunchly conservative.

His method of discussion [was] feebly imitated by the pile-driver. His passion was hottest when his logic was coldest. Yet if he felt a man had something in him, no one could be more patient than he in helping it come to light.”111 Coincidently, like Greene’s father, Henderson held a

“lifelong love of French culture.”112

For years Henderson had been sharing his thoughts about education in conversations with his academic friends as well as the president of the University, Abbot Lawrence Lowell. They each held a discontent “with the training of American graduate students in the Arts and Sciences

. . . that usually leads to [a Ph.D.] They felt that the heavy formal requirements . . . were so many encumbrances on the best young scholars, and trammeled the most productive years of their lives. The ablest were stamped by the same press as the merely able.”113 Henderson continued to explore these ideas during the 1920s, and in particular during a long conversation while on a train ride to Boston with Alfred North Whitehead, the British mathematician and philosopher of

110 Joy Harvey, “History of Science, History and Science, and Natural Sciences: Undergraduate Teaching of the History of Science at Harvard, 1938–1970,” Isis, Vol. 90, Supplement, Catching up with the Vision: Essays on the Occasion of the 75th Anniversary of the Founding of the History of Science Society (1999): S272.

111 Ibid.

112 Homans and Bailey, p. 4.

113 Ibid., p. 5.

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science who had recently arrived at Harvard. Whitehead had, as a student, been a Fellow of

Trinity College. That program corresponded well to the principles previously discussed by

Henderson and Lowell. The three subsequently met a few days later, “to talk things over, and very soon thereafter . . . spent a long evening [at Henderson’s house] . . . going into the questions of detail.”114 A committee soon formed with additional faculty, but attempts to secure a grant came to naught until an anonymous donor funded an endowment in 1932. That donor later proved to be none other than Lowell himself, who admitted in a personal account, “It took nearly all that I had.” He dedicated the endowment, known as the “Anna Parker Lowell Fund,” to the memory of his wife.115

Greene remembered his interview before the Harvard Senior Fellows as being

“interesting,” noting that “[It] took place at a horse-shoe table in Eliot House, where the Society met. I sat at one end of the horseshoe.” Meanwhile Lowell, Henderson, Whitehead, Brinton, and the other senior fellows sat opposite. Greene recalled, “By this time I had formulated a project focused on the doctrine of plenary inspiration in the Bible. I had come to believe that everything in the relations of science and religion turned on this idea. So when asked to explain what I would work on if I were elected to the Society of Fellows, I started to expound on it.”116

Greene recalled that Lowell soon interrupted and asked, “Mr. Greene, what do you know about Unitarianism?” Lowell was now in his eighties and in need of an “electric hearing aid,” but apparently Unitarianism and science remained an interest from his younger days. Greene recalled that Lowell “looked disappointed and lapsed into silence” when Greene explained that though he

“had worked on a lot of people,” unfortunately he had not yet “got to the Unitarians.” After

114 Ibid., p. 7.

115 Ibid., p. 19.

116 Greene, History, Humanity and Evolution, p. 19.

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another ten minutes when Lowell interrupted him again with the very same question. Greene later admitted, “Well, this was a little disconcerting, but everyone else smiled as if they knew what to expect.”117

Greene’s exchange with Henderson proved a bit more intense. He recalled that

“Somewhere in my exposition I happened to mention Pareto. Henderson sat up straight. ‘Oh, well,’ he said, ‘have you read Pareto, Mr. Greene?’” Greene of course had, and remembered clearly the next parry:

‘Well, what do you think of it?’ [Henderson] demanded. All the other Senior Fellows were very sympathetic toward me on this question. I said that, as far as I could see, what Pareto called ‘residues’ were just implicit prepositions of thought in a period. Whitehead burst in, ‘Exactly!’ He obviously was not bowled over by Pareto, although I don’t think there was any antagonism between him and Henderson. But Henderson was a very imposing figure.118

The Senior Fellows notified Greene “in due course” of his election to a three-year fellowship. According to Greene, Whitehead, Henderson and Lowell’s intention was to “foster something like the ‘high table’ ethos of an Oxbridge college. They wanted to get around the

Ph.D. fetish and to emphasize conversation and independent study.” On Mondays, the Society gathered at Elliot Hall, “for sherry” and to “talk a little before dinner, then we would go in and sit around the horseshoe table.”119 Though he initially felt a little “maladroit” negotiating the protocol of Schlesinger’s Sunday afternoon teas, he eventually appeared right at home rubbing elbows with many of Harvard’s best and brightest. The year was, however, 1941, and world events would soon take him to war.

117 Ibid.

118 Ibid., p. 20.

119 Ibid.

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Spanning the Globe with Uncle Sam

Greene recalled how during his first year with the Society of Fellows, “somebody came around recruiting people to do code work, which would involve learning Japanese.” He signed up, but in the middle of the course received his draft notice, returning to Vermillion “to be inducted into the Army . . . for regular basic training.”120 To his surprise, he enjoyed “basic.”

Green explained, “It required no great mental or physical exertion, no initiative, nothing but conformance to a daily routine. . . . [It was a] pleasant change, this military regime, from the tense, competitive atmosphere of the Harvard Graduate School, where every man races against time and his fellow students and where it is the fashion to plague oneself with all the world’s woes. No one bothers about ultimate questions in the Army.”121 While at Camp Crowder in

Missouri, Greene took up an offer for officer training in the signal corps, but due to poor testing for eyesight, was relegated to the administrative officer training corps.

Greene wrote an engaging memoir of his army experience with the title, A Scholar Goes

To War (2005). Much of it appeared taken from a diary, referencing contemporary events in the present tense.122 Greene admitted that though he otherwise “never saw action” as an officer in

“the ‘chairborne infantry,’” looking back he realized “the most active education of my life took place in those years.”123 As an officer in training, awaiting deployment while at a variety of

120 Ibid., p. 22.

121 John C. Greene, A Scholar Goes to War (Claremont, CA: The Paige Press, 2005), p. 7.

122 Greene dedicated the book to his wife: “For Ellen, the Red Cross girl who captured my heart and agreed to marry me.” He met his future wife, Ellen, at a 1944 Christmas party described toward the end of the account, after his tour of duty in Palestine and upon his return to Iran to serve as an aide-de-camp attached to the Persian Gulf Command. They married in 1945 in Cairo, Egypt.

123 Greene, A Scholar Goes to War, pp. 1–2. The Routledge Dictionary of Modern American Slang describes “chairborne infantry” as a military pun on “airborne infantry,” referring to “a rear echelon support job.” See Tom Dalzell, The Routledge Dictionary of Modern American Slang and Unconventional English (New York: Routledge, 2009), p. 179.

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camps, Greene had a chance to study a cross-section of mid century America not readily observed in Harvard Yard. He found himself “surprised at the number of recruits whose schooling stopped at the eighth grade. A bare majority were high school graduates and college men were few and far between.” He felt the “backwardness” of certain sections of the country; it was “depressingly apparent.”124 But perhaps unlike many of his Harvard cohorts, Greene also possessed a genuine appreciation of his “common” compatriots, and considered that while “real friendship requires similarity of interests, tastes, and values, democracy does not require that all men be friends; it requires only mutual respect and tolerance, and an absence of ill will.” He felt that to its credit, these qualities “could be learned in the Army.”125

Greene’s views were complicated. Though he found it surprising that the average recruit held an “astonishing lack of curiosity about other people. . . . Yet, unimaginative as most of them were, they were much more fretted by Army life than I, and this in spite of the fact that some were living better than they had as civilians.”126 Moreover, he noted that “[their] lives had been molded in a different pattern, and they had no desire to change it.” In a sense, he admired that this “stubborn desire to live one’s own life in one’s own way is a priceless democratic heritage.

In Army life I found a living argument against totalitarianism, for in it I saw the regimentation, the system of privilege . . . [and] the subordination to a master purpose . . . which we were fighting to destroy. And I was thankful that the average American detested this life despite its perfect security and relative ease.”127

124 Ibid., p. 10.

125 Ibid., p. 15.

126 Ibid., p. 16.

127 Ibid.

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He also recalled, as a recently minted officer waiting to ship out attempting to pacify a riot when racial tensions exploded between the white and black soldiers over access to the base

PX store. Green worked to pacify one crowd, but:

At the next corner I saw another group of Negroes starting off in the direction of the PX. “Break it up, men,” I cried, without slackening my stride. “It’s all over.” “It’s never over,” came the answer in a voice I shall not forget, a voice black with despair. The next moment a stone caught me in the middle of the back and another flew over my right shoulder. I walked straight on, thoroughly frightened by this time but endeavoring to give no sign of it.128

Greene concluded, “For me, the riot was a bitter disillusionment . . . and the first lesson of an education in race relations that was to be continued at great length” during his time in the military.129

Greene finally shipped out in July 1943, sailing under San Francisco’s Golden Gate

Bridge, his final destination the Persian Gulf Command via the South Pacific. After a short port of call in Australia, the ship met up with a small convey heading for India. He noted, “I remember well the gray September morning when we entered Bombay harbor,” where upon debarking, many of the GI’s “piled into tongas and set out to see” the city. Greene relished the adventure, “as if ‘The Thief of Baghdad’ had suddenly come true. . . . All the things I had read about – the beggars, the snake charmers, the cripples, the sacred cows, the banyan trees – were here in front of my eyes and under my nose. It was some time before my delight in finding things as I had imagined them gave way to painful depression” over the squalor with which Indians had to regularly contend. Greene noted, “Some American soldiers never overcame their initial revulsion from the poverty . . . they recoiled from the ‘whole stinking mess’ and stayed in camp

128 Ibid., p. 25.

129 Ibid., p. 26–27.

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or frequented only the most Westernized parts of Bombay. As for me, I was as much fascinated as revolted by these scenes.”130

With no immediate ocean transport available to Iran, Greene spent most of the next six weeks at a “British camp on the outskirts of Bombay” under austere conditions that elicited complaints from many of the GIs. Nonetheless, aspects of the base were rather cosmopolitan, as the camp housed officers and soldiers from all corners of the British Empire. Greene met friendly officers who had fought at Dunkirk, with one in particular leading West African troops. There were also officers from the upper classes of India, as well as a few visiting from China. He was quick to strike up conversations and learn more. Greene noticed, “It is typical of the relations between the British and Americans that our officers became better acquainted with the Indian officers than the British.”131 He heard the jibe from the Indian officers that “Britain will fight to the last Indian,” and noted that their disparate backgrounds hardly unsettled a common agreement that the British must leave before India could move forward. These officers “were eager to talk with the Americans and persuade them of the Indian way of thinking”; but as to what would come next, they were not clear.132

Of this period, Green would later have many distinct recollections, though at times mixed with reservations of one sort or another: “[Some] of my most vivid memories of India are of the scenes I saw on my daily walks to the village in the afternoon. Heavy wooden carts raised the thick dust of the road as they lumbered by. Barefoot women with dung baskets on their heads walked with stately grace . . . Beside the road sat a beggar with horrid blind eyes, his pretty wife

130 Ibid., pp. 34–35.

131 Greene, A Scholar Goes to War, 45. Curiously, Greene seemed to take interest when an Indian argued against traditional Hindu vegetarian dietary practices (p. 47, 48).

132 Ibid., p. 46.

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lying beside him. Farther on was a huge banyan tree with a passage cut through the middle of it.

In the village a snake charmer attracted a crowd by waving a half dead cobra in front of a mongoose.”133

Or, of another occasion:

I remember, too, the night of Divali, the Hindu New Year, when I left the gayety in the bazaar and walked back among the native huts. There the darkness was relieved only by the tiny Divali candles burning in the windows or in niches in the mud walls. These flickering lights revealed the shapes of women sitting in the low doorways with their babes in their arms, their faces lighted with smiles, and round about them goats, dogs, and burros reposing peacefully. Something in this scene in the low, dark huts, the women with their loved ones, the sleeping animals, the calm, hopeful faces, made me think of Christmas and the babe in the manger.”134

Greene would also tour the holy city of Nashik, about twenty miles from his base camp at the time. He recalled that through “the center of the city flowed the holy river Godivari

[Godavari] . . . the life of the city. On its banks were hundreds of temples and shrines, large and small, old and new, covered and open to the air.”135 On one morning, he later remembered, “I went with two Indian officers to visit the temples of Nasik. We descended first to Rama’s Pool, a large rectangular pond close to the river’s edge. . . . It was the season of pilgrims, and we were fortunate enough to glimpse the interior of the temple of the goddess of the Godivari, which is opened for two weeks every twelve years. Outside the door of the temple were vendors of flowers, food, and other temple offerings . . . At each temple we were permitted only a glimpse from the doorway after having removed our shoes to approach thus close.”136 Later that day, after ascending “a hill by a narrow dirt road we entered a very ancient section of Nasik and

133 Ibid., pp. 49–50.

134 Ibid., pp. 50–51.

135 Ibid., p. 51.

136 Ibid., p. 52.

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arrived at the oldest and most sacred of the temples to Rama. The keepers would not hear of our looking in, despite the plea that we were ‘American Brahmins.’ We did, however, see the clump of five banyans where Rama and Sita are supposed to have lived in exile . . . A nearby temple contained marble images of Rama and his wife decked in costly jeweled garments.”137

Among a variety of excursions, Greene travelled with a detachment of men under his command to the air depot at Agra, where Greene viewed “that pearl of architecture, the Taj

Mahal.” He recalled that while gazing “at the Taj from the battlements of the Akbar’s red sandstone fortress across a graceful curve of the Jumna [Yamuna] River, I sensed for a moment the contrast of splendor and squalor which is the paradox of the Orient’s history.”138 He recalled that on a portion of the journey to Agra, “the land became wetter and we saw palm trees and white herons, [and] some of the men were reminded of Florida.”139

In October 1943, a ship finally arrived to transport his detachment to Iran. He wrote that his “trip across the Arabian Sea was uneventful, save for an occasional encounter with a dhow, . . . which have plied between Basra and Bombay since Sinbad’s time.” Not long after, the ship “entered the Shatt el Arab, the broad confluence of the rivers of Babylon. On each side of the river was a fringe of date palms, beyond which stretched interminably the flattest, most barren desert I had ever seen.”140

Greene noticed that the locals appeared “sturdier and more independent than the Indians.

They stared at me curiously, quite unafraid. If I greeted them with ‘Salaam aleikum’ they looked at each other in pleased surprise and returned a lively ‘Aleikum salaam.’” Greene reflected upon

137 Ibid., p. 53.

138 Ibid., p. 41.

139 Ibid., p. 39.

140 Ibid., pp. 55–56.

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“what the Iranian people themselves [would like] in the present crisis,” and concluded, “In my opinion, they want nothing so much as to be left alone. But a country which forms the land bridge to the Far East and which contains some of the richest oil deposits can scarcely expect to be left alone.”141

Greene was assigned to the Persian Gulf Command, but needed to wait for the conclusion of the Tehran Conference meetings between Roosevelt, Stalin, and Churchill before entering the city. Upon arriving, he found the Allied war effort in high gear, running supplies to the Russian eastern front. Greene reported to the Office of Technical Information (OTI) with a fellow

“journalist.” (Since he was an author writing a dissertation, the Army considered Greene a potential newspaperman).142

When it soon became apparent that Greene did not possess a journalistic background, he fell into a program arranging educational recreation for the GIs in Iran. Greene expressed disappointment with the Army slogan that the “G.I. must be given ‘what he wants,’” given that

“everyone knew, or assumed, that he wanted amusement, not education.” Nonetheless, “In April,

1944, it was decided to give the G.I.s a chance to visit Isfahan, and I was assigned the task of organizing the sight seeing tours” to the seventeenth century Persian capital famous for its

Islamic and Iranian architecture and cultural monuments (many designated UNESCO World

Heritage Sites.)143 The tours proved popular, especially considering the G.I.’s needed to travel

250 miles over rough roads from Tehran in the back of a truck and, for those from the Gulf, an additional 400 miles in a boxcar. Greene had help from a staff that included the assistance of a

141 Ibid., p. 131.

142 Ibid., p. 63.

143 Ibid., p. 69. Saudi Aramco World magazine published an essay describing Isfahan’s historical cultural significance. See “Isfahan Is Half The World,” Saudi Aramco World, (January 1962): 22–24. Also available at: http://www.saudiaramcoworld.com/issue/196201/.isfahan.is.half.the.world..htm, accessed 20 September 2112.

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couple of American civilians with expertise in Iran, one being Donald Wilbur. In 1943, the

Persian Gulf Command published both Greene’s Guide to Isfahan, which he wrote with Wilbur, as well as A Sketch of Iranian History.144 As it turned out, Wilbur was not just a scholar of

Iranian history and archeology but an American intelligence agent who would later play a critical role as a CIA operative orchestrating the 1953 Iranian coup d’état that returned the Shah to power as a staunch ally of the U.S. and Britain.145

The onset of the malaria season ended the Isfahan project, but Greene soon found himself

“opening . . . a rest and sightseeing camp in Palestine . . . Since fully half the visitors to this camp were expected to be from the Persian Gulf Command, it was thought best to send a liaison officer to the camp to look out for the PGC boys.”146 The camp was a few miles outside Tel

Aviv, “a clean modern city with a hospitable citizenry and plenty of pretty girls, sidewalk cafes, beaches, night clubs, shops and movies – the closest thing to home in the Middle East.”147

The Red Cross already had organized tours to Jerusalem and Bethlehem, but Greene soon picked up that for most G.I.’s, “the Holy Land meant nothing more to them than Isfahan or

Cyprus or Yellowstone National Park. It was another place to take pictures.”148 In response,

Greene organized a tour to the Sea of Galilee that tied in with a visit with “Dr. Harte, an aged

American missionary who lived on the shores of Galilee,” and who took the men on a local tour.

Greene claimed, “I could see that the men were taken with this saintly old man with the serene

144 Homans and Bailey, p. 81.

145 Greene, History, Humanity and Evolution, p. 23; Dr. Donald Wilber, “Overthrow of Premier Mossadeq of Iran, November 1952–August 1953,” CIA Clandestine Service History, March 1954, http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB28/#documents, accessed 20 September 2112. Greene’s publications with Wilber appear to be his first.

146 Greene, A Scholar Goes to War, p. 85.

147 Ibid., p. 86.

148 Ibid., p. 89.

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blue eyes and gentle voice.” Though Greene expressed concern that Harte’s “moralizing had irritated the men,” the Galilee tour “became the most popular of the three, though it covered two- hundred-and-fifty miles in one day,” round trip. For Greene, “Dr. Harte had shown me another side of the G.I.’s character” in their preference for a guide who appeared to offer a genuine experience, as compared to the often business-like tours in Bethlehem and Jerusalem.149

At the time Greene also dated a Jewish girl affiliated with the famous Habima Theater that had originated in Moscow prior to WWI. During the late 1920s, they established a troop in

Palestine that eventually became the National Theater of Israel.150 Greene recalled that his girlfriend “turned me to some of these old Jewish plays” like “The Golem, which rehearsed the terrible drama of the ghetto, and the new ones, which portray the struggles and the invincible hope of the cooperative settlements. Though I could not understand Hebrew, I could feel the intensity of the emotion which bound the audience and the players together.”151 Greene noted,

“Sometimes I think I was the only gentile in the audience . . . people looked at me a little curiously but . . . [there was] nothing hostile about it.”152

Greene noted that though the “Jews and Arabs occupy the same country, they have very little contact with each other. Jaffa and Tel Aviv, though as close together as Minneapolis and St.

Paul, are separate worlds. . . . The Arabs, for their part, are greatly alarmed at the rapid influx of an alien people into the land they have cultivated for centuries. The newcomers are alien in race,

149 Ibid., p. 91.

150 “Habima – Who We Are,” Habima National Theater of Israel, http://www.habima.co.il/show_item.asp?levelId=64339, accessed 15 November 2012.

151 John Greene, in an interview with the author, May 19, 2008; Greene, A Scholar Goes to War, 108. Greene could remember the name of his friend, though it does not come through clearly in the recording. He noted this was “before the time of my marriage,” and before he met Ellen at a Christmas party in Tehran later that year.

152 Greene mentioned his girlfriend did “bit parts in the productions.” John Greene, in an interview with the author, May 19, 2008.

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in religion, in customs and mores and, worse still, they plainly regard the land as their own and announce their intention to make it over in their own image.”153 Nonetheless, he concluded, “I left Palestine with a strong conviction that, although the problem is enormously complicated and difficult, some solution must be found which encourages the aspiration of the Jewish people to build a progressive, democratic community in their ancestral homeland.” Greene also had thoughts on how future relations between the Palestinians and Israelis might affect the United

States: “The question for Americans is: whose side shall we be on in the contest between the existing order and the forces of modernism? The answer is linked with another question: Who will be on our side in the coming struggle for a democratic world?”154

Greene’s numerous perspectives presented throughout his narrative offer a fascinating firsthand account of the history of the region during this critical, formative period.155 As for himself, Greene admitted, “With the land of Palestine I fell quite in love. . . . Every view calls to mind a line of exalted poetry.”156

Not long after returning to Iran after the malaria season passed, Greene attended an eventful Christmas party. But first, the “newly appointed Commanding General of the Persian

Gulf Command,” Brigadier General Donald P. Booth, asked him to serve as his aide-de-camp.

Greene found the experience rewarding, and would rise to the rank of Army Captain while serving under the General.157 But even more significant that holiday season was the Christmas

153 Greene, A Scholar Goes to War, pp. 113–14.

154 Ibid., pp. 118–19.

155 Ibid., pp. 85–119.

156 Ibid., pp. 94–95.

157 Homans and Bailey, p. 81.

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dance, as Greene would later excitedly recall, “That’s when I first met Ellen”!158 Greene explained that his wife “had been stationed at Teheran with the Red Cross several months, and we saw each other very steadily at the General’s billet. Then she was transferred to Cairo and I realized that I missed her. In November 1945 I obtained a leave of absence to go over and propose to her, and another to return and get married. After our honeymoon in Cyprus, Ellen finished her work in Cairo and went back to her family in New York. I stayed on in Teheran before going home via Italy.”159

Greene concluded: “Like everyone else, I had had more than enough of Iran and the

Middle East. But I had a thousand pleasant memories, not the least of which was courting and marrying a Red Cross girl . . . And I was on my way home to her now.”160

Back in the U.S.A.

Once he returned, Greene noticed that aspects of Harvard life had become “somewhat democratized.” Before the war, at meals “you sat at a table and were waited on hand and foot.

Not afterwards.” He also noticed some new senior fellows, but the “main changes came from having Brinton instead of Henderson as the chairman. And by this time I realized that my major interest was not science and the Bible; it was the downfall of the static view of nature.”161

The two years remaining on Greene’s Junior Fellows scholarship funding helped the young couple get established. Not long after, in 1947, their first child Ruth was born, with

158 Greene, History, Humanity and Evolution, p. 23.

159 Greene, History, Humanity and Evolution, p. 23. In an interview with the author, Greene remembered the sequence of events a little differently: “When the command closed at the end of V.J. day, I transferred to Cairo to be close to her and we got married in Cairo . . . and [took] our honeymoon in Cyprus.” John C. Greene, in an interview with the author, May 18, 2008.

160 Greene, A Scholar Goes to War, 145. A New York Times engagement announcement noted Ellen also graduated from Barnard, as had Greene’s mother. See “Ellen Wiemann To Wed,” Special to The New York Times (19 October 1945): 34.

161 Greene, History, Humanity and Evolution, p. 23. Henderson died in 1942.

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Edward arriving the following year. But once Greene’s term expired, “I was thrown out on the academic world without a Ph.D. (Junior Fellows were not supposed to need a Ph.D.)”162

Fortunately, “About that time the dean of Robert Hutchins’ experimental general education college at the University of Chicago came through looking for teachers, and I got hired. The college was the most intellectually stimulating place I have ever been. David Riesman

[coauthor of The Lonely Crowd (1950)] was the presiding genius in the social sciences. For each course there was a staff of seven or eight; we taught entirely from original sources chosen by ourselves.” Greene noted, “All those people [participating in the program] eventually wound up doing rather interesting things. Discussions with them were invaluable.”163

Notable among the intellectuals that Greene crossed paths with while at the University of

Chicago was the famous physicist, Enrico Fermi, whom Greene met through mutual friends at a discussion group “that met once a month to talk about interesting books and so forth.” Greene recalled, “It was quite an interesting group of scientists. So that way I got some acquaintance with Fermi.”164

Greene would also recall how much he enjoyed singing “wonderful Anglican hymns” at the University of Chicago’s Rockefeller Memorial Chapel (he began attending Episcopalian

162 Greene, Debating Darwin, p. 6.

163 Greene, History, Humanity and Evolution, p. 25.

164 John C. Greene, in an interview with the author, August 7, 2007. Greene mentioned that “[Fermi] and his wife were friends with a couple of my colleagues, George and Mary Cohen.” There was a George M. Cohen who obtained his Ph.D. at Chicago during the late 1940s, and then went on to become a distinguished artist and professor at Northwestern University. Enrico Fermi’s daughter, Nella, obtained her degree at Chicago during the same period, and similarly taught as an accomplished artist while working in the Chicago area for many years. That could explain a social connection. Though the wife of George M. Cohen, does not appear to go by the name “Mary,” perhaps Greene’s recollection of her name was a slip in memory. Greene also mentioned someone else in the reading group who appeared to be a scientist, but it is difficult to clearly hear the name on the recording – it sounded like “Perkins.”

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services while at Harvard).165 Of the choir Greene remembered, “We had an excellent director there, Richard Dixon [who led] a choir of about sixteen voices, I guess.” The Chapel was nondenominational, and Greene recalled how “on one occasion we had a Jewish Rabbi preaching from the pulpit . . . and when he finished the choir stood up and sang in Latin!”166 Greene also remembered spending time during his Chicago days with Saul Levin, a Harvard Junior Fellow friend who became an important scholar of ancient languages and cultures. Greene mentioned how they were once invited to a Jewish wedding, “and it was quite interesting, including the throwing of glasses!”167

Greene noted, “During the eight years at Chicago and the University of Wisconsin we were poor as churchmice. The universities did not pay a nickel more than they had to. And now we had two children.”168 In fact, when they first arrived in Chicago, the Greenes lived “in a converted Army barracks; the best they could offer lowly instructors and graduate students at that time. It was right after the war.”169 Ellen also worked for a time as a secretary. He recalled working “hard in my spare moments, including summers, on what I had planned to be a book, because I realized now that if I were going to get another job, I would have to obtain a Ph.D. I simply submitted completed chapters of the book as a dissertation.”170 Schlesinger, Brinton, and

165 Greene mentioned his growing preference for the Episcopalian tradition that began during his Harvard days was due more to an attraction to the services, than anything philosophical.

166 John C. Greene, in an interview with the author, August 7, 2007.

167 John C. Greene, in an interview with the author, May 19, 2008. Once Greene learned I had grown up in a Jewish family, he seemed to make it a point to recollect his Jewish pastimes!

168 Greene, History, Humanity and Evolution, p. 25.

169 John C. Greene, in an interview with the author, August 7, 2007.

170 Greene, History, Humanity and Evolution, p. 25.

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Oscar Handlin passed him upon examination, “and I received the sacred union ticket just before I went to the University of Wisconsin” in 1952.171

Greene taught American history while at Wisconsin, his father’s alma mater. He admitted that teaching “American history while working on a book which now had little to do with

American history was not easy. . . . However, I had managed to pull together my ideas about changing presuppositions of thought in successive historical periods and expressed them in a paper . . . [in which] I sketched the results of my researches to that date and charted my course for the future. Intellectual history, for me, was to consist in delineating the basic presuppositions of thought (dominant, subdominant, and incipient) in given periods and in explaining as far as possible the transitions from the dominance of one set of presuppositions to the next.”172

The Second American Red Scare, spurred on by Wisconsin’s Senator Joe McCarthy, peaked during Greene’s time teaching at Madison. Greene remembered, “We were upset by

McCarthy. Ellen telephoned people in our neighborhood to ask them to vote against him, but she was not very successful. We lived on the wrong side of the tracks politically speaking. I was very anti-McCarthy but never demonstrated my opposition.” Greene was an untenured professor at the time.173

Nonetheless, an article in The Sheboygan Press reported that in May 1953, Greene gave the main address at an “afternoon panel discussion” at the Mead Public Library titled, “Are we in danger of losing the freedoms guaranteed under the Bill of Rights?” The panel included a local religious leader, another professor, a “manufacturer and business man,” and an associate

171 Greene, Debating Darwin, p. 6.

172 Greene, Debating Darwin, pp. 6–7. Greene read his paper, “Objectives and Methods in Intellectual History,” at a meeting of the Mississippi Valley Historical Association, which published it as an article in its Review 44 (1957): 58–74.

173 Greene, Debating Darwin, p. 28.

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newspaper editor. Greene first outlined “the basic principles of the Bill of Rights, pointing out that great men in history, although differing violently in theory on various matters, could agree on such basic things as the Declaration of Independence and Constitution of the United States.”

The article reported that Greene then warned his audience, “‘We are at war,’ referring to frequent attempts to muzzle freedom of speech, freedom of press and to censor library books and other printed material.”174

A couple of years later Greene learned he “wasn’t going to be kept at Wisconsin.”175 He later recalled, “I seriously considered leaving the academic world. I talked with some acquaintances in the State Department, but fortunately I heard that Iowa State University was looking for someone in the history of science. And by now it had become clear that this really was my field. . . . So I was interviewed, and Iowa offered me the job as an associate professor. A year later I got tenure, and by 1956 I was a full professor.”176

Greene admitted, “I had no training in that field except my work on THE BOOK, but I decided that my research had pointed me toward the history of science and that I might as well make a virtue of it.”177 The project had grown out of his dissertation research, but the work was not yet finished. The extra push he needed would soon come in 1958 “[when] there was a competition for the best manuscript from any source submitted to Iowa State University Press. I

174 “Fox River Valley Librarians Will Meet Here Wednesday,” The Sheboygan (Wis.) Press, Monday (18 May 1953): 12; “Fox River Librarians Wind Up Successful Session Here,” The Sheboygan (Wis.) Press (21 May 1953): 17.

175 Greene wrote in another account: “At the very moment when my professional prospects at Wisconsin looked dim indeed an opportunity presented itself to go to Iowa State University to introduce a course in the history of science,” in Debating Darwin, p. 7. It is not clear why he was not retained at Wisconsin.

176 Greene, History, Humanity and Evolution, 25. The local newspaper reported, “Dr. Greene, whose field of special interest is intellectual history, came to Iowa State in 1956 from the University of Wisconsin to begin a program in the history of science within the department of history, government and philosophy.” in “To Honor Greene At Reception,” Ames Daily Tribune (14 November 1959): 2.

177 Greene, Debating Darwin, p. 7.

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completed my manuscript, sent it in, and won.”178 He added, “Since the Press was now branching out from books on practical subjects such as poultry husbandry, engineering, statistics, and the like, they decided to publish my manuscript handsomely with many illustrations. But the title I had chosen, ‘The Genesis of the Evolutionary Idea,’ did not seem sufficiently dramatic, and I was asked to suggest other titles. The choice fell on The Death of Adam: Evolution and Its

Impact on Western Thought, a title that was to provoke criticism in conservative religious circles.”179

The Ames Daily Tribune reported in an article on page 2 featuring a large photograph, that Greene’s book “has been named the ‘most significant book manuscript written by an Iowa

State College staff member during the centennial year of the college.’” Greene received a “cash reward of $650” (a little over $5000 in 2012 dollars) with an anticipated release date in October

1959. The article noted: “Greene’s prize-winning manuscript traces the genesis of natural science in the 18th and 19th century. Greene points up all the ideas embodied in Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution were present in the scientific world in 1818, although not yet comprehended by a single powerful intellect. The author states he is not tending to diminish Darwin’s glory. ‘ . . . but rather to place his contribution in clear perspective by relating it to the contributions of earlier writers.’”180

In another article, a local columnist wrote about his exchange with Greene at “the publication day reception” held by the Press. He mentioned, “I commented favorably on the artwork and typography in the book, and [Greene] smiled, ‘For that price, where else can you get

178 Greene, History, Humanity and Evolution, p. 25.

179 Greene, Debating Darwin, p. 7. The Press requested Greene complete his manuscript through Darwin, which Greene did by writing two additional chapters from materials he intended to use for a second volume.

180 “Greene Names Winner of ISC Book Competition,” Ames Daily Tribune (25 February 1959): 2.

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a work of art like the book?’ he asked, and added, ‘Anything you get from the text, after looking at the pictures, is so much gravy.’”181

Greene began to “reap the fruit” of his “interest” in Charles Darwin when “the American

Philosophical Society was making plans for its commemoration of the Centennial of Darwin’s

[publication] of the Origin’s of Species in 1959, [and] a speaker was needed to discuss the topic of ‘Darwin and Religion.’” The APS invited Greene to fill the need. He later recalled being:

“Only too glad to oblige, I showed up at the centennial observance of the Society in April of

1959, manuscript in hand, and there found myself surrounded by distinguished neo-Darwinian scientists, founders of what Sir Julian Huxley had called the ‘modern synthesis.’”182

Greene would later clearly remember that, as previously mentioned, at “the reception before the papers were read I found myself standing next to one of these resurrectors of Darwin’s theory of natural selection, the famous geneticist Theodosius Dobzhansky. By way of making conversation I told him that I was planning to say few words in criticism of the similes and metaphors that he and Julian Huxley used in describing evolutionary processes. ‘Pray sir,’ he admonished me, ‘do not bracket me with Julian Huxley. He is an atheist, I am a Christian.’”183

As a result of their conversation, Greene decided to avoid mentioning Dobzhansky “in this connection.” He later noted that Dobzhansky “apparently . . . liked the paper, for he praised it warmly and urged me to call him and come for dinner at the Dobzhansky apartment in New

York when next I visited the city.”184 This initial exchange between the two opened a ten-year

181 Rod Riggs, “From My Point of View,” Ames Daily Tribune (21 November 1959): 4.

182 Greene, Debating Darwin, p. 8. For the published version of Greene’s paper, See John C. Greene, “Darwin and Religion,” Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, Vol. 103, No. 5 (Oct. 15, 1959): 716–725.

183 Ibid.

184 Ibid., pp. 8-9.

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discourse involving the role of science, ideology and worldview in light of a public discourse involving evolutionary biology. As Greene explained it, “My correspondence with

Dobzhansky . . . centered on the concept of biological progress,” a concept he had noticed

“creeping into the literature of natural history” since the late eighteenth century.185

Ernst Mayr also contributed to the American Philosophical Society’s Darwinian celebrations, along with other leading architects of the modern evolutionary synthesis such as

George Gaylord Simpson and G. Ledyard Stebbins. Mayr’s biographer, Jürgen Haffer, noted that

Mayr’s presentation offered “a historical analysis on the views of the pioneers of evolution on the importance of geographic isolation, with an emphasis where they were ‘right’ and where they

‘missed the boat’ and why, as seen from the current perspective.”186

Among the many 1959 gatherings that celebrated the hundredth anniversary of Darwin’s publication of On the Origin of Species, the festivities that took place later that year at the

University of Chicago are often acknowledged as the largest. Greene crossed paths there once again with Dobzhansky and Mayr. Historian Betty Smocovitis explains the significance of these events:

One critical important reason for the intensity and the number of 1959 Darwin celebrations had to do with the timing of the anniversary within the larger history of evolutionary biology. In the wake of the evolutionary synthesis of the 1930s and 1940s, the anniversary of 1959 . . . was perfectly timed to reassess the state of the art by the community of individuals that had worked to create the synthetic, and unified theory of evolution.187

185 Ibid., p. 11.

186 Jürgen Haffer, Ornithology, Evolution, and Philosophy: The Life and Science of Ernst Mayr, 1904-2005 (NY: Springer, 2007), p. 342.

187 Vassiliki Betty Smocovitis, “The 1959 Darwin Centennial Celebration in America,” Osiris 14, 2nd Series (1999): 278.

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The centennial was also the first prominent public demonstration championing evolution since the Scopes Trial of 1925, and was thus aimed at making a favorable impression while aspiring to convey the “synthetic theory and the restoration of Darwinism to American high school teachers.”188 In emphasizing that point, the title of an essay published during the 1959 celebrations (and written by winning geneticist, Hermann J. Muller) proclaimed,

“One Hundred Years Without Darwinism Are Enough.”189

A highlight of the Chicago event was Julian Huxley’s Convocation Address, which he titled “The Evolutionary Vision” and delivered from the pulpit of the University’s Rockefeller

Chapel. Perhaps Huxley’s choice of location was an unfortunate faux pas for delivering a “fire and brimstone” sermon proclaiming the sagacity of secular humanism, as described in his popular book, Religion without Revelation (1927). Huxley was known for enthusiastically evangelizing his humanistic epiphanies as an alternative metaphysical paradigm destined to replace traditional Western religion. One Huxleyan pronouncement that Thanksgiving Day stated baldly that: “Evolutionary man can no longer take refuge from his loneliness in the arms of a divinized father-figure whom he has himself created.”190

188 Vassiliki Betty Smocovitis, Unifying Biology: The Evolutionary Synthesis and Evolutionary Biology (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1996), p. 23.

189 Hermann J. Muller, “One Hundred Years Without Darwinism Are Enough,” School Science and Mathematics 59 (1959): 304-16.

190 Julian Huxley, “The Evolutionary Vision: The Convocation Address,” in Sol Tax and Charles Callender, eds., Evolution After Darwin, vol. 3 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1960), p. 253. Huxley’s “sermon of progress” also stated: “Religions are organs of psychosocial man concerned with human destiny and with experiences of sacredness and transcendence. In their evolution, some [religions] . . . have given birth to the concept of gods as supernatural beings endowed with mental and spiritual properties and capable of intervening in the affairs of nature, including man. Such supernaturally centered religions are early organizations of human though in its interaction with the puzzling, complex world with which it has to contend – the outer world of nature and the inner world of man’s own nature. In this, they resemble other early organizations of human thought confronted with nature, like the doctrine of the Four Elements, . . . or the Eastern concept of rebirth and reincarnation. Like these, they are destined to disappear in competition with other, truer, and more embracing thought organizations which are handling the same range of raw or processed experience – in this case, with the new religions which are surely destined to emerge on this world’s scene.”

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Smocovitis notes that shortly afterwards there began to appear a fresh barrage of antievolution literature, most notably John C. Whitcomb and Henry Morris’s The Genesis

Flood.191 In later reflections, Morris noted that while the Scopes Trial had embarrassed the creationist movement, “The Great Darwinian Centennial” with its “worship service” had a unifying effect in both galvanizing and bringing coherence to a fundamentalist response.192 The

Pulitzer Prize winning historian of science, Edward J. Larson, confirms that when “you go back to the 1950s and ‘60s, you can find people reacting to Julian Huxley’s grand statements about the meaning of evolution.”193

Howard L. Kaye, professor of sociology, argues that it was precisely “this aspect of the evolutionary synthesis – as a ‘scientific’ ground for a ‘progressive,’ humanistic world view – . . . popularized most prominently by Julian Huxley,” that appeared to inflame the fundamentalists, and all the more so when Huxley’s “‘evolutionary humanism’ reached an international audience of millions and was incorporated into textbooks that helped inspire and train a generation of scientists.”194 For example, two days after the Darwin Centennial Convocation Huxley presented a seminar on, “The Place of Evolution In The Curriculum,” before the Institute of High School

Huxley then stated: “Evolutionary man can no longer take refuge from his loneliness in the arms of a divinized father-figure who he has himself created, nor escape from the responsibility of making decisions by sheltering under the umbrella of Divine Authority, nor absolve himself from the hard task of meeting problems and planning his future by relying on the will of an omniscient, but unfortunately inscrutable, Providence.”

191 John C. Whitcomb and Henry M. Morris, The Genesis Flood (Philadelphia: Presbyterian and Reformed Publishing Co., 1961).

192 Quoted in Smocovitis, “The 1959 Darwin Centennial,” p. 303.

193 Quoted in Peter Dizikes, “Evolution War: In The Ongoing Struggle Between Evolution And Creationism, Says Philosopher Of Science Michael Ruse, Darwinians May Be Their Own Worst Enemy,” Boston Globe, May 1, 2005.

194 Howard J. Kaye, review of Unifying Biology: The Evolutionary Synthesis and Evolutionary Biology, by Vassiliki Betty Smokovitis, The American Historical Review 103 (1998): 858.

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Biology Teachers.195 Julian Huxley’s casual mixing of a personal metaphysics with the science – a tendency also found in the writings of other architects of the evolutionary synthesis – would concern Greene for much of his career.

Greene was also invited by the coordinators of the Chicago Darwinian Centennial “to organize a session on science and religion . . . but,” he later recalled, “I declined for reasons I cannot now remember.” He did remember driving “from Ames, Iowa, to attend the centennial, however. The session on science and religion was very lively, with some sharp exchanges between Julian Huxley and a Catholic anthropologist . . . Unfortunately I missed Huxley’s secular sermon from the pulpit of Rockefeller Chapel (where I used to sing in the choir). I had accepted a luncheon invitation on the supposition that everyone would be going to hear Huxley, but lunch was just getting started when Huxley spoke. My friends told me that the Chancellor of the University felt embarrassed by Huxley’s performance (‘right up there on that pulpit’!)”196

Greene added: “Incidentally, Dobzhansky . . . had recently finished reading the copy of

Adam I sent him and wanted to know why I was so pessimistic about the future of homo sapiens.”197 In the book’s conclusion, Greene had warned that science and technology, “which were to have led the way to a bright new future, have become increasingly preoccupied with

195 “The Program in Pictures,” in Sol Tax and Charles Callender, eds., Evolution After Darwin, vol. 3 (Chicago, 1960), “following page 278.” The volume offered a copy of the schedule of events. Huxley addressed one of two seminars engaging American high school biology teachers, whose attendance was “financed by a grant from the National Science Foundation as a means of widening the influence of the Centennial Celebration and of this Institute.”

196 John C. Greene to Betty Smocovitis, 13 March 1996, Greene Papers. In an interview with the author, Greene added, “I was asked to give a paper there but I declined . . . but I attended.” Asked why he declined, “Well I forgotten, but I think it was partly what they wanted me to talk about and I didn’t feel it was something I was especially in tune to.” Greene mentioned it was “a mutual friend” who approached him, but after spending several moments attempting to recall the name, he admitted “ah, too hard to remember.” As for the topic of discussion at the “Science and Theology” seminar, he recalled, “Well, everybody was sounding off after Julian Huxley, etcetera, etcetera.” John C. Greene, in an interview with the author, May 19, 2008.

197 John C. Greene to Betty Smocovitis, 13 March 1996, Greene Papers.

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devising new and more dreadful weapons of obliteration. [Though] The historical Adam is dead, a casualty of scientific progress, but the Adam . . . lives on . . . [as] a moral being whose every intellectual triumph is at once a temptation to evil and a power of good.”198 Dobzhansky, in contrast, took a more cheery view of the future of humanity and science, while also often couching his conclusions with Biblical metaphors.

Dobzhansky and Mayr both participated in a session of the Chicago conference entitled

“The Evolution of Life,” and chaired by Huxley and Alfred Emerson. Other participants included

E. B. Ford, Everett Olson, G. Ledyard Stebbins, and Sewall Wright. Mayr raised points concerning the relationship between genotype and phenotype and the formation of species, though he otherwise did not play a prominent role in the Chicago festivities. Greene could not recollect exactly when he first met Mayr, and neither did he “remember seeing a lot of him there” at the Chicago celebration.199 Nonetheless, he wrote Mayr shortly after returning from

Chicago:

I am most grateful to you for sending me a reprint of your article on “Agassiz, Darwin, and Evolution.” It is a splendid example of the approach to the history of science in terms of general intellectual history which I try to use myself. I think I sent you a reprint of my “Biology and Social Theory in the 19th Century.” Please accept also the enclosed reprints. I wish I could add a copy of my new book – The Death of Adam: Evolution and Its Impact on Western Thought (Iowa State Univ. Press: Ames, Iowa) – but my stock of free copies was long ago exhausted.200

Mayr’s essay on Agassiz that Greene referred to analyzed the great nineteenth century

Harvard zoologist’s famous opposition to Darwinian theory. In that essay Mayr proposed that

Agassiz’s dilemma stemmed from his early education “in Switzerland and Germany during a

198 John C. Greene, The Death of Adam: Evolution and Its Impact on Western Thought (Ames, IA: Iowa State University, 1996), p. 339.

199 John C. Greene, in an interview with the author, May 19, 2008.

200 John C. Greene to Ernst Mayr, 3 December 1959, Papers of Ernst Mayr, Harvard University Archives, Cambridge, Massachusetts. This letter appears to be their first exchange on record.

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period dominated by romantic ideas and by a largely metaphysical approach to nature, especially

Plato’s .” Thus, it “was not religious scruples that prevented Agassiz from becoming an evolutionist but rather a framework of ideas that could not be combined with evolutionism.”201 Greene responded in his letter to Mayr, “I am not sufficiently familiar with

Agassiz’s writing to comment intelligently on your analysis of his intellectual cast. I would take some exception, however, to your rather sweeping generalizations about Plato’s influence.”202

With this correspondence, the Mayr-Greene epistolary exchange began during that 1959 Darwin

Centennial year, just as Mayr’s career took a concentrated turn toward the history and philosophy of biology, and Greene established himself as a leading scholar in the intellectual history of evolutionary thought.203

201 Haffer, p. 343.

202 Greene to Mayr, 3 December 1959, Mayr Papers.

203 In a short report to the Harvard Fellows published that year, Greene summarized his accomplishments and aspirations for the future: “My researches have continued to be concerned with the development of evolutionary conceptions in Western thought since the seventeenth century. My book [Death of Adam] attempts to survey the whole field of natural history – geology, paleontology, biology, and physical anthropology – and to demonstrate the interaction of science and world view. The American side of this story I hope to describe in the next year or two in a book entitled “Science and Society in the Age of Jefferson.” . . . My teaching has covered a wide range of subjects, beginning with American history and modern social science at the University of Chicago, proceeding to American constitutional and intellectual history at Wisconsin, and presently [at Iowa State] embracing a survey of the history of science. In the future I expect to divide my time more or less evenly between the history of science and general intellectual history, both in teaching and research.” See John Greene, “John Colton Greene,” in The Society of Fellows, ed. Crane Brinton (Cambridge: Society of Fellows of Harvard University, 1959), pp. 141–42.

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CHAPTER 5 CORRESPONDING COLLEAGUES: MAYR AND GREENE

Mayr and Greene’s initial exchange debated Mayr’s assertions about the influence of

Platonic thought on the opponents of Darwinian theory, such as the prominent nineteenth century

Harvard zoologist Louis Agassiz. Mayr dedicated his essay, one of his initial forays into the history of biology, to Erwin Stresemann, “on his seventieth birthday.”1 Mayr’s analysis described Agassiz as “a devout Christian,” and as a result it had “sometimes . . . been claimed that his religious beliefs lay behind his opposition.” Mayr disagreed, arguing rather that from his

“childhood on, Agassiz had been exposed to the priori concepts of the various philosophies of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries,” while claiming that a “detailed analysis of Agassiz’ writings indicates strongly that he was never able to escape this conceptual world in spite of his lifelong concern with empirical natural history.” Mayr opined, “All his life, Agassiz remained a child of the world of ideas of the eighteenth century.”2

According to Mayr, in the eighteenth century, “all speculation on the nature of the world was based on the implicit assumption that the universe obeys a set of rational principles, and that one can ‘explain’ the world by discovering these principles.”3 He continued, “The basic framework for such a rational interpretation of the world was provided by Plato and his successors,” while pointing out that “three ideas in particular dominated subsequent thinking: the principle of completeness of the existing world . . . the principle of the qualitative continuity of the series of forms of natural existence, and the principle of a unilinear ascending order of excellence. It is a combination of these three principles that resulted in a conception of the

1 Ernst Mayr, “Agassiz, Darwin, and Evolution,” Harvard Library Bulletin 13 (Spring 1959): 165.

2 Ibid., 16566.

3 Ibid., p. 166.

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universe designated by Lovejoy as the ‘Great Chain of Being.’”4 Mayr considered that, “We have to keep this clearly in mind when, in the of writers from the Greeks to Goethe, we discover statements with an evolutionary ring, like ‘scale of nature’ or ‘ladder of perfection.’ . . . Neither Aristotle nor Leibniz, nor, as is quite evident, even Goethe, was an evolutionist in the biological sense. Lacking the all important ingredient of ‘,’ their concepts were in essence static.” He pointed out, “Only a few philosophers . . . succeeded in breaking out of Plato’s strait jacket.”5

On this basis, Mayr argued, “There is a radical difference between Agassiz and the modern naturalist who derives his theories by induction from his facts. Agassiz, like the speculative philosophers of the eighteenth century, accommodates the observed facts in a preconceived framework of ideas and tends to minimize or ignore facts that do not fit.”6 He added, “In retrospect, it is quite evident how exceedingly difficult it would be for one steeped in the tradition of Plato’s philosophy to accept the thought of ‘common descent.’ This is the reason the great German zoologists of the first half of the nineteenth century failed so completely to solve the problem of evolution. They had been thoroughly indoctrinated in the concepts of idealistic philosophy.”

In contrast to Agassiz, Mayr considered that, since Darwin and Wallace had “spent their time watching birds, collecting insects, and reading Malthus and Vestiges of the Natural History of the Creation,” they had remained “happily . . . unaffected by the lofty fallacies of idealistic

4 Ibid.

5 Ibid., 167. Mary P. Winsor wrote a critique of Mayr’s attack on essentialism in her essay, “The Creation of the Essentialism Story: An Exercise in Metahistory,” History of the Philosophy of the Life Sciences 28 (2006): 149–174. Winsor states in her abstract: “The essentialism story is a version of the history of biological classification that was fabricated between 1953 and 1968 by Ernst Mayr . . . Mayr’s motive was to promote the Modern Synthesis in opposition to the typology of idealist morphologists; demonizing Plato served this end.”

6 Ibid., p. 168.

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philosophy.”7 Darwin’s great fortune, he concluded, “was that he was just enough ahead of his time to be a leader and not enough ahead to be ignored. Agassiz’ misfortune was to have been absorbed in a zeitgeist during his youth that was unsuitable for mixing with the revolutionary new ideas. He was, one may say, a victim of the thoroughness of his education.”8

Greene wrote to Mayr that he felt “most grateful” for having received his essay on

Agassiz that Mayr had sent him following the conclusion of the Chicago meetings. Greene initially responded by noting the similarities in their approach toward the “history of science in terms of general intellectual history,” but he added, “Speaking more generally, I find your explanation of the failure of Agassiz and others to solve the species riddle correctly because of

‘the lofty fallacies of idealistic philosophy’ a rather too simple answer to a very complex problem.” Instead, he asserted:

I question your idea that the tendency to accommodate observed facts in a preconceived framework was the vice of a pre-scientific age which we have now happily left behind us. Science and world view are in continual interaction, and significant breakthroughs in scientific thought will continue to be heralded by prescient speculations that outrun the available evidence.9

While Greene shared Mayr’s “admiration for [Arthur] Lovejoy’s Great Chain of Being,” an influential mid-twentieth century work on intellectual history, he did so with a warning: “But I think it must be used with caution . . . [as Lovejoy] tends to treat naturalists as if they were primarily philosophers and only secondarily naturalists. The emphasis should be the other way around.”10 Greene also suggested Lovejoy’s treatment of Buffon invited further development.

7 Ibid., p. 173

8 Ibid., p. 193

9 John C. Greene to Ernst Mayr, 3 December 1959, Papers of Ernst Mayr, Harvard University Archives, Cambridge, Massachusetts.

10 Greene to Mayr, 3 December 1959, Mayr Papers.

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Mayr responded in March after returning from Australia and India, in turn thanking

Greene for sending “several reprints which are of the greatest interest to me. No doubt you realize,” he humbly admitted, “that I am a greenhorn as far as the field of the history of ideas is concerned, and I certainly would not want to be dogmatic in my views. Perhaps I am doing an injustice to old Plato by using his name as a label for all ideologies which do not admit of a real change but only of a change of the appearance . . . Yet he is the first I believe who has expressed this viewpoint succinctly and has elaborated on it considerably.”11 Mayr continued, “what struck me in the Pre-Darwinian literature is that most of the authors . . . treat evolution not as a genuine change of the eidos but merely as an unfolding of previously hidden potentialities of the eidos, or as several ‘reincarnations’ of the eidos. . . . The difference between the two types of concepts may not be conspicuous to a non-biologist, but they are of the utmost importance to the biologist.” He concluded, “I am not the person to work this out in detail, but I had hoped that my

Agassiz paper will stimulate someone to trace this conceptual revolution. It coincided with the emergence of population thinking in biology and is without question the greatest conceptual revolution in biology and perhaps all of science.”12 Mayr therefore argued that Plato’s assessment of biological species as representing essential qualities in nature inhibited consideration that biological populations could genuinely change over time. It was only with

Darwin that scientific thinkers outgrew such ancient concepts. Whatever the case may be, it is worth noting that a comprehensive empirically based definition for biological species remains a scientific challenge. Though Mayr rightly argued for the significance of population thinking in a modern biological species concept, Greene felt that blaming historically “complex problems” on

11 Mayr to Greene, 10 March 1960, Mayr Papers.

12 Ibid.thoug

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the “lofty fallacies of idealistic philosophy” was “rather too simplistic.” Greene thus questioned

Mayr’s critique of Platonic thought as having a “tendency to accommodate observed facts in a preconceived framework” represented the “vice of a pre-scientific age.” Greene considered Mayr naïve to think that these “vices” were “now happily left behind us.”

Their difference in perspective would arise again later in the decade when Stephen

Gaubard, editor for the American Academy of Arts and Science journal, Daedalus, requested

Mayr’s opinion on a Greene submission. Mayr replied, “I have mixed feelings about the Greene manuscript. . . . I think the basic trouble is that Greene has a concept of Darwinism that does not have too much to do with Darwin. . . . And I must say, I am rather confused as to what Greene means by twentieth century Darwinism.”13

Greene Tackles “Progress”

Greene followed The Death of Adam with Darwin and the Modern World View, his second book, based on a series of Rockwell Lectures he gave at Rice University in 1960 that were then published by the Louisiana State University Press the following year.14 Bentley Glass, the editor for The Quarterly Review of Biology, reviewed both works. Of Adam, Glass had said:

“It would be hard to acclaim too greatly the fine qualities.” He considered that the work

“deservedly won much praise from scholars and general readers who are interested in the history of ideas.”15 A few years later, Glass reviewed Darwin and the Modern World View, commenting that in Greene’s second “book on Darwin’s impact,” the author “discusses Darwin and the Bible,

13 Ernst Mayr to Stephen R. Gaubard, 15 June 1964, Mayr Papers.

14 Greene reported he was invited to give the lectures by the respected physicist and president of Rice University, William V. Houston, who had been impressed by his presentation on Darwin and religion at the American Philosophical Society the previous year. See John C. Greene, Debating Darwin: Adventures of a Scholar (Claremont, CA: Regina Press, 1999), p. 9.

15 Bentley Glass, review of Darwin and the Modern World View by John Greene, Quarterly Review of Biology 49 (1974): 335.

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Darwin and Natural Theology, and Darwin and Social Science. These topics may be treated more exhaustively elsewhere, but no finer introduction to such subjects exists. If at certain points one may take issue with the author, so much the better for stimulating discussion and controversy.”16

Morton Fried, the influential Columbia University anthropology professor, also reviewed both works for the American Anthropologist. While he agreed with Glass’ evaluation of Adam, he proved severely critical of the second book. Of The Death of Adam, Fried had written, “The solidity of the presentation of the emergence of a of evolution is most impressive.” He considered there was “a novelty about the book” in “the skillful manner in which the author has developed an argument in the very well chosen words of the original contributors,” and felt “particularly impressed with its general historical approach of the emergence of biological evolutionism in the context of the major developments in physical science.” Fried concluded, “This is as it should be; the author is a historian with special interests in the philosophy and history of science.”17

In contrast, Fried attacked Greene’s lack of a positivistic commitment in Darwin and the

Modern World View. He noted, “To be sure, there were signs in the earlier book that Greene was discontented with science as ideology, but these were interpreted (at least by me) as indications of a healthy critical skepticism such as leads to greater refinement of concept and a higher level of operational efficiency in any body of studies.” By comparison, Fried wrote, “Darwin and the

Modern World View dispels this notion and presents us instead . . . the idea that there is more in heaven and earth than can be explained by science or, more specifically, that there is more to

16 Ibid.

17 Morton H. Fried, review of The Death of Adam: Evolution and Its Impact on Western Thought by John C. Greene, American Anthropologist, New Series 63 (Apr. 1961): 392.

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man than can be comprehended by a materialistic method. Given such an assumption, the failure of science is a forgone conclusion.”18

Nonetheless, Fried admitted, “Greene has at least one powerful point which, combined with his fluent style and intrinsic interest of his discussions, makes this book required reading for students of cultural evolution. Reference is to progress, particularly as it is used by Julian

Huxley” and others. Fried explained, “In brief . . . progress is change measured by some criterion of value. Anyone can erect criteria of progress; [the] possibilities are almost infinite.” He continued, “When students of either biology or culture identify evolution with progress they are engraving invitations to the metaphysicians,” and thus “evolutionists should not be dismayed when their guests arrive and claim the hall.”19 Though Fried expressed profound reservations about Greene’s “discontent with science as ideology,” he heartily appreciated Greene’s concern for the ideology of “progress” as an invitation to metaphysical speculation hardly suited for empirical investigation.

Greene had explained that his interest in a critique of “progress” began when he noticed it:

. . . Creeping into the literature of natural history in the late eighteenth century and early nineteenth century, partly in connection with the evolutionary speculations of Erasmus Darwin, Lamarck, Lacépède, and others, partly in anthropological inquiries of Rousseau and Lord Monboddo, and partly in the idea of successive progressive creations advanced to explain the paleontological discoveries of Georges Cuvier and his contemporaries.

After trying out my ideas on this subject on various biologists at Iowa State University and on a conference of botanists at Vanderbilt University, but without arousing any great interest in my auditors, I decided to develop my ideas more fully in a lecture to the History of Ideas Club at the Johns Hopkins University. This was a club founded and dominated by Arthur O. Lovejoy, a philosopher whose writings

18 Morton H. Fried, review of Darwin and the Modern World View by John C. Greene, American Anthropologist. New Series 64 (Apr. 1962): 382–83.

19 Ibid.

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on intellectual history, and especially on the history of evolutionary ideas, had done much to influence my own thinking. Unfortunately, Lovejoy, then in his eighties, was not well enough to attend the lecture, but it generated sufficient interest to bring about its publication in The Johns Hopkins Magazine under the title “Evolution and Progress.”20

Greene further noted, “Biologists, I urged, should either stop using words like ‘higher’ and

‘lower’ and ‘progress’ and the figures of speech accompanying them or they should revise their philosophy of nature and natural science to make room for concepts of this kind. But I thought it unlikely that they would adopt either course of action.”21

Greene’s essay in The Johns Hopkins Magazine began by stating: “Nothing in the literature of the modern evolutionary biologist is more striking to the intellectual historian than the pervasive and ambiguous role of the idea of progress. Belief in progress has been the leitmotif of Western civilization since the Enlightenment.”22 He inquired, “Is it surprising, then, that the idea of progress should play an equivocal role in modern biology?”23 He continued,

“often biological definitions of progress make implicit reference to man, even when an attempt is made to rule out the human point of view,”24 and concluded, “[i]n short, evolutionary biologists seem able neither to live with or live without the idea of progress. To what extent this confused state of affairs inhibits scientific progress in biology I am not in a position to say. In the past, scientific observation and scientific reasoning have been influenced by extra-scientific

20 Greene, Debating Darwin, p. 11.

21 Ibid., p. 12.

22 Greene, “Evolution and Progress,” The Johns Hopkins Magazine 14 (October 1962), p. 8.

23 Ibid., p. 32.

24 Ibid., p. 10.

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presuppositions and attitudes, and I strongly suspect that contemporary science is influenced by a world view dominated by progress.”25 He then proposed:

As a biologist, the student of evolution can say of the idea of progress what Laplace said of the idea of God: “I have no need of that hypothesis.” But as a human being seeking some motive of action beyond the needs of the moment he stands in desperate need of that hypothesis. No one can live without hope, and modern man’s hope is in progress.26

Years later, Greene reflected on his critique of the “ambiguous status of the idea of progress in evolutionary discourse.” He recalled that, “All attempts to define biological progress scientifically, and there were a good many, collapsed into mere survival or likelihood of survival.

Yet the evolutionary literature was full of words like ‘progress,’ ‘improvement,’ ‘advance,’

‘higher,’ and ‘lower’ and of figures of speech implying striving, purpose, and achievement. Was it possible, I asked myself, that these biologists, most of whom had discarded traditional religious and philosophical ways of giving meaning to science and human existence, had adopted the idea of evolutionary progress as a substitute mode of accomplishing the same objective”?27

Greene also remembered that the response to his lecture at “the History of Ideas Club came largely from professors of literature and philosophy.” The published version received a thoughtful reply from one of Mayr’s former graduate students, Walter Bock, then teaching at the

University of Illinois. Bock wrote to Greene that his “analysis of the problems of progress in evolutionary theory” offered “an accurate picture of the psychological factors underlying

25 Ibid.

26 Ibid., p. 32.

27 Greene, Debating Darwin, p. 14.

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biologists’ frequent resort to the language of progress in formulating evolutionary concepts.” In his own work, however, Bock chose to use scientific language that avoided the term.28

Dobzhansky and Greene: Making Sense of Evolution

Greene recollected that, with the publication of his first two books, “I was now a Darwin expert, or so the unsuspecting public thought. Whether I liked it or not, I had become involved in what soon came to be known as ‘the Darwin industry,’ a scholarly enterprise which attracted young historians . . . [as well as] . . . distinguished scientists who had played leading roles in founding and extending the neo-Darwinian synthesis of the 1930s and 1940s – men like Julian

Huxley, George Gaylord Simpson, Theodosius Dobzhansky, Ernst Mayr, and G. Ledyard

Stebbins, all of whom looked to Darwin as their patron saint.”29 Greene continued, “As I read what these scientists had to say about Darwin and Darwinism, I soon realized that their own interpretations were different in important respects from mine. I had come to Darwin, not from the perspective of twentieth century neo-Darwinism, but from my researches on the interaction of science and world view in the development of systematic natural history from the late seventeenth century to the overthrow of the static view of nature and natural history in Darwin’s time.”30

While Greene read many of the scientific works of the neo-Darwinian synthesizers while auditing an evolutionary biology course as a Harvard graduate student, he only first came in personal contact with them at the April 1959 American Philosophical Society Meetings held to

28 Ibid., p. 12. The original letter is held in Greene’s archives: Walter Bock to John C. Greene, 7 May 1964, John C. Greene Papers, Archives & Special Collections at the Thomas J. Dodd Research Center, University of Connecticut, Storrs, Connecticut. Bock wrote: “I do not see the need for the a notion of progress in evolutionary biology and I have rejected it from my thinking.”

29 Ibid., p. 13.

30 Ibid.

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celebrate the centennial of Darwin’s Origin of Species. He had been invited to speak on the topic of “Darwin and Religion” at the symposium with these scientists, a talk which was subsequently published in the October edition of the Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society.

Among the leading architects of the neo-Darwinian synthesis participating at the American

Philosophical Society meetings were Ernst Mayr, Theodosius Dobzhansky, George Gaylord

Simpson, and G. Ledyard Stebbins, along with prominent scientists such as Curt Stern, Wilfrid

Le Gros Clark, I. Michael Lerner, and Norman D. Newell, and others. Charles Darwin’s grandson, Sir Charles Galton Darwin, gave a dinner address filled with personal recollections.

In his paper, Greene argued that Darwin was “[hardly] the first to suggest that man’s origins had been bestial.” Earlier writers like “Rousseau and Lord Monboddo had sketched the evolution of human nature from brute-like beginnings, and Lamarck had plainly implied man’s apelike emergence in a long course of organic evolution. But Darwin converted the scientific community to his view. He thereby raised it from the status of a subversive speculation to that of a scientific theory strenuously defended by scientists in an age when the prestige of science was growing steadily.”31 He suggested, “Oddly enough, it was the element of chance variation . . . which recommended Darwin’s theory to the American pragmatists Charles Peirce and William

James as a means of deliverance from the mechanical determinism of nineteenth-century physical sciences – ‘the block universe eternal and without a history,’ as William James described it.”32 Greene then pointed out:

Likewise . . . Henri Bergson, A. N. Whitehead, and others, each in his own way, found in the idea organic evolution the key to a new cosmology in which spontaneity, novelty, and purpose had a place, a place which had been denied them in the cosmology inherited from the seventeenth century. The influence of these

31 John Greene, “Darwin and Religion,” Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 103 (1959): 717.

32 Ibid., 720.

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new ideas may be seen in the writings of modern students of evolution, as when Professor Dobzhansky writes, somewhat mystically: “In producing life, cosmic evolution overcame its own bounds; in giving rise to man, biological evolution transcended itself. Human evolution may yet ascend to a superhuman level.”33

Greene defined three areas in which Darwin influenced relations between science and religion. Greene first claimed that: “With respect to revealed religion, Darwin’s writings helped to precipitate a rethinking of traditional doctrines.” Second: “With respect to natural religion,

Darwin shattered its traditional basis by exhibiting the of structure to function in the organic world as a necessary outcome of random variation, struggle for existence, and natural selection . . . [though for] many of his contemporaries the blow was softened by the indomitable faith . . . in progress.” Greene than concluded: “With respect to the third stage . . . in which the methods of natural science were applied to the study of man and society, Darwin [also] played a pioneering role.” Nonetheless, in this area, Darwin “wound up in hopeless contradictions” much like Herbert Spencer had in an attempt to “apply concepts of biology to human history.” In

Greene’s view, “Biology afforded no criterion of progress for a creature like man, and Darwin was forced to bring in other criteria, imported surreptitiously from his Christian background.”34

Early in the meetings Greene met the prominent evolutionary biologist, Theodosius

Dobzhansky, who upheld a “belief” in progress coupled with a Christian sympathetic worldview.

Dobzhansky had grown up in the Ukraine. He would complete his studies at the University of

Kiev in the early 1920s before moving to America on a Rockefeller Fellowship to work at

Thomas Hunt Morgan’s pioneering genetic research laboratory in 1927. Dobzhansky’s publication of Genetics and the Origin of Species (1937) led to his recognition as a leading architect of the neo-Darwinian synthesis of Mendelian genetics and Darwinian theory. Michael

33 Ibid. Greene would repeat these comments toward the end of the conclusion to his soon to be published, The Death of Darwin: Evolution and Its Impact on Western Thought, p. 338

34 Ibid., p. 725.

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Ruse, the prominent philosopher of science, describes his “incredible influential work” during this period as “the foundation, in America especially, of the reinvigorated Darwinism which conquered biology.”35 Dobzhansky subsequently accepted a position at Columbia University in

1940. During this period, Dobzhansky and Mayr developed a close relationship, particularly after

Dobzhansky’s move to Columbia a few miles away from the American Museum of Natural

History.

Dobzhansky subscribed to a broadly Christian worldview, interwoven with evolutionary theory and concepts of “progress.”36 For example, Dobzhansky explained that from his perspective, “Christianity has an inherent and indispensable evolutionary idea at the core of its world view . . . [with] the fall of man . . . followed by a new ascent. Progressive revelation of

God to man through the patriarchs and the prophets was followed by the appearance of Christ.”37

Creation, he continued, “is not an event which has taken place some six thousand years ago; it is a process and not an act; it is not completed and it is going on before our eyes; there is hope for man, and not only in afterlife but on this earth as well.”38 In his view, Dobzhansky asserted,

35 Michael Ruse, “Introduction” to “On the Nature of the Evolutionary Process: The Correspondence Between Theodosius Dobzhansky and John C. Greene,” Biology and Philosophy 11 (1996): 445.

36 For a comprehensive analysis of the adoption of “progress” as an ideology held by leading scientists concerning their views on evolution, See Michael Ruse, From Monad to Man: The Concept of Progress in Evolutionary Biology (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1996.) Ruse presents a focused analysis on the perspectives of both Dobzhansky (pp. 391–401) and Mayr (410–419). See also Costas B. Krimbas, “The Evolutionary Worldview of Theodosius Dobzhansky,” in The Evolution of Theodosius Dobzhansky: Essays on His Life and Thought in Russia and America, ed. Mark B. Adams (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1994).

37 Theodosius Dobzhansky, “Evolutionism and Man’s Hope,” The Sewanee Review 68 (1960): 288. Dobzhansky wrote to Greene that “I hope to give a variant,” of his essay published in The Sewanee Review, “at the Science Congress in Bombay and another in Australia.” Theodosius Dobzhansky to John C. Greene, 6 December 1959, in John C. Greene and Michael Ruse, “On the Nature of the Evolutionary Process: The Correspondence Between Theodosius Dobzhansky and John C. Greene,” Biology and Philosophy 11 (1996): 450. Copies of the correspondence between Dobzhansky and Greene can be found in Greene’s Archives at the University of Connecticut, and in Dobzhansky’s papers held at the American Philosophical Society Archives in Philadelphia.

38 Theodosius Dobzhansky, “Evolutionism and Man’s Hope,” The Sewanee Review 68 (1960): 288.

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“Christianity is basically evolutionistic. It affirms that the meaning of history lies in the progression from Creation, through Redemption, to the City of God.”39

It was not unusual for Dobzhansky to have such thoughts. He noted that other prominent evolutionists held similar views. Wallace, for example, “thought that man’s mind must have been implanted by a supernatural agency.” He added that , “one of the foremost modern evolutionary ecologists, is of the same opinion.” As evidence, Dobzhansky pointed to Lack’s statement that “A Christian, agreeing to man’s evolution by natural selection, has to add that man has spiritual attributes, good and evil, that are not a result of this evolution, but are of supernatural origin.”40 It was in his book, The Biological Basis of Human Freedom (1956) that

Dobzhansky declared: “In producing life, cosmic evolution overcame its own bounds; in giving rise to man, biological evolution transcended itself. Human evolution may yet ascent to a superhuman level.”41 Perhaps he felt that such an experience would be something akin to that of

Christ, whose appearance Dobzhansky understood to be an “ineffably pivotal event and the watershed of the history of the cosmos.”42 When examining such statements, Ruse

“unambiguously” considered that “the overriding reason for Dobzhansky’s faith in progress” centered on his “religious beliefs.”43

39 Theodosius Dobzhansky, The Biology of Ultimate Concern (New York: The New American Library, 1967), p. 112.

40 Quoted in Ibid., p. 53. David Lack’s passage cited by Dobzhansky can be referenced to Lack’s short work, Evolutionary Theory and Christian Belief (London: MacMillan & Co., 1961), p. 115. Lack’s book was originally published in 1957.

41 Theodosius Dobzhansky, The Biological Basis of Human Freedom (New York: Columbia University Press, 1956), p. 27.

42 Theodosius Dobzhansky, “Evolutionism and Man’s Hope,” p. 288

43 Michael Ruse, “Dobzhansky and the Problem of Progress,” in The Evolution of Theodosius Dobzhansky, ed. Mark B. Adams (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1994), p. 239. According to Ruse: “Like Dobzhansky, a man of philosophical sophistication and deep religious conviction, Greene nevertheless challenged the reading that Dobzhansky put on evolutionary theory, most especially the Teilhardian slant. Whereas for Dobzhansky, science

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James R. Moore notes that Greene “threw down the gauntlet to Dobzhansky for smuggling values into evolution beneath an ‘undergrowth of metaphors and implicit metaphysics.’” Though Moore suggests that “some rapprochement was achieved after

Dobzhansky confessed to being a fellow liberal Christian who sometimes spoke as such,” the tone of Dobzhansky and Greene’s exchange, which lasted through much of the 1960s, suggested that Greene was hardly wholly impressed.44 For example, even after learning of Dobzhansky’s

Christian sympathies, Greene still severely criticized Dobzhansky’s indulgence in metaphysical language when expressing his “confident assumption . . . that the progress of intellect . . . science and the scientific attitude, [were] necessarily accompanied by moral and cultural progress.”

Dobzhansky had recently proclaimed that “Man represents the highest, most progressive, and most successful product of organic evolution,” going so far as to say, “[man] may yet become

‘business manager for the cosmic process of evolution,’ a role which Julian Huxley has ascribed to him.” On this point, Greene incredulously asked his audience: “What should a sane man think of this?”45 Despite these statements, Greene recalled that Dobzhansky appreciated his presentation at the APS meetings, and even encouraged Greene “to look him up in New York on

[his] next visit there.”46 Greene was, however, perplexed: “Precisely what Dobzhansky admired in my paper I am not sure – perhaps the fact that I took religion seriously.” Greene noted that he

and religion melded easily into one whole, for Greene in an almost positivist manner, truth in one area must be kept strictly apart from truth in another area. Good fences make good neighbors” (446).

44 James Moore, “John Colton Greene: 1917–2008,” Isis 103 (2012): 146.

45 John C. Greene, “Darwin and Religion,” p. 724. Greene was specifically referring to statements found in Theodosius Dobzhansky, The Biological Basis of Human Freedom (New York: Columbia University Press, 1956), pp. 87–88; Sir Julian Huxley, Evolution in Action (New York: Mentor Books, 1957). One obvious question would be what sort of scientific experiment could be arranged to test “man’s” capacity for managing the cosmos, much less its future evolution.

46 John C. Greene, “Recollections of Theodosius Dobzhansky” in “On the Nature of the Evolutionary Process: The Correspondence Between Theodosius Dobzhansky and John C. Greene,” Biology and Philosophy 11 (1996): 447.

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found in Dobzhansky “[an] eagerness to work out an evolutionary world view compatible with

Christian tradition – one which was philosophically, as well as scientifically, sound.”47 Still, he felt that Dobzhansky remained “fully prepared . . . not to concede” that a scientific analysis should exclude value judgments, as well as attempts to find “moral significance in natural events.”48

A few months later Greene briefly saw Dobzhansky at the Chicago Darwin Centennial meetings. Dobzhansky had just completed Greene’s recently published The Death of Adam and gently chided Greene by asking, “Why are you so pessimistic?”49 Presumably, Dobzhansky was referring to Greene’s concluding paragraph questioning if scientific progress would be accompanied by the maturity to use it wisely. Shortly thereafter, Dobzhansky wrote to Greene: “I hoped that we might have a good unhurried conversation while in Chicago, but as usual on occasions like that celebration one sees too many people and no one in particular.” After this cordial introduction, Dobzhansky got right to the point:

What I want to say to you is, in brief, this: You should seize the initiative from Julian Huxley and his like. By “You” I mean scientifically informed philosophers. We, research scientists, can help you, but we cannot do it alone. A negative attitude is not enough.

I take it that you are not a fundamentalist, and accept the fact that science is here to stay. I mean it is here to stay not as a collection of knowledge how to make gadgets only, but as a part of man’s view of himself and of the universe. A mere grudging acceptance of this fact by Christians is not enough. We need a synthesis. Scientific activity should become a charismatic activity. I realize that this is asking a lot, but it seems that nothing less will do.50

47 Ibid.

48 Greene, Debating Darwin, p. 9

49 Greene, “Recollections of Theodosius Dobzhansky” p. 448. In his conclusion to The Death of Adam, Greene questioned if human beings had the moral and ethical wherewithal to handle the powerful discoveries of modern science, asking “Is man in truth a kind of Prometheus unbound, ready and able to assume control of his own and cosmic destiny?” (p. 338). Greene utilized Biblical references in framing his argument.

50 Dobzhansky to Greene, 6 December 1959, in Greene and Ruse, p. 449.

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Greene responded the following summer, apologizing for his tardy reply by blaming it on a series of lectures that he had delivered at Rice University that spring and was now preparing for publication as Darwin and the Modern World View. He sent a portion of the manuscript to

Dobzhansky, requesting his critique. Greene included the warning:

As you will see, I am baffled, astounded, and perturbed by the vocabulary which you, Simpson, Huxley, and others use in talking about evolution. It seems to me to be totally at war with your philosophical postulates. You should either abandon the vocabulary or revise your postulates. I put this very badly, as if I were sure of my own views of the matter. Actually, I am not at all clear on many of the issues involved, but I do feel strongly that many biologists are trying to have their cake and eat it on the subject of in evolution. I know that you distinguish your views from those of Huxley, but from the point of view of the intellectual historian you both seem to be in the same general camp.51

Dobzhansky responded to Greene soon after returning from his trip to Asia, enthusiastically writing, “I dearly wish that we could have the opportunity to sit down for a good

‘bull session’ and discuss these things, which evidently interest you as much as they do me. It is hard to do so satisfactorily in a letter.” But he also protested:

Even more I would like to convince you that Huxley, Simpson and myself are not “in the same general camp” as far as our philosophical attitudes are concerned. Huxley is militantly and virulently anti-religious. Simpson can, I think, be fairly described as an agnostic. I happen to be a Christian. But I see no objection against Huxley’s statement which you quote . . . Personally, I think that evolution (cosmic + biological + human) is God’s method of creation (not a very original view, I realize).52

The two continued to correspond, all the while attempting to arrange a meeting in New

York. Dobzhansky, in the meantime, continued to wonder why Greene insisted biologists should

“shun such words as ‘creativity,’ ‘improvement,’ ‘trial and errors,’ etc.?” After all, he reasoned,

“This is what they observe happening or infer having happened.” Dobzhansky also described his own affinity for the views of the French Jesuit philosopher, paleontologist and geologist, Pierre

51 Greene to Dobzhansky, 30 August 1960, in Greene and Ruse, p. 451.

52 Dobzhansky to Greene, 17 September 1960, in Greene and Ruse, p. 452.

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Teilhard de Chardin.53 Though he admitted that many of the philosophical ideas Teilhard expressed in The Phenomenon of Man (French ed. 1955, English ed. 1959) were “[as] science . . . indeed worthless,” he thought that Teilhard did not intend “to use biological evolution to ‘prove’ evolution.” Rather, Dobzhansky argued, “He tried to . . . use science plus metaphysics plus theology plus poetry to arrive at a personal ‘Weltanschauung.’” Dobzhansky,

“[found] his attempt admirable,” though he added that he “would like to cook up a bit different

‘Weltanschauung.’” Moreover, he asked Greene, “Do you take the standpoint that such attempts are not to be made?”54

Greene promptly responded, first thanking Dobzhansky for his letter, and then writing, “I am sure we do not understand each other very well.” He added, “In your recent letter . . . you seem to take a position more like Huxley’s than like . . . Teilhard de Chardin’s . . . [who] seems to recognize what I have called a creative ground or principle in evolution. Teilhard calls it

Omega and identifies it with the Christian God.”55 Greene then turned severe: “You on the contrary, seem to incline to Huxley’s view that the creativity of nature requires no explanation, no creative ground. Evolution is a ‘natural creative process,’ and that is all there is to it. I must say that makes no sense to me.” He continued, “It does not help matters to say that the cosmic process is ‘naturally creative’ or that it ‘transcends itself.’ An enigma rephrased in poetic language is still an enigma. What would you say to a physicist who told you that it was a natural property of matter or matter-energy to transcend itself?”56 Greene also clarified one of his

53 John Grim and Mary Evelyn Tucker, “Teilhard de Chardin: A Short Biography,” American Teilhard Association, accessed 1 December 2012, http://teilharddechardin.org/index.php/biography. Dobzhansky served as president and member of the Board of Directors during the early years of the American Teilhard Association.

54 Dobzhansky to Greene, 13 November 1961, in Greene and Ruse, p. 457.

55 Greene to Dobzhansky, 17 November 1961, in Greene and Ruse, p. 458.

56 Ibid., pp. 458–59.

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primary objectives: “[as to] ‘success’ and ‘failure,’ trial and error,’ etc., these expressions make no sense unless you assume that something or someone is trying to go somewhere or accomplish something.” He then queried Dobzhansky: “I simply do not understand where you stand,” especially in regard to the relationship between a creative agent and nature.57

Greene wrote in conclusion: “The whole question [depends on] whether science can or should admit value-concepts into its theoretical structure. The usual assumption in modern times is it should not. You will remember Boyle’s objection to the Aristotelian-medieval habit of regarding some elements as ‘nobler’ than others. But modern evolutionary vocabulary is loaded with expressions that imply value-judgments in their ordinary usage.” He then asked

Dobzhansky:

What conclusion do I draw from this? The following: Either biologists should eliminate these words from the language of biology, or they should recognize frankly that biological theory requires concepts that can only be defined in terms of a general philosophy of nature, i.e., a philosophy of nature in terms of which these value-loaded expressions make sense. If the biologist follows the first course, he will talk about change, but not about progress. He will speak of a change in the average character of populations, but not about an improvement in their character. He will, in short, adopt the ethically neutral attitude we associate with physical science. He may feel as a human being that these changes constitute progress in the long run, but he will ignore this because he cannot deal with it as scientist.58

Greene continued, “If, on the contrary, he insists that these concepts and expressions are absolutely indispensable to the biological enterprise, he will have to ask himself philosophical questions,” such as “what do I mean” by the use of these metaphors, and “What must the universe be like to produce ever new levels of being, etc.?” Greene admitted, “On the whole, I think the latter course” for developing a philosophy of nature that accommodates value-loaded concepts “more rational, because it seeks understanding in the broadest terms.” He suggested

57 Ibid., p. 459.

58 Greene to Dobzhansky, 17 November 1961, in Greene and Ruse, p. 460.

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that biologists and physicists “should go back to thinking of themselves as natural philosophers and give up the absurd illusion that science can live without philosophy.”59

In response, Dobzhansky again attempted to explain himself to Greene by insisting, “I am a Christian,” and that “Evolution (cosmic + biological + human) is going towards something, we hope some city of God. This belief is not imposed on us by our scientific discoveries, but if we wish (but not if we do not wish) we may see in nature manifestations of the Omega, or your creative ground . . . or simply of God.”60 Dobzhansky appeared to be soliciting a sympathetic reading from Greene based on shared metaphysics. He also included some ruminations:

I see no escape from thinking that God acts not in fits of miraculous interventions, but in all significant and insignificant, spectacular and humdrum events. Pantheism, you may say? I do not think so, but if so then there is much truth in pantheism. The really tough point is, of course, in what sense can God’s action be seen in all that happens. I am not foolish enough to think I can solve this. Perhaps Teilhard had a hint, very obscurely expressed.61

He concluded his letter to Greene by stating, “I do not doubt that at some level evolution, like everything else in the world, is a manifestation of God’s activity. All that I say is that as a scientist I do not observe anything that would prove this. In short, as scientists Laplace and myself ‘have no need of this hypothesis,’ but as a human being I do need this hypothesis!”

Overall, he resisted what he saw as Greene’s attempt to put “things in water-tight compartments.”62

While Dobzhansky wished to reassure Greene that he considered himself a Christian who saw creativity in evolution as an expression of God’s will no matter whether scientific

59 Ibid., pp. 460–61.

60 Dobzhansky to Greene, 23 November 1961, in Greene and Ruse, p. 462.

61 Ibid., p. 463.

62 Dobzhansky to Greene, 23 November 1961, in Greene and Ruse, p. 464.

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methodology could conclusively prove it or not (it rather appeared to Dobzhansky intuitive), he nonetheless aspired to find a synthesis between the two. Greene, meanwhile, maintained his doubts about Dobzhansky’s philosophical focus. Greene felt that scientists, as scientists, should stick to the ideals expressed by scientific luminaries such as Robert Boyle and Pierre-Simon

Laplace who, during the and Enlightenment, proposed that a scientific investigation of the natural world should be pursued without a connection to metaphysics.

Otherwise, Greene argued, scientists should introduce philosophical tools for dealing with a creative principle. He admitted his personal preference was for the latter, as in his view, philosophically acknowledging a creative principle made the more sense.

Disciplinary Boundaries

Dobzhansky’s long thoughtful letter attempting to explain the relationship between his philosophical views and his science elicited another lengthy reply from Greene, who stated, “it seems to me that the crux of our misunderstanding and disagreement is the question of the relations of science and philosophy rather than of science and religion.” He noted that, “whether natural theology is possible and, if so, of what kind, is a question on which I have not made up my mind. . . . In any case, Christian faith does not depend on the possibility of a demonstrative natural theology. I think we agree on this.”63

Greene continued; “The point where we seem to disagree is on the extent to which the

‘facts,’ propositions, and theories of evolutionary biology are scientific and the extent to which

(degree to which) they involve philosophical presuppositions, and hence require explicit philosophizing if we are to be clear what we mean.” He pointed out to Dobzhansky, “You say, for example, that ‘evolution (cosmic + biological + human) is going towards something.’ I am

63 Greene to Dobzhansky, 1 December 1961, in Greene and Ruse, p. 465.

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not clear whether you regard this as a scientific fact, a philosophical interpretation, or an affirmation of religious faith. . . . As I read Huxley [and others], he seems to feel that the statement that evolution (cosmic, etc. etc.) is going somewhere is a statement of scientific fact, simply a matter of observation. But surely this is not true, certainly not on a cosmic level.”64 It would be interesting to learn what sort of scientific experiment Huxley would propose for testing cosmic progress, what to speak of its final destination.

Greene then argued, “Instead of frankly recognizing that these assumptions are made to render our experience meaningful philosophically and religiously, they pretend (and apparently fool themselves into believing) that they are only reporting scientific facts or highly probably scientific theories. At the same time they overlook the enormous difficulties involved in defining what one means by ‘going somewhere.’ Such an idea involves notions of ‘perfection,’

‘improvement,’ etc., which don’t make sense in a mechanistic philosophy of nature.”65 Greene also offered a suggestion:

Individual organisms may try to survive . . . but a species does not struggle to survive. ‘Life’ does not struggle to survive; it has no concept of better or worse. I can’t make philosophical sense of this language, much less scientific sense. . . . The whole thing smacks of , , and others things which are supposed to be hideous to modern biologists. These personifications of varieties, species, life, etc. are not necessary for scientific purposes; they obfuscate science. They are only desperate attempts to make a mechanistic world meaningful. I conclude that the metaphorical vocabulary of modern evolutionary biologists is a poor substitute for honest philosophical problems deeply embedded in the structure of evolutionary theory.66

Dobzhansky’s response came quickly. In it he acknowledged, “I have to admit you being right that my phrase ‘evolution . . . is going towards something’ confuses religious affirmation

64 Ibid., pp. 465–66.

65 Ibid., p. 466.

66 Ibid., p. 467

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with scientific fact. In my letter I intended it to be the former . . . But I still want to insist that scientific generalization . . . leads to results compatible with the affirmation, and such compatibilities are what makes scientific research exciting.”67 But he also offered his own small criticism in return: “I hope that I misinterpret you, but reading your books . . . I have an uncomfortable impression that in them there are some overtones of feelings that if the old

Charles Darwin had not invented this business of evolution then philosophy and religion would have been better off. I ascribe this to the wholly justified irritation with Julian Huxley’s use of evolution as a weapon to combat religion. For this reason, in every letter I write you I stress that

Huxley is not the only biologist, there also exist [Charles] Birch, and Teilhard, and even myself.”68

In reply to this particular point, Greene referred to Dobzhansky’s “twice-mentioned impression that I would be happier if Charles Darwin had never lived and evolutionary theory had never been propounded” as “most unexpected.” He also pointed out to Dobzhansky:

“Whitehead and [Alexandre] Koyré both think that enormous damage was done by the philosophical interpretation placed on the 17th century revolution in . Does this mean that they wish Galileo, Descartes, Huygens, and Newton had never lived and never written? Of course not.” Greene continued, “I think great damage has been done and is being done by some philosophical interpretations (some of them masquerading as ‘science’) of evolutionary biology, and by some of the attempts to carry the concepts of biology bodily in to ‘social science’ . . . but

I have no desire to hinder in any way the pursuit of truth, or to be shielded from truth once known. The essential question is; what is the truth about evolution?”69

67 Dobzhansky to Greene, 6 December 1961, in Greene and Ruse, p. 469.

68 Ibid., p. 470.

69 Greene to Dobzhansky, 5 January 1962, in Greene and Ruse, p. 478

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Greene again restated his now common criticism, emphasizing the consequences of the mechanistic approach: “The fundamental dilemma of the modern evolutionary biologist seems to me to be the following. He approaches nature either consciously or unconsciously with a mechanistic philosophy of nature . . . derived from Newtonian physics and cosmology. In his philosophy of nature, when pushed to logical conclusions, there is no room for levels of being, for progress, for higher and lower. There are simply displacements in infinite and uniform space of particles of valueless matter.”70 Doubtless, Greene concluded, “biology will survive these confusions and march on to new intellectual triumphs, but whether our civilization can survive confusion about the nature of science and its relation to philosophy, religion, art, politics, etc. is quite another question.”71

After writing to each other extensively, the two “scholars at arms” finally found an opportunity to meet at the Dobzhansky’s apartment in New York City, deciding on a Friday evening to “dine together, family style,” with the Dobzhanskys’ added offer “to put you up in our mediocre guest room”!72 Dobzhansky promised to “postpone the discussion of the illegitimate language in which biologists indulge until we meet,” though he wished for “one [last] ‘shot’” beforehand. Dobzhansky explained that he still held the view that “anybody reading The Death of Adam will feel that if Darwin never lived, or occupied himself as a country gentleman of his day was normally expected to be occupied, this would be a wiser and happier world. I fully believe that you did not intend this. Maybe it was ‘unconscious’?” He then suggested, “Now, I like to be an optimist, and to think that Darwin was a good boy; you are evidently more pessimistic. This reminds me of the definitions of optimist as one ‘who believes that this is the

70 Ibid., p. 477

71 Ibid., p. 478

72 Dobzhansky to Greene, 14 December 1961, in Greene and Ruse, p. 473.

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best of all possible worlds,’ and of pessimist as one ‘who is afraid that the optimist is probably right.’” Dobzhansky signed off, “And so till Friday after!”73

Referring to Dobzhansky’s invitation, Greene would later recall, “Well, I wasn’t going to pass that up.”74 His recollection of the meeting continued: “In our conversation after dinner,

Dobzhansky, in response to my criticisms of some of the writings of evolutionary biologists, kept pressing me to state my own solutions to these problems. Unfortunately, I cannot remember our conversation in detail . . . [but] I came away with a lively impression of his eagerness to work out an evolutionary world view compatible with Christian tradition – one which was philosophically, as well as scientifically, sound.” Greene remembered the experience as a “very pleasant and stimulating evening in New York”75 one that he “enjoyed very much.” In a thank you letter to

Dobzhansky he admitted, “I think I gained a truer idea of your position on the matters we have been discussing,” while requesting his host to “please give Mrs. Dobzhansky my sincere thanks for her gracious hospitality.”76

In remembering their exchange, Greene would later conclude: “To me it seems clear that

Dobzhansky, like Huxley . . . wished to conceive science as a charismatic activity revealing how nature works and at the same time suggesting a world view capable of guiding and inspiring individual and social action. But both men came to the study of evolution with previously acquired world views: Huxley with his grandfather’s commitment to ‘scientific naturalism,’

Dobzhansky as a believing Christian77 seeking an alternative to evolutionary naturalism.” Given

73 Dobzhansky to Greene, 11 January 1962, in Greene and Ruse, p. 479.

74 John C. Greene, in interview with the author, August 7, 2007.

75 Ibid., pp. 447–48.

76 Greene to Dobzhansky, 2 March 1962, in Greene and Ruse, pp. 480–81.

77 Greene made a number of interesting comments on his appreciation of Dobzhansky’s Christian sentiments in his interview with the author:

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the views expressed in their correspondence, it seems only natural Greene felt that “both men were envisaging something which the norms of science established in the seventeenth century precluded, namely, a value-laden, value-achieving concept of nature. . . . Thus Dobzhansky, though horrified at the idea of being bracketed with Huxley, an avowed atheist, nevertheless felt obliged to defend Huxley’s evolutionary vocabulary of self-transcendence, trial and error, success and failure.” Moreover, Greene considered that Dobzhansky’s vocabulary “made more sense philosophically, although not scientifically, from [his] theistic point of view than from

Huxley’s anti-theist standpoint.”78

Dobzhansky and Greene continued their correspondence through the 1960s, often exchanging pages of analysis while considering each other’s views. They also shared manuscripts for commentary and review. For example, Dobzhansky wrote Greene about one of his drafts, “I have no doubt that you will criticize this thing severely, but since your critique will be very useful to me, I shall be waiting [to receive it].”79 At another time Dobzhansky wrote, “I am not afraid of friendly criticism even if this criticism is decidedly negative, and I am sure that your criticism will be welcome.”80

“Well, [Dobzhansky] always said he was a Christian . . . [but] Francisco Ayala, you know, was a graduate student under Dobzhansky, and Ayala says he was no Christian. As Ayala had been a Catholic priest, you know, and he was a little dubious about Dobzhansky’s Christianity.” Greene continued: “I forgot the exact circumstances in which [Ayala] said this, but ah, he certainly pooh-poohed the idea Dobzhansky was a Christian. . . . I suppose [Ayala] had in mind what the elements of being a Christian are – that was the son, Jesus Christ. Certainly you didn’t hear Dobzhansky talking about Jesus really.” Greene then concluded, “Well, when [Dobzhansky] said ‘I am a Christian,’ he obviously had something in mind. What it was, I am not quite sure.” John C. Greene, in interview with the author, May 19, 2008. Meanwhile, another former student of Dobzhansky’s, Costas B. Krimbas, a Professor of the History and Philosophy of Biology at the University of Athens, reported: “Dobzhansky considered himself to be an active communicant of the Eastern Orthodox Church. According to his last student, Jeff Powell . . . Dobzhansky prayed daily in his final years.” See Krimbas, “The Evolutionary Worldview of Theodosius Dobzhansky,” p. 188.

78 Greene, “Recollections of Theodosius Dobzhansky,” p. 448.

79 Dobzhansky to Greene, 14 January 1962, in Greene and Ruse, p. 480.

80 Dobzhansky to Greene, 27 March 1962, in Greene and Ruse, p. 482.

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When Greene was later asked what he felt motivated prominent evolutionary biologists like Dobzhansky, and then later Mayr, to engage with him in extended dialogues on the role of science and worldview, he admitted, “Your guess is as good as mine . . . but I am eternally grateful to [Mayr] that he did take the trouble to keep the dialogue going. I felt the same way with Dobzhansky, you know, to me [another] interesting dialogue.” Though Greene confessed, “I had arguments to press and [Dobzhansky] had arguments to press and so forth,”81 he also lamented, “in retrospect my only regret is that I did not make a greater, more prolonged effort to elicit the views of this admirable man and outstanding scientist.”82

Darwin & Spencer: As Seen by Harris, Freeman, Mayr, Greene, et al.

During the 1960s, Greene’s academic career unfolded in what James Moore described as

“his Wanderjahre.” It included a stint as visiting professor at Berkeley, at "the time of the ‘free speech’ struggle there” by the students on campus during the early 1960s.83 Greene also recalled that he had the opportunity one evening to present his “ideas about progress informally to a small dinner group that included [the prominent geneticists] Michael Lerner, Curt Stern,”84 and others, and that “they took the line that whereas biologists in the olden days were influenced by notions of progress, etc., that was no longer true except for a few like Julian Huxley.”85 Greene later also recalled that the next stop in his academic career, at the University of Kansas, “offered better

81 John C. Green, in an interview with the author, May 19, 2008.

82 Greene, “Recollections of Theodosius Dobzhansky,” p. 448.

83 Greene, History, Humanity and Evolution, p. 27. Garland Allen, the historian of biology, recalled a written exchange he had with Greene from this period in which Greene expressed dissatisfaction with some of the student protest activities (Garland Allen, in an interview with the author, March 27, 2010). Coincidently, photographs of Greene during the 1950s and early 60s suggest a persona with a square-cut background.

84 Stern and Lerner also presented papers at the 1959 APS Darwin Centennial conference in held in Philadelphia where Greene presented his essay on “Darwin and Religion.”

85 John C. Greene to Michael Ruse, 10 March 1996, Greene Papers.

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library facilities and a chance to work with graduate majors.” Unfortunately, Greene also observed of the new environment, “From a family point of view . . . the move has been less successful.”86 When in 1967 an opportunity arose to teach at the University of Connecticut, within driving distance of Ellen’s hometown where many of her relatives and friends still lived,

Greene and family made the move and stayed there for the next twenty years.87

Though Greene’s interactions with Dobzhansky wound down at the end of the 1960s, his interactions with Mayr increased. In 1968, the influential anthropologist Marvin Harris presented a provocative analysis of the influence of Darwin’s and Spencer’s views on the emerging discipline of anthropology in his acclaimed work The Rise of Anthropological Theory. Soon thereafter, the journal Current Anthropology published an analysis that included an “Author’s

Précis,” offering Harris an opportunity to explain his thesis, followed by critical reviews from over a dozen scholars. While Harris discussed a variety of concerns engaging anthropological theory, his severe criticism of Darwin specifically invited attention from a number of the architects of the neo-Darwinian synthesis such as Mayr and Simpson, as well as historians and philosophers of science, such as Greene and Michael Ghiselin. A few years later, Current

Anthropology published a second extended analysis of Harris’s work, this time featuring a lengthy critical response by Derek Freeman, a provocative anthropologist who would become best known for his severe critique of Margaret Mead’s work in Samoa.88

In Harris’ summary of the views expressed in his book, he explained that Darwin and

Spencer’s thinking had been profoundly influenced by Thomas Malthus’, An Essay on the

86 John Greene to Bert Loewenberg, 15 May 1965, Greene Papers. Greene mentioned that from a professional standpoint, Kansas proved all he expected. He taught there for four years.

87 Their oldest daughter, Ruth, was also attending Barnard College in NYC at this time.

88 Derek Freeman, Margaret Mead and Samoa: The Making an Unmaking of an Anthropological Myth (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1983).

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Principles of Population (1798), calling it “the main inspiration” for their “evolutionary syntheses” that “began the trend toward the biologization of history.” Quite provocatively, Harris wrote:

During the first half of the 19th century, the overriding issue was polygenesis versus monogenesis. It was the racist interpretation of history and society, combined with an emphasis on individual and group struggle, which led to Spencer’s concept of survival of the fittest and Darwin’s natural selection. Social Darwinism, more accurately described as Biological Spencerism, transcended the Malthusian dilemma by showing how struggle and conflict produced “progress.” Scientism in the form of racism reigned supreme. Spencer, Darwin, [T. H.] Huxley, [and others] were, all racists. They all believed that no fundamental sociocultural change was possible without concomitant biological modification, which required the laps of many generations.

Thus, as anthropology achieved disciplinary identity in the period 1860–90, its theoretical strategy encompassed at best an eclectic mixture of racist and cultural idealist proposals.89

Freeman’s counterattack in defense of Darwin focused on Harris’ analysis as an

“externalist’ interpretation . . . of Darwin’s discovery of the mechanism of natural selection – an interpretation . . . in which Darwin is linked with Spencer as one of the ideologists of ‘early industrial capitalism.’” The principle aim of his own paper, Freeman argued, “is to explore certain crucial differences between the evolutionary theories of Charles Darwin and Herbert

Spencer, and to show that the history of evolutionary thought from the 1830s onwards does not sustain the view that the theories of Darwin and Spencer constituted an ‘evolutionary synthesis.’”90 Freeman took special note of how their evolutionary theories, “differed decisively

89 Marvin Harris, “Author’s Précis,” in review of “The Rise of Anthropological Theory by Marvin Harris” Current Anthropology 9 (1968): 519.

90 Derek Freeman, “The Evolutionary Theories of Charles Darwin and Herbert Spencer,” Current Anthropology 15 (1974): 211.

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in the extent to which they depended on the supposed mechanism of Lamarckian inheritance,” and progressive biological development.91

The editors of Current Anthropology sent Freeman’s critical analysis of Harris’s thesis to fifty scholars, soliciting comment. Fifteen were published followed by Freeman’s replies.92

During exchanges among the participants prior to publication, Freeman wrote Mayr for advice on how best to respond. While Freeman noted that he hoped to express a balanced view and that some of “the comments that have been forwarded to me by Sol Tax [the editor] are going to assist me in this task,” he also acknowledged that, “Once again I have been struck by the marked divergence of opinion on basic issues in evolutionary theory . . . between biologists and others.”

To this, Freeman added,

Are you, I wonder, familiar with the writings of Professor J. C. Greene on evolutionary theory and Darwin? If so I would be grateful for a brief assessment of his competence. He certainly has a Holier-than-thou attitude to the distinguished biologists who have written about Darwin and the history of his theory. Thus . . . Professor Greene has written: “Simpson, Ghiselin, Mayr and de Beer are scientists not historians: they approach Darwin from an a-historical point of view.”

For my part I am not impressed by Greene’s writings on Darwin, etc. He fails to appreciate some of the fundamental scientific issues involved, and, in general, tends to take an ideological stance. He is also (judging from his Darwin and the Modern World View, 1961) a dualist with strong religious convictions. . . . I would . . . be most grateful for your judgment . . . as well as brief comments on Greene should you happen to be familiar with his writing on Darwin.93

Mayr responded to Freeman: “Yes, I know J. C. Greene, in fact I had long arguments with him at a history of science meeting last November. On that occasion we disagreed quite drastically on a number of points.” He continued, “Not unnaturally, when it comes to judgments on biology, I feel that Greene cannot be right when he disagrees with the consensus of the

91 Ibid., p. 218.

92 Ibid., p. 211.

93 Derek Freeman to Ernst Mayr, 24 March 1971, Mayr Papers.

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biologists,” while adding, “you probably know that Greene is a devout Christian, and I have a feeling that this has colored his views on evolutionary matters. I just see in your letter that you have come to the same conclusion.” Mayr closed his letter to Freeman by stating: “I am sure that on rereading Spencer you will find your views substantiated contra-Greene. I am looking forward to your manuscript and will hold it strictly confidential.”94

Perhaps adjustments were made during a process of review, as Greene’s published commentary did not appear overtly provocative. He did argue, however, that “Freeman tends to underestimate the common elements in [Darwin’s and Spencer’s] views concerning nature, human nature, and social evolution.” Though Greene acknowledged that the “Origin of Species owed nothing to Spencer,” aspects of Darwin’s The Descent of Man corresponded with many of

Spencer’s views. Greene claimed:

Darwin and Spencer agreed that human progress resulted primarily from a gradual improvement in the intellectual and instinctual endowment of the human species, which, in turn, was caused chiefly by (1) natural selection and (2) the inherited effects of mental and moral training. Progress was a necessary long-run outcome of these processes, however dubious specific short-run developments might appear with respect to progress. Darwin reaffirmed his faith in “natural selection having done and doing more for the progress of civilization” than most men were ready to admit.95

Freeman responded to Greene in Current Anthropology that while he agreed with

Greene’s statement that “Darwin was not an ‘interactionist’ anthropologist,” there were otherwise lapses in Greene’s scholarship. For example, Freeman replied to Greene’s critique that, “Darwin out-Spencers Spencer in stressing the importance of competitive struggle as the

94 Mayr to Derek, 29 March 1971, Mayr Papers.

95 John Greene, “Comments” on “The Evolutionary Theories of Charles Darwin and Herbert Spencer,” Current Anthropology 15 (1974): 224–225. Greene’s source for Darwin’s quotation was: Francis Darwin, ed., The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin Vol. 1 (London: John Murray, 1887), p. 316.

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engine of human progress,” by presenting contrary evidence that Spencer had, in fact, “out-

Spencered Darwin” on many such points.96

In a separate commentary, George Gaylord Simpson stated that while he agreed “with most everything that Freeman said in [his] article,” Simpson noted that when Darwin wrote, “‘as natural selection works solely by and for the good of each being, all corporeal and mental endowments will tend to progress towards perfection,’ Darwin also made clear that he thought when change did occur it was for the better,” suggesting a belief in progress. Simpson noted that he found “that interpretation consistent with the whole corpus of Darwin’s work.”97 Meanwhile,

Ernst Mayr’s commentary expressed unreserved support for “Freeman’s superb analysis. If one wanted to criticize anything,” wrote Mayr, “it would be a number of omissions.” Mayr concluded: “I hope Freeman’s article will finally do away with misinformation and misconceptions about Darwin so widely prevalent in the anthropological literature.”98

Michael T. Ghiselin, who had previously worked under Mayr’s direction at Harvard as a post-doctoral fellow, wrote that he found Freeman “basically right.” Ghiselin then criticized the

“externalists,” who “insist that society must have dominated Darwin’s reasoning,” while arguing,

“the burden of proof lies with them, and they have given no legitimate evidence.”99 It is worth noting that a few years earlier Ghiselin had accused Greene of being not only under the influence of such externalist tendencies but also for writing a “religious tract” that accused “modern biologists [of being] hypocritical in denying teleology, because their language gives . . . a

96 Derek Freeman, “Reply by Derek Freeman,” Current Anthropology 15 (1974): 230–31.

97 G. G. Simpson, “Comments” on “The Evolutionary Theories of Charles Darwin and Herbert Spencer,” Current Anthropology 15 (1974): 228.

98 Ernst Mayr, “Comments” on “The Evolutionary Theories of Charles Darwin and Herbert Spencer,” Current Anthropology 15 (1974): 227–28.

99 Michael T. Ghiselin, “Comments” on “The Evolutionary Theories of Charles Darwin and Herbert Spencer,” Current Anthropology 15 (1974): 224.

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subjective impression of teleological intent.”100Greene’s response was: “My reply to Michael

Ghiselin . . . was to say that his Triumph of the Darwinian Method [1969] was a religious tract. I have a broad view of religion on that respect.”101

Around the time of the Current Anthropology exchange, Greene presented a report at the

75th anniversary of the History of Science Society meetings. His account was given the title,

“Reflections on the Progress of Darwin Studies.” Everett Mendelsohn, the editor for the Journal of the History of Biology, wrote to Mayr explaining that Greene’s essay covered “a wide range of materials currently under way or recently published, and his paper seems to me in general to be an important contribution and assessment of the literature. I would appreciate any suggestions you might want to make for revisions, reorganization, correction, etc.”102

Greene’s presentation described how “a full-blown field of Darwin studies has emerged during the past fifteen or twenty years.” About it, he asked: “How is this phenomenon to be explained? Undoubtedly the centennial of the Origin of Species gave a strong impetus to Darwin scholarship, but this stimulus would have been ephemeral had it not been reinforced by accompanying developments of a more permanent nature. Among these I would mention particularly (1) the emergence of the history of ideas as an academic discipline in the 1930s,

1940s, and 1950s; (2) the crystallization of the modern synthetic theory of evolution by natural selection in the same period; and (3) the rapid expansion and professionalization of the history

100 Michael Ghiselin, The Triumph of the Darwinian Method (Berkeley: The University of California Press, 1969), p. 241. Ghiselin was specifically referring to Greene’s Darwin and the Modern World View (1961).

101 Greene, History, Humanity and Evolution, p. 35.

102 Everett Mendelsohn to Ernst Mayr, 20 February 1975, Mayr Papers.

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and philosophy of science as an academic discipline in the years following World War II.”103 He then offered a lengthy examination of each of these influences.

Greene additionally noted that “just as the intellectual historian’s approach to the history of evolutionary biology has its limitations and biases, so, too, does that of the practicing scientist turned historian. And just as Darwin became a hero to some intellectual historians and a villain to others, so, too, he has excited the polemical passions of modern evolutionary biologists caught up in the scientific and polemical controversies of the twentieth century.”104 Greene added that for “most evolutionary biologists, however, Darwin is a hero to be defended against all attacks of his enemies. For Julian Huxley, Darwin is the patron saint not only of the modern synthetic theory of evolution by natural selection but also of evolutionary humanism, and the same could probably be said of Sir Gavin de Beer, George Gaylord Simpson, Michael Ghiselin, and other biologist-historians.” As a result, Greene noted, “many of these scientist-scholars feel called upon to show that Darwin was on their side of twentieth-century controversies concerning evolutionary theory, sound , and the philosophy of man, nature, and society.”105

Greene suggested that these scholars were too often projecting their own views onto

Darwin:

Are they anti-typologists? So must Darwin have been. Are they Popperians in their philosophy of science? Darwin was too. Are they agnostics in religious matters? So Darwin must have been. Do they abhor the application of the concept of natural selection to social evolution? Darwin must have abhorred it too. The founder of modern evolutionary biology must be sans peur et sans reproche in every aspect.106

103 John Greene, “Reflections on the Progress of Darwin Studies,” Journal of the History of Biology 8 (1975): 247–48.

104 Ibid., p. 253.

105 Ibid., p. 254.

106 Ibid.

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Greene then dedicated the next few pages to Michael Ghiselin, using him as an example of “this defensive, polemical approach to the study of Darwin and his place in history.” Greene commented that in Ghiselin’s “brilliant but profoundly unhistorical work . . . The Triumph of the

Darwinian Method . . . [he in] effect . . . tells the historian to approach Darwin’s writings in terms of the controversies raging among biologists and philosophers and historians of science today.”107 In contrast, Greene offered a more encouraging assessment of Mayr’s historical work:

“Fortunately, there are scientist-historians who have shown themselves capable of solid scientific analysis with a due appreciation of the complexities of intellectual history. Ernst Mayr, in his stimulating essay ‘Lamarck Revisited,’ recognizes the need for further research aimed at placing

Lamarck’s thought in its eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century context.”108

In summation of the broad scholarship on Darwin that developed since the centennial,

Greene concluded:

In all these researches and publications, Darwin will continue to be a highly controversial figure to those who study him, and every student will necessarily be influenced by his or her own training, temperament, and intellectual and moral biases. But this diversity of approaches, far from being a source of weakness, should add variety, sophistication, and strength to the enterprise if all parties concerned will consider seriously the limitations inherent to every approach to complex historical problems and enter into controversies that inevitably result from these differences in a spirit of friendly rivalry and mutual instruction.109

Prior to publication, when the journal’s editor, Everett Mendelsohn, had asked Mayr to review Greene’s manuscript, Mayr did not sound impressed. He replied to Mendelsohn, “I am sure that this is useful to those who are not in the midst of the Darwin research and this justifies

107 Ibid.

108 Ibid., p. 259. For Mayr’s essay, See Ernst Mayr, “Lamarck Revisited,” Journal of the History of Biology 5 (1972): 55–94. Mayr reprinted it in Evolution and the Diversity of Life (1976), pp. 222–250. Could Greene have been indulging in an intellectual strategy of “divide and conquer,” attempting to stir points of dissention between Mayr and Ghiselin’s historical methodologies?

109 Ibid., p. 273.

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making it available, unless there is a surplus of good manuscripts.” He added that, “Greene’s critical comments are, on the whole, rather superficial and he answers Ghiselin’s unsubstantiated assertions by making unsubstantiated assertions himself.”110

Though Greene would enjoy extended scholarly correspondences with both Mayr and

Ghiselin, for now the three indulged in a variety of contested issues involving “externalist” and

“internalist” interpretations of the history of science. In a humorous recollection from the time,

Frank Sulloway, a student of Mayr’s, wrote to his professor about having recently met Greene while on a research trip in England:

[Greene] made a rather amusing comment to me about you . . . We were talking about Ghiselin, who he has not met, and Greene said that Ghiselin reminded him of “Ernst Mayr in his younger days,” when you thought that historians of science should listen to what biologists had to say about the history of biology and not so much vice versa. Greene is, of course, very much the historian’s historian of science. What amused me was his apparent restriction of your attitude to your younger days!”111

Common Grounds

Despite these differences, areas of common interest arose between Mayr and Greene as the 1970s progressed. While Mayr was writing an essay on “The Nature of Darwinian

Revolutions,” he discovered that Greene had previously argued similar points in his own essay,

“The Kuhnian Paradigm and the Darwinian Revolution in Natural History.”112 Mayr took the opportunity to write Greene: “I just spotted your article on the Kuhnian Paradigm in Perspectives in the History of Science and Technology. I would like to tell you how much I enjoyed your

110 Mayr to Mendelsohn, 3 March 1975, Mayr Papers.

111 Frank Sulloway to Ernst Mayr, 4 July 1974, Mayr Papers.

112 See Ernst Mayr, “The Nature of the Darwinian Revolution: Acceptance of evolution by natural selection required the rejection of many previously held concepts,” Science 176 (June 2, 1972): 981–989. Reprinted and revised in E. Mayr, Evolution and the Diversity of Life (Cambridge: Belnap Press of Harvard University Press, 1976), pp. 277–296. John C. Greene, “The Kuhnian Paradigm and the Darwinian Revolution in Natural History,” in Perspectives in the History of Science and Technology, ed. Duane H. D. Roller (Norman, OK: University of Oklahoma Press, 1971), pp. 3–38.

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analysis which in many ways parallels my conclusions which I had arrived at in a different route.

I dealt with the same subject in my Sarton Lecture which was accepted by Science and I presume will be published sometime this spring. . . . Like you I am rather doubtful that the paradigm concept . . . is very useful in connection with the Darwinian revolution.”113 Greene enthusiastically responded to Mayr: “I was delighted to receive your letter indicating that my essay . . . met with your approval and that you had arrived at similar conclusions. . . . I hope our paths will cross before long, so that we can discuss problems of common interest at length.”114

Mayr had written in the opening of his essay on “Darwinian Revolutions” that “[the] road on which science advances is not a smoothly rising ramp: there are periods of stagnation, and periods of accelerated progress. Some historians of science have recently emphasized that there are occasional breakthroughs, scientific revolutions [Kuhn, 1962], consisting of rather drastic revisions of previously maintained assumptions and concepts. The actual nature of these revolutions, however, has remained highly controversial [Toulmin 1966].”115 Mayr then analyzed a variety of intellectual developments leading to two “conclusions [that] emerge from this analysis. First, the Darwinian and quite likely other scientific revolutions consist of the replacement of a considerable number of concepts. . . . Second, the mere summation of new concepts is not enough; it is their constellation that counts.”116 Mayr concluded:

113 Mayr to Greene, 27 March 1972, Mayr Papers. The editors of Science noted, “This article is the text of the George Sarton Memorial Lecture delivered at the annual meeting of the AAAS in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, 28 December 1971.”

114 Greene to Mayr, 5 April 1972, Mayr Papers.

115 Mayr, “The Nature of the Darwinian Revolution,” p. 981. In his essay, Mayr referenced the works of: T. S. Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1962); as well as, Stephen Toulmin’s essay, “Does the Distinction between Normal and Revolutionary Science Hold Water?” in Criticism and the Growth of Knowledge Volume 4, Proceedings of the International Colloquium in the Philosophy of Science, London 1965, eds. Imre Lakatos and Alan Musgrave (London: Cambridge University Press, 1970), pp. 39–48.

116 Mayr, “The Nature of the Darwinian Revolution,” p. 988.

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It is now evident that the Darwinian revolution does not conform to the simple model of a scientific revolution, as described, for instance, by T. S. Kuhn. It is actually a complex movement that started nearly 250 years ago; its many major components were proposed at different times, and became victorious independently of each other. Even though a revolutionary climax occurred unquestionably in 1859, the gradual acceptance of evolutionism, with all of its ramifications, covered a period of nearly 250 years.117

As Mayr noted, Greene took a different tactic to reach a similar conclusion. Greene had written: “Professor Kuhn’s examples of the formation and transformation of paradigms are drawn entirely from the history of the physical sciences, but he gives us no reason to believe his analysis is not applicable to the sciences generally. It may be worthwhile, therefore, to examine the developments leading up to the Darwinian revolution in natural history to see [to] what extent they fit the pattern of historical development described in Kuhn’s book.” Greene offered a suggestion:

Perhaps the best way to begin the investigation is to ask: When did it arrive at a state characterized by “research firmly based upon one or more past scientific achievements that some particular scientific community acknowledged for a time as supplying the foundation for its further practice”; achievements “sufficiently unprecedented to attract an enduring group of adherents away from competing modes of scientific activity,” yet “sufficiently open-ended to leave all sorts of problems for the redefined group of practitioners to resolve.”?118

In an answer to his own question, Greene described the development of a static natural theology firmly established by Ray and others in the seventeenth century and subsequently propounded to varying degrees by leading biologists such as Linnaeus and Cuvier. Nearly simultaneously, Buffon, Erasmus Darwin, Lamarck and others had speculated on a dynamic view of nature evolving. It should be apparent, Greene proposed, that Kuhn’s inquiry “[does] not admit of a simple Yes or No answer.”119 He concluded that the “Kuhnian paradigm of paradigms

117 Ibid.

118 Greene, “The Kuhnian Paradigm,” p. 4

119 Ibid., 20

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can be made to fit certain aspects of the development of natural history from Ray to Darwin, but its adequacy as a conceptual model for that development seems doubtful.” At the same time,

Greene allowed, “it should be remembered an inadequate hypothesis is better than none.” He suggested that his own analysis was “intended less as a critique of Kuhn’s stimulating book than as a tentative formulation of some general ideas about the rise and development of concepts of organic evolution,” and that he hoped the points he raised might help stimulate “alternative interpretations of the genesis of revolutions in science” among those who found Kuhn’s analysis lacking.120

Mayr soon wrote Greene a second time: “The results of your analysis, not surprisingly, are not too far from the results of my own analysis even though we employed entirely different approaches.” Mayr added, “suspecting that the Kuhnian paradigm is not particularly applicable to the Darwinian revolution, I deliberately refrained from fitting my analysis into the Kuhnian framework. I am now doubly glad that I didn’t try to do it since I would have otherwise merely duplicated what you had done already.”121

On The History of Biological Revolutions

During this period, Mayr was becoming increasingly fascinated with the intellectual history of science, the biological sciences in particular. For example, in 1970 Mayr wrote to his friend Dobzhansky: “The more I get into my history of ideas in biology, the more I realize how important it will be to bring it down to the present day.” He added, “we live in a forgetful world.

One bright, young molecular biologist once told me, ‘Forget about all literature that is more than two years old, it’s junk!’ This is the attitude the historian of science has to fight against. This

120 Ibid., p. 23.

121 Mayr to Greene, 12 April, 1972, Mayr Papers.

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attitude is, of course, merely a poorly concealed attempt to find an excuse for an appalling ignorance.”122 Then Mayr solicited his friends advice: “This brings me to a request . . . If you had to record for posterity what you consider your major scientific contributions, what would you single out? . . . Perhaps you have written an autobiography . . . If so, I hope you can make a copy available to me.”123

Dobzhansky wrote back to Mayr noting how he had participated in an “Oral History

Project” conducted by Columbia University in the early 1960’s.124 He also referred to his pioneering work examining “drosophila genetics . . . in nature,” though he would also joke that the wild flies were still put in bottles and subsequently studied in laboratories! Dobzhansky then expressed his philosophical insights on human nature which grew out of his study of evolutionary biology:

And the last idea, to which you may be even more skeptical: self-awareness is an elusive, but nevertheless basic human trait, the adaptive value of which is unquestionable. It is the basis of the human forms of society, and as such was selectively advantageous. But self-awareness is accompanied by another, also uniquely human trait, namely death-awareness, the selective value of which is not so clear. What is, however, clear is that death-awareness has important human ramifications, perhaps the most interesting of which is, following Tillich, called ‘ultimate concern’.125

While such thoughts were perhaps a little far afield of Mayr’s interests in the intellectual history of biology, he nonetheless sent another letter to Dobzhansky in May 1973:

122 Ernst Mayr to Theodosius Dobzhansky, 7 December 1970, Theodosius Dobzhansky Papers, Series II: Correspondence with Ernst Mayr, American Philosophical Society Archives, Philadelphia, PA. The APS holds additional copies of correspondence between Dobzhansky and Mayr in Theodosius Dobzhansky Papers: Series I: Correspondence. Further correspondence is located in Dobzhansky, Theodosius 1970–1975, Ernst Mayr Papers, 1946, 1974–1979: Selected Inventory from Genetics Subject Guide.

123 Mayr to Dobzhansky, 7 December 1970, Dobzhansky Papers.

124 The American Philosophical Society Archives in Philadelphia hold a copy of the 600-page transcript in their collection of Dobzhansky’s personal papers.

125 Dobzhansky to Mayr, 15 December 1970, Dobzhansky Papers.

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The American Academy of Arts and Sciences is planning to organize a conference in the History of Biology devoted to the “evolutionary synthesis” of the 1930s and 1940s. There is a feeling among the historians of biology that this was very much of a “scientific revolution” but quite different in nature from those that Tom Kuhn has written about. You, Simpson and I together with Sewall Wright and a few others are among the remaining survivors of that exciting period. I am sure each one of us has his own ideas as to what was responsible for the sudden removal of all obstacles and what the real obstacles were. . . .

Would you be willing to be co-sponsor with me of a conference held under the auspices of the American Academy to reconstruct what exactly went on, who the architects of the synthesis were, and to show how this scientific revolution differed from, let us say, the Copernican or Darwinian revolutions. I think this would be an enterprise with a considerable amount of intellectual excitement.126

Along with requesting the assistance of his good friend and fellow architect of the neo-

Darwinian synthesis to help with the conference, Mayr’s letter revealed his concerns about the influence of Kuhn’s analysis, as well as his own affinity for Greene’s critique. Mayr’s follow up letter in August, sent to Dobzhansky and “about 8 people” playing leading roles in the synthesis, stated once again:

As you have no doubt gathered from the literature there is at the present time a very active interest in the nature of scientific revolutions. Tom Kuhn deserves credit for this interest and for having developed a concise theory of the nature of scientific revolutions. Critics, on the other hand, have pointed out that much of Kuhn’s evidence can also be interpreted differently and that scientific revolutions in fields other than physics may take a very different course from that postulated by Kuhn. I pointed this out, for example, for the Darwinian revolution (Science (1972), 176: 981–989).

Although rarely designated a major scientific revolution, the making of the evolutionary synthesis in the 1930s and 1940s actually satisfies most of the definitions of a scientific revolution. The enormous controversies among evolutionists that raged from 1859 to the 1930s suddenly gave way to a synthesis to which specialists in the most diverse areas of biology contributed. Curiously, one can find very little in the literature on the factors that brought about this sudden change and what one does find is biased or naively over-simplified.

Many of the architects of this evolutionary synthesis are still alive and active, and it has occurred to several of us in the Boston area that it would be meritorious to

126 Mayr to Dobzhansky, 30 May 1973, Dobzhansky Papers.

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bring these evolutionists together in order to work out a balanced account of the history of the evolutionary synthesis. I am enclosing a tentative and unavoidably rather biased statement outlining some of the objectives of such a conference . . . 127

Dobzhansky enthusiastically responded to Mayr: “How right you are that with ‘the surviving members . . . all in their 70s or late 60s it would seem urgently necessary to act as speedily as possible.’” Dobzhansky offered, “If you want me to contribute anything . . . I could give a sort of comparative reminiscence on the evolutionary thought in Russia in the nineteen- twenties, and of the Morgan school in the twenties and thirties. This last I am particularly anxious to do.”128

Mayr wrote back that Dobzhansky’s proposal “would indeed be precisely what would be most valuable.” He also noted: “I had a long letter from E. B. Ford in which he sounds quite enthusiastic about the ‘synthesis’ conference. Simpson on the other hand would seem to prefer someone coming to visit him at this home and making a tape recording of his recollections. In the end, however, he said that he would want to be present if there was a conference.” Mayr added, “It is my impression that the various personal biases of everyone concerned can be straightened out only, or at least best, by having everybody sit around the table and expose his opinions to everybody else’s criticism. If one of the younger people is elected to be a record- taker and travels from one person to the next he will never be able to even begin to straighten out contradictions and differences of opinion.”129

The following February Mayr reported to Dobzhansky on the latest developments in organizing the conference: “We have now decided to hold the conference May 23–25 and to

127 Mayr to Dobzhansky, 27 August 1973, Dobzhansky Papers.

128 Dobzhansky to Mayr, 5 September 1973, Dobzhansky Papers.

129Mayr to Dobzhansky, 17 September 1973, Dobzhansky Papers.

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scrape the funds together somehow or other.130 Not unexpectedly not everyone is able to come in the spring and we will be forced to hold a second conference next fall (presumably mid-October) primarily in order to include G. G. Simpson and B. Rensch, neither of whom could make it this spring. We shall try to have as many of the participants as financially possible also come to the

October conference, in order to provide intellectual continuity.” Mayr also mentioned a questionnaire that he had sent to all the principal attendees, including Dobzhansky, to whom

Mayr remarked, “I hope you can answer [the questionnaire] in considerable detail.”131 In the letter, Mayr also went over some of the details of Dobzhansky’s presentation.

In his introduction to the questionnaire sent to the leading participants, Mayr described the desirability of face-to-face discussion facilitated by a conference. He wrote:

One of the major objectives of the proposed conference is to compare the recollections of different participants, and to resolve whatever contradictions are discovered. It is only too human (and happens every day) for scientists to remember only when they were right and to forget when they were wrong. The same is true for fields. The ego-strength of each field requires that it stress its constructive contributions to the development of a field and to ignore those of its earlier stands that have since been refuted. By having all the fields represented around a single table we hope to be able to achieve a balanced picture.132

Mayr also wrote that historians of biology “would like to know what happened during these crucial years. What factors were responsible . . . What important insights were contributed by specialists . . . What misunderstanding had to be removed? Why were the thirties and forties so favorable to the synthesis?”133 In later clarifying the goals of his undertaking, Mayr remarked,

“[One of the] major objectives of the conference was to elicit as much information as possible

130 Smocovitis offers a comprehensive overview of both on the Conference of the Evolutionary Synthesis and the historiographical issues surrounding it, in Unifying Biology, pp. 27–33.

131 Mayr to Dobzhansky, 25 February 1974, Dobzhansky Papers.

132 Mayr to Dobzhansky, “Enclosure: questionnaire,” 25 February 1974, Dobzhansky Papers.

133 Ernst Mayr, “Preface to the Original Edition,” The Evolutionary Synthesis: Perspectives on the Unification of Biology, eds. Ernst Mayr and William Provine (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1998), p. xv.

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about any factor, scientific or otherwise, that had had a positive or negative influence on the occurrence of the synthesis. Some participants had prepared formal papers; others presented their views informally. All of them made major additional contributions in response to questions in the ensuing discussion periods.”134

John Greene was listed among the historians studying the evolutionary synthesis that

Mayr (who served as conference chairman) had invited to participate. Greene attended the second session in October 1974.135

Anthropology, Ideology, and World View

Greene participated in at least two workshops held at the conference hosted by the

American Academy of Arts and Sciences, which took place not far from the Harvard campus. It was Mayr’s intention to cull material from the conference for publishing a comprehensive historical account of the neo-Darwinian synthesis. It was later titled, The Evolutionary Synthesis:

Perspectives on the Unification of Biology, and published in 1980.

During an initial session, Greene participated in a short exchange with Mayr, Michael

Ghiselin, Everett “Ole” Olson (considered “among the great vertebrate paleontologists of the twentieth century)136 and Irven Devore (a Harvard anthropologist who would later serve as director of Harvard’s Peabody Museum of Archaeology and Ethnology). In the midst of a lengthy discussion, Greene raised the following point: “I notice that the subject of man and

134 Mayr, “Preface to the Original Edition,” p. xvi.

135 A full list of conference participants are listed in The Evolutionary Synthesis,” p. 468. Dobzhansky only attended the first workshop in May.

136 Michael A. Bell, “Everett C. Olson: November 6, 1910 – November 27, 1993,” in Biographical Memoirs Volume 74 by the National Academy of Sciences (Washington, D.C.: National Academy Press, 1998), p. 241.

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anthropology seems to be totally missing from the evolutionary synthesis. Is that because it didn’t play any role in it, either in a positive or negative way?”137

Mayr suggested that one reason physical anthropology appeared to lag behind in contributing to the synthesis was that it “had, at least in certain centers in this country, tremendous investment in essentialism, [and] in typology.”138 Olson admitted that “integrating anthropology as a whole into this has been very difficult; it’s almost a world apart,” to which

Mayr added that in his view, “one particular difficulty . . . was that the anthropologists had gotten their concept of evolution not from Darwin but from Spencer.” Devore pointed out, “I don’t think the influence of biological anthropology is that much in terms of fossil men and races because they just didn’t talk together that much” with the scientists involved in the synthesis.139

To these points Greene responded, “But the point I don’t understand, Ernst, is that we’ve been told that morphology . . . paleontology . . . [and] experimental embryology didn’t contribute much to the evolutionary synthesis but we’ve talked about it at great length.”140 He stated that it now appeared physical anthropology also did not contribute, as well. Greene questioned, “from a purely negative point of view . . . [in the past] Lyell’s feelings about man’s unique place in nature were [considered] the chief stumbling block to his acceptance of Lamarck and, later on,

137 “Mayr Papers Conference on the Evolutionary Synthesis,” Mss.B.M451e 3.3, American Philosophical Society Archives, Philadelphia, PA, p.18. The title of this workshop appears to be “Embryology.” The introductory notes to the collection reads, “There are multiple copies of several of the transcripts in various stages of editing. Participants edited their own statements on the transcripts, while Ernst Mayr and William Provine crafted the whole into The Evolutionary Synthesis.” It adds, “These transcripts were given to the American Philosophical Society by Ernst Mayr in 1989 along with several other items related to the Conference” such as correspondence, presentations, and questionnaires answered by the various participants. The introductory notes also reports, “At the time this listing was prepared, May 1994, the audio tapes themselves have not been donated to the American Philosophical Society Library and remain the property of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.”

138 Ibid., p.18.

139 Ibid., p.20.

140 Ibid., p. 21.

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Darwin, [so] I just wonder whether some feelings about man of this sort may not have played some kind of a role with respect to the evolutionary synthesis, either pro or con.”141

Ghiselin replied, “I would say con,” asserting that “the notion of culture” had

“[hampered] our understanding of human evolution.”142 Mayr then deferred to Devore, who admitted that while there were certainly challenges posed by “theological terms” and “all kinds of national and racist ideologies,” it appeared that “most anthropologists settled [down comfortably] with the notion that natural selection and evolutionary history were something that were important for our species up to ‘x’ point . . . [but ] once we invented culture, cultural rules took over; cultural evolution, which is a mess conceptually to this hour, took over and physical processes, natural selection in that sense, was just over-ridden.” Olson then proposed, “So natural selection is not even a phrase which could be used in terms of human behavior. . . .

There’s no movement in anthropology today to talk about it seriously.”143

Simpson, Ideology, and World View

Greene proved to be more engaged in the session dedicated to paleontology. After the participants had been introduced, Mayr offered regrets over the absence of G. G. Simpson and

Bernhard Rensch, two of the leading architects he had hoped could attend. Though Simpson had made on-again, off-again commitments, in the end he missed both the May and October sessions

“for reasons of health and previous commitment.” Mayr reported that, fortunately, “Two of

Simpson’s friends and closest professional colleagues, Everett Olson and Bobb Schaeffer, agreed to attend and present their views on the role of paleontology in the evolutionary synthesis.” For a

141 Ibid., p. 22. Charles Lyell was the influential British scientist as well as Darwin’s supporter and close friend who famously authored the three-volume Principles of Geology (1830–33).

142 Ibid.

143 Ibid., pp. 22–23. The transcript reads “most anthropologists settled uncomfortably,” with “(down comfortably)” typed in just above the word “uncomfortably.”

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comprehensive analysis of the session, Mayr and Provine turned to Stephen Jay Gould, “one of the current leaders of paleontology,” to author the essay, “G. G. Simpson, Paleontology, and the

Modern Synthesis,” for inclusion in the finished volume.144 Mayr also produced a biographical essay of Simpson that was included in the volume, based on quotations taken from Simpson’s answers to the questionnaire Mayr had sent to the participants.

Mayr opened with a fifteen-minute summary of the May meetings. Upon completion,

William Provine called into question Mayr’s account, suggesting that it was “more of a summary of your point of view of what went on in the conference than a lot of the things that actually did go on.” Provine elaborated: “For example, I will argue that the synthesis was not a revolution, that there was a little delay.” To this, Mayr acquiesced, giving deference to the “tapes and transcript I had hoped would be available. . . . But you’re probably quite right, I’m not objecting to it but if one reports in such a summary every cross current that happened in a preceding meeting I think the report would be about as long as the meeting was.”145

Greene would later explain an idea that came to him while he listened to Mayr’s summary: “[I] was greatly struck with the parallel to the so-called Newtonian revolution. Talk about long delay in the appearance of the synthesis; after all the Newtonian synthesis didn’t really take place until 1750.” (Over six decades after Newton had published the Principia.)

Greene would also point out that the rival theories of Descartes had not been “overthrown . . . among the leading mechanicians of the continent until the 1740s.” He added, “In the same way . . . there were [all] these people talking past each other” during the years leading to the

144 Ernst Mayr, “Introduction to Chapter 6, Paleontology,” The Evolutionary Synthesis: Perspectives on the Unification of Biology, eds. Ernst Mayr and William Provine (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1998), p. 468.

145 “Mayr Papers Conference on the Evolutionary Synthesis,” Mss.B.M451e 6.18, “First Session – Paleontology,” American Philosophical Society Archives, Philadelphia, PA, p. 6. This session was described and dates as: “Conference B Evolutionary Synthesis, October 11–12, 1974.”

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evolutionary synthesis. Greene concluded, “The whole thing [the neo-Darwinian synthesis] sounds vaguely familiar” to the historical experience of the reception of the Newtonian

Synthesis.146

Garland Allen, a historian of biology who had worked on his graduate degree at Harvard under Mayr and Everett Mendelsohn during the early 1960s, then spoke on what he viewed as

“[an] obsession with the question of ‘Why the delay?’” He suggested, “Maybe another way of asking the same question . . . [is] what made the synthesis possible?”147 Mayr agreed: “I think one has to ask those questions . . . It’s really up to the people sitting around this table to see that the balance is maintained.” To that Allen responded, “Right, it’s a question of emphasis.”148

After an extended conversation analyzing historical events involving paleontology’s role in the synthesis, Greene asked a question that set the agenda for the workshop’s final quarter, during which he had the opportunity to lay out his concern for the role of philosophy and worldview in influencing the careers of a number of the architects of the evolutionary synthesis.

Notable is the feedback elicited from the scholars of the synthesis participating in the workshop, many of whom were leading biologists and historians of science.149

Greene: Before we leave Simpson [and his role bringing paleontology into the neo- Darwinian synthesis], I would like to raise a more general question. My training is more in intellectual history than in science, and the way this symposium is set up makes an intellectual historian cringe. Here we have all these people, Julian Huxley and Simpson and Rensch, etc, who come from different backgrounds, different countries, different intellectual traditions, presumably with different philosophical ideas and backgrounds. [We also] have people like Simpson and Huxley and Waddington who have written what I would call the Bridgewater Treatises of the

146 Ibid.

147 Ibid.

148 Ibid.

149 Ibid., pp. 74–89. What follows are excerpts of transcript discussions involving issues that Greene raised. An otherwise blank line with an ellipsis denotes a section edited from the conversation in favor of maintaining the flow of the discourse, while page numbers (in parentheses) note where comments are located in the original transcript.

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twentieth century, books like The Meaning of Evolution, Evolution in Action, and The Ethical Animal, etc. Yet this is regarded, so far as I can see from the materials you sent me, as absolutely irrelevant to the origins of the evolutionary synthesis.

Now, did all these people have the same conception of what science is or ought to be; did they all have the same conception of nature? The approach to the history of science implied in the way this symposium is set up, is that the history of science is strictly a matter between the scientist and nature, and between scientists and other scientists. For example, was there delay in arriving at the evolution synthesis? If so, how is this to be explained? As you say in the materials you handed out, was it because we didn’t have the right facts or was it because we had the right facts but there wasn’t enough communication between the people who had the right facts, or was it that the scientific concepts weren’t formulated quite clearly enough?

These are all obviously important factors, but are these all the dimensions of the problem? Note that Simpson says: “by the 1930s when I began to accumulate the material that became Tempo and Mode, I had reached a philosophical and theoretical point of view that seemed to me to have some originality and some importance. It therefore required expression in writing.” I’d like to ask Professor Schaeffer and others who know Simpson, what was this philosophical and theoretical point of view that he is talking about? (72–73)

Schaeffer: That’s a good question. . . . I think he was gradually becoming aware of genetics, particularly, population genetics and the possibility of interpreting some of the things he was seeing in the fossil record in a way that would be compatible with genetic theory. (73–74)

Greene: What’s philosophical about that? (74)

. . .

Ghiselin: Simpson discussed philosophy in his book This View of Life. The question is did he have those ideas back in the ‘30s and did he come to this late in life and did it affect his thinking? (74)

Greene: Yes, that’s what I meant. (74)

Olson: From his published work through the 1930s I would judge that some of his concepts developed later. His philosophy seems to have matured over the years. (74)

Mayr: Let us remember that he worked at the time at the American Museum and a lot of his thinking may have been a reaction to Henry Fairfield Osborn.150 He

150 Henry Fairfield Osborn (1857–1935) was the long time president of the American Museum of Natural History, better known for his organizational skills and as a great popularizer of science, than for his theorizing. Mayr joined the AMNH toward the end of Osborn’s tenure as president.

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would say, “Osborn has one philosophy; I have a different philosophy.” I think I almost heard him say this. (74)

Schaeffer: He once said in a letter I saw, “I’m dividing my career into three parts; first is description, and he turned out a new paper once a week and a great bulletin once a month for a year. Then he said I’m going from that to some kind of synthesis, and from that to philosophy.” (75)

Ghiselin: Sounds like Baconian induction to me. (75)

Greene: Are you going to say the same thing of Julian Huxley then, that all these general ideas about nature and what science ought to be, are feeble-minded products of his old age that . . . had no influence on his work in the 1920s or 30s? (75)

. . .

Gould: I think John has got a very good point. It’s true that Simpson wrote those philosophical essays late – why is it that . . . he would choose to do that? Can it be irrelevant to his beliefs about things? Probably not. [Gould then commented that Simpson worked “on the metamorphosis of salamanders in the 20’s; a lot of it had to do with his views about the perfectibility of man.”]151 (75)

Schaeffer: And after all, you don’t know when a man starts thinking about these things until he writes about them, unless you have personal communication with him. We sort of have to go on the basis of his written record. (75)

. . .

Mayr: John, I think you raised such an important point that, if you want to, maybe after hearing what you’ve heard now you could rephrase it or ask the follow-up questions? (78)

Greene: I just want to bring to the attention of the group the fact that this whole dimension of the history of scientific thinking has been left out of this symposium as far as I can see. When we talk about Darwin or Newton, we bring all of these things in and we point out that Darwin and Wallace and all the other people who came up with natural selection were Englishmen and they were brought up in an environment that stressed the competitive ethos, (and Ernst Mayr has a nice essay on “Agassiz, Darwin, and Evolution” in which he goes into the effects of Agassiz’s

151 Gould’s commentary reads disjointed at this point, as typed in the transcript. This is likely due to “Several people talking at once,” as noted in the end of this section. Though in bits and pieces, the additional comments attributed to Gould might also be of interest: “And in fact when he found he could induce certain changes. . . . And Aldous Huxley wrote [blank space in transcript] are some largely because of these conversations with Julian about it.”

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training in the German universities on his outlook as compared with Darwin’s upbringing in the British empiricist tradition etc.).

Now what are we to say? We say science used to be like that, science used to develop that way, but it doesn’t any more. Nowadays it is just a matter of scientists confronting nature and each other and all these things of national peculiarity, etc. are not really significant, except when we’re talking about national scientific institutions. But intellectual traditions . . . for example an animus against “metaphysical” ideas, which is very strong in the positivistic orientation of modern evolutionary biologists, this has no relevance to their work as scientists. I don’t know enough about this period to present specific cases etc. All I’m saying is, either the nature of scientific development has changed or else we ought to consider these factors as part of the whole development because we do when we talk about Darwin and his predecessors. (78–79)

[A discussion on Osborn’s influence and Simpson’s reaction to it followed. Participants included Olson, William Coleman (historian of biology), Schaeffer, and Mayr. (79–81)]

Provine: I simply wanted to respond to John’s point by saying that it seems to me that the dimension you’re talking about is in large part indeed missing from the conference, but I don’t quite know how you could expect it to be here because by and large scientists don’t really talk about their larger metaphysical view of things, no matter how important it might be in their personal approaches to their science. . . . [F]or example, when Dobzhansky was here for the May conference, he never mentioned Teilhard de Chardin . . . He did mention, just in one sentence, that at a much earlier time he had a flirtation with Berg’s nomogenesis. Clearly there is some continuity about Dobzhansky’s view about things of this sort from very early in his life up until the present, but we saw very little of that dimension here in the conference. I think what historians have to do is ask people about questions like that. . . . (81)

Mayr: I was going to answer something else to John, and that is that there still was, when the conference started, so much uncertainty about what had actually taken place during the synthesis so that the feelings we had when we organized the conference – let’s get that all straightened out first. What you’re now talking about is really a sort of follow up. Now we can talk about Darwin and these philosophical things because the factual situation is pretty much straightened out and we can begin to look at the philosophical aspect. (81–82)

Gould: But Ernst, don’t you see the problem? You’re responding in the same way that John’s complaining; you’re saying any philosophical thing is completely epiphenomenal – it’s what’s on top, it’s what comes later. John is trying to argue that it’s integral; in fact, you can’t – it isn’t a question of straightening out the other stuff first and then talking about [it]. . . . You see, that’s exactly the problem. Scientists see the speculative essays of a George Gaylord Simpson as something

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the old man did late in his life; it’s something that must be ancillary. I remember talking with Bill Darlington [who also] speculated . . . and he said, oh well I would give George Gaylord Simpson an ‘A’ for all this work on the Crazy Mtn. [Basin Paleocene site in Montana]; I’d give him a ‘C’ for his essays. I said, “why, aren’t they really good essays?” He said, yeh, yeh, yeh, they’re good essays, but it’s all speculation, it’s irrelevant to the . . . ” And that of course, among working scientists is the predominant view – but it’s not epiphenomenal; it can’t be. (82)

Greene: I agree entirely with what Steve says and I know Michael Ghiselin here has called my book Darwin and the Modern World View a religious tract, which I didn’t think I was writing when I wrote it. In the same way . . . I think there’s a lot of what you might call secular religion in Ghiselin’s The Triumph of the Darwinian Method, and particularly in his article, “Darwin and Evolutionary Psychology.” I don’t think you can eliminate this dimension, and I strongly suspect – I can’t prove it – that George Gaylord Simpson quite early in life had some very strong feelings about nature and religion and science and that his reaction to Osborne was connected with this, and that his desire to write a book was, as he says, connected with this. In other words, he was very much concerned about the meaning of evolution from the beginning. I don’t see how you can say, first we’re going to get the facts straight and then we’ll talk about these things. (82–83)

. . .

Allen: I think the point Will Provine was emphasizing was a good one. One way we can get at the question that you’re asking, John, is by digging at the people who are here to find out what they read, to who they talked, etc. Eventually we may be able to dig it out of their recollection; if not we have to resort to the usual methods of looking back at letters or whatever else. There’s hardly any way to bring it into a conference like this other than the actual pursuit of it right here in the room – if we can nail the old-timers down on specifics. Too bad Simpson isn’t here; we can’t ask him what he read or by whom he was influenced. (84)

At this point in the discussion, Mayr explained how his readings likely influenced his own career. He specifically mentioned works by Bergson and Driesch that he brought on his expedition to New Guinea during his youth. Participants in this exchange included Viktor

Hamburger (developmental biologist), Frederick B. Churchill (historian of embryology), Allen,

Provine, and Greene. The final pages of the transcript involve a discussion between Frank

Sulloway, Coleman, Schaeffer, Olson, and Mayr, on discerning the role of “national peculiarities” (as Greene had put it) as well as the influence of the so-called “winners” and

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“losers” in the endeavor of scientific discovery, while pursuing a comprehensive historical study on the establishment of the neo-Darwinian synthesis.

A notable feature of these exchanges was the extent to which Greene proved successful introducing the significance of ideology and worldview in a scientific endeavor. Though perhaps it should be less surprising to hear such talk from the historians, the biologists also appeared willing to engage the subject. Particularly fascinating was Mayr’s openness, though his ability to apply the concerns to his own career, while sincere, were limited to a few books discussing topics like vitalism that he read as a young man. Overall, Mayr appeared open to all the participants, and especially gracious to Greene in particular. There is no question that Mayr wholeheartedly cared for the scientific discipline he worked so hard to develop, and realized proactively engaging the concerns of historians and philosophers of science would be important to its legacy. And of course he had his own role to consider within that legacy.

A Response from G. G. Simpson

Mayr had made a concerted effort to encourage Simpson’s participation at the conference. At the bottom of a general invitation sent to a number of the leading participants,

Mayr added a handwritten postscript to Simpson:

I had hoped to see you in Boulder, but gather that you were unable to attend. As for the conference on the “Synthesis” is concerned – confidentially – I want to counteract the present historiography which gives just about all the credit to the geneticists. They should have all the credit they deserve, but not more.

Hope both you and Ann [Simpson’s wife] are well!

As ever, Ernst.152

152 Ernst Mayr to George Gaylord Simpson, 27 August 1973, “Mayr Papers Conference on the Evolutionary Synthesis,” B M451 Box 2 “GG Simpson,” American Philosophical Society Archives, Philadelphia, PA.

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In Simpson’s response he wrote that he “thoroughly agree[d] that it would be of great current interest and historical importance to record the origins and nature of the evolutionary synthesis while many of those active in its early days are still alive.” Nonetheless, after giving it

“much thought,” he “[had] some doubts as to whether a conference is the best, or even an effective, way to accomplish that.”153 Simpson also expressed concern that Mayr’s own theoretical bias could overshadow an objective examination. Though Simpson admitted: “My belief that your presentation is incomplete could be an argument in favor of getting people together to discuss such matters,” he added, “I just don’t think talking to each other at a conference is the way to gather such material. What is wanted is a trained interviewer and reporter, preferably but not necessarily a professional historian, knowledgeable in this field, to sit down for a day, a week, or a month with each of the relevant people, to tape a personal discussion of these matters, and to combine the interviews into a book-length report. Someone like Kuhn, or Kuhn himself, would be good at that, in spite of Kuhn’s physical bias.”154 Despite

“doubts about the conference”155 which included his “bias against conferences” in general,

Simpson wrote that he “will hope[d] to attend,” since Mayr was “going ahead with plans,”156 and felt that he “should be included in conversation in this facet of scientific history.”157

After the New Year, Mayr wrote to Simpson describing how the conference organizers were developing a questionnaire to address some of the concerns Simpson had expressed. Mayr sent a “tentative draft” that was “being studied by several people with experience drafting

153 Simpson to Mayr, 8 September 1997, Mayr Papers Evolutionary Synthesis.

154 Simpson’s comments suggested he perhaps held a greater affinity for Kuhn’s approach than that expressed by Mayr.

155 Ibid.

156 Simpson to Mayr, 22 September 1973, Mayr Papers Evolutionary Synthesis.

157 Simpson to Mayr, 8 September 1973, Mayr Papers Evolutionary Synthesis.

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questionnaires,” and he hoped Simpson would respond with any concerns about “errors of omission” or “‘leading questions which should be rephrased in a detached manner.”158 Simpson responded with a few suggestions, while also commenting he hoped that “the conference is not aimed for May, 1974, for two reasons: first, I don’t see how it could be sufficiently organized by then; second, I now have such a heavy schedule that I could not myself make it then.”159

After the conclusion of the first session, Mayr made another effort to elicit Simpson’s active participation, sending a letter to his friend on June 20th: “By now you are probably more tired of conferences than ever. I realize that you don’t like them, but in order to avoid misunderstandings, let me repeat that you are cordially invited to the second Conference of the

New Synthesis which will take place in the house of the Academy [AAAS] on October 11th and

12th.” He added: “You have already presented the most relevant facts of your development in the answer to the questionnaire, but if you should decide to come to the October meeting, it would be helpful if you could try to analyze the very special problem of the paleontologist with respect to evolution and particularly with respect to the mechanisms of evolution. Why have such a large percentage of paleontologists rejected the Darwinian interpretation for such a long time?” Mayr then expressed additional topics he wanted the workshop participants to consider in advance. The first conference, he explained to Simpson, “was a success, so far as I can judge from letters received from various of the participants. The discussions will not be published . . . but an effort will be made to incorporate them into the more formal presentations.” 160

Simpson again responded that he had “of course noted the dates for the October conference, appreciate the invitation, and hope to attend,” but that he “[could] not now be

158 Mayr to Simpson, 14 January 1974, Mayr Papers Evolutionary Synthesis.

159 Simpson to Mayr, 19 January 1974, Mayr Papers Evolutionary Synthesis.

160 Mayr to Simpson, 20 June 1974, Mayr Papers Evolutionary Synthesis.

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positive.” He then responded to Mayr’s workshop questions, noting that “[it] will be difficult to determine the views of most paleontologists on evolutionary causal theory in the crucial period because most of them had none or didn’t say. That is still true to some extent, although much less so.” Simpson noted that “[among] French and Spanish paleontologists . . . with whom I am in close touch, I do not know even one who [would consider themselves] fully what they would call

Neodarwinian.” Simpson concluded his letter to Mayr, “Anyone who thinks that all or even that most informed evolutionists are syntheticists (or Neodarwinians) or that finalism is a dead issue is kidding himself.”161 Simpson appeared to suggest that Mayr’s certainty in the neo-Darwinian synthesis as a victory complete within the scientific community could be misplaced. Simpson may have also been carping.

Mayr replied with typical confidence in the strength of his position while avoiding a sensitive topic: “Your last paragraph was fully confirmed in discussions of the May

Conference. . . . I doubt very much whether any of the historians of biology were aware of the long delay and extreme slowness of the victory of the Neo-Darwinians.” Mayr added he was

“delighted to learn that there is a possibility of [Simpson’s] participation at the October conference.” He also assured Simpson that the Academy would be able to pay for his expenses but added that there was not enough money in the budget to pay for Simpson’s wife to accompany him.162 In September, Mayr wrote a follow up letter: “Even though I have not heard from you, I still hope that you might be able to attend. . . . Rensch [“unless he has a set back in

161 Simpson to Mayr, 15 July 1974, Mayr Papers Evolutionary Synthesis. Simpson cited a work by Joaquin Templado titled Historia de las Teorías Evolucionistas (Madrid, Editorial Alambra, 1974), in which the author offered “quite a fair historical review, citing among many others Dobzhansky, Fisher, Ford, Haldane, T. H. and J. Huxley, Mayr, Rensch, Simpson, Stebbins, and Wright,” but then “concludes that evolution is quite possibly Neodarwinian in detail but nondarwinian and finalistic overall.”

162 Mayr to Simpson, 29 July 1974, Mayr Papers Evolutionary Synthesis.

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health,” Mayr had previously warned.163] and Olson will also be there. But without you the meetings would be like a performance of Hamlet without the Prince of Denmark.”164

Simpson responded, reporting how he had just recently returned from “an extremely interesting time in the Arctic,” and that “now that we are back, I find it quite difficult to catch up with accumulated and deferred work.” Simpson admitted: “Perhaps that was not altogether purposely leading up to the statement that I really cannot plan to attend your October conference in spite of your kind and indeed flattering urging. . . . It is also true that Anne is extremely reluctant to have me go off without her again, and that this hardly could be avoided in this instance. Surely my rather full answers to the questionnaire will sufficiently represent me.”165

After the conference, Mayr reported the results to Simpson in a long hand written letter:

I think [the conference] was quite illuminating, even though we missed you. As far as paleo is concerned, one interesting fact that emerged was the minimal interest among the paleontologists of the 1920s–30s in evol. generalization. . . . One of the gratifying aspects of the recent conference was the keen interest of the young historians: [William] Coleman, Fred Churchill, Mark Adams, Gar Allen, [Camille] Limoges, etc. Michael Ghiselin also was there with his usual combination of keen insights and brash overgeneralization.

The working up of the conference will have to be postponed until I get back to Cambridge. In the meantime the tapes of the discussion will be transcribed. I think Bill Provine will be co-editor with me. He is an enthusiastic and very perceptive young historian (Cornell).166

The following summer, Mayr contacted Simpson again, requesting his comments on the paleontology workshop transcript. Perhaps more than a little bluntly, Mayr wrote:

163 Ibid.

164 Mayr to Simpson, 10 September 1974, Mayr Papers Evolutionary Synthesis.

165 Simpson to Mayr, 18 September 1974, Mayr Papers Evolutionary Synthesis. Simpson had added, “On rereading them, I note only two points to amend.”

166 Mayr to Simpson, 27 October 1974, Mayr Papers Evolutionary Synthesis.

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Dear George,

I am herewith sending you those pages of the transcript of our workshop on the evolutionary synthesis that particularly concern you. As you recall, you were unable or unwilling to participate but, of course, it would have been absurd to discuss the coming of the evolutionary synthesis without mentioning morphology and paleontology. As a result, we had to speculate about G. G. Simpson, but it is only G. G. Simpson who knows how right or wrong we were in our speculations.

You stated (I, 73) “By the 1930s . . . I had reached a philosophical and theoretical point of view . . . ” The question was raised by Greene (I, 72–73), what this philosophical and theoretical point of view was and where it came from. Schaeffer, Gould, Olson, Ghiselin, and Mayr attempted (I, 73–77) – rather unsuccessfully – to answer this question. Surely, you could do this much better than they. Would you be willing to try? . . .

I do hope you will correct any misconceptions you find in the enclosed pages of the transcript. If you have previously answered some of these questions in print, we would appreciate having a bibliographic reference.

Please return the enclosed pages with your comments and corrections because we have only two copies and must use the same pages for circulation among the members of the workshop. . . .

With best regards,

Ernst167

Simpson was nonplussed. He wrote to Mayr a few days later:

It is both interesting and disheartening to read what some colleagues think of my thoughts and work in what I suppose is a fair report of frank and informal discussion. It is disheartening especially because on the whole they don’t seem to have understood what in fact I thought and wrote, and indeed do not seem to have made an honest effort to do so before sounding off. It would be arrogant to tell them what they should think, and asinine to try now in marginal comments to make them understand what I have already devoted fifty years of work and hundreds of publications to. . . . Perhaps, however, if my views had been better understood and represented they would be even less appreciated.

167 Mayr to Simpson, 22 July 1975, Mayr Papers Evolutionary Synthesis.

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And yet, Simpson acquiesced: “Of course much of this may be carelessness of speech and transcription.” Following this comment, he added a page and a half of detailed critique concerning the discussion commentary.168

Mayr’s reply was diplomatic: “I am sorry you have been so disappointed about the discussion, but I have had similar experiences with discussions at other conferences. The participants were extremely carefully chosen, as I can assure you, and if you had been able to attend, it presumably would have made all the difference.” He also suggested to Simpson,

“Whatever you think, it cannot be denied that historians of science will ask the kind of questions we asked at our conference. When they do so, John Greene is, perhaps, an example, they are apt to be even more off the mark than the working paleontologists in their off the cuff remarks”!169

Despite this tense exchange, Simpson and Mayr shared a decades long collegial relationship, out of which this interaction was but one short episode. In a letter to Mayr a few years later, “only two days [after]” reading the recently published Evolutionary Synthesis,

Simpson wrote: “[The book] will surely be a rich, indispensable source for historians of biology

168 Simpson to Mayr, 26 July 1975, Mayr Papers Evolutionary Synthesis. Simpson also noted: “As I have written some unhappy (but I trust not unkind) things about Ole, Bobb, and Steve, [while critiquing the transcript,] I think it only courteous to send them copies. . . . With cordial regards (to all four of you).” Simpson sent copies of his letter to “cc: Drs. E.C. Olson, B. Schaeffer, S.J. Gould”. Simpson’s wife, Anne Roe, also wrote Mayr on the same date, 26 July 1975: “I have just read the transcript of your discussions which contains the material about G, and I am sorry to say that it seems to me to have been rather less than worth the time and effort, not to say the money that went into that particular meeting. To publish what A thinks that X had in mind whenever can, to be blunt about it, be misleading even when it is not downright incorrect. . . . I do hope you will give serious thought to a severe editing job before letting this be published.” Mayr, of course, had written Simpson earlier that the transcripts were not intended for publication, a point perhaps forgotten by Simpson after his initial reading. Bobb Shaeffer, whose comments in the transcript Simpson directly critiqued, and who thus received a “cc” of Simpson’s July 26 letter, wrote to Mayr on 5 August 1975 that after returning from Europe he read Simpson’s letter while catching up on correspondence. Schaeffer wrote that he did not have a clear recollection of his own comments, “except that, in my opinion, paleontology has not contributed to our understanding of evolutionary mechanism. I regret that I did not see a transcript of my remarks before they were sent to George, but I assume that my absence abroad made the timing difficult for you. . . . As you well know, George is extremely sensitive in regard to these matters, and I hate to make the situation worse, if it can be avoided.”

169 Mayr to Simpson, 7 August 1975, Mayr Papers Evolutionary Synthesis.

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in general and evolutionary theory in particular. There are of course some gaps of coverage and some unevenness of style and approach.” But he assured Mayr that he “[did] not really mean to stress only the flaws.”170

Mayr wrote to his colleague: “I was very happy to receive your long, cordial letter. I had regretted that we seemed to have somewhat drifted apart, but perhaps I had merely imagined things. It pleases me that, on the whole, you like The Evolutionary Synthesis and I agree with most of your criticisms. . . . It was a tragedy that you were unable to participate.”171

Mayr closed his letter reflecting on the limitation of the book with something of an invitation, and perhaps one directed more generally than to George Gaylord Simpson:

To come back to the Evolutionary Synthesis. Its main objective was to stimulate thought and to correct some widespread misconceptions . . . Those who find gaps or errors should write supplementary accounts. . . . Maybe you want to write something on paleontology? It would only please me, if you did. I am totally aware that the Evolutionary Synthesis is not a definitive work, but will serve to attract the historians to this area and period of time.172

170 Simpson to Mayr, 2 March 1981, Mayr Papers Evolutionary Synthesis. Simpson also more or less wished to apologize for not reading the book sooner, due to “a series of illness and misfortune,” as it had now been out quite a few months.

171 Mayr to Simpson, 17 March 1981, Mayr Papers Evolutionary Synthesis.

172 Ibid. Mayr noted “widespread misconceptions” such as “‘The evol. synthesis was the work of Fisher, Haldane, and Wright.’”

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CHAPTER 6 WORLD VIEWS IN COLLISION

The Correspondence Thickens

Mayr retired as director of the Museum of Comparative Zoology in 1970. He wrapped up his formal teaching career five years later in 1975. Both moves facilitated his growing interest in the history and philosophy of biology. While Mayr continued his work with Will Provine on the materials accumulated from the evolutionary synthesis conference held at the American

Academy of Arts and Science, he developed his “big book” project that would evolve into The

Growth of Biological Thought (1982). Mayr also published Evolution and the Diversity of Life

(1976), a lengthy compilation of his essays to date, including quite a few on the history and philosophy of biology. During this time, Greene continued to teach history of science at the

University of Connecticut while also serving as an officer at the History of Science Society, culminating with a term as President during the years 1975–1976. Along with publishing a variety of essays, Greene was at work on his own book, Science, Ideology and World View

(1981). The two authors exchanged manuscripts with each other.

In 1976 Mayr wrote Greene informing him how he had “agreed to give a lecture at a forthcoming symposium entitled ‘The Difference between Cosmic and Organic Evolution,’ [so as to] straighten out the matter in my own mind.” Mayr confided to him that two years earlier he had attended a symposium where “[it] so happened the majority of participants were physical scientists and they very much acted as if cosmic evolution was the same thing as organic evolution. Frankly, I had never before realized quite as acutely how ambiguously the term evolution is utilized.”1 Mayr asked Greene if he “[knew] of any general paper or book devoted to

1 Ernst Mayr to John C. Greene, 4 March 1976, Papers of Ernst Mayr, Harvard University Archives, Cambridge, Massachusetts.

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the concept of evolution in the broader sense,” adding, “I am sure philosophers must have thought about this topic. Also there must be efforts in the literature . . . to discriminate between evolution and just plain history.” To support this thought, Mayr pointed out that “[neither the] change in the weather from day to day nor that of the seasons through the year is evolution.

Hence evolution cannot be simply defined as change.”2

Greene responded that he “hadn’t thought of any good secondary discussion [on the] distinction between evolution-in-general and organic evolution.” But he offered some thoughts on the matter anyway: “Herbert Spencer is the fountainhead of ‘evolution’ as a term for the cosmic process as a whole. In his 1857 essay ‘Progress: Its Law and Cause’ he used the word

‘progress’ to characterize the cosmic process in all its aspects, but in First Principles (1861) he switched to the word ‘evolution.’” Greene noted that later authors, including some of his and

Mayr’s contemporaries, such as Julian Huxley, “[held to] the same broad usage of the word.”

Greene also pointed out that in contrast, Huxley’s grandfather, T. H. Huxley, “in some passages . . . rejects ‘the doctrine of evolution’” which Huxley attributed to Spencer, adding that

“[T. H. Huxley] confines his own belief to the demonstrated findings of paleontology, etc.”

Greene suggested the need for more research, and then encouragingly noted, “Good luck to you in this undertaking. I shall be interested to see what you come up with. It should be useful to students of the history of ideas.”3

The following year, Mayr sent Greene a draft for his chapters on the intellectual history and philosophy of science, in what would become his major work on the history and philosophy

2 Mayr to Greene, 4 March 1976, Mayr Papers.

3 Greene to Mayr, 13 March 1976, Mayr Papers. Mayr wrote a variety of notes on his copy of the letter, including a number of what were apparently page references, as well as the name “Kant,” the word “evolution,” and “file.” Mayr also wrote, “Answered by hand, 22 III 76” (March 22, 1976), but a copy of a letter written on that date does not appear available in either Mayr’s papers, nor Greene’s papers at UConn.

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of biology, The Growth of Biological Thought (GBT). Greene’s response to Mayr was that it was

“enlightening” before adding, “as you know, I have never read extensively in the philosophy of science and hence am not the best person to critique a manuscript of this kind. Nevertheless, I offer the following suggestions.” Among them:

Page 1. (and elsewhere) – Your conception (both historical and philosophical) of the relations between science and religion seems to me the weakest element in your argument. You should either say nothing about religion or take the trouble to acquire the same command of the intricacies (historical, epistemological, and philosophical) of the relations of theology, philosophy, and science as you have of the relations of philosophy and science. Suggested readings: Historical: R. Hooykass, Religion and the Rise of Modern Science, Michael Foster, article in Mind, v. 43 (1934), 446–448. Philosophical: J. Maritain, “Science and Wisdom,” in R.N. Ausben, ed., Science and Man (1942).4

In addition, Greene also proposed: “On the difficulties of the notion, of absolute proof in and on the relations between reduction and deduction, see the last part of Query 31 in

Newton’s Optics.” He then questioned Mayr, “How do you know that there is no cosmic teleology, or that the kind you describe is the only conceivable kind? I would recommend

Whitehead on this point. See also Ian Barbour, Issues in Science and Religion.” (In the marginalia to this paragraph, Mayr wrote, “There!”)5

Mayr responded by thanking Greene, while adding, “I am sure you are right in stating that my view of the relation between science and religion is one sided. I was vaguely aware of this having read Max Weber and Hooykaas. But of course, one can neither consider science or religion as a homogeneous entity. As far as the theory of evolution and the theory of natural

4 Greene to Mayr, 30 December 1977, Mayr Papers. Greene’s philosophical reference might be two different books: (1) Jacques Maritain and Bernard Wall, Science and Wisdom (New York: Scribner, 1940), and (2) Ruth Nanda Anshen and Aleš Hrdlička, Science and Man (New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1942).

Mayr cited the reference on page 928 of the first edition of GBT (1982) as described in Greene’s letter.

5 Greene to Mayr, 30 December 1977, Mayr Papers. Other notes written by Mayr on his copy of the letter include, “Chapter B folder” and “Reader of chapter II.” Perhaps Mayr’s comment “there!” involves a feeling of satisfaction that Whitehead’s “muddleheaded-ness” poorly reflected on Greene’s general argument.

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selection are concerned, the record seems rather unambiguous.” He also criticized Whitehead for being “terribly vague and muddle headed,” adding, “It is perfectly obvious from his discussions that he might have been a good mathematician but simply did not understand biology at all.”6

A few months later Greene replied to Mayr thanking him for sending another “bundle of reprints,” and then informed Mayr of his own project: “You will be interested to know that I am planning to publish a volume on my essays in the spring of 1979 . . . under the title Science,

Ideology, and World View: Essays on the History of Ideas.” He noted, “Most of these essay will be reprints, but there is a new essay on ‘Defining Darwinism.’” To this he added a playfully handwritten note: “ . . . which will infuriate you.”7

In the following year, 1979, Greene sent Mayr “the introductory essay” to his collection of essays, which at that point had been submitted to the University of California Press to be considered for publication. Greene requested, “If you think it would be useful to have such a collection in print, perhaps you will drop a line” to the editor.8 He then mentioned, “It is good to . . . learn that your ‘big book’ is coming along and that the Harvard Press is about to publish the volume on the evolutionary synthesis.” He also responded to a query from Mayr:

As to Darwin and religion, I have never published an essay on this subject,9 though I have referred to it from time to time. My most extended remarks in this connection are in an unpublished essay “Defining Darwinism,” a copy of which I enclose. Please do not circulate it, but you are welcome to make a xerox copy, if you like, for private reference . . . The best thing I have seen lately on Darwin and

6 Mayr to Greene, 1 March 1978, Mayr Papers. Mayr also wrote, “Have you read the recent book by Popper and Eccles? I am not asking you whether or not you agree with them but I find it most interesting how far Popper has moved away from his original Vienna background.” This likely refers to: Karl R. Popper and John C. Eccles, The Self and Its Brain (New York: Springer International, 1977).

7 Greene to Mayr, 10 November 1978, Mayr Papers.

8 Greene to Mayr, 24 August 1979, Mayr Papers.

9 Curiously, Greene did in fact present a paper at the American Philosophical Society’s 1959 Darwin centennial event, also attended by Mayr. See John Greene, “Darwin and Religion,” Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 103 (1959): 716–725.

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religion is an essay by Dov Ospovat, “God and Natural Selection: The Darwinian Idea of Design.”10 In it Ospovat discusses not only Darwin’s evolutionary deism (in a thorough and well-balanced way) but also its influence on his scientific world. I think you should see this essay before making up your mind about Darwin’s religious views. I should hate to see the enormous prestige of your name thrown on the side of the view that Darwin was an atheist or agnostic in 1859 or any time previously.11

Greene added the he was also working on “more chapters of my American Science in the

Age of Jefferson,” which would eventually be published in 1984. Greene wrote, “I hope to finish the whole thing by the end of my sabbatical year 1980–1981, after which I plan to return to

Darwinian themes. I hope to see you at the HSS [History of Science Society] meetings in New

York next December. Meanwhile, I shall appreciate your comments and criticisms on ‘Defining

Darwinism.’”12

Mayr promptly replied (perhaps in a slightly sardonic tone) apparent agreeing to some of

Greene’s comments on the simplicity of Mayr’s critique of Darwin’s religious views:

What a good friend you are! I admit, frankly, that for quite a while I considered Darwin a straight atheist because I couldn’t imagine how one could combine the purely materialistic process of natural selection with a belief in a supreme being, as the French would have called it. I was, of course, fully aware of opposing statements by Darwin himself, but we know how careful he was not to offend the feelings of his friends and his family. You know also how many statements there are in the autobiography which can be shown not to be true. This is what makes it so difficult to determine what Darwin’s real thought was. However, I have more or less come to the conclusion that he had not gone to the last extreme.13

10 At the time it was a manuscript in submission, and eventually published in the Journal of the History of Biology 13 (1980): 169–194.

11 Greene to Mayr, 24 August 1979, Mayr Papers.

12 Greene to Mayr, 24 August 1979, Mayr Papers.

13 Mayr to Greene, 28 August 1979, Mayr Papers. There may be an element of “tongue in cheek” regarding Mayr’s response to Greene’s comments on Darwin and deism, as the two similarly returned to the issue in later letters. From this letter on through much of the 1980s, the majority of Mayr’s and Greene’s correspondence can be found in both Mayr’s papers held at Harvard, and Greene’s papers held at the University of Connecticut. In contrast, prior letters from the 1960s and 70s are near exclusively found in Mayr’s collection, presumably because Greene was not yet concerned with systematically saving his correspondence. Meanwhile, letters after 1987 are primarily located in Greene’s collection.

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In conclusion, Mayr wrote, “I am most grateful to you for the material you have sent me . . . I shall write you again after I have read your material.”14

Mayr’s Critique of Greene’s Science, Ideology, and World View

A few years earlier, in 1974, Greene had the opportunity for a sabbatical year as a visiting scholar researching Darwin materials at Cambridge University. He recalled: “What a pleasure it was to leaf through Darwin’s books and reprints, annotated in his own hand! As I examined his annotations, I began to realize how deeply Darwin’s thinking on social evolution was embedded in British belief in competition between individuals, tribes, nations and races as an engine of progress in human history.”15 Greene added:

By this time I could see the outlines of a general world view common to the members of the great quadrumvirate of English Darwinists – Darwin, Spencer, Huxley, and Wallace – and I decided to publish [an essay that became “Darwinism as a World View”] in hope of clarifying the confused situation produced by conflicting definitions of Darwinism as being, alternatively, the idea of organic evolution, the theory of natural selection, the ideological position know as social Darwinism, etc. etc. Spencero-Darwinism, I argued, was compounded of several historical currents of thought: (1) Cartesian mechanism, (2) evolutionary deism fading into agnosticism, (3) British empiricism verging toward , and (4) belief in progressive development through competitive struggle and the inherited effects of habit and mental and moral training.16

Greene also noted that he had begun “to envisage the possibility of tracing the fortunes of

Darwinism as a world view into the twentieth century, and more generally, of seeking to

Greene also published a collection of excerpts from their exchange from the years 1979 to 1997, in his book, Debating Darwin: Adventures of a Scholar (1999). Footnote references will use the Mayr collection for citations, except when the letter is only found in Greene’s collection. On Greene’s copy of this letter (Box 6, Folder 106, Greene papers), he made a short, difficult to read note at the top that suggests: “Materials for Pascal Easler Symposium.”

14 Mayr to Greene, 28 August 1979, Mayr Papers.

15 John C. Greene, Debating Darwin: Adventures of a Scholar (Claremont, CA: Regina Press, 1999), p. 15. Greene noted that materials from this research also formed a basis for his essay, “Darwin as a Social Evolutionist,” Journal of the History of Biology 10 (1977): 1–27.

16 Ibid.

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discover the presuppositions of thought in the scientific literature of that period, beginning with evolutionary biology.”17

In September, Mayr sent Greene his comments on the draft, then titled “Defining

Darwinism,” but later published as “Darwinism as a World View” in Science, Ideology, and

World View (1981). Mayr wrote: “It is a very illuminating analysis, but, as I am sure you expected, I am not entirely in agreement with your conclusions. I have a number of minor misgivings, which I have indicated on the margin of the manuscript, and two major ones.”18

These were Mayr’s major contentions: “(1) If you ask almost any biologist today to define

Darwinism he would unhesitantly say, ‘Evolution by natural selection’ . . . [but] I know your answer would be that for you an -ism must mean a broad philosophy, and not merely a concrete theory. But I would think that even that approach is vulnerable, and this brings me to my other point.” Mayr’s second point was more extensive:

(2) Obviously, all of us absorb, and accept without thinking, a great many contemporary beliefs. The 1979 definitions of progress, equality, freedom, etc., are by no means the same as those held 50 or 200 years ago, nor will they remain the same 50 years from now. There were quite a few contemporary ideas which Darwin accepted without asking questions but, in my opinion, they were not crucial for his basic paradigm, nor do we need to insist retaining them if the term Darwinism is used at the end of the 20th century. Most of these concepts were not at all typical Darwinian anyhow, and, as you rightly say, could be and probably should be called Spencerianism. You may make a few sociologists happy by inflicting that package of Spencerian concepts upon Darwin, but those who probably use the word Darwinism the most will simply ignore it. I think you are too far committed to your thesis to give it up, so I will do no more than state my own opinion.19

Mayr also clarified his own opinion: “Personally, I consider Darwin one of the greatest philosophers. He never went through the hocus-pocus of the professional logicians, etc., but

17 Ibid., p. 16.

18 Mayr to Greene, 6 September 1979, Mayr Papers.

19 Mayr to Greene, 6 September 1979, Mayr Papers.

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many of his mature epistemological propositions were subsequently accepted and are now beginning to be the basis for modern philosophy.” And he offered a suggestion: “Reread once more Derek Freeman’s paper in Current Anthropology,” adding the warning, “No doubt your article will be loved by people like [Marvin] Harris, but this strikes me a little like the famous saying: ‘With such a friend you don’t need any enemies.’”20 Mayr concluded by stating: “The basic issue really is, whether it is legitimate to keep a package intact as it may have possibly existed in the 1870s (if your construction is correct). . . . No matter what you write, I am quite sure that everybody will continue to define Darwinism as the theory of evolution, in which all directional change is caused by natural selection.”21

It appears that Greene’s reaction was swift. He typed the following on a postcard and sent it to Mayr less then a week later: “Dear Ernst, I appreciate you vehement and trenchant criticisms and will respond to them when I have had a chance to reflect and to see your annotations on my

MS. I am scheduled to read that MS at the History Colloquium here [UConn] next week, and I shall make a point of referring to some of your criticisms. Cordially, John C. Greene.”22

A fuller and more thoughtful response came from Greene six weeks later, the nub of which Greene expressed in a single sentence: “There were several distinct questions that ought not to be confused.” Among those questions, Greene asked Mayr: Was there a “constellation of beliefs” shared among many of the early actors in establishing evolutionary theory, and if so, what should it be called? Did other biologists in the late nineteenth century share them, and do

20 Mayr to Greene, 6 September 1979, Mayr Papers.

21 Mayr to Greene, 6 September 1979, Mayr Papers. Mayr added in a handwritten postscript: “Population thinking was more important for shaping the thinking of [Patrick] Matthew, Wallace, and Darwin than social theory!” Matthew had briefly theorized on natural selection (unbeknownst to Darwin and Wallace) nearly thirty years prior to the publication of On the Origin of Species, in the appendix to his own book, On Naval Timber and Arboriculture (London: Black, 1831).

22 Greene to Mayr, 12 September 1979, Mayr Papers.

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they still affect thinkers in the twentieth century? On the other hand, should only those ideas relevant to modern evolutionary biologists be called “Darwinian”? Further, if Darwin did not hold the worldview described in the manuscript, “What was his ‘basic paradigm’ (to use your

[Mayr’s] expression)?”23

Greene expanded his arguments to describe a worldview shared among some of the leading British evolutionists of Darwin’s time. He also asked Mayr “whether Darwin was a great philosopher, as you allege. It is one thing to say that Darwin’s theory implied ‘population thinking’ and a probabilistic conception of order. It is quite another thing to say that Darwin grasped these perspectives philosophically. . . . Whenever Darwin philosophized explicitly – about ethics, God, the scientific method, etc. – he was invariably unoriginal and often confused.

What are the ‘mature epistemological propositions’ you ascribe to Darwin, and where does he state them? I would be interested to know.”24 Greene then asked Mayr how to “designate the constellation of ideas on which these men converged?” And he admitted, “I’m not sure what the solution to this problem in nomenclature is. Could we agree on ‘Spencero-Darwinism,’ or must we resort to Darwinism-No. 1, Darwinism-No. 2, etc.”25

Greene then argued:

You suggest cutting the Gordian knot by defining Darwinism as “the theory of evolution in which all directional change is caused by natural selection,” and you assert that this definition is the one assumed by most 20th-century biologists. But there are several difficulties in this.

First, Darwin himself did not believe that all direction change was caused by natural selection.

23 Greene to Mayr, 22 October 1979, Mayr Papers.

24 Ibid.

25 Ibid.

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Second, Darwin’s contemporaries, including [T. H.] Huxley, usually had in mind something much broader than the scientific theory of evolution by natural selection when they spoke of Darwinism.

Third, historians of ideas have usually distinguished between scientific theories and the isms connected with them.

Further, for many 20th-century biologists – Julian Huxley, Simpson, E. O. Wilson, and others – “Darwinism” is a world view, not exactly the same world view as the one I have delineated but related to it through a process of descent-with- modification. “Darwinism” has evolved. From the point of view of a student of the history of ideas, the only sensible approach is to try to define the original sense or senses of the term, explain how they were related to each other, and trace the subsequent history of the term.26

Greene summarized his position as follows: “As I see it, there are two kinds of differences between us. First, there are disagreements as to questions of historical fact . . . and on these I presume we might hope eventually to arrive at some agreement. Secondly, there are differences in point of view arising from the circumstance that you are first and foremost a biologist whereas I am a historian by training and interest.” As a scientist, Greene continued,

“you seek to extract whatever in Darwin’s writings seems most valuable today from the point of view of science and the philosophy of science. But I think that you should recognize that, as a human being, you have a strong desire to make Darwin conform to your ideal of what a scientist should be.”27

Greene then presented his appreciation of his own scholarly interests:

As a historian, I seek to understand Darwin as concretely as possible within the context of his times and in relation to the currents of thought that converged upon him. To me Darwin is a very great scientist, a mediocre amateur philosopher, and a warm and admirable human being struggling (in his later years) to reconcile his passion for science with his growing realization that the deistic faith that sustained him during the long years of work on the Origin of Species has slipped away, leaving as its remnant the bare hope that he and Lyell and Hooker will some day be

26 Ibid.

27 Ibid.

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looked back on as ‘mere savages’ by superior breeds of men evolved by natural selection and the inherited effects of mental and moral training.28

While Greene acknowledged he was “considering reworking the essay . . . to take account of the criticisms I have received from you and others,” he concluded his letter in a way that would become a pattern whenever arguments between the two became intense, and that was to engage a statement culled from Biblical literature, generally presented without citation. This time Greene referred to Hebrews 11.1: “Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.”29 He appeared to be insinuating that such faith is hardly unique to traditional religious beliefs.

Mayr wrote back immediately, and once again cordially (perhaps in part to avoid inflaming religious sensibilities): “I am most grateful to you for your long reply to my comments and question.” He responded that all Greene had to do to find out the meaning of “the word

Darwinism,” was to “write a letter to any 10 [evolutionary biologists].” He also mentioned that, while he appreciated the complexity in Darwin’s “religious” views, he nonetheless mostly appreciated Darwin’s sensitivity to not offend the personal beliefs of others. As for parsing the specifics “of the relation between [the] agnostic and atheistic” in light of Darwin’s philosophical perspectives, Mayr wrote that, though the debate might be important to theologians, “[to] a scientist . . . for all practical purposes there isn’t much difference.”30

In a similar style, Mayr argued that “the problem of laws [and] chance” as considered by

Darwin and his contemporaries appeared more in tune with a contemporary scientific outlook

28 Ibid. Greene’s “mere savages” reference is found in Darwin’s letter to Charles Lyell, 4 May 1860. See http://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/entry-2782, accessed 12 January 2013. There could be other instances of Darwin touching upon on this subject, as per Greene’s mention of Hooker.

29 Ibid.

30 Mayr to Greene, 26 October 1979, Mayr Papers.

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similar to Mayr’s than that suggested in Greene’s essay. Meanwhile, he wrote that “the most characteristic” issues involving social theory and worldview could be attributed to Spencer’s influence. As for the “word Darwinian,” Mayr offered, “[it] now has . . . a well-defined meaning” amongst evolutionary biologists.31

Perhaps Mayr’s most enthusiastic defense involved Darwin as a philosopher:

Now to your other point: whether or not Darwin was a great philosopher. This almost requires first a definition of what is a philosopher. For me a philosopher is a person who develops new concepts, which I admit is an unorthodox definition. Darwin had the intellectual strength to reject many of the philosophical straitjackets of his age, and develop new ways of thinking. Much of the modern thinking in regions way beyond evolutionary biology ultimately go back to Darwin. This is why I called him a great philosopher. To be a great philosopher it is not necessary for the author to say loudly and in public I am a philosopher.32

Mayr did admit that: “What evolutionary biologists now call Darwinism is not identical with Darwin’s beliefs,” and that “historian[s] obviously must bring out all these uncertainties, contradictions, and ambiguities.” He also added that while a scientist “must redefine his terms continuously to keep up with the latest knowledge,” he nonetheless insisted that “when it comes to using terms that are common coin in modern science we cannot load them down with the uncertainties of past history.”33

Mayr’s Recommendation

It was in the middle of this exchange that Greene mentioned he had submitted his collection of essays to the University of California Press and asked Mayr for a favor: “If you think it would be useful to have such a collection in print, perhaps you will drop a line to the

Editor, Ms. Sheila Berg, to this effect. I have no idea whom they are consulting about the

31 Ibid.

32 Ibid.

33 Ibid.

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feasibility of publishing the volume.”34 In December, Berg wrote to Mayr, thanking him for his

“willingness to give . . . your advice on the publication of John C. Greene’s collection of essays,

Science, Ideology, and World View: Essays in the History of Ideas.” She enclosed a copy of the manuscript, along with details concerning Mayr’s honorarium. Berg reported, “our Editorial

Committee will be particularly interested in learning whether the earlier pieces have withstood the passing of time and whether the collection presents a coherent theme and, if brought together, would make a contribution to the field.” She also encouraged Mayr to submit “any additional comments you may have.”35

Mayr responded to Berg enthusiastically, though with some pointed critique:

Frankly, when I heard of John Greene’s planned essay volume, I was very enthusiastic. Greene is one of the rather few historians of science who has a good understanding of the science about which he writes. Also he is a writer of great integrity. Finally, he is not a bandwagon writer, and by his occasional dissent he is often delightfully stimulating. All my anticipations were strengthened when, some time ago, I saw the titles of the seven essays to be included.36

Mayr then added, “Now that I have worked through the texts I still feel that they should be published and that they would make a stimulating and constructive little volume.” Nonetheless, he recommended “quite a bit of revisionary effort on the part of the author.” He suggested that since “all the essays (which is what gives them unity) deal with the Darwinian revolution and its consequences,” and with this being “a field in which the literature has ‘exploded’ over the last

10–15 years,” it would be only appropriate to propose that “one would at least like to have references to newer writings on the same subject.” On this point, Mayr concluded, “[Since]

34 Greene to Mayr, 24 August 1979, Mayr Papers.

35 Sheila Berg to Ernst Mayr, 7 December 1979, Mayr Papers. Mayr circled the date in pencil with a question mark, adding: “can’t find any other recommendation for Greene.”

36 Ernst Mayr to Sheila Berg, 8 January 1980, Mayr Papers.

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Greene has done excellent bibliographical work concerning Darwin literature, he should have little trouble adding what is needed.”37

Mayr then offered “suggestions for individual essays . . . in a series of short critical statements.” Unsurprisingly, he offered particularly interesting comments on Greene’s analysis on the relationship between science, ideology, and worldview, a phrase that Greene used as both the title of the first essay in the collection as well as the book itself. Mayr called the essay,

“provocative, not unjustified in principle, but unwise to attempt to turn the clock back 100 years, when there is now complete unanimity about the meaning of the word Darwinism. This essay is really an abstract of the other six,” and in particular the sixth essay with the title “Darwinism As a World View.” Mayr admitted, “I am not too happy about this essay as I have written to Greene myself.” He then restated his concerns for Greene’s attempt to define Darwinism “as a world view held by Darwin and his friends in the 1870s,” whereas modern biologists consider the term exclusively with reference to “‘the theory of evolution by natural selection.’” Mayr then expounded on this point:

[Greene’s use of the term] applies to a Weltanschaung [sic], while Darwin was a scientist and one must apply the term to that scientific theory of Darwin’s for which he is best known, which (as one no one would deny) is the theory of natural selection. Mendelism is a theory of genetics and not Mendel’s catholic Weltanschanung [sic]. I must say that I rather thoroughly disagree with Greene’s antiquarianism with which he tries to transfer a technical term to a set of ideas, that as a paradigm, have been obsolete for nearly 100 years.

This essay would be quite worthwhile if it had a different message, for instance: “The world view of Darwin and his friends”. If this were done one could still disagree with Greene on individual points, but one would no longer have to battle the thrust of his present principle message. There are a lot of interesting

37 Ibid.

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observations in this essay and, if properly modified, I would like to see it published.38

Greene’s collection also included an essay on Kuhn for which Mayr had previously expressed enthusiasm. Mayr admitted to Berg, “I like[d] this essay very much when I first read it and I still like it. It was pioneering by being the first attempt to test the Kuhnian concept of scientific revolutions against a biological revolution. Not only that, but Greene made some very telling points.” Mayr recommended that references to other recent analyses should be added in an updated bibliography, as the essay was “now nine years old.”39

Particularly interesting, and especially considering the opinions Mayr’s previously shared in private with Derek Freeman before all three (Freeman, Mayr, Greene, as well as many others) participated in the 1974 Current Anthropology analysis of the relationship between Darwin and

Spencerian social theory, were Mayr’s comments on the essay, “Darwin as a Social

Evolutionist”:

This is a modern, up-to-date paper which might be considered a useful antidote to Derek Freemen’s Spencer paper. It is particularly valuable because it collects from Darwin’s writings and letters certain remarks made by Darwin that are usually ignored as seeming not to fit the picture everyone has of Darwin. But we must paint an honest picture of our great men, “warts and all”. The essay shows that Darwin participated more in the spirit of his times than is usually admitted.40

38 Ibid. The Oxford English Dictionary offers the following definition for “Weltanschauung, n.: A particular philosophy or view of life; a concept of the world held by an individual or a group; = world-view.” OED online. December 2012. Oxford University Press. http://www.oed.com.lp.hscl.ufl.edu/view/Entry/227763?redirectedFrom=WELTANSCHAUUNG#eid (accessed January 12, 2012).

39 Ibid.

40 Ibid. Mayr had also previously written Peter Bowler, the historian of evolutionary theory: “You have undoubtedly seen the recent paper by John Greene on Darwin’s social Darwinism. Equally important, particularly since it takes the opposite view point, is a paper by Derek Freeman, originally published in Current Anthropology (surely quoted by Greene).” Mayr to Dr. P. Bowler, 22 January 1979, Mayr Papers.

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In his recommendations to the editor, Mayr concluded: “In sum, I think Greene’s essays are worth publishing, but they would greatly benefit from extensive revision.”41

From Huxley to Huxley: “Transformations in the Darwinian Credo”

Greene did not yet know of Mayr’s recommendations to Sheila Berg when he wrote him in March 1980 about the good news that “the University of California Press had agreed to publish” his book. He then described what his book would include:

. . . Those essays you are already familiar with in printed form . . . [as well as] an introductory essay, my 1957 article “Objectives and Methods in Intellectual History,” and two unpublished essays. The first of these latter is the essay you have seen in manuscript under the title “Defining Darwinism.” I thought long and hard about revising this essay to take full account of your criticisms, but I found it difficult to do so successfully. Instead, I plan to change the title to: “‘Darwinism’ as a World View”, thus indicating that the appropriate name for the pattern of ideas I describe in the essay is uncertain.42

Greene added, “I would like also, if you have no objection, to add a footnote at the end of the article, in which I would like to quote from your letters to me and from my reply thereto.”

Greene enclosed the excerpts he wished to include, inviting Mayr to either “add to or subtract from the quotations.” He also offered Mayr an opportunity to decline: “[If you] rather that I abandon the whole idea of quoting your opinions, I shall of course do so.”43

Not knowing that Mayr had already commented to Berg on the final essay in Greene’s collection “From Huxley to Huxley: Transformations in the Darwinian Credo,” Greene asked

Mayr, “If you have the time and interest to read this essay and give me your reactions, I shall be very glad to have them, especially since I know that we view some of these matters very differently.” He warned Mayr that his essay “rather critically [described] the general ideas of

41 Ibid.

42 John Greene to Ernst Mayr, 20 March 1980, Mayr Papers.

43 Ibid.

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nature, man, society, and history to be found in the writings of Julian Huxley, George Gaylord

Simpson, Cyril Darlington, and Edward O. Wilson.”44 Then Greene signed off: “I look forward to the publication of your own book and of the results of the symposia on the origins of the modern synthesis,”45 referring to Mayr’s manuscript for The Growth of Biological Thought, as well as the book on the AAAS conference they had both participated in which was scheduled for publication that year as The Evolutionary Synthesis: Perspectives on the Unification of Biology.

Mayr quickly replied to Greene: “I was delighted to hear that the University of California

Press has decided to print your essays.” He added, “I did not try to conceal my identity in my evaluation of your essays, and I presume you realized that I was one of the consultants.” And he advised Greene to consider “a good deal of revising,” to bring some of his older essays up-to- date. Regarding the use of his comments in a footnote, Mayr wrote that he had “no objections whatsoever.”46 On a friendly note, Mayr confessed:

When corresponding with you, John, I always have the pleasant feeling that we can disagree quite drastically and yet manage to keep on good terms. This is as it ought to be. I should be glad to read your Huxley essay, even though as you predict, I will probably disagree with some of your conclusions.47

He closed by sharing a status report on his own projects: “Proof[s] for the synthesis volume is supposed to reach me any day now. The ‘big book’ [GBT] makes good progress too.”48

In return, Greene thanked Mayr for his permission to quote from their correspondence and for his agreeing to read and comment on the final essay in the collection. On a more personal

44 Ibid. Mayr had commented to Berg on the 7th essay: “This is rather thin and uninteresting since so much has been written on progress and evolutionary progression since that date. . . . I don’t think this essay reflects the thinking of modern evolutionists.” Ernst Mayr to Sheila Berg, 8 January 1980, Mayr Papers.

45 Ibid.

46 Ernst Mayr to John Greene, 27 March 1980, Mayr Papers.

47 Ibid.

48 Ibid.

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note, Greene added, “I quite agree with you in prizing our ability to take issue strongly on

Darwinian themes without any personal rancor. You have no idea how helpful it is to me to receive criticism from one of the leading evolutionary biologists of the 20th century, even when I decide to reject or qualify some of the criticisms. I am well aware how much I owe you.”49

Greene added that while he had “suspected [Mayr had been] probably one of the referees,” and found “some difficulty . . . in [his] idea of making major revision, or even extensive minor revisions, of the essays,” he would take Mayr’s recommendation to offer an updated “‘Suggested

Further Readings’” at the end of each chapter so that readers could “pursue the subject down to the present time.”50

Greene then made a suggestion to Mayr: “In reading my final essay, please understand that my objection is not to the values Huxley and Simpson espouse (they are pretty much my own) or to science itself properly conceived, but rather to their notion that these values can and should be derived from evolutionary biology. These are the hard-earned values of Western civilization, derived from Greek and Roman culture, the Judeo-Christian tradition, and the

Enlightenment.” He then entreated his friend: “There is nothing to gain and very much to lose by rejecting these sources of our values in favor of an illusory and self-defeating derivation of them from science of any kind.”51 Greene concluded, “The authors of the Bridgewater Treatises [the

49 John Greene to Ernst Mayr, 31 March 1980, Mayr Papers. This is the first letter Greene reproduced in his chapter “The Mayr-Greene Correspondence: Some Passages At Arms,” published in his book Debating Darwin: Adventures of a Scholar (1991). A majority of their correspondence through the rest of the 1980s can be located in both of their archives, though in such cases Mayr’s papers will be referenced.

50 Ibid.

51 Ibid.

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well known early nineteenth century exposition on natural theology], should have taught us that, if nothing else.”52

Mayr responded enthusiastically: “Here is the next installment in our mutual education correspondence.” Interestingly enough, he added, while forcefully presenting his contentions, point by point with his contentions (to which Greene would later respond): “No harm is done in presenting the excerpts from the writings of the Huxleys, Simpson, Darlington, and Wilson.

They are all valiantly trying to arrive at a non-supernatural basis of human ethics and beliefs.”53

Mayr continued:

I regret that your critique is so negative. One continuously reads between the lines “let us go back, let us go back to God, then we will be comfortable, and then we can refer all objections to all viewpoints to Him.” You tried to undermine the claims of these evolutionists but I fail to see that you propose anything else instead.54

Mayr argued that Simpson “perhaps makes the point most clearly [when he said] that as modern scientists we reject escape into non-material causations and if we look for the science that can serve as the basis for our interpretations we find that the only one that is suitable for this purpose

52 Ibid. The “authors of the Bridgewater Treatises” were a variety of well-known natural scientists and theologians of the day, each of whom authored one of eight treatises with the guiding theme, “On the Power, Wisdom and Goodness of God as manifested in the Creation.” Among them were Royal Society members William Whewell, William Prout, William Kirby, and William Buckland, while Charles Babbage wrote an unofficial ninth treatise in response. The project had been organized by the Royal Society of London on the instructions in the will of a prominent patron. Perhaps Greene raised the issue to suggest complexity of the relationship between science and religion and the natural world, while anticipating his statement would raise the ire of Mayr. Greene said of the Bridgewater Treatises in an interview with James Moore: “The point about [them] . . . is that they try to get sermons from stones. But it is one thing to say . . . that the human mind demands some explanation of the order and harmony of the universe; it is quite another thing to say that geology or palaeontology or some other science proves the existence of God. That is a very truncated thought.” In: Greene, History, Humanity and Evolution, p. 35.

53 Mayr to Greene, 8 April 1980, Mayr Papers.

54 Ibid.

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is evolutionary biology (broadly defined to include psychology and sociology, as far as they are evolutionary).”55

Mayr responded that he found “two basic weaknesses” in the essay. First he said that

Greene considered science to be “as something absolute, something that provides ironclad proofs and totally logical conclusions,” much like a “19th century concept of science.” Mayr, in contrast, emphasized “all conclusions of science are tentative, they are what at this moment is most probable and consistent with the greatest amount of evidence.” Greene’s “second weakness” was that he “obviously [took] little stock in natural selection. This is alright, for someone who always has God to fall back on when he encounters something puzzling, but if you are obliged, on the basis of looking at all aspects of this world, to deny the existence of a supreme being, and if one then looks at all the phenomena of living nature, one has no choice but saying that natural selection is by all odds the most probable cause of observed phenomena.”56

But then Mayr made an intriguing acknowledgement: “Let me just mention that you are of course entirely right . . . that faith in science is no less a religion than faith in God,” adding, “I don’t think any of the quoted scientists has claimed or ever will claim that ethical principles will automatically be produced by science. All a modern evolutionist claims is that ethical principles are indispensable for the harmonious functioning of society and that any society that lacks such principles will soon go under.” Mayr then concluded, “I am afraid that Ghiselin will again malign you with the epithet of an author of religious tracts unless you produce a better balanced version of the religion of Greene versus the religions of J. Huxley and G. G. Simpson.”57 This is a particularly interesting statement. Perhaps it was a slip by Mayr, a suggestion to shift the

55 Ibid.

56 Ibid.

57 Ibid.

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debate from a critique on the intellectual history of ideas to a contest of religious worldviews –

Greene vs. Huxley & Simpson.

Greene immediately replied with a long double-spaced response: “I was glad to receive your letter with its forthright criticisms, especially so since two of the faculty here at U-Conn

(one a philosopher and certainly not a Christian, the other a historian of ideas whose philosophical and religious views are unknown to me) whom I asked to criticize my essay came up with nothing but praise and general agreement. It’s nice to be praised, but not very helpful in improving one’s literary production.”58 Following this introduction, Greene stated:

As I suspected, there are fundamental conflicts in point of view and basic premises that make it difficult for us to understand each other, let alone agree. Let me try to make my own point of view clearer. You are wrong in thinking that my objections to the Simpson-Huxley-Darlington-Wilson line of argument are essentially religious. They are philosophical. My basic method is to take what these writers say at face value, juxtapose what they say at different times and places in their writings, and show that they become involved in contradictions and paradoxes. To me this suggests some error or omission in the premise of their argument. 59

He proposed this was a “perfectly valid type of criticism,” and that “accusing” him (Greene) of

“being religious, of having wrong ideas about science,” is not a logical response to the charge that “these writers wind up in paradoxes and contradiction.”

Greene argued that Mayr’s claim that scientists “are all valiantly trying to arrive at a non- supernatural basis of human ethics and beliefs” is also a “poor excuse.” He stated: “In the first place, it assumes without proof that a supernatural basis for ethics is to be avoided at all costs and that any amount of illogicality may be excused if it rests on some other basis. In the second place, it assumes that all non-scientific systems of ethics rest on a supernatural basis.” Greene

58 Greene to Mayr, 11 April 1980, p. 1, Mayr Papers. Greene wrote Mayr a seven full-page double-spaced typed letter. Greene published nearly the entire letter, (though not all, with additional excerpts included here,) in his book, Debating Darwin, pp. 223–29.

59 Ibid.

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charged, “[That] is obviously not true – witness the ethics of Plato, Aristotle, Epicurus, Aristotle,

Epictetus, the Confucians, Kant, and a host of ethical systems proposed by modern philosophers.” He argued that no one forgives their “illogicalities . . . on the ground that they valiantly seek a non-supernatural basis of human ethics and beliefs.”60

Greene’s next concern involved Mayr’s claim that “as modern scientists we must reject escape into non-material causations, and if we look for the science that can serve as the basis for our interpretations, we find that the only one that is suitable for this purpose is evolutionary biology.” Greene’s rather emphatic response: “What a host of philosophical assumptions and attitudes lie embedded in that statement!” In support of this he wrote: “Do you mean that scientists as scientists must reject non-material causations or that scientists as philosophers must also reject non-material causations. The first proposition would seem easier to defend, . . . [but] in any case it does not settle the question of what the scientist as philosopher is bound to exclude, unless you take the position that science and philosophy are the same thing, and I think that this is the rub of the issue between me and your camp.”61

Greene also addressed what Mayr had claimed to be Greene’s own contention “that science is ‘something absolute . . . ’” Greene assured his colleague, “I have no such concept of science, though I hope that scientists will continue to strive to be strictly logical in their reasoning.”62 He further added, “though I am no biologist, I can see that natural selection, as a scientific theory, sheds a great deal of light on events in the biological world, both past and present. But many of the claims made for the efficacy of natural selection in the biological and human worlds go far beyond anything capable of scientific verification.” He added, “we are

60 Ibid., p. 2.

61 Ibid., p. 1.

62 Ibid., pp. 3–4.

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asked to swallow all these ‘explanations’ without question on the ground that natural selection might conceivably be the cause of the phenomena and that the evolutionary biologists who propose these explanations cannot conceive of any other explanation, or that the other explanations they can conceive involve a resort to ‘non-material causation,’ which is a no-no.”63

Then Greene pursued the point further: “But there is more to it than that. There is also a deep-seated fear that to admit the validity of metaphysics and theology as intellectual disciplines would be to undermine the security of the scientific enterprise by opening up the door to non- material causation. It is this fear that underlies your belief that I must be motivated by religious considerations.” Greene thus argued that Mayr’s response suggested that he was not only attempting to subsume metaphysics and theology within contemporary biological theory, but that he otherwise felt threatened if they were to remain independent intellectual interests. It appeared to Greene that Mayr sensed

a threat to the autonomy of science in any suggestion that the positivistic world view associated with much (though not all) of modern evolutionary biology is open to question. Your mind conjures up fanatical creationists crusading to force creationist biology on school children. The threat is a real one, but it is generated in considerable measure by the insistence of Huxley, Simpson, Darlington, Wilson, and others on palming off evolutionary biology as the only safe guide to human duty and destiny. The claim is preposterous.”64

Greene continued in a similar vein: “It is one thing to argue, as you do, that natural selection might select for ‘open programs’ that permit ethical systems. It is quite another to claim that evolutionary biology (and only it) can discover human duty and destiny. If evolutionary biologists go around making claims of this kind, they should not be surprised if parents decide to take a hand in determining what kind of biology their children will be exposed to.”65 He also

63 Ibid., p. 4.

64 Ibid.

65 Ibid., p. 5.

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expressed interest that Mayr “concede[d] that faith in science can be no less a religion than faith in God,” adding, “but who would pretend the world views promulgated by Julian Huxley,

Simpson, and Wilson in the name of science, are ‘science’ in any proper sense of the word? They preach faith in science and make use of scientific discoveries in building their picture of the world, but they are essentially philosophical interpretations of the results of scientific investigations with strong religious overtones.”66

Greene then concluded once again with a Biblical warning, throwing down the gauntlet:

If ultimate reality is truly as Simpson, Huxley, and Wilson represent it, the rational man will be more likely to take Hobbes’ ethical advice then to pretend with Huxley et al. that biology confirms the Biblical injunction to do justly, love mercy, and walk humbly with one’s God. But if, on the other hand, God exists and has revealed himself to us in his son, then we know beyond a shadow of a doubt that we ought also to love one another.67

In a postscript, Greene added: “Your letter has convinced me of one thing, namely, that I should add a brief postscript to the last chapter making my own views plain (as in the above); otherwise many readers (including our friend Michael Ghiselin – that sturdy ideologue) will form erroneous ideas about what I ‘must’ think, just as you did.” And he requested Mayr’s permission to use additional extracts from their correspondence for that purpose.68

Green followed up a week later with a draft of a “postscript” he had written “to take care of some matters that deserve comment, including some indication of my own philosophical, ethical, and religious views. If you have suggestions for modifying or adding to this addendum, I shall be glad to receive them.” Greene noted that he wanted the postscript to be brief, as it was

66 Ibid., p. 6.

67 Ibid., p. 7. Greene is likely paraphrasing Micah 6.8 and 1 John 4:9–11. While Greene appeared to retort to Mayr’s positivistic overtones (perhaps an intellectual riposte), it certainly also showed Greene’s intellectual appreciation of Judeo- Christian metaphysics.

68 Ibid.

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important to him that the essays “stand or fall on their own merits.” He assured Mayr: “I appreciate greatly the assistance you have given me with respect to these essays, if only by forcing me to state my views more clearly and take some account of opposing views. I shall, of course, acknowledge my debt to you in the preface.”69

Meanwhile, Mayr had written a letter to Greene; the two letters crossed paths in the mail.

Mayr noted that Greene’s previous letter had not answered all his objections. Still, he relented:

“ . . . but it will of course be up to the reader to make that decision.” Mayr agreed that a postscript would be “an excellent idea,” as it would make “much clearer than your other discussions . . . that you see a contrast between scientist and philosopher, a contrast I do not see.

You also seem to think that all science is positivistic science, and I would like you to define this somewhere clearly.”70 Mayr’s key complaint was that Greene was too critical: “[You concentrate] too much on criticizing others without making sufficient of an effort to replace it with positive statements of your own. Perhaps this is the reason why I, and I am not alone, have concluded that your attitude is governed by religious commitments. . . . Somewhere the reader will want to know, if ethics cannot be based on the findings of evolutionary biology, what should it be based on.”71 It appears that much like Dobzhansky, Mayr had difficulty distinguishing

“beliefs,” which he found inspiration for in science, from his professional career as a scientist.

The day after Greene had sent Mayr a four-and-a-half-page draft of his proposed postscript (dated April 24), he received this last letter from Mayr (dated April 21). He responded immediately: “I can sympathize with your wish that I spell out in full my own philosophical position with respect to science, ethics, metaphysics, etc., and perhaps I will attempt to do so

69 Greene to Mayr, 24 April 1980, Mayr Papers.

70 Mayr to Greene, 21 April 1980, p. 5, Mayr Papers.

71 Ibid.

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later on both in correspondence and in print. But I shall not go any further in this direction in the

‘Postscript’ for two reasons:

(1) the validity of the implied criticism of Huxley, Simpson, etc. in my essay does not in any way depend on what my own philosophical or religious position may be; one does not answer logical criticism by pointing out that no alternative has been proposed; and

(2) an extended presentation of my own ideas is neither necessary nor particularly appropriate in a collection of essays which are historical in nature, though I agree that I ought to give the reader some impression of my general point of view, and I think I have done this in the “Postscript” I sent you.72

Greene then plainly outlined his personal views: “As to ethics, I have indicated that my own views are based both on philosophical reflection on human experience and on faith in God as He has revealed himself in Jesus Christ. As to metaphysics and cosmology, I have no systematic views, though I have been much interested in Whitehead’s philosophy.” As to

“science and epistemology,” he added, “I feel strongly that positivism, by which I meant the position that science (exemplified in modern physics, biology, chemistry, etc.) exhausts the field of rational inquiry and is our only means of access to knowledge, is a pernicious doctrine, dangerous to science itself for the reasons set forth in my final essay and in the ‘Postscript’ and fatal to any humane view of life.”73 Greene also contended that in his view, “The humaneness of

Huxley and Simpson is derived, not from science, but from the very philosophical and religious traditions they dismiss as superstition or ‘metaphysics.’ These are issues of grave import for the future of civilization, and I am glad to have had the opportunity to discuss them with you.” He closed his letter to Mayr by stating, “Perhaps you will agree that all of our positions are ultimately ‘religious’ in Tillich’s sense of involving ‘ultimate concern.’ There is no getting away

72 Greene to Mayr, 25 April 1980, Mayr Papers.

73 Ibid.

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from faith and hope. The only question is: in what do we place our trust?”74 Greene clearly appeared to be suggesting that when dealing with “ultimate concerns” hardly amenable to empirical verification, personal inclinations come into play “outside” of strict science. For

Greene, “faith and hope” were a part of this human condition, with the larger question involving where the individual chose to place them.

The next month, Mayr wrote to Greene replying that he was glad Greene had “decided to include the Postscript. This explains some of the things you leave rather vague in your essays.”

Mayr still had concerns whether or not Greene viewed “all science to be positivistic science,” and that Greene lacked “a clear distinction between adopting an ethics that is based on (or derived from) one’s scientific findings, and an ethics that is consistent with the findings of science.” Mayr argued, “Sure one can easily argue against the former, but I would find it rather vulnerable to do the latter.”75 He also asked for a copy of Greene’s review of Michael Foucault’s

Words and Things, regarding which he wrote, “I am as unconvinced by Foucault as you seem to have been.”76 (To this particular comment, Greene would respond: “I am glad we agree about

Foucault. He claims far too much for his ‘infallible’ method in intellectual history.”)77

Greene answered Mayr’s “latest queries” by clarifying his views on positivism: “My objections to positivism apply to positivistic world views claiming validation by ‘science,’ not to science itself. History shows plainly that excellent scientific work can be and has been done

74 Ibid.

75 Mayr to Greene, 12 May 1980, Mayr Papers.

76 Ibid.

77 Mayr to Greene, 15 May 1980, Mayr Papers. Greene’s review of Michal Foucault’s Les mots et les choses (1966) – English edition, Words and Things (1970) – was published in Social Science Information 6.4 (August 1967): 131–138.

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within a great many kinds of world view – e. g. Aristotle, Kepler, al-Battani, Einstein, G.G.

Simpson, Mendel, etc.”78 Greene continued:

But most scientists have had sense enough to recognize that science per se does not dictate any particular world view (theistic, non-theistic, idealistic, materialistic, etc.) simply because science excluded a priori all those aspects of experience that are not amenable to its techniques and presuppositions, i.e. value judgments, reference to non-empirical entities, etc. Only when a scientific theory is extrapolated into general view of what is really real does it become “positivistic” (as a philosophical outlook). Freud’s theory of neurotic behavior may be called a scientific theory; “Freudianism,” as in Civilization and Its Discontents or Totem and Taboo, is a positivistic world view.79

Greene then addressed Mayr’s concerns about his view of ethics in relation to the natural sciences: “Obviously any adequate ethics must take into account all relevant knowledge of what is. But that is quite a different thing from saying that scientific knowledge of those aspects of reality that are amenable to scientific inquiry can yield an adequate ethics derived from knowledge.” Furthermore, he argued, “Simpson et al. have the illusion that this is possible only because they come to the study of science with their values already derived from the philosophical and religious traditions of Western civilization, just as the authors of the

Bridgewater treatises found in nature and natural science what their Christian upbringing had taught them to expect to find.”80 Apparently Greene considered that the natural world would reflect back whatever metaphysical value an ethicist wished to project upon it, whether it was the traditional natural theology found in the Bridgewater Treatises, or the progressive evolutionary humanism of “Simpson et al.”

The following year Mayr sent Greene an enthusiastic handwritten letter explaining, how upon returning from “a five months stay in Germany (during most of this period my office in

78 Ibid.

79 Ibid.

80 Ibid.

276

Cambridge was unattended),” he found “in the pile of mail . . . [Greene’s] book.” Mayr wrote,

“Very many thanks. I have, of course, read these essays previously, but I am very glad to have them in book form. They will be particularly valuable to me where they jar my views and where they will force me to have second thoughts.”81 To this Mayr added:

Darwin, as does almost any author, causes often difficulties because, as [handwriting unclear] stated years ago, he frequently contradicts himself in different paragraphs or publications. Which, then, is the true Darwin? In case of conflict, we select what fits best into our preconceived ideas.

I think your book will be widely read and, on the whole, be well received. It will also evoke some furious rejoinders. I am sure you are prepared for this.

With thanks and best wishes as ever

Ernst82

The Growth of Biological Thought

A copy of Science, Ideology, and World View was also sent to Jacques Roger, the French intellectual historian of science. Roger wrote to Greene: “I thank you very much for your book, which I just received yesterday. I have already re-read the first three articles and I will read the others very soon. You know that I am particularly interested in evolutionary theory, and deeply

81 Mayr to Greene, 11 June 1981, John C. Greene Papers, Archives & Special Collections at the Thomas J. Dodd Research Center, University of Connecticut, Storrs, Connecticut. The special collections of the Ernst Mayr Library at the Harvard Museum of Comparative Zoology includes Mayr’s copy of Science, Ideology, and World View. Written on the title page is: “For Ernst Mayr, with high regard – John Greene.” In particular Chapter 3 “The Kuhnian Paradigm and the Darwinian Revolution in Natural History,” and Chapter 6 “Darwinism as a World View,” contains marginalia. Page 133 alongside the text at the end of the first paragraph has an especially interesting note: “Since science was increasingly conceived as the search for laws governing the phenomena presented in sense experience, the hope of knowing a reality behind the veil [Mayr underlined] of sense experience diminished as the prestige of science grew. Positivism led to agnosticism.” – Mayr wrote in the margins: “G. is a pious Christian!” On page 130, next to the first paragraph where Greene wrote that “the suffix ism should be reserved for general views of reality (nature and social) connected with scientific theories instead of being used to denote the theories themselves,” in his defense of the use of the term Darwinism “to designate a world view [Mayr underlined] that seems to have been arrived at more or less independently by Spencer, Darwin, Huxley, and Wallace . . .” – Mayr wrote, “a historian’s view.”

82 Mayr to Greene, 11 June 1981, Greene Papers. While Mayr could appreciate that others might project views upon Darwin that Darwin never actually held, Mayr appeared less able to consider how he might be doing the same – projecting his own views upon Darwin.

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convinced that it is impossible to deal with it without taking into account its ideological components. After that, I need not tell you how much I agree with your analysis.” In addition to this statement of solidarity, Roger made the request: “But I also was particularly pleased by your book because it give me the opportunity to ask you for some help. Perhaps you know that I am now responsible for an old review, the Revue de Synthèse, first published in 1900 as Revue de

Synthèse Historique by Henri Berr . . . I have decided, with the editorial board, to go back to the old title and devote the review to intellectual history.” Roger explained that the plan was to re- launch the journal the following year. He asked, “Would it be possible to have an article by you?

What we would like is something about the current situation of the history of ideas in the United

States, together with your own view of the discipline.” He recommended that Greene’s first two essays, “Science, Ideology, and World View” and “Objectives and Methods in Intellectual

History,” would be appropriate, and that Greene could use excerpts from those articles and “only add something about the present American situation.” Roger concluded, “We think that we need something from the United States and, in my opinion, you are the most qualified American historian for such a work.”83

Greene was “delighted” to receive Roger’s letter. In his reply he admitted, “I am flattered that you should ask me to write an article for the reorganized Revue de Synthèse Historique, and

I should like very much to be able to agree to do so, but I cannot. I am devoting every spare moment to revision of my big book American Science in the Age of Jefferson and will be working closely with the publisher for most, if not all, of the year to come.” Greene explained that he also had “a full teaching load,” and that he felt he would need to do a few months research to write on the current situation in American intellectual history. Greene concluded: “I

83 Jacques Roger to John Greene, 3 juillet 1981, Greene Papers. This is the only letter to Greene that Roger wrote in English.

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can only add that I am looking forward longingly to the time when my current project is out of the way and I can return to my first love, the history of ideas. I am delighted to know that this field of inquiry is reviving in France.”84

Over the next few years, all was quiet on the evolutionary front as Greene worked toward publishing his book American Science in the Age of Jefferson (1984), a project that grew out of research that had begun when he was a graduate student in American history.85 Greene sent a copy of the book to Mayr, who wrote, “Many thanks for your most useful and enjoyable book.”

Mayr admitted, “Before opening it I was afraid it might not contain much of interest to me, but I was mistaken. In fact I am quite fascinated with your very well written account. That I am also learning a lot is not surprising since my previous knowledge of the history of American science was rather rudimentary.”86

It was “a long time in the making,” Greene replied to Mayr. With the book finished,

Greene would begin researching the intellectual development of modern evolutionary biology, a project for which he had already submitted a grant proposal. Greene also mentioned,

“Incidentally, I have been mining your Growth of Biological Thought in connection with two of my courses. Eventually I should have some questions and reflection about it for you.” In a postscript, he added, “I note that you say in your big book that Darwinian biology requires a new

84 Greene to Roger, 15 July 1981, Greene Papers. Greene had also previously written Mayr, “I shall have to abandon Darwinian researches for the next 15 months to finish work on my American Science in the Age of Jefferson.” Greene to Mayr, 24 April 1980, Mayr Papers.

85 John Greene, “Introductory Conversation,” in History, Humanity, and Evolution: Essays for John Greene, ed. James Moore (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1989), p. 29. Moore wrote, “while researching and pursuing neo-Darwinists [Greene] was able, with the help of a Guggenheim Fellowship, to augment and transform the unused chapters of his Harvard dissertation into American Science in the Age of Jefferson, since 1984 a standard text on the sciences in the early republic.” In James Moore, “John Colton Greene, 1917–2008,’ Isis 103 (2012): 148.

86 Mayr to Greene, 16 July 1984, Greene Papers.

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ethics. It would be asking too much to request that you spell this out in a letter, but I do hope to draw you out on this subject eventually.”87

Coincidently, Mayr had recently written about the subject of ethics to William Provine, his coeditor for the book on the evolutionary synthesis conference. After thanking Provine for sending him his recent reprints, Mayr noted that the article “on Darwin and religion” dealt with

“a dilemma I had been aware of since my high school days.” Mayr added, “I never had any problems with being an atheist and I think it forced me into an ethical stance that is distinctly superior to that of the average church-goer. However we scientists have things in which we believe and which make it easy for us to cope with life. The average person does not.” Mayr asserted, “If you destroy his faith you take away from him everything that he can hold onto. This is why I consistently abstain from religious controversies. This of course gives all the advantage to the fundamentalists, as I realize.”88

87 Greene to Mayr, 20 July 1984, Greene Papes.

88 Ernst Mayr to William Provine, 6 March 1984, Mayr Papers. Mayr seemed to be saying that “faith” in science (or at least his faith) was a superior “faith” to that “of the average church-goer.” A follow up question might be “faith” in science to do what? And is “faith” in science a science, or a religion? Which quickly invites a question like “which religious faith is the fairest of them all?” – and that is not a scientific question. It is certainly a value- laden question. Mayr further developed his ideas on human ethics in a lecture delivered the following year at Cornell University, where Provine taught, as part of Cornell’s Messenger Lecture series. Based on those presentations, he subsequently published an essay, “The Origins of Human Ethics,” in Toward a New Philosophy of Biology (pp. 75–91). The essay described how the traditional ethical norms of Western culture handed down from “the pastoral people of the Near East” were no longer adequate. Mayr proposed that Julian Huxley’s ideals of evolutionary humanism could provide a replacement which Mayr proclaimed, “gives us a world view that can serve as a sound basis for the development of an ethical system that is appropriate for . . . a healthy human society.” See “The Origins of Human Ethics,” Toward a New Philosophy of Biology (Cambridge: The Belknap Press of Harvard, 1988), pp. 86, 89. Cornell University describes the “Messenger Lecture series” as having been “established in 1924 by a gift from Dr. Hiram Messenger [1855–1913], a Cornell graduate of 1880 and a longtime teacher of mathematics. The terms of the original gift established ‘a fund to provide a course of lectures on the Evolution of Civilization for the special purpose of raising the moral standard of our political, business, and social life.’” Perhaps Dr. Messenger entertained notions of Spencerian progress during his career at the turn of the last century. The contemporary series engaging a variety of topics is considered as “one of the most important of the Cornell extracurricular activities.” See “University and Messenger Lectures,” Cornell University: The University Faculty, http://theuniversityfaculty.cornell.edu/lectures/lectures_main.html, accessed 12 January 2012. Mayr’s presentation at Cornell (Fall 1985) was titled “Evolutionary Biology and Philosophy.” See “University and Messenger Lectures (1960–Present),” Cornell University: The University Faculty, http://theuniversityfaculty.cornell.edu/lectures/historic.html, accessed 12 January 2012.

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Perhaps this was in part an expression of another one of those “universal” human qualities, that when sharing a set of metaphysical assumptions with a fellow advocate, a sense of superiority often shines through. Still, it is to Mayr’s credit he never made a public career out of such proclivities, even when faced with adversity. Nonetheless, it is likely such views reflected in his then recent work, The Growth of Biological Thought. Prior to publication, Greene had assisted Mayr as a critical reader for some of the early chapters on the intellectual history of biology, and Mayr acknowledged his help in the preface.89 As previously noted, Greene had offered a few pointed concerns involving Mayr’s mix of biology and worldview.90

Published on the centenary of Darwin’s death in 1982, the GBT earned accolades as a

“magisterial study . . . widely credited with playing a major role in raising the biological sciences onto the same intellectual plane as more quantifiable scientific disciplines, such as physics and chemistry.”91 The Harvard University Press described the significance of Mayr’s work on the book’s back cover:92

No one in this century can speak with greater authority on the progress of ideas in biology than Ernst Mayr. And no book has ever established the life sciences so firmly in the mainstream of Western intellectual history as The Growth of Biological Thought. Ten years in preparation, this is a work of epic proportions,

89 Mayr noted Greene as being among the “numerous individuals and institutions” about whom he wrote, “I owe an immense debt of gratitude . . . [they] have read drafts of various chapters, have pointed out errors and omissions, and have made numerous constructive suggestions. I did not always follow their advice and am thus solely responsible for remaining errors and efficiencies.” Ernst Mayr, “Preface,” The Growth of Biological Thought (Cambridge: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1982), p. viii.

90 Greene to Mayr, 30 December 1977, Mayr Papers. In his critique of Mayr’s manuscript, Greene suggested Mayr needed more background to write a balanced essay on the relationship between religion and science. He also asked Mayr, “How do you know that there is no cosmic teleology?” Greene to Mayr, 30 December 1977, Mayr Papers.

91 Mark Feeney, “Renowned Biologist Ernst Mayr, 100, Dies,” The Boston Globe, February 5, 2005. The article ran on the front page of the main section with a photograph of Mayr.

92 Technically, the book was published by HUP’s Belknap Press imprint, “known for books of long-lasting importance, superior in scholarship and physical production, chosen whether or not they might be profitable.” Undoubtedly The Growth of Biological Thought proved profitable, enjoying its 12th English printing in 2003. See “A Brief History of Harvard University Press,” Harvard University Press, http://www.hup.harvard.edu/about/history.html, accessed 12 January 2013.

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tracing the development of the major problems in biology, from the earliest attempt to find order in the diversity of life, to modern research into the mechanisms of gene transmission.

In the book’s introductory chapters, Mayr described his analysis of the intellectual history and philosophy of biology with chapter titles such as “How to write history of biology,” “The place of biology in the sciences and its conceptual nature,” and “The changing intellectual milieu of biology.” He divided the main section with three headings “Diversity of Life,” “Evolution”

(described as “the long 327-page core of this book”93), and “Variation and Inheritance.” Mayr titled his concluding chapter “Epilogue: Toward a science of science.”

The book received over thirty reviews in prominent scholarly journals, penned by many of the leading evolutionary biologists and historians and philosophers of science. The noted evolutionary biologist Douglas Futuyma wrote in Science:

One cannot help standing in awe of the Germanic capacity for vast, all-embracing synthesis: consider the lifelong devotion of Goethe to Faust, or Wagner’s integration of the arts into a in which all of human history and experience is wrought into epic myth. It is perhaps in this tradition that Ernst Mayr’s The Growth of Biological Thought stands: a history of all biology . . . complete with leitmotivs such as the failures of , the struggle of biology for independence from physics, and the liberation of population thinking from the bonds of essentialism.94

Futuyma also remarked: “It is, of course, easy to find debatable points in any work of this magnitude, especially when it is penned by so forceful a personality.”95 This, perhaps, suggested another “Germanic” capacity, that being Mayr’s frequently authoritarian tone. In one example from the book, Mayr openly stated that in his view, the writing of history “should even be polemical,” admitting that when dealing with philosophical controversies, “I have described the

93 George Gaylord Simpson, “Autobiology,” review of The Growth of Biological Thought by Ernst Mayr, The Quarterly Review of Biology 57 (1982): 441.

94 Douglas J. Futuyma, review of The Growth of Biological Thought by Ernst Mayr, Science 216 (1982): 842.

95 Ibid., p. 844.

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opposing viewpoints in categorical, sometimes almost one-sided, terms in order to provoke rejoinder, if such is justified. Because I hate beating around the bush, I have sometimes even been called dogmatic.”96 Nevertheless, Mayr prided himself in “having changed [his] mind on frequent occasions,” though he also acknowledged:

However, it is true that my tactic is to make sweeping categorical statements. Whether or not this is a fault in the free world of the interchange of scientific ideas is debatable. My own feeling is that it leads more quickly to the ultimate solution of scientific problems than a cautious sitting on the fence.97

While Mayr offered many constructive points for his feeling “greatly attracted by Hegel’s scheme of thesis-antithesis-synthesis,” some of his tactics could be better suited for seasoned professional scientists and academics, than for a less-familiar public hardly adept at unweaving often personal perspectives, from tested scientific doctrine. Moreover, in perhaps a telling choice of words, there are no “ultimate solutions to scientific problems” no matter the concern about fence sitting, as science remains an open-ended investigation seeking new evidence and a more powerful explanatory hypothesis. Mayr’s choice of a word like “ultimate” could suggest a latent philosophical aspiration bordering on the metaphysical, and perhaps something Mayr himself had difficulty desentangling from his otherwise scientific agenda. For example, even G. G.

Simpson, Mayr’s old associate and fellow architect of the neo-Darwinian synthesis, titled his review of Mayr’s book, “Autobiology.” He claimed that as he read the book’s “many hundreds of close-set pages it kept recurring to [him]. This book is an unconventional and highly unusual way an autobiography. In it Mayr is seeking out, cleverly and successfully, the roots of his own accomplishment and opinions. It is an intellectual, psychological, and conceptual

96 Mayr, Growth of Biological Thought, p. 9.

97 Ibid.

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autobiography.”98 Simpson also asserted: “Mayr thinks that professional historians of science may consider these chapters ‘somewhat amateurish.’ Biologists will not.”99 Apparently, according to Simpson, it was not only an untrained public that could fail to make such distinctions.

In a comparatively caustic review, the AMNH anthropologist Ian Tattersall remarked,

“The Growth of Biological Thought, as history as opposed to a catalogue of facts, is an opinionated work by a practicing scientist with a large axe to grind . . . Of course, Mayr’s opinions, as those of one of the formative influences of modern evolutionary biology, are not without interest, even compelling interest. But they should not be mistaken for balanced history.”100 David Hull, the prominent philosopher of science, expressed something similar, though with more generous language: “As a contribution to secondary literature, The Growth of

Biological Thought exhibits Mayr’s own preference a bit too obviously and pervasively, but

Mayr’s book is also a contribution to the primary literature. After all, Mayr himself is an actor in some of the stories he tells.”101

In a New York Times book review that appeared to agree with some of Greene’s concerns over Mayr’s analysis of religion and science,102 the Princeton evolutionary biologist James L.

Gould wrote that while he certainly admired The Growth of Biological Thought, Mayr’s presentation contained, “one major flaw” in its “analysis of the history of the ideas that led to

98 George Gaylord Simpson, “Autobiology,” p. 438.

99 Ibid., 437.

100 Ian Tattersall, “The Good, the Bad, and the Synthesis,” American Anthropologist 86 (1984): 88.

101 David L. Hull, “Ernst Mayr’s Influence of the History and Philosophy of Biology: A Personal Memoir,” Biology and Philosophy 9 (1994): 381.

102 Greene to Mayr, 30 December 1977, Mayr Papers. See fn. 4 referencing Greene’s comments on Mayr’s GBT manuscript.

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evolution,” and “that is in his presentation of the role of religious thought in scientific inquiry.”

Gould considered that “Mayr has a curiously shallow and altogether mistaken view of much of the theological background as it affected scientists.” He continued, “Mayr provides a remarkably ill-informed and tasteless . . . attack. He repeatedly and with little or no qualification identifies

Christianity, past and present, as the chief enemy of scholarship in general and science in particular.”103 A “thoroughgoing skeptic myself,” Gould confessed, “I find it odd to be compelled to rebut Mr. Mayr’s assertions, but in all fairness I must point out that Christianity is placed in a rather different role by most historians.” Gould proposed an alternative approach:

It was not . . . that Christianity . . . smother[ed] the development of modern science: It was essential to it. The original Judeo-Christian ethos, focusing as it did on the individual and his relationship to God and the world around him, produced generation after generation of intellectuals – the natural theologians – who found their calling in reading the works of God in the book of Nature. Until less than a century ago, it was precisely this group of Christian scientists who discover most of the laws of nature.104

Mayr would propose his own idea for an appropriate relationship between science and religion which he provocatively stated in The Growth of Biological Thought: “Virtually all biologists are religious, in the deeper sense of the word, even though it may be a religion without revelation, as it was called by Julian Huxley.”105 In another essay that he wrote not long after,

Mayr described how the traditional ethical norms of Western culture handed down from “the

103 James L. Gould, “Ideas about Life,” The New York Times, May 23, 1982, pp. 7, 32–34.

104 Ibid.

105 Mayr, Growth of Biological Thought, 81. Mayr explained to Greene in a letter dated 1 May 1989: “When I read Huxley’s Religion Without Revelation, I found it on the whole quite congenial. I have always insisted that I have religion, perhaps a stronger religion than most church-going people, but it does not fall under the word religion in the vocabulary of most of those who belong to a particular congregation.” He also reiterated his view previously expressed to William Provine, “On the whole I have always avoided controversies about religion, being afraid that I might destroy somebody else’s faith if my arguments were too convincing.” In John C. Greene, Debating Darwin, pp. 231–32.

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pastoral people of the Near East” were no longer adequate.106 As a replacement he proposed

Julian Huxley’s evolutionary humanism, which he proclaimed, “gives us a world view that can serve as a sound basis for the development of an ethical system that is appropriate for . . . a healthy human society.”107

Greene would later comment on the nature of the relationship between Mayr and

Huxley’s philosophical views:

Like Huxley, [Mayr] looks to science, and especially to evolutionary biology, to loosen the grip of traditional religions and idealistic philosophies on modern thought and to provide a scientific basis for a new ethics, a new secular faith, and a new image of humans. But whereas for Huxley this ethical-religious motive dominated nearly everything he wrote and did, in Mayr’s case the scientific impulse toward discovering and expounding a new version of the theory of evolution by natural selection, giving pride of place to the naturalist-systematist, has been the driving force.108

The International Congress of History of Science at Berkeley

It is likely that similar concerns about “the growth of biological thought” had crossed the minds of other scholars concerned with the relationship between science and religion, such as the intellectual historian Jacques Roger. He again wrote to Greene in February 1985: “Perhaps you remember that I asked you once for an article on the history of ideas, as you design and practice.

I return today with the same request, hoping you have a little more freedom to respond favorably.

We want to publish several articles on this topic in the Revue de Synthèse. Would it be possible,

106 Ernst Mayr, “The Origins of Human Ethics,” p. 86. This essay was based on a presentation given at Cornell in 1985; See also fn. 85.

107 Ibid., p. 89.

108 John C. Greene, “Science, Philosophy, and Metaphor in Ernst Mayr’s Writings,” Journal of the History of Biology 27 (1994): 312. Greene asked Mayr to critique the manuscript prior to publication, and Mayr responded concerning this passage: “Science has never for me been something ‘to loosen the grip of traditional religion.’ Such an intent has been far from my mind, indeed I have been quite careful to avoid anything that might be offensive to my orthodox friends. However, I can’t help it if the findings of science make the claims of some organized religions rather ridiculous. And, the conflict is not between religion and science, but between ‘revealed’ religion and science. And every scientists I know, no matter how much of an atheist he may be, has religion.” Mayr to Greene, 4 September 1989, Debating Darwin, pp. 234–35.

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taking inspiration from what you’ve written, to send us a text of twenty pages for the month of

September?” Roger added, “I would be very happy to introduce your ideas better in France, and thereby contribute to the revival of the history of ideas in this country.”109

In his reply to Roger, Greene admitted it was a “pleasant surprise to receive your letter . . . inviting me (for a second time) to write an essay” for the Revue. He continued, “I feel honored by this invitation, and I would like to submit an essay if I have sufficient time.” He briefly described the current demands on his time and attention, and suggested a rough timeframe for producing his submission to the Revue:

[I am] teaching full time this semester but managing to find some time for work on the interrelations of science, ideology, and world view in the rise and development of the modern synthesis. (I am concentrating for the moment on the writings of Ernst Mayr). I should like to illustrate my essay with some examples from this research, but I shall need at least four months to trace out the clues I have discovered and develop a convincing general analysis. Indeed, a general analysis will require perhaps four years, but I can probably make enough headway in the next four months to be able to illustrate my method in the history of ideas with reference to the modern synthesis in evolutionary biology. Please let me know: will a mid-July deadline for receipt of my essay leave time . . . in connection with the September issue of the Revue?110

In conclusion, Greene noted that he also hoped “to have the pleasure of seeing you at the

International Congress [of History of Science] in Berkeley next August.”111

Roger wrote back with encouragement: “[The] subject on which you are currently working seems to me very exciting, and we would be very pleased to have an article about the history of ideas, which is illustrated by this study. What we are preparing is a special issue of the

Revue de Synthèse that would bring together a few studies on the history of ideas by the

109 Jacques Roger to John Greene, 6 February 1985, Greene Papers. Roger wrote Greene in his native French from this letter on. The French to English translation offered is fairly basic. A number of Roger’s letters were handwritten.

110 Greene to Roger, 15 February 1985, Greene Papers.

111 Ibid.

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undisputed masters of the discipline, French and foreign, but actually especially foreigners because as you know, currently the discipline is hardly practiced in France. However, there are signs that many people are beginning to take notice again. The time is therefore favorable.”112

In his reply, Greene expressed enthusiasm, even “delight.” He admitted: “I must demur at being regarded as a master of that field . . . I will do my best to finish my essay by next July.”

Greene also reported to Roger that he had recently submitted “the abstract of my brief paper for the International Congress in Berkeley before I was entirely sure what direction the paper would take, but it does appear that Mayr’s double polemic against the vitalists and finalists on the one hand and the reductionists on the other will be the main theme. It is curious that, although Mayr insists that the evolutionary process is not goal-directed, he nevertheless uses highly teleological language in writing about it. A case of having your cake and eating it, I suppose.”113

Greene also wrote an update to a younger historian of science whom he had become close to over the previous decade, Jim Moore.114 Greene wrote that he planned to attend “the international meeting in Berkeley this summer . . . to read a paper entitled ‘Science, Philosophy, and Metaphor in Ernst Mayr’s Biological Writings.’” Greene explained: “I have been working on that and on the modern synthesis generally this summer in connection with a piece I have promised Jacques Roger for the Revue de Synthèse – ‘The History of Ideas Revisited.’”115 A few weeks later, just prior to leaving for the conference, Greene wrote to Moore again:

[I have been considering] the question of what we mean by “nature.” My current researches on science, ideology, and world view in the rise and development of the

112 Roger to Greene, n/d February 1985, Greene Papers. Translated from French. There is a second copy in Greene’s papers that has “[1985 c Mar]” penciled in on the top right.

113 Greene to Roger, 18 March 1985, Greene Papers.

114 So much so that Greene would later write to Moore: “After all, you are like our third son!” John Greene to Jim Moore, 4 June 1998, Greene Papers.

115 Greene to Moore, 12 June 1985, Greene Papers.

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“modern synthesis” focus to a considerable extent on that . . . In my paper for Jacques Roger I argue that the inclusion of man and mind in nature a la Darwin, combined with the 20th century revolution in physics and cosmology, has disintegrated our ideas about nature. The ensuing confusion is all too apparent in the essays in Ernst Mayr’s Evolution and the Diversity of Life [1976], which I will analyze in my paper at Berkeley both as to their substantive and their metaphorical content. His arguments and his figures of speech vary widely depending on whether his is arguing against creationists, finalists, and vitalists or against “laboratory mechanists.”116

Greene had also recently written Frank Sulloway (one of Mayr’s former students) thanking him for sending him reprints. Greene again reported:

[I am] working madly on the architects of the modern synthesis – Mayr, Simpson, J. Huxley, etc. from my own idiosyncratic point of view, and I have produced a draft of an article . . . on the evolution of evolutionary ideas from Aristotle to Ernst Mayr – a high-flow macro-history to set alongside the micro-history you are presently engaged in. But I am worried on two scores: (1) have I gone completely off my rocker in babbling about science, ideology, and world view, and (2) will what I say about Ernst Mayr’s writing offend him! I prize my friendship with Ernst highly; he and I have always been able to agree to disagree without loss of good feelings. But can this last if I set out to show the interaction of science, ideology, and world view in his writings?117

Greene then asked Sulloway, “[Could you] take a look at the enclosed draft and give me your candid opinion on both the points mentioned above?”118

The International Congress for History of Science, held at the University of California,

Berkeley, and organized with the International Union of History and Philosophy of Science based in Paris, took place during the first week in August 1985 with close to nine hundred participants attending its twenty-one Symposia and seventy-nine scientific sessions. The Spanish

116 Ibid.

117 Greene to Frank [Sulloway], 28 June 1985, Greene Papers. While the letter offered no last name in the salutation, it specifically refers to Frank Sulloway’s recent projects. Sulloway was one of Mayr’s former graduate students who remained in close contact.

118 Ibid.

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language history and philosophy of science journal Theoria noted, “The Congress had a high standard, given the international status of its many participants.”119

One scholar who fit that description was the influential historian of science John Hedley

Brooke, who had been scheduled to chair a section at the conference.120 Brooke became particularly well known for advocating a sophisticated historical relationship between science and religion. Gary B. Ferngren, editor for the encyclopedic The History of Science and Religion in the Western Tradition (2000), writes of Brooke in his introduction to the abridged volume:

“Evidence that the relationship of science and religion has exhibited a multiplicity of attitudes, reflecting local conditions and particular historical circumstances, has led John Brooke to speak of a ‘complexity thesis’ as a more accurate model than the familiar ‘conflict thesis.’ But while

Brooke’s view has gained widespread acceptance among professional historians of science, the traditional view remains strong elsewhere, not least in the popular mind.”121

After returning from the conference, John Brooke had written to Greene, “It was a great pleasure to exchange a few words in Berkeley and a privilege to hear your paper on Mayr – quite the most original and far-reaching contribution to the congress I witnessed. When you decide that it could be circulated I should like to be included among those who have asked to see it.”122

Greene replied, “Many thanks for your encouraging remarks about my Berkeley paper . . . I was

119 Mary Sol De Mora, “XVIIth International Congress of History of Science (Berkeley),” Theoria: Revista de Teoria, Historia y Fundamentos de la Ciencia 1 (1985): 606. no. 2 606–608. The exact dates for the 17th International Congress of History of Science, held in Berkeley, California, were 31 July to 8 August, 1985.

120 Moore to Greene, 25 June 1985, Greene Papers. Likely Brooke’s section had to do with topics concerning Darwin and religion, as Moore wrote Greene: “I’d been asked to do a paper for the section John Brooke is chairing.” Unfortunately, for a variety of reasons, Moore was unable to attend that year.

121 Gary Ferngren, ed., Science and Religion: A Historical Introduction (Baltimore: The John Hopkins University Press, 2002), p. x. This abridged edition contained 30 essays “drawn” from the 103 articles published in The History of Science and Religion in the Western Tradition: An Encyclopedia (New York: Garland, 2000), that Ferngren edited with fellow scholars Edward J. Larson, Darrel W. Amundsen, and Anne-Marie E. Nakhla

122 John Brooke to John Greene, 27 August 1985, Greene Papers.

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greatly encouraged to find that my very tentative entry into the world of ideas of the founders of the modern synthesis evoked considerable interest.” He told Brooke that he had written to Mayr with a copy of the presentation, to which he added, “And I’m happy to report that Ernst Mayr has reacted to the paper with characteristic spirit and good nature, asking only that I cite chapter and verse when I quote him which, of course, I shall do when I prepare something for publication.

My broader thesis – that the tensions, ambiguities, etc. I thought to find in Mayr are characteristic of evolutionary theory from the beginning as a consequence of trying to expand the mechanistic view of nature to embrace life and mind – will be developed with appropriate footnotes in an essay I am writing for Jacque Roger’s Revue de Synthèse.”123

Greene had written Mayr shortly after returning from the conference, noting he did not mean to single Mayr out in his presentation, but rather intended to show that “tensions and contradictions I found (or thought to find) in your essay were not peculiar to you but seemed characteristic of the founders of the modern synthesis generally.” Greene noted that he was

“presently working on an article [for Roger] which will outline this analysis more fully than I could in my extemporaneous remarks at Berkeley.” He also wrote:

As I told Frank Sulloway and others, I value your friendship highly and would not wish to do anything that might impair it. Thus far we have been able to agree to disagree without hard feelings, and I fervently hope that we shall always be able to do so. My thoughts about the substance and forms of linguistic expression in the modern synthesis are still very tentative and I shall welcome your criticisms of them. I have learned a lot of biology from reading your essays and your Systematics and the Origin of Species, and I expect to learn much more as I read further in your works and those of Simpson, Huxley, etc. When I next get to Cambridge I hope we can get together for an exchange of ideas.124

123 John Greene to John Brooke, 3 September 1985, Greene Papers.

124 Greene to Mayr, 14 August 1985, Mayr Papers.

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Mayr responded to Greene in a handwritten letter, “As I have clearly stated in GBT I feel that direct ‘provocative’ statements of my views are in the long run more apt to lead to advance than fence sitting. Anybody has the right to respond to my sticking my neck out, if needed by chopping my head off!” He then added the caveat, “All I would recommend is that you show your completed draft to someone perhaps have a little more familiar with my work than you are, to protect yourself against misrepresentations. (I thought I found quite a few in your short M. S.).

. . . Your thinking, throughout, is more that of a philosopher than that of a scientist. Having just finished through the books of two philosophers of biology ([Elliot] Sober, [Philip] Kitcher) I am amazed at the difference in thinking (even with respect to quite ‘neutral’ concepts.)” Mayr then signed off with, “Have a great time! Cordially, Ernst”.125

Greene replied to this with a “note” to say: “How relieved I am to know that our dialogue about evolutionary theory can continue in its accustomed groove with mutual respect and enjoyment. In introducing my paper at the congress I stressed that I had only just begun to wade in the waters of the modern synthesis and that I expected my ideas to change and develop as I plunged deeper. I was pleasantly surprised by the amount of interest the paper generated among both the biologists and the historians of science who heard it, but I do not suppose that this validates what I had to say in any way.” Greene also wanted to assure Mayr: “I have no wish to misrepresent your ideas. I’ll check with you to make sure I have not done so before bursting into print.”126

125 Mayr to Greene, 28 August 1985, Greene Papers. It appears that Mayr might have been leaning on his authority in scientific matters to sidestep a critique of his philosophical inclinations that inspired much of his scientific career. Mayr seems to be having difficulty distinguishing between the two, taking a challenge to one as a challenge to both.

126 Greene to Mayr, 3 September 1985, Mayr Papers.

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The next week – likely shortly after receiving Greene’s latest “note,” – Mayr wrote

Michael Ghiselin offering a critical analysis of a recent philosophy of biology publication by

Elliot Sober. In that letter he also mentioned Greene’s latest effort:

You may have heard that our dear friend John Greene has now chosen me as the target of his attentions and has read a paper to the International Berkeley Congress about my ideology and inconsistencies. I deny neither the one or the other, yet it is quite clear from his paper that poor John doesn’t really understand modern evolutionary theory. And as you said in that wonderful crack of yours of a few years ago, his religious commitments ultimately control his thinking.127

Undoubtedly Mayr was looking for support, and at the time Ghiselin apparently upheld a reputation for sporting in competitive punditry.128 He had certainly enjoyed a few such exchanges with Greene. Ghiselin responded to Mayr a few weeks later:

I wish someone more competent than John Greene were criticizing your views. Yes, as you say, he doesn’t understand modern evolutionary theory. But he doesn’t understand the theory of the 1800’s either. As to ideology, the appropriate response to the man would be to ask him to justify his own ideology. Of course those who argue in his fashion pretend that they themselves, being professional historians, have no ideology, no preconceptions, no metaphysics, no social or political bias, etc.129

Jacques Roger and the Revue de Synthèse

Roger wrote to Greene in the middle of September: “Forgive me for not giving you a sign of life since June. I had some health problems this summer that made me lose a lot of time. . . . I read your article with great interest and pleasure. What interested me most is, of course, your analysis of the presuppositions of the synthetic theory of evolution. I understand that your presentation at Berkeley made some noise!” Regarding the article itself, Roger reported that it was “obviously a little long,” adding, “but we think, my colleagues and I, it has a unity and an

127 Mayr to Ghiselin, 10 September 1985, Mayr Papers.

128 Mayr and David Hull would discuss this tendency in a set of exchanges the following year. See Mayr to Hull, 11 June 1986; Mayr to Hull, 21 May 1987; Hull to Mayr, 1 June 1987, Mayr Papers.

129 Ghiselin to Mayr, 4 October 1985, Mayr Papers.

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overall structure that would be a shame to change. We are ready to publish it as is, unless you want to introduce some changes yourself.”130

Greene responded that it was “good to hear from you and know you are well,” and that the draft appeared “acceptable in general if not in all its details. I myself consider it to be very imperfect in its present form, but I have been waiting to receive your reaction before doing anything further with it.” He reported that he planned to make a few additional revisions, and could get the finished paper to Roger by the end of October. Greene confessed, “I do wish that I had much more time to develop the analysis and test it against the sources, but I suppose that there is some merit in sending up a trial balloon. Apparently my paper in Berkeley did stir up considerable discussion. I sent a copy to Ernst Mayr afterward, and he replied promptly with his usual sprit and good humor – he is really admirable that way.” Greene suggested he could bring the paper “to Bloomington” for the soon to occur History of Science Society meetings, and that they could discuss it there.131

Roger was already in the United States teaching at the University of Virginia that fall.

Though, academically, he had initially delved in the classics, he focused in French literature and intellectual history in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and, in particular, the life of the great French naturalist and mathematician Comte de Buffon. In 1963, Roger published The Life

Sciences in Eighteenth-Century French Thought (English trans. 1997), a work described as “the first major synthetic and interpretive work in the history of life sciences as sophisticated as the writings of Alexandre Koyré on the physical sciences. Comprehensive, synthetic, and penetrating, his analysis of the issue of organic generation in the early modern period brought to

130 Roger to Greene, 16 septembre 1985, Greene Papers. (Translated from French.)

131 Greene to Roger, 19 September 1985, Greene Papers.

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bear his training in classics, literature, the history of science, and intellectual history, making this a work of enormous range and significance.”132 Phillip Sloan, historian and philosopher of science, also characterized Roger’s work as “not simply a history of biology, as that genre of writing had been practiced before Roger; [but] a deep penetration of the structure of the biomedical sciences and the underlying assumption of these sciences in their full intellectual context. At the same time, it was a foundation study on the origins of the Enlightenment itself.”133

Meanwhile, Greene continued to solicit Mayr’s views while keeping Roger updated.

Greene once again wanted to assure Mayr that he was “anxious . . . not to misrepresent or mislead in any part of the paper,” and that he appreciated “very much [Mayr’s] broad-minded tolerance for [his] idiosyncratic approach to modern evolutionary biology.” Greene reassured

Mayr, “ . . . I shall take your comments seriously.”134 Mayr’s response to Greene included a lengthy analysis. In turn, Mayr noted, “Throughout I have attempted to encourage you, in a number of marginal notes, to be more precise in your statements and to give actual references in the cases of claims that strike me as improbable. . . . I would wish that my comments could have

132 Phillip R. Sloan, “Jacques Roger, 24 October 1920 – 26 March 1990,” Isis 82 (1991): 692.

133 Ibid. Jean Gayon, philosopher of science and historian of biology, discussed some of Roger’s philosophical perspectives in his essay “De la philosophe biologique dans l’œuvre historique de Jacques Roger.” Gayon stated that while Roger was “always discreet in his Christian intellectual commitment,” he could “emphasize at every opportunity the power of religious reason[ing] in the structure of scientific debates of the past and present.” Gayon also noted that “an exceptional virtuosity” of Roger’s historical work involved his illustrating “how religion could play [a role] either as an obstacle, or as a moving force for scientific thinking, by separating cautiously its motivations and its rational effects. Without doubt . . . he was willing to show that the Christian religion had not been a systematic obstacle to scientific rationality.” Gayon added that Roger frequently directed “this kind of historical interpretation” toward “modern scientific subjects and disciplines.” See Jean Gayon, “Postface,” in Pour Une Histoire Des Sciences À Part Entière by Jacques Roger (Paris: Albin Michel, 1995), pp. 463–64. Professor Gayon kindly assisted with an English translation of his French text.

134 Greene to Mayr, 27 September 1985, Mayr Papers.

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been kinder, but your deliberate neglect of the conceptual developments of the last 50 years, makes this impossible.”135

Greene graciously thanked Mayr, while also sending him a point-by-point response, defending the relevancy of his historical analysis. Greene acknowledged:

As always, I enjoy crossing swords with you about the fundamental ideas of biologists and other scientists, and I fervently hope that nothing I write will ever be interpreted as aimed at diminishing your stature as one of the leading biologists of our century. I think that we are undergoing a sea change in conceptions of nature in our time. If so, it is not surprising that the language in which scientists talk and write about nature should display ambivalence, paradox, and even contradiction from time to time. To the historian of ideas these manifestations are meat and drink and clues in unraveling the movement of thought. At the same time I enjoy the pleasure of learning much good science and exchanging ideas with those who produce it.136

Nonetheless, Mayr responded sharply: “As you rightly say, neither you nor I will be around to determine what the prevailing views on nature and science will be in the 21st century.

Your wishful thinking that the synthetic evolutionary theory, so seemingly distasteful to you, will no longer ‘linger on’ is quite amusing to me. . . . Since you never quite understood what

Darwinism is, you don’t realize its strength.”137 Whereas Greene could lean on Biblical metaphors when feeling seriously challenged, Mayr appeared to interpret a heavy critique of the history of ideas as an attack on the science itself, and hid behind it.

135 Mayr to Greene, 8 October 1985, Mayr Papers. Greene commented in a letter to the historian of science, Winifred Lovell Wisan, “I am hard at work . . . on the final draft of my essay . . . trying to take account of Ernst Mayr’s criticisms. He thinks I’m fifty years out of date in my understanding of evolutionary biology, but I am not convinced that I am.” See Greene to Winifred [Lovell Wisan], Greene Papers.

136 Greene to Mayr, 18 October 1985, p. 3, Mayr Papers.

137 Mayr to Greene, 21 October 1985, Mayr Papers. The following is Greene’s concluding paragraph, to which Mayr appears to refer: “It seems evident, then, that concepts of nature and science are in flux. The ideas of nature and science Darwin and his contemporaries took for granted are no longer viable, although they linger on in the biological community as convenient sticks with which to beat creationists, finalists, and vitalists. New views of nature and science, of man and society, of reality in general are in the making. What dominant view of nature and man’s place in it (clothed in appropriate figures of speech) will emerge in the twenty-first century only future historians of ideas can tell.” In J. C. Greene, “The History of Ideas Revisited,” Revue, p. 227.

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At the end of October, Greene reported to Mayr that the essay was finished and ready to be submitted to the Revue. While he mentioned he had made further adjustments, some of them based on Mayr’s critique, he maintained the essence of his views:

I am sorry that you do not think better of it, for I value your opinion highly, but I have concluded that our conception of what science is, how it develops, and how it is related to ideology, philosophy, and world view are so far apart that the gap cannot be bridged. You seem to think that science has ceased to be influenced by extraneous factors such as ideology and world view and that science can answer questions of human duty and destiny that are (in my opinion) philosophical and religious. I regard the former view as naïve and unhistorical and the latter one as unsound and dangerous – dangerous to science as well as society.

I assure you I have no brief for structuralism or for dialectical biology in the Marxist style, nor do I have any animus against the modern synthesis insofar as it is truly scientific. But when Huxley, Simpson, etc. begin to tell me that evolutionary biology is an all-sufficient guide to the meaning of life, right conduct, social policy, etc. etc. I say “No, thank you” and begin to examine their writings as specimens of the interaction of science, ideology, and world view. As I said in my collection of essays on the subject, the ultimate intelligibility of things, if there is one, is not scientific in any modern sense of that word.138

Science “yields a limited type of intelligibility,” Greene continued, “which can be used for good and evil,” but he insisted that “science knows nothing of wisdom.” Greene carried on in what was obviously a patronizing tone, so much so that even he had to acknowledge it at the end of the letter: “End of sermon!”139 Perhaps this was part of a calculated tactic.

Roger Recruits Mayr

At this point, Mayr felt he needed to express himself directly to Roger. He apologized for his tardy reply to Roger’s previous letter inquiring on a variety of topics, saying that it was

138 Greene to Mayr, 29 October 1985, Mayr Papers.

139 Greene to Mayr, 29 October 1985, Mayr Papers. He signed off: “May our dialogue continue indefinitely with mutual esteem.”

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“owing to my giving the Messenger Lectures at Cornell.”140 Then he got to the point: “I suppose

John Greene has now sent you his chapter which he had first sent to me for criticism. Frankly, I do not particularly care for it, but I believe that everybody has a right to his opinions.” As for

Mayr’s own opinion, he wrote, “Greene still operates with some rather obsolete ideas, and seems to evaluate everything on an ‘all or none’ basis. . . . It is said that John Greene is a very devout

Christian, and it seems to me that he is still fighting Darwin.”141

Roger promptly replied that he had heard “from Will Provine” about Mayr’s recent activities at Cornell, and that he had hoped to see Mayr at the History of Science Society meetings later that month. Then he too got to the point:

I just reread John Greene’s article and discussed it with him. Personally, I do not at all feel that he seeks to attack Darwin, much less you. What he thinks is that there is a difficulty inherent in any theory of evolution, and that is, it needs to reconcile a mechanistic explanation (which is the only one scientifically acceptable) and the indisputable fact of adaptation and the progress through its history. But your letter gave me an idea: would you write a few pages to explain your views in response to Greene? I will publish in the same issue of the magazine, immediately after his article. If you approve, I might even ask other evolutionary biologists to give their opinion. . . . This would make an exceptional volume, which might interest many people. . . . Tell me what you think of this idea. Obviously, the project is only realized if you accept yourself, to write a few pages.142

Mayr responded with a request for “a copy of [Greene’s] final manuscript,” explaining that “Indeed, I would now know whether it is worthwhile to answer him until I have seen what his final manuscript looks like.” Mayr admitted, “It is very difficult to deal with John Greene. He

140 These lectures coincidently formed the basis for a formal essay on his views of human ethics published in Toward a New Philosophy of Biology (1988), which he claimed to base on his scientific appreciation of evolutionary theory (see fn. 85).

141 Mayr to Roger, 6 November 1985, Mayr Papers. Mayr also severely criticized Greene’s commentary on Mayr’s “‘ultimate causations’ terminology for evolutionary causations,” but Greene did not appear to write on this issue in the final paper. Mayr had also previously mentioned his concern directly in a letter to Greene: “You might want to correct some of your unpleasant remarks on my terminology ultimate-proximate. This was the terminology of John Baker and David Lack, from whom I took it over, as I have repeatedly stressed in my writings and as is clearly stated by Sharon Kingsland in her new book.” Mayr to Greene, 21 October 1985, Mayr Papers.

142 Roger to Mayr, 11 November 1985, Mayr Papers. (Translated from French.)

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is such a nice person that one is quite reluctant to attack his ideas. Furthermore, there is no question that he sees the hand of God in everything in nature and therefore regards Darwin’s ideas with great distaste.” Mayr noted an example from a recent exchange with Greene, stating that it “showed again how different a pious Christian thinks from an uncommitted scientist.”143 It is interesting to note Mayr’s juxtaposition of “the hand of God” and “Darwin’s ideas.” In other words, it appears Mayr had made a perhaps latent psychological connection between a scientific appreciation of Darwinian theory, and an exclusively positivistic worldview as the only justifiable conclusion.

Roger sent Mayr the manuscript, while continuing to encourage him. He then reported to

Mayr that he had asked Greene for “an article on the history of ideas, of which he is an expert, because we want to develop this kind of history in our magazine. But I did not know what he would say. Anyway, I think the issue he discusses is interesting, even if I am not entirely in agreement with the way he puts it. Furthermore, although I have met him several times, we never discussed religious issues, and I am completely ignorant of his ideas on this subject.”144

Roger continued, “With regard to the substance of the problem, I regret not having the time to discuss it with you here in detail.” Still, he noted:

Briefly, I see two different issues: first, the use by some biologists of apparently teleological mechanistic formulas. That seems to me what John Greene discussed. This is not new. Even François Jacob lent Lamarck teleological ideas he never had, on account of expressions of this kind. Darwin complained, and rightly, to have been misunderstood for the same reason. It would be necessary each time to say – “everything happens as if . . . but we know that . . . ” – and that would be unending. The answer seems to me that easy.

143 Mayr to Green, 21 November 1985, Mayr Papers.

144 Roger to Mayr, 2 décembre 1985, Mayr Papers. (Translated from French.)

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But what appears to me more delicate is the use of teleonomic reasoning to determine the adaptive value of a character, especially in the past. Perhaps there is this risk if you are not very careful. I wonder what you think.

If you want, I can give you more time writing about it. I’ve sent you an offprint from a lecture I gave in Strasbourg a few years ago and where, drawing my inspiration from your ideas, I had developed the theme of ‘two biologies’? If I have not, please tell me and I will sent it.

I very much hope you will agree to write a few pages on the article by John Greene. It would be an honor for our journal to publish.145

Mayr shortly sent back to Roger “the uncorrected transcript of a quick dictation dealing with Greene’s essay.” Mayr had a request: “Before I start polishing it up and adding all the footnotes etc. I would like to have your reaction to this draft. My major objective,” he explained,

“has been to show up the backwardness of Greene’s interpretations and his rather astonishing inability to understand the evolutionary theory. It would be a pity if readers would think that

Greene’s conclusions are the last word on what the historians of ideas think about Darwin.”146

The following month, Mayr reported to his biological compatriot Michael Ghiselin the latest news of his Revue experience. Perhaps with the passage of time, portions of the letter can be considered with good humor. Mayr wrote:

Jacques Roger was so shocked by John Greene’s contribution to a volume edited by him on the history of ideas, that he asked me to write a rebuttal to John Greene. Although I have surely more urgent things to do, I finally obliged Jacques Roger, not that I will change John Greene’s mind (it has been made up since he was about

145 Roger to Mayr, 2 décembre 1985, Mayr Papers. (Translated from French.) Roger’s French text in which he discusses “the substance of the problem” as “two different issues” is as follows: En ce qui concerne le fond du problème, je regrette de n'avoir pas le temps d'en discuter ici avec vous en détail. Sommairement, je vois deux questions différentes: d'abord, l'emploi par des biologistes mécanistes de formules apparemment téléologiques. C'est, me semble-t-il, ce que discute John Greene. Ce n'est pas nouveau. Même François Jacob a prêté à Lamarck des idées téléologiques qu'il n'a jamais eues, à cause d'expressions de ce genre. Darwin s'est plaint, et à juste titre, d'avoir été mal compris pour la même raison. Il faudrait chaque fois dire : "tout se passe comme si ... , mais nous savons que ....”, et ce serait interminable. La réponse me semble donc facile. Mais ce qui me paraît plus délicat, c'est l'emploi du raisonnement téléonomique pour déterminer la valeur adaptative d'un caractère, surtout dans le passé. C’est peut-être là qu’il y a des risques si l'on n'est pas très attentif. J'aimerais savoir ce que vous en pensez.

146 Mayr to Roger, 13 December 1985, Mayr Papers.

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10 years old, I presume) but so that readers of this volume, particularly those outside of biology, get a stop-look-listen signal.147

Roger next wrote to Mayr a few months later, asking his forgiveness for the “long silence” due to his involvement with a busy semester. He noted:

I received your response to John Greene. I am ready to publish as it is, but if you want to send me a second version a bit more elaborate, it may be best. As I’ve said, I do not know enough to determine whether John Greene is fundamentally hostile to Darwinism for religious reasons, because he has never spoken to me [about it.] Perhaps you could discuss a little further what he is saying of teleology and its role and relationship to mechanism within the synthetic theory. But without removing from what you are saying otherwise.148

Roger also updated Mayr on his plans for the rest of that issue of the Revue:

I have permitted myself to provide the text of Greene and yourself to François Jacob, who like you responded with great liveliness, and to Charles Devillers, who with more nuance, clearly expressed his agreement with you. I think [Stephen Jay] Gould will also send me his reaction. I will publish it all together with a presentation that I will write myself. When I asked Greene for an article on the history of ideas in general, I did not foresee that it would come to this! But it is clear that all of the evolutionary biologists responded like you, and that is something Greene does not understand, or does not understand the same way as the biologists. It will be necessary to be careful as I am writing my own text!149

Mayr shortly wrote back to Roger: “I have once more reread Greene’s ‘The History of

Ideas Revisited’ as well as my answer to him and feel that there is not enough substance to

Greene’s essay to make it worthwhile to expand my piece. I think I have rather decisively refuted

147 Mayr to Ghiselin, 7 January 1986, Mayr Papers.

148 Roger to Greene, Le 24 mar 1986, Mayr Papers. (Translated from French.)

149 Roger to Greene, Le 24 mar 1986, Mayr Papers. (Translated from French.) François Jacob is a French biologist who shared the 1965 Nobel Prize in Medicine with Jacques Monod and André Lwoff. Charles Devillers was a French biologist, among whose other publications coauthored with Jean Chaline a work translated into English as, Evolution: An Evolving Theory (Berlin; New York: Springer-Verlang, 1993). Stephen Jay Gould was an influential Harvard paleontologist and historian of science. Roger’s original French text for this paragraph was as follows: Je me suis permis de communiquer le texte de Greene et le vôtre à François Jacob, qui a réagi avec beaucoup de vivacité que vous, et à Charles Devillers que, avec plus de nuances, exprime clairement son accord avec vous. Je pense que Gould va aussi m'envoyer sa réaction. Je publierai le tout ensemble, avec une présentation que j'écrirai moi-même. Quand j'avais demandé à Greene un article sur l'histoire des idées en général, je ne prévoyais pas que j'en arriverai là ! Mais il est clair que tous les biologistes de l'evolution réagissent comme vous, et qu'il y a quelque chose que Greene n'a pas compris, ou ne comprend pas de la même manière que les biologistes. Il va falloir que je fasse attention en rédigeant mon propre texte !

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all of his claims. His misconceptions are not worthy of more of an expenditure of time on my part.” Mayr added a list of corrections he had found upon rereading his own essay, which he had sardonically titled, “The Death of Darwin?” Indulging in a strident tone, Mayr argued that

Greene aimed to undermine the Darwinian revolution. He also sent Greene a copy of his short, sharp essay.150

In early June, after receiving a manuscript of the essay, Greene once again attempted to explain to Mayr his position, which Greene felt Mayr consistently missed. Greene wrote, “I am glad that you have had an opportunity to expound your views and to comment on those of Julian

Huxley as well. I cannot say that you have resolved the paradoxes and contradictions I thought to point out in your writings and those of Huxley, but perhaps the readers of the Revue de Synthèse will perceive the resolution where I do not. I leave the matter to their judgment. My only regret,”

Greene added, “is that you have misunderstood my own position with respect to Darwin, to evolutionary biology, and to the relations among science, philosophy, and religion.”151

He then listed the “main corrections” he would offer to Mayr’s “presentation of [his] views.” Greene noted that, while he considered “Darwin as a very great biologist, in the same class with Aristotle,” his opinion of Darwin as a philosopher “of nature and natural science” was hardly on Aristotle’s level, though perhaps “on par with , [Darwin’s] beau idéal of the scientist.” Greene also stated that he had “no quarrel with the idea that populations of organisms undergo changes in character as a result of differential survival and reproduction,” but rather objected strenuously to “describing evolutionary processes in teleological and vitalistic

150 Mayr to Roger, 11 April 1986, Mayr Papers. For the text of the essay published in the Revue, See Ernst Mayr, “The Death of Adam?” Revue de Synthése 3 (1986): 229–235. Mayr also republished the essay in his own compilation, Toward a New Philosophy of Biology: Observations of an Evolutionist (1988), pp. 258–264.

151 Greene to Mayr, 4 June 1986, Mayr Papers. This letter was subsequently published, See John C. Greene, “Letters to the Editors,” The Journal of the History of Biology 22 (1989): 357–59.

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figures of speech as you and Huxley and biologists generally love to do.” Neither did he

“ascribe . . . all changes in scientific theory to ideological forces, as any reader of The Death of

Adam knows.” Nonetheless, he was “interested in the way in which general ideas about nature, man, society, history, God, etc. influence scientific research and theory.” Greene strenuously argued he made no claim “that twentieth century developments in biology have ‘led to the refutation’ of Darwin’s theory of evolution primarily by natural selection,”152 while concluding that, “Darwin is dead (so are Aristotle, Descartes, and Newton), but Darwinism is alive and flourishing in an astonishing variety of forms (scientific and otherwise), some which make more sense than others. Whatever the case,” Greene added, “I beg you to rest assured of my high personal regard for you and for your outstanding contributions to biology and to the history of biology.”153

Greene would also respond to Mayr’s charge that it was “evident” he was “a devout

Christian” who “[could not] adopt Darwinism because he sees God’s hand in everything in nature,” and as a result, “Any attempt at a purely materialistic explanation would cause an insoluble conflict.”154 On these points, Greene wrote to Mayr: “I do consider myself a Christian

(though of the intellectual rather than the practicing kind), but no one except you has ever described me as devout!” Greene next responded with a few Biblical allusions:

But if I prefer to worship the true God rather than evolution, natural selection, science, humanity, fate, or any other inferior being, what of that? It does not, as you seem to think, require that I believe (as you indicate) that “evolutionary progression . . . is . . . clear evidence of the workings of the mind of the Creator.” That was Darwin’s position in the Origins, but it is not mine. I am not privy to the thoughts of the Creator, not having been present when he laid the foundation of the

152 Greene to Mayr, 4 June 1986, Mayr Papers.

153 Greene to Mayr, 4 June 1986, Mayr Papers.

154 Ernst Mayr, “The Death of Darwin?” Revue de Synthése 3 (1986): 232.

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earth while the morning stars sang together and the sons of God shouted with joy.155

Greene’s concluding riposte can be attributed to none other than the Biblical Creator

Himself, as paraphrased at the beginning of Job 38. But even without a traditional testimonial, perhaps there is a wider point that can be considered in Greene’s remark. After all, lacking an omniscient perspective – a broadly experienced human condition – there is little possibility of empirically securing a definitive understanding of the nature of time and space, and perhaps biological theory as well. In other words, natural methodology lacks facility for ascertaining an ultimate conclusion, as Mayr could readily agree. Nonetheless, in Greene’s view, engaging a biblical reference added something personally relevant to the intellectual exchange.

Mayr reacted favorably, or at least diplomatically – again a sign of his preference to avoid religious controversy: “Your answer to me goes ‘way beyond the call of duty.’ There was no need whatsoever for you to justify yourself to me. However, I am very glad to have your letter, because it tells me far better what your real thinking is than your recent essay. . . . As far as the major point of your letter is concerned,” he continued, “[regarding] the influence of ideology on science, I actually share it with you totally, and this should be obvious enough from my Growth of Biological Thought. I have constantly stressed the influence of essentialism, teleological thinking, physicalist determinism, etc.”156 He then added:

But of course as I made clear in one of my Messenger Lectures at Cornell, no research program or whatever you might call scientific Darwinism, is ever final, it is always being modified, enlarged, revised, etc. I am now working on a new essay volume of mine in which I will include a few unpublished essays, [Mayr appeared to be referring to Toward a New Philosophy of Biology: Observations of an Evolutionist (1988)], one of them dealing with the unfinished business of the

155 For a full text of the letter, See John C. Greene, “Letters to the Editors,” Journal of the History of Biology 22 (1989): 357–359.

156 Mayr to Greene, 11 June 1986, Mayr Papers.

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evolutionary synthesis. I think you will like these discussions, because I emphasize in them the open-endedness of science.157

Mayr finished his letter with a personal note:

No doubt you realize, John, that I wouldn’t devote so much time to discussions with you if I didn’t have a high personal regard for you, even where we disagree fundamentally. It has always been my principle to try to stay on good terms with those with whom I disagree. . . . Nothing has been as inimical to progress in science or intellectual thought as bringing personal attitudes into a discussion.158

With warmest personal regards,

yours,

Ernst

Moving Towards Publication

Prior to this exchange, and shortly after Greene had received Mayr’s manuscript for “The

Death of Darwin?” Greene sent Roger a second letter, addressed to the editors of the Revue de

Synthèse, similar to what he had written directly to Mayr as a response to Mayr’s rejoinder.

Greene admitted to Roger: “I must say I am discouraged and disturbed by Mayr’s total incomprehension of my point of view. I saw him recently at a meeting of the Darwin

Correspondence Committee, and I am happy to report that his manner, though showing some signs of strain of controversy, was cordial. I should really hate to lose his friendship and respect.”159

Greene also wrote Jim Moore, primarily about the Festschrift project Moore was organizing, and in particular about arrangements Moore was making for a biographical interview

157 Mayr to Greene, 11 June 1986, Mayr Papers.

158 Mayr to Greene, 11 June 1986, Mayr Papers. The signed copy in Greene’s papers, is signed “Ernst,” though “Ernst Mayr” is typed beneath it.

159 Greene to Roger, 1 June 1986, Greene Papers.

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with Greene when they planned to meet in England that summer.160 In the same letter, Greene confided to Moore: “You and I will have many things to discuss, including my latest interchange with Ernst Mayr, who has, at Jacques Roger’s request, supplied a shotgun rejoinder to my ‘The

History of Ideas Revisited,’ in which [in his rejoinder] I am labeled as being simultaneously a

Christian, an essentialist, an anti-Darwinian, and a promoter of the idea that the development of science is governed entirely by ‘ideological forces.’” Like he had to Roger, Greene also described to Moore his cordial, though strained exchange with Mayr at the Darwin

Correspondence Committee meeting. And, once again, Greene referred to the effect he hoped his latest work would not have on his relationship with Mayr:

I should hate to lose his friendship and respect. His misrepresentations of my views are not from malice or spite but from his total incomprehension, as a good scientist, of the point of view of an intellectual historian. He cannot separate science and world view and hence insists on regarding any questioning of his version of the Darwinian world view as an attack on science itself. In addition, he insists on imposing his own version of “Darwinism” to Darwin himself – a real historical anachronism.161

Soon thereafter, Roger sent a handwritten letter to Greene with an update on the project:

In principle, everything is ready for publication of your article and the commentaries it germinated: after the reply by Ernst Mayr, there will be a brief note from François Jacob (which is going in the same direction as Ernst Mayr,) plus two commentaries that are longer and nuanced by Stephen Jay Gould and also from a French (Darwinian) biologist Charles Devillers. And what is left for me is to write a few page presentation of the debate.

I think it will be useful to publish your response, or maybe at least some excerpt. It seems clear that Ernst and Jacob did not understand what you wanted to say, Gould and Devillers did understand a lot better, and my presentation will be such that the reader will appreciate it. In this condition it may not be necessary to publish your response. But I will think about it after reviewing everything together. Be certain your article is going to be taken more seriously then, and I fear for him, the too

160 Moore published the interview as the “Introductory Conversation” in History, Humanity and Evolution: Essays for John Greene, ed. James R. Moore (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1989), pp. 1–38.

161 Greene to Moore, 6 June 1986, Greene Papers.

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abrupt response from Ernst Mayr. You did the right thing by writing to him, but he is very difficult to convince.

As soon as I will decide, I will write to you. In any case, this letter is only for you. Please believe in my cordial devotion – Jacques Roger162

On June 17th Greene wrote both Mayr and Roger. To Roger he mentioned how

“delighted” and “greatly honored” he was that his essay “should receive so much attention from

. . . you and four eminent biologists.” Above all, he wrote, “I am delighted that the issues I have raised will receive a thorough discussion.”163 As for his letter to Mayr, he expressed “how pleased and relieved” he was that it appeared they “understand[stood] each other better now,” and how that it was “a great satisfaction . . . to know that we are still on terms of friendship and mutual esteem.”164

The Revue in Print

During July, Greene travelled to England, France, and Italy on a tour with Ellen, as well as to catch up with old academic friends such as Jim Moore and attend a conference on ‘Science and Belief’ at Oxford.165 While in Paris, Roger invited John and Ellen “to lunch,” which Greene later appreciated in a letter, saying how they had “enjoyed the occasion very much, so much so that I am afraid that I forgot to thank you properly. I always enjoy talking intellectual history with you.”166 Returning to America, Greene also sent a short letter to John Hedley Brooke (who he likely crossed paths with while visiting Oxford), thanking him “for sending me your two

162 Roger to Greene, Le 9 juin 1986, Greene Papers. (Translated from handwritten letter in French.)

163 Greene to Roger, 17 June 1986, Greene Papers.

164 Greene to Mayr, 17 July 1985, Mayr Papers.

165 Greene to Mayr, 8 July 1986, Greene Papers. While in England, John and Ellen met up with James Moore and family, and it was during this time that Moore and Greene engaged in a discussion eventually published as the 40- page “Introductory conversation” in History, Humanity and Evolution (1989), a festschrift Moore organized and edited in Greene’s honor.

166 Greene to Roger, 14 August 1986, Greene Papers.

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essays, both of them very well done and of great interest to me.” Greene told Brooke: “I saw

Jacques Roger in Paris and learned that my ‘The History of Ideas Revisited’ will be published in the Revue de Synthèse this fall with commentaries by Mayr, Gould, Jaçob, Devillers (a French biologist), and Roger himself. The commentaries will outweigh the article! At any rate I seem to have given the biologists something to think about.”167

In the introduction to the July-September edition of the Revue de Synthèse dedicated to

“The History of Ideas and the Theory of Evolution,” Roger described (in French) how the controversy over Darwin’s theory of evolution described in that edition presented “the unusual nature involving one historian pitted against a number of biologists.”168 He wrote:

This confrontation was not premeditated. Initially, we asked John Greene, a well- known specialist in intellectual history to write an article about his discipline. Since his article ended with a discussion of some contemporary issues involving the theory of evolution, John Greene sent his manuscript to Ernst Mayr, who was not pleased. We proposed that he write a reply that we would publish, and we also submitted the case to three other biologists, who were kind enough, despite all their other activities, take the time to read them and send us their feedback. They are warmly thanked.

It turns out that Ernst Mayr, François Jacob and Stephen J. Gould have also published important works on the history of biology. This fact adds to the interest of the debate, implicitly posing the question of two possible readings of a century of Darwinian evolutionism. But the fundamental problem, as posed by John Greene, remains that of mechanism and teleology and their place in the modern theory of evolution.169

Roger completed his introduction with an admission: “We have not resisted the temptation to add some personal reflections on these very rich texts. May the reader pardon us!”170

167 Greene to Brooke, 19 August 1986, Greene Papers.

168 Jacques Roger, “Présentation d’une Controverse,” Revue de Synthèse 3 (1986): 199. (Translated from French.)

Roger’s original text in French: “La controverse sur la théorie darwinienne de l’évolution que nous publions dans les pages qui suivent présente le caractère insolite d’opposer un historien à des biologistes.”

169 Ibid.

170 Ibid.

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The editors had asked Greene (and presumably the other authors as well) to present, in

English, a short abstract of his essay that would be published at the end of the issue. Part of

Greene’s summary follows:

The mechanical view of nature was a fusion of Pythagorean-Platonic, Atomist, and Judaeo-Christian conceptions of nature. In its dynamic Cartesian form it undermined the static Christianized Aristotelianism of Linnaeus and Cuvier and the Platonism of and gave rise to the idea that living forms, including man, were products of a law-bound system of matter in motion. But evolutionary theory introduced ideas of progress, struggle, chance, individuality, and mind-in- nature that were incompatible with a mechanistic conception of nature, thus creating a tension in evolutionary thought that remains unresolved to the present day. This tension is illustrated from the writings of Darwin, Julian Huxley, Ernst Mayr, and others, including some Marxist biologists.171

In contrast, Mayr’s summary of his essay, “The Death of Darwin?” argued:

John Greene’s claim that Darwin’s theories are obsolete, rests on misunderstandings. In philosophy and in the history of ideas Darwin was a great innovator and it completely misinterprets his thought to consider him a representative of the Galilean-Cartesian tradition. By introducing population thinking Darwin liberated us from the Platonian essentialism. Evolutionary progress for the Darwinian is not a teleological process, but the description of the adaptive elaboration of organisms from the simplest bacteria to highly complex multi-cellular organisms with a central nervous system and parental care. All of Darwin’s major theses have been confirmed by modern evolutionary biology. Indeed, Darwin’s thought is still very much alive.172

François Jacob, the prominent French biologist who in 1965 won the Nobel Prize in

Physiology with Jacques Monod and André Lwoff for their “discoveries concerning the genetic regulation of enzyme and virus synthesis,”173 contributed a short, sharp paragraph offering enthusiastic support for Mayr’s essay (translated from French):

171 John C. Greene, “Summaries of Articles: The History of Ideas Revisited,” Revue de Synthèse 3 (1986): 335.

172 Ernst Mayr, “Summaries of Articles: The Death of Darwin?” Revue de Synthèse 3 (1986): 335.

173 Sven Gard, “Award Ceremony Speech: The Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine 1965,” Nobelprize.org: The Official Site of the Nobel Prize, http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/medicine/laureates/1965/press.html, accessed 25 January 2013.

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Surprising is this text by the American historian John Greene because it goes against everything a biologist can think about the role of Darwin in the evolution of ideas. How, for example, can one write: “To a considerable extent, Spencer, Darwin and Huxley thought of themselves as simply extending to the world of life and history the conception of nature . . . as a law-bound system of matter in motion”? First, because mixing the thinking of Darwin with that of Spencer is hardly serious. Then, because it is Darwin who had probably done the most to replace the mechanistic and deterministic view of life with a probabilistic and populationist view. It is impossible not to be amazed by the suggestion that Darwin’s work would fall within the Galileo Cartesian concept that everything in nature is due to matter in motion. I agree with most of the criticism made by Ernst Mayr. That said, I struggled to find John Greene’s article relevant.174

Stephen Jay Gould, the Harvard paleontologist and historian of science, attempted a middle course by writing that “[the] exchange between Greene and Mayr is a double pleasure to read because it represents a commentary about history by two men who have, through the excellence of their own works, helped to shape the history of evolutionary thought. Yet I find that both men are talking largely past rather than to each other. Mayr writes to defend the specific mechanics of natural selection; Greene is questioning the philosophical underpinnings of

Darwin’s world view.”

Gould further noted that Mayr “[viewed] Greene’s paper as a subtle attack on Darwinian mechanism,” and that Mayr ventured “a speculation on Greene’s motive for questioning Darwin” due to his being “a devout Christian.” Gould acknowledged that he was “not attracted by this attempt to reinstitute the notion that science and religion are locked in a struggle to the death.”175

174 François Jacob, “Intervention,” Revue de Synthèse 3 (1986): 237. Jacob’s original text in French: Étonnant ce texte de l’historien américain John Greene car il va à l’enconre de tout ce qu’un biologist peut penser sur le rôle de Darwin dans l’évolution des idées. Comment, par exemple, peut-on écrire : « To a considerable extent, Spencer, Darwin and Huxley thought of themselves as simply extending to the world of life and history the conception of nature . . . as a law-bound system of matter in motion » ? D’abord parce que mélanger la pensée de Darwin avec celle de Spencer n’est guère sérieux. Ensuite, parce que c’est Darwin qui a probablement fait le plus pour remplacer la vue mécaniste et déterministe du monde vivant par une vue probabiliste et populationiste. Impossible de ne pas être stupéfié par la proposition que l’œuvre de Darwin relèverait du concept Galileo Cartésien selon lequel tout dans la nature est dû à la matière en mouvement. Je suis en accord avec la plupart des critques formulées par Ernst Mayr. Cela dit, j’ai du mal à trouver l’article de John Greene intéressant.

175 Stephen Jay Gould, “Commentary on Greene and Mayr,” Revue de Synthèse 3 (1986): 239.

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And yet, he also admitted: “While I think that Mayr speaks past Greene (though making numerous valid and interesting points along the way), I am not happy with Greene’s general argument in its own terms.” He did not consider Greene’s “illustration of the deep dilemma faced by modern Darwinians . . . accurate,”176 and added, “although Green is correct in describing a tension between old-fashioned mechanism and the statistical and historical character of Darwin’s theory, I would also hold that Green is incorrect in arguing that such a tension makes Darwin’s theory incoherent.”177

Charles Devillers wrote the third essay commenting on the Greene-Mayr exchange.

Devillers, a Professor Emeritus from the University of Paris known as a specialist in zoology and evolutionary theory, was likely best known to English speaking readers as the coauthor of

Evolution: An Evolving Theory (trans. 1993), written with the French paleontologist Jean

Chaline. Devillers argued that as a biologist, he “understood and shared the irritation and anger” of Ernst Mayr concerning Greene’s charge that a hundred and fifty years of research to build a

“materialistic evolutionary mechanics” produced “a horrible mix of incompatibilities, contradictions, ambiguities, and inconsistencies, all against the backdrop of anthropomorphic reasoning.”178 Nonetheless, Devillers admitted that some of Greene’s criticisms “concerning the use and abuse of a certain vocabulary with anthropomorphic connotations are worth mentioning.” He added that the use of such words, as often indulged in by Julian Huxley, invited replacement with better terms expressed in a “restricted, non-anthropomorphic sense.” Devillers

176 Ibid., 241.

177 Ibid., 242. Perhaps Gould was also confusing Darwinian theory as science, with Darwinism as a worldview.

178 Charles Devillers, “Où Vont Le Darwinisme et la Théorie Synthétique de L’Évolution? : Résponse à J. C. Greene,” Revue de Synthèse 3 (1986): 243. Devillers’ opening sentences in the original French: “Biologiste je comprends, et partage, l'irritation, la colère d'E. Mayr. Selon J. C. Greene, cent cinquante ans de recherches pur édifier une mécanique évolutive matérialiste n'auraient produit qu'un horrible mèlange d'incompatibilités, de contradictions, d'ambiguités, d'incohérences, le tout sur fond de raisonnement anthropomorphique.”

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concluded that in spite of these concerns, he felt “confident of the future” for an “improved theory of the evolutionary mechanics . . . being built . . . on the sound foundations as established by Darwin and the ‘Fathers’ of the Synthetic theory.”179

The concluding analysis, written by Roger and titled “Réflections sur une Controverse,” offered by far the most nuanced argument, and one that was diplomatically sympathetic to

Greene. He noted that when Greene and Mayr spoke of “Darwin and Darwinism,” difficulty arose “because they do not speak exactly the same thing,” but rather refer to a variety of issues according to historical and scientific context.180 He similarly pointed out that while he agreed with François Jacob that it was “unacceptable to confuse Darwin and Spencer . . . this was routinely done at the end of the nineteenth century.”181

Roger also offered an English summary of his critique of the exchange:

The author [Roger] follows John Greene’s analysis of the relationship between and teleology. In the second section of the paper, he tries to analyze the relationship between Darwin’s thought and modern Darwinism. Finally he discusses the problems of progress, human values and teleology in evolutionary theory. As a conclusion . . . [Roger considered] John Greene’s analysis a legitimate one, but the fate of a scientific theory depends on scientific work, not on historical analysis.182

Two Old Intellectual Troopers

In November 1986, both Mayr and Greene received copies of the published Revue, and both subsequently thanked Roger for sending them. Mayr also thanked Roger for sending his congratulations, as Mayr had recently been awarded the History of Science Society Sarton Medal

179 Ibid., 336–37.

180 Roger, “Réflections sur une Controverse,” pp. 261–62.

181 Ibid., 262.

182 Jacques Roger, “Summary of Articles: Reflections upon a controversy,” Revue de Synthèse 3 (1986): 337.

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for a lifetime of scholarly achievement (Greene would earn the same award in 2002). Mayr also wrote of the present state of his relationship with Greene: “John Greene does not seem to be too much upset about my criticism; I suspect he feels that in the end he will turn out to be considered to have been right. He recently wrote me quite a friendly letter.”183

Greene would write to Mayr again later that month, in turn thanking his friend in intellectual arms for sending him a “reprint with its friendly inscription. It was awfully good of you to send it – I appreciate the gesture and thank you for it.” Greene then summed up his personal feelings about their Revue exchange: “If together we have stirred up some discussion of important questions about evolutionary theory and its historical development, I shall be more than satisfied. The commentaries I have received thus far in response to . . . my article and the rejoinders by you, Jacob, and Gould have impressed me with the variety of opinions possible on these issues.”184

Greene then referred to a long letter he had received from Peter Bowler, historian of science and evolutionary thought.185 Greene told Mayr what Bowler had written: “You and I are both barking up the wrong tree on these issues [in considering that] Darwin was the central figure in the growth of 19th century evolutionism.” Bowler had also written to Greene: “If you and Mayr started off from a less Darwin-centered view of the 19th century, I suspect that you might be able to debate the issues of determinism, progress, etc. more effectively.” Greene also reported to Mayr that the Cornell anthropologist Davydd Greenwood was “much more sympathetic to my line of argument.” Greenwood had suggested to Greene that François Jacob’s

183 Mayr to Roger, 5 January 1987, Mayr Papers. Perhaps Mayr and Greene also crossed paths at the History of Science Society meetings that year, usually held in early November.

184 Greene to Mayr, 28 January 1987, Greene Papers.

185 Bowler to Greene, undated, Greene Papers. Bowler sent a copy of the letter with additional comments to Mayr. The probable date is sometime in December 1986.

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book The Possible and the Actual (1982) was “an elegant example of the dilemma you have laid out.”186

Their relationship continued to unfold as they exchanged news and views, with Mayr offering Greene a quick update: “Gretel and I spent a rather quiet summer at our country place in

N.H.” He added, “Be sure to le me know in good time, if you come to Cambridge. I will be here most of the (fall) semester.” Mayr also requested Greene to “please convey my greetings to

Shirley [Roe],” who served as Greene’s “replacement” historian of science professor upon his retirement at the University of Connecticut.187 The following December, Mayr sent another

“message of greetings, so we won’t lose touch!” He inquired, “How is your freedom agreeing with you? Presumably you are living up to the saying ‘An emeritus is busier than he was before retiring!’” Mayr shared the news that he felt “swamped” reviewing a “554 pp!” proof for his

“next essay volume.”188 At the time, Greene was working on an essay analyzing Julian Huxley’s worldview, and he inquired from Mayr about his experience working with Huxley. Interestingly enough, Mayr responded:

I greatly admired [Huxley] more for one quality of his than any other, his infectious enthusiasm right up to his old age. There must be an extraordinary number of young people who were inspired by him. . . . [But the] trouble with Huxley was that he had such a fertile mind that he rarely succeeded in settling down and doing a thorough job. His Evolution: The Modern Synthesis is rather chaotic in its organization. It is full of excellent individual thoughts but it has always been my

186 Greene to Mayr, 28 January 1987, Greene Papers. François Jacob’s book comprised a set of four lectures on evolutionary theory and the philosophy of science, reminiscent in tone of Jacob Bronowski’s better known public presentations on the subject. Interestingly, Jacob also offered a critique of sociobiology and scientific dogmatism.

187 Mayr to Greene, 4 October 1987, Greene Papers.

188 Mayr to Greene, December 1987, Greene Papers. Mayr also wrote to Greene: “Shirley Roe gave us an excellent colloquium yesterday. She is a wonderful scholar. I hope the students appreciate her.” In Greene’s reply to Mayr on December 9, 1987, Greene expressed concern that Mayr was attempting to make inroads to steal Roe away from the University of Connecticut! Mayr pleaded ignorance – though apparently Roe had accepted opportunities to interview at Harvard and the University of Wisconsin. See Greene to Mayr, 23 December 1987, Greene Papers. Greene’s letter from December 23rd is the last one Mayr kept as an archival copy.

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feeling that they did not hang together. He of course was much more interested in the broader, man-connected issues than I.189

Mayr also noted how he “recently” had been “interviewed about progress by Michael Ruse,” in all likelihood for the philosopher’s future publication, From Monad to Man: the Concept of

Progress in Evolutionary Biology (1996).190

To this, Greene responded: “I appreciate greatly your remarks about Julian Huxley. I certainly admire him as a humanist and, separately, as a scientist . . . but I think that his attempt to combine humanism and science into a gospel of ‘scientific’ evolutionary humanism a failure.

You will see why I think so from the enclosed manuscript.” Greene then restated his long held argument on biology and progress:

As to that much maligned word “progress,” I certainly believe that progress in human affairs is possible and devoutly to be hoped and worked for, but I do not see how concepts of progress and improvement can be introduced into biological science unless biologists revise their concept of nature to admit the idea of levels of being and their concept of science to admit value concepts. Until they do so, they will continue to be unable either to live with or to live without such ideas. Thus, your discussion of the idea of progress in The Growth of Biological Thought is left hanging in the air by your admission that biologists cannot agree on a definition of the term that is scientifically acceptable.191

Mayr often criticized Greene for his reluctance to show his own hand when criticizing others, and in this attack by Greene on Mayr’s vision for “progress in human affairs,” Greene declined to define how his own idea of a progress “devoutly to be hoped and worked for,” should be

189 Mayr to Greene, 5 April 1988, Greene Papers.

190 Ibid. Ruses offers a comprehensive survey of the history of evolutionary thought, pinpointing intellectual and cultural tensions to the “intimate relationship between evolution and the secular ideology of progress.” See Michael Ruse, Monad to Man: The Concept of Progress in Evolutionary Biology (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1996). Ruse offers an analysis of Mayr on pp. 410–410 (with excerpts from personal interviews) in a chapter examining the views of many of the architects of the evolutionary synthesis. Ruse wrote of Mayr: “In short, everything points to the conclusion that Mayr’s thoughts on progress are a function of the biological milieu in which he grew up in Germany and that which he entered America, spliced with the influence of Julian Huxley and with his present cultural convictions, especially those about scientific and technological Progress.” In Ruse, Monad to Man, p. 419.

191 Greene to Mayr, 10 April 1988, Greene Papers.

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offered as a superior alternative. Greene, of course, would demure that the extent of his critique involved the philosophical basis of the idea of progress as construed by a number of evolutionists promoting the concept as a component of the biological sciences, and not on the idea itself.

Nonetheless, he would admit that on a personal level, a Christian-based concept of human nature and ethical progress made more sense to him than Huxley’s evolutionary humanism, but that was a personal affinity hardly amenable to scientific investigation.

Mayr “enjoyed” reading Greene’s manuscript on Huxley’s worldview. He pronounced, “I think you got him largely right. Reading what you say strongly reinforced my recently published judgment that Huxley’s views ‘were not at all typical of those of the architects of the synthesis.’

He was an enormous idealist, and this quite often affected his judgment.” Mayr also offered

Greene a page full of critique, though mostly minor. Greene responded with a revised manuscript for Mayr in May, requesting from him permission to use excerpts from their correspondence in the footnotes of the article. In 1990 it would be published in the Journal of the History of Biology with the title “The Interaction of Science and World View in Sir Julian Huxley’s Evolutionary

Biology.”192

At the end of the month, Greene thanked Mayr for sending him a copy of his recently printed “handsome volume of essays” Toward a New Philosophy of Biology (1988). But then

Greene added:

I was surprised to find your blast of me [Mayr’s “The Death of Adam?”] in the Revue de Synthèse included, for reasons set forth in the letter I wrote you immediately after reading your essay. But since you insist on regarding my interpretation of Darwin and Darwinism as totally mistaken, we can only leave it to posterity to decide between us. The truth is great and will prevail whether it turns out to be my interpretation or your interpretation or something quite different from

192 Greene to Mayr, 9 May 1988, Greene Papers. For the published essay, See John C. Greene, “The Interaction of Science and World View in Sir Julian Huxley’s Evolutionary Biology,” Journal of the History of Biology 23 (1990): 39–56.

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either. . . . The world is so full of a number of ideas I’m sure we should all be as happy as kings – at least if we are students of the history of ideas.

Greene concluded saying he was about to leave for an academic engagement overseas. He cheerily signed off: “On to Israel and Dijon!”193

Mayr responded by more or less not responding. Though he did write to remark on points raised by Greene, he avoided the main one. Greene, however, did not leave it at that, deciding over the summer to approach Everett Mendelsohn, editor for the Journal of the History of

Biology. He described the backdrop of his correspondence with Mayr, and how Mayr had made a conciliatorily gesture expressing that he now possessed a better understanding of Greene’s position than what he had before the publication of their Revue articles. Surprisingly, Mayr then went ahead and republished his “shot gun rejoinder” without offering any of the backstory as context.194 In response, Greene wrote to Mendelsohn:

Since the readers of Professor Mayr’s excellent new book will be many and since most of them will have had no occasion to read my article in the Revue de Synthèse (and hence will have no reason to question Professor Mayr’s representation of my views), I am sending you a copy of my letter of June 14, 1986, explaining my true views to Professor Mayr after I had received an advance copy of his commentary. I send it in the hope that you will publish it and the present letter in your journal by way of setting the record straight. I know of no better way to reach a large number of readers likely to have read Professor Mayr’s commentary, and I cannot imagine that he would have any objection to my making this request of you. I value his friendship highly, and I would certainly not want to mar that friendship in any way.195

Mendelsohn replied in September after “finishing off a summer seminar,” that he

“certainly” understood Greene’s “reason for wanting to have [his] views put forward, since many

193 Greene to Mayr, 31 May 1988, Greene Papers. As it turned out, Greene was unfortunately unable to follow through with his travel plans.

194 Ernst Mayr, “Chapter 15: The Death of Darwin?” in Toward a New Philosophy of Biology: Observations of an Evolutionist (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1988), pp. 258–264.

195 John Greene to Everett Mendelsohn, 28 July 1988, Greene Papers.

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of the readers of the JHB will indeed be readers of Ernst Mayr’s collected essays.” After confirming publication details, Mendelsohn printed both Greene’s 1986 letter to Mayr describing his own “true views” and his letter to Mendelsohn requesting to publish them both in the JHB.

They appeared in the “Letter to the Editor” section the following summer.196

Greene also wrote Mayr, explaining his current course of action: “As I wrote you earlier,

I am somewhat concerned lest the readers of your book take your account of my views as gospel truth. (You will remember that I wrote you on June 4, 1986 to explain my views more clearly.)”

Greene explained why he approached the editor of the JHB, and how Mendelsohn agreed to accept the letters for publication. Greene added, “I would not wish to appear to be doing something behind your back, however – hence this letter. . . . I hope you will understand my concern for the correct presentation of my views. I could think of no better way to get them before the public interested in the history and philosophy of biology.”197

Perhaps because Mayr felt he had been caught “red handed,” not to mention that Greene had taken the high road, it was quite a few months before Greene received another letter from

Mayr. But the following spring, Mayr again wrote “just a note, so our correspondence does not totally fall asleep.”198 It is difficult to say what Mayr anticipated would be the response when he sent Greene the copy of his new book.

Fortunately, their vibrant correspondence soon rebounded once again. Nearly three quarters of their letters date from after the Revue exchange up until the year before Mayr’s death.

Though their correspondence served primarily as an exchange of views, manuscripts, and

196 John Greene, “Letter to the Editor,” Journal of the History of Biology 22 (1989), pp. 357–359.

197 Greene to Mayr, 25 September 1988, Greene Papers.

198 Mayr to Greene, 2 April 1989, Greene Papers. This is the first letter from Mayr in Greene’s papers after September 1988, though it is possible there were other letters exchanged in between.

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updates on the latest publications they each found interesting, there were also instances when

Greene made noticeable references to recently published works with theological or philosophical critiques of evolutionary theory, or otherwise commented upon the growing intelligent design controversy. Many of Greene’s statements suggested his intellectual sympathies for a theistic perspective. In all such instances, Mayr would soon noticeably cool off by not responding for several months. In fact, Walter Bock, a former graduate student of Mayr’s who spent considerable time with him during this period, once responded to a query as to how he viewed the nature of the friendship between the two men – was it genuinely without hard feelings in such circumstances? Bock’s reply: “I think that is the case from both sides. As far as I know, the thing that Mayr didn’t want to do was get in more discussion about religion or worldview or things like that.” Bock would add: “Mayr was of course an unbeliever and such, and John was not. And I think this caused a problem. John kept wanting to have more interaction with Mayr discussing this and Mayr didn’t want to do it anymore.”199

During the early 1990s, Greene would write extensive critiques of Mayr’s work as a historian of science, critiques that Mayr appreciated, albeit with mixed feelings. In a thirty-six page essay titled “Science, Philosophy, and Metaphor in Ernst Mayr’s Writings,” Greene described him as an “antireductionist and antideterminist and at the same time an antivitalist, antiteleologist, antitheist, and anticreationist. . . .[who] looks to Charles Darwin as a thinker who developed a scientific worldview fatal to both mechanistic reductionism and creationist finalism, and who laid the groundwork for a historico-organicist conception of evolutionary

199 Walter Bock, conversation with the author, 9 September 2010. In similar comments, Bock would also state: “I think John was really interested in discussing this more fully . . . debate about it and so forth. And Mayr simply, I think after awhile he didn’t want to do anything more with it.” Bock also mentioned, “The only [negative] comment I ever heard Mayr saying is he really doesn’t want to continue to discuss this problem with Greene. . . . his comment was, he didn’t want to get into all that anymore this debate with Greene. And he said it in a fairly definite way, a very strong, definite way.” Bock recalled hearing these comments “at least in the 90s, if not the 2000s.”

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development.”200 Upon reading a copy of Greene’s early manuscript, Mayr responded in a long handwritten letter: “On the whole, I think you have done a remarkable job of representing my ideas fairly. But every once in a while you have slipped.” Mayr then made a claim of himself:

Science has never been for me something “to loosen the grip of traditional religion.” Such an intent has been far from my mind, indeed I have been quite careful to avoid anything that might be offensive to my orthodox friends. However, I can’t help it if the findings of science make the claims of some organized religions rather ridiculous. And, the conflict is not between religion and science, but between “revealed” religion and science. And every scientist I know, no matter how much of an atheist he may be, has religion.201

In another lengthy critique written by Greene, this time of Mayr’s Growth of Biological

Thought, Greene described a rationale for his analysis of Mayr as a historian of science:

“According to Mayr, the historian of science must pay attention to the scientist’s ‘priorities and values’ and to the ‘silent assumptions’ that influence his scientific activity (GBT, 17). The same is true in evaluating a historian of science. What, then, are Mayr’s own priorities, values, and silent assumptions?”202

Greene argued that, while prior attempts at examining the history of biology could be accused of being “shaped by” a “polemical position with respect to the major issues confronting biologists,” Mayr in turn was “defending his version of the modern synthesis in evolutionary

200 John Greene, “Science, Philosophy, and Metaphor in Ernst Mayr’s Writings,” Journal of the History of Biology 27 (1994), p. 312.

201 Mayr to Greene, 4 September 1989, Greene Papers. An abridge version of this letter appears in Greene’s Debating Darwin (1999), pp. 234–235. The full version contains a list of critiques Mayr made to Greene’s manuscript. Greene provides in Debating Darwin a good selection of excerpts from their correspondence during the 1990s. Mayr deferred when Mendelsohn asked if he would like to write a response to Greene’s critique for the JHB. Mayr would regularly give Greene permission to quote from their correspondence in his essays.

202 John C. Greene, “From Aristotle to Darwin: Reflections on Ernst Mayr’s Interpretation in The Growth of Biological Thought,” Journal of the History of Biology 22 (1992), p. 258.

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biology against old-fashioned creationists, vitalists, and teleologists on the one hand, and mechanistic and mathematical reductionists on the other.”203 In contrast, Greene claimed:

My own stance as a historian is quite different. I have no commitment to a particular position with respect to the issues currently agitating biologists, and I see no reason to believe that the interaction between science, philosophy, and worldview (including religious attitudes) came to an end with Darwin or anyone else or is likely to do so in the future. Indeed, I view Mayr’s own writings as proof positive that this interaction continues in our day. The result is that, although I have the greatest admiration for Mayr’s historical defense of his central ideas and have learned much from studying his Growth of Biological Thought, I cannot accept some of his interpretation of key developments in the transition from Aristotle to Darwin.204

One of the last formal essays that Greene would publish in a prominent academic journal appeared to bring the Mayr-Greene exchange full circle, recalling its beginnings in 1959, when

Greene critiqued Mayr’s analysis of the debilitating effect of Platonic ideology on the development of evolutionary thought. Titled “Reflections on Ernst Mayr’s This is Biology” and published in Biology and Philosophy in 1999, Greene argued that “Mayr’s presentation of the history of science seems strangely ahistorical.” He claimed, “Biology as [Mayr] conceives it . . . was prevented from emerging in Western culture partly by ignorance of crucial facts but largely by the pernicious influence of a series of false ideologies beginning with Platonic-Aristotelian essentialism,” and followed by other unsavory influences like “Christian supernaturalism” and

“mechanistic physicalism,” all tied together in support of a static worldview at odds with dynamic population thinking. Greene slyly remarked: “In short, if Western culture had not been

Western culture, Darwinian biology would have emerged much sooner!”205 Fortunately, in

203 Ibid., p. 283.

204 Ibid., p. 283–284.

205 John C. Greene, “Reflections on Ernst Mayr’s This is Biology,” Biology and Philosophy 14 (1999), p. 104.

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Mayr’s view, the “influence of these false ideologies . . . could not prevent, the triumph of true science.”206

As in the past, Greene appeared particularly eager to attack Mayr’s presentation of modern biology as the most desirable wellspring from which to draw enlightened human values.

But then Greene also graciously concluded:

Those who know Ernst Mayr also know that he is, in addition to being one of the leading biologists of the twentieth century, a warm, sensitive, courageous human being as devoted to the welfare of humankind and the other denizens of the planet Earth as he is to the welfare of biology and the scientific enterprise. If, in defending his chosen calling, his way of life, he has claimed more for science in general and for biology in particular than a balanced view of human history, aspiration, and achievement can justify, we may perhaps forgive him. He is, as he himself has said, a fighter.207

Happy Birthday Ernst

In May 1992, Greene wrote to Patricia Williams, the philosopher of science organizing the International Society for the History, Philosophy, and Social Studies of Biology (ISHPSSB) meetings to be held at Brandeis University the following year. Greene suggested that Mayr

“speak . . . at a plenary session” in honor of his ninetieth birthday. Williams wrote back,

“Unfortunately, for every letter like yours, I receive another vilifying Mayr and all his works.”

She suggested it better to consider “organizing a session on Mayr,” and asked if Greene would like to do that. She acknowledged: “He is one of the greatest, if not the greatest figure in 20th century biology – a remarkable man. We really ought to have a session on his work, and with your knowledge of it, and of those who have commented on it, you’d be the perfect person to

206 Ibid., p. 106.

207 Ibid., p. 115.

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organize a session.” Williams concluded her response to Greene’s proposal: “I’d love a session on Mayr [for the next conference].”208

Over the summer, Greene got in contact with fellow scholars such as Walter Bock,

Stephen Jay Gould, John Beatty, and Michael Ghiselin, as well as of course Mayr, all of whom were interested in the project. Perhaps Greene felt inspired in part by a sense of guilt, as he admitted in a letter to Ghiselin: “Ernst has borne the slings and arrows of outrageous Greene for many years with remarkable patience and tolerance, and I admire him greatly.”209

Mayr was naturally pleased to learn of Greene’s efforts, and remarked in a letter: “It slightly amuses me to be able to attend a session normally dedicated to recently deceased persons. Well, I’m still alive and kicking.” He closed with a handwritten postscript: “I’m prepared to consider any of your suggestions!”210 Greene and Mayr also discussed potential speakers for the event. Later that summer Mayr would rave, “You are a magician to have conjured up such a powerful panel for the Ernst Mayr session next July! I very much appreciate your efforts.”211 In addition, Michael Ruse had offered to Greene “the possibility of publishing the papers” in Biology and Philosophy, the journal for which Ruse served as editor.212 Ruse

208 Patricia Williams to John C. Greene, 28 May 1992, Greene papers.

209 Greene to Ghiselin, 14 July 1992, Greene papers. Ghiselin was also arranging for a celebration for the 50th anniversary of the publication of Mayr’s Systematics and the Origin of Species at the California Academy of Sciences, and the two were interested in coordinating efforts.

210 Mayr to Greene, 2 July 1992, Greene Papers. Mayr and Greene were also conversing on potential speakers for the session.

211 Mayr to Greene, 21 August 1992, Greene Papers. At the time, Greene had lined up “Bock on Systematics, Gould on evolutionary theory, Beatty on philosophy of biology, and Chip Burkhardt on history of biology.” Greene to Williams, 14 August 1992, Greene Papers.

212 Greene to Williams, 24 September 1992, Greene Papers. Gould notified Greene in advance he would not be able to produce a paper for publication. As per comments from a number of participants, Gould’s presentation fell short of expectations.

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estimated they could publish in time for Mayr’s actual ninetieth birthday the following year (July

1994).213

The session went well, with Mayr participating in the commentary review in between presentations. Bock recalled: “I was most pleased overall with the symposium,” and continued to work with Greene by helping organize the papers for the special edition of Biology and

Philosophy, as well as arrange for the follow up presentation of the journal to Mayr on his birthday the following year. During the actual event, Mayr offered Greene his special thanks in his concluding remarks: “And last, but not least, I want to thank my good friend John Greene. He has been responsible for getting this together . . . and he has continued to be my good friend in spite of all the adverse things I have said about some of his writings.”214 One historian of science, Sherrie Lyons, reminisced about the event in a letter to Greene the following year, remembering when Mayr “called you up and thanked you for still being his good friend after all the nasty things he had written about you. I can tell you it was a very moving moment and was the highlight of the Conference for many of us.”215

Fortunately the symposium issue was ready in time for Greene and his wife to bring to

Mayr’s birthday celebration at his New Hampshire farm. There were also plans for Greene to make a presentation speech.216 Bock arranged everything with Mayr’s daughter, Christa, but unfortunately, just prior to John and Ellen leaving Connecticut, Greene became ill and had to

213 See “Special Edition on Ernst Mayr at Ninety,” Biology and Philosophy 9 (1994). Bock expanded his paper in lieu of Gould’s contribution. The final edition also included contributions from David L. Hull and Joseph Cain.

214 Ernst Mayr, “Concluding Remarks,” Biology and Philosophy 9 (1994): 374.

215 Sherrie L. Lyons to John C. Greene, 11 October 1994, Greene Papers.

216 John C. Greene to “Dear Colleagues,” 10 July 1994, Greene Papers. Greene kept a copy of his speech with the letter.

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postpone their visit until October.217 He would later amusingly recall that finally making the trip was quite an adventure!

We had directions for driving to the farm and first we turned into a wrong place and we banged up the bottom of our car hitting rocks and whatnot. I said, I don’t think this is the right [road], so we went down to the next road leading off to the left, and there was Ernst sitting on a rock waiting for us!218

Greene also remembered that “[during a] conversation around the lunch table,” Ernst made “a clear statement” that “people who were writing about evolutionary biology should be trained in biology, period!” Mayr also took John and Ellen on a tour of the farm. Greene was “impressed how he knew every flower, every animal and so forth. It was a fairly good size farm, you know.”

When later speaking about this visit, Greene would point to a photograph of Mayr with himself and Ellen (and Mayr’s dog, Stasha) on a side of a slope during their autumn walk. At the time he recalled that Mayr “really applied his biological and ornithological knowledge . . . he knew [all] the denizens of his farm, so to speak.”219

Returning to Connecticut, Greene reported to Bock:

[The] trip to New Hampshire to visit Ernst and Christa (and Stasha) was a great success. The fall weather was perfect, the foliage beautiful, and our hike in the foothills interesting and a good workout . . . Ernst seemed indefatigable and Christa supplied us with two delicious lunches. All in all, it was a very pleasant weekend.220

217 Bock had initially intended to be there with Greene, but wrote that he needed to attend an important meeting at the University of Zürich that July weekend. Bock to Greene, 21 April 1994, Greene Papers.

218 John C. Greene, conversation with the author, August 7, 2007. Mayr had sent Greene a handwritten letter with directions, and likely a hand drawn map as well.

219 Ibid. Greene kept a picture on his apartment wall of the photograph with Mayr he would also publish on page 116 of his book, Debating Darwin. Though the book reports it was taken in 1992, the correct date would be on the mid October weekend of the 15th and 16th, in 1994.

220 Greene to Bock, 17 October 1994, Greene Papers. Greene wrote to Mayr: “Ellen and I are agreed that our visit with you and Christa (and Stasha) was as enjoyable as could be: perfect weather, beautiful foliage, good food, and plenty of exercise! . . . Thanks again for the wonderful weekend. We hope you will visit us here in Storrs when the Tiffany lamps are on display, if not sooner.” Greene to Mayr, 18 October 1994, Greene Papers. Mayr would reply: “I am glad to learn that Ellen and you not only enjoyed your visit to New Hampshire but also that the climb to the Lyndeboro Mt. was not too much for you. Christa worried that I had taken you too far.” Mayr to Greene, 26 October 1994, Greene Papers.

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Mayr similarly wrote to Greene: “Thank you for those very nice pictures of your visit to my place in New Hampshire. What a memorable day it was! I wouldn’t need these photos to make me remember it, but they will certainly reinforce the memory of a beautiful day.”221

Greene and Mayr kept in regular contact over the next decade with a voluminous assortment of personal letters (in Mayr’s case, usually handwritten) filled with long analyses of scholarly issues and current events, as well as personal experiences such as moving into a retirement home. When discussing Greene’s 1999 book, Debating Darwin, which featured a chapter of excerpts from their correspondence, Mayr wrote: “Very many thanks . . . To be frank, before I started reading it, I feared it would be ‘the same old thing’ and of not much interest to me. However, when I got into it, I found some of it quite fascinating. I write letters on the spur of the moment and now I find that I had revealed in my letters a lot more than I have never told anyone else. I think my future biographer will find this very useful.”222

As time passed, their letters during the early 2000s became less frequent, especially whenever Greene attempted to prod Mayr with a discussion on religious themes. Nonetheless, in

July 2003, Greene wrote to Mayr reminiscing about his and Ellen’s visit to see Mayr at his New

Hampshire farm, initially intending to honor him on his birthday with the symposium volume.

Now he wished to once again offer his friend his “heartiest congratulations and best wishes” on the occasion of Mayr’s ninety-ninth birthday.223 Ernst subsequently replied in a handwritten letter thanking Greene for his birthday greetings, while also interestingly adding:

221 Mayr to Greene, 17 November 1994, Greene Papers.

222 Mayr to Greene, 2 April 1999, Greene Papers.

223 Greene to Mayr, 6 July 2003, Greene Papers. Mayr would reach his one-hundredth birthday the following year, though his health began to decline after. Mayr passed away on February 3, 2005.

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You are quite right in criticizing my statements of the contributions of science, being “for better or worse.” I should have said “for better and worse.” For “better,” is well illustrated by contributions of medical science, as illustrated by infant mortality, small pox, and by genetics to agriculture.

For worse is illustrated by industr. pollution, the population explosion and its impact on the environment, etc. Several books are published each year describing the adverse impact of applied science on the environment and indirectly of human well being.

I hope you are well! I had a [case of?] severe bronchitis recently which set me back rather badly! As one gets older one becomes more fragile!

With my best wishes for your health and happiness.224

Yours,

Ernst

It is worth noting, perhaps even intriguingly, that in Greene’s short handwritten note to

Mayr from July 6th, he had not expressed anything concerning Mayr’s “statements about the contribution of science being for better or worse.”225 What Greene did mention was that he hoped they could always “continue to disagree on important subjects with mutual respect and friendship.” It sounded, perhaps, that Mayr was rather responding to Greene’s concluding paragraph in The Death of Adam, written in 1959:

224 Mayr to Greene, 14 July 2003, Greene Papers.

225 At the risk of upsetting a heart warming ending – Greene likely sent Mayr a copy of his essay, “Science and Spirituality: A Dialogue with Ernst Mayr,” published in Canterbury Tales 35 (Spring 2003), p. 6. Canterbury Tales appears to have been the newsletter for Greene’s Canterbury Woods retirement community near Monterey, California. Greene’s essay mentioned that Mayr had written in the July 2001 edition of : “humanity has attained, for better or for worse, an unprecedented dominance over the entire globe.” Whether Greene sent Mayr a copy or not, Greene discussed similar themes in his conclusion to The Death of Adam, as well as elsewhere in his work.

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Is man in truth a kind of Prometheus unbound, ready and able to assume control of his own and cosmic destiny? . . . Science and technology, which were to have led the way to a bright new future, have become increasingly preoccupied with devising new and more dreadful weapons of obliteration. The historical Adam is dead, a casualty of scientific progress, but the Adam in whom all men die lives on, the creature and the creator of history, a moral being whose every intellectual triumph is at once a temptation to evil and good.226

It was to be their last exchange.

226 John C. Greene, The Death of Adam: Evolution and Its Impact on Western Thought (Ames, IA: Iowa State University Press, 1996), pp. 338–39. Greene, of course, wrote this passage during the height of the Cold War. He similarly wrote on pages 336–37: “There was another even more terrifying prospect which Darwin never glimpsed, namely, the possibility that man might perish from the face of the earth, not by some natural catastrophe, but by his own hand, because the progress of his intellect had outrun the progress of human sympathy and understanding. That this possibility did not occur to Darwin is highly significant. It shows how implicitly he assumed that scientific and technological progress would be accompanied by moral and cultural progress.”

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CHAPTER 7 UNDERSTANDING THE EXCHANGE AND SUMMING IT ALL UP

Was Stephen Jay Gould right in thinking Mayr and Greene talked “past each other” in their Revue de Synthèse exchange?1 Possibly, but not to the degree Gould suggested. Greene, for example, appeared more comprehensively aware of the issues involved, and drove the exchange with his concerns about Mayr’s historical analysis and philosophy of biology. Greene also appeared to know more about what motivated Mayr, perhaps more even than Mayr himself, as strange as that may sound.2 Mayr, on the other hand, understood the specifics of the science in greater detail than Greene, something which Greene would have readily admitted. Curiously, though, on many occasions when Mayr criticized Greene, he would express bewilderment as to how a theist (as compared to being a layman or non-scientist) could come to terms with evolutionary theory (a likely reflection on his own philosophical experience). In any event, philosophical sentimentality was an attribute hardly conducive to building a prestigious scientific discipline in an intensely positivistic mid-twentieth century intellectual environment, out of the

1 See the introductory Chapter 1, pp. 8–9.

2 Greene consistently analyzed Mayr’s professional scientific concerns fairly well, but Mayr would often lash out at Greene stating his concerns as a historian were religiously motivated. But, when asked if he felt this were true, Greene replied: “I don’t think so. We both reflected on a wide range of issues and reached opposite conclusions. . . . Mayr was much harder driving, but he never, would never [“stop” – unclear] writing to and answering my letters. He had a very kind personality. . . . I disagreed with him quite early, and if that’s pushing the issue [Greene chuckles], but he certainly was capable of counter attacks. The remarkable thing is we didn’t quit, you know.” Greene then was asked if he tried to move Mayr in any direction through his arguments in their exchange, and he replied, “No, I was just analyzing what he said. I am an amateur philosopher and no biologist at all. But there are these issues that transcend science. They’re, you can say, philosophical or metaphysical issues.” (John C. Greene, in an interview with the author, May 18, 2008). Here Greene continued to emphasize that their disagreements were not personal, but he does interestingly point out that his own concern involved metaphysical interests that transcend science, and this concern was not derived from a professional background in biology or philosophy. Interestingly enough, Greene commented the following day: “I don’t know if I had an agenda. . . . I was more or less just reacting to what I read . . . and I had developed my own ideas about science, ideology, and worldview . . . I guess I felt I had a truer idea of how things worked, than he did.” (John C. Greene, in an interview with the author, May 19, 2008). Perhaps Greene’s use of the words “truer idea” could reflect the concern for “metaphysical issues” he had commented upon the previous day. Greene’s careful choice of words does not make that interpretation entirely clear.

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seemingly disparate elements that went into the making of a unified science of evolutionary biology. This was his life’s main achievement, and the one in which he took the most pride.

Mayr was not the only biologist to feel confronted by Greene’s critique; many scientists all too often embed more than just science into their public presentations of evolutionary theory.

Perhaps an aspect of Mayr’s reaction, especially when that reaction was published in an open forum such as the Revue, was a perceived need to lead a counterattack with a show of philosophical force. By comparison, the specific argument employed would be less important in this context. Perhaps his arguments were intended more to impress leading scientists such as

François Jacob, which they did, even though historians of science, such as Jacques Roger, had quickly pointed out to Greene (and more tactfully to Mayr) that many aspects of Mayr’s essay

“The Death of Darwin?” appeared motivated by concerns other than a direct historical analysis of Greene’s critique. Devillers indicates as much in admitting that Greene’s essay pointed out areas of concern regarding the use of metaphysical language. Nonetheless, Devillers shared

Mayr’s “irritation and anger,” and considered the evolutionary synthesis resting on a “sound foundation.” But scientists like the Nobel laureate biologist François Jacob had expectations to be met, and Jacob expressed little patience for Greene’s analysis of intellectual history, viewing it as an attack on the integrity of science.3 Mayr surely appreciated Jacob’s support as an orthodox scientist with an international reputation, especially since Mayr felt a tremendous responsibility to defend the orthodox credentials of the neo-Darwinian synthesis that he had worked so hard to establish over a long career. The Revue exchange aside, Mayr’s historical interests were otherwise sincere. Over the decades he appeared genuinely interested to engage

3 Though Mayr may have not been aware of Jacob’s contribution to the exchange at the time he wrote “The Death of Darwin?” he surely was aware there were a number of prominent scientists who shared such views. Since Mayr could productively engage with Greene in private, the question here is what motivated his seemingly over-the-top attitude expressed in this public presentation? As brash as Mayr could be in print, this essay far exceeded his norm.

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the issues raised by the “historian’s historian of science,” if at least according to his capacity which far exceeded that of Jacob in his response.4

Undoubtedly, Mayr’s concerns were complex, as were Greene’s. Foremost among

Mayr’s interests was his long-standing desire to build the discipline of evolutionary biology.5

Though Greene admired the science, he also questioned all the metaphysical “side-projects.”

They were a problem to maintaining the value-neutrality of science. For example, Mayr would write that his naturalistic worldview expressed through his science was his religion, and it offered for him an experience superior to traditional religion. Greene, meanwhile, honestly admitted that he found the Christian tradition the best source of human ethics and value, but he did not make that issue central to his career, at least not overtly. Greene argued Huxley’s evolutionary humanism was little more than a cooption of the traditional values of Western culture packaged in a veneer of evolutionary theory. Perhaps it is no surprise that Huxley authored an essay, “Religion and Science: Old Wine in New Bottles,” with an opening quotation:

“The next great task of Science is to create a religion for humanity.”6 Greene had a difficult time

4 Greene commented on the exchange in a letter to James Moore: “F. Jacob certainly represents the incredulity of the practicing scientist to the intellectual history approach to the history of science. Mayr, at least, has been doing history long enough to know that things are not as simple as Jacob believes. My chief hope is that I started some discussion on fundamental issues.” (John C. Greene to James R. Moore, 4 December 1986, John C. Greene Papers, Archives & Special Collections at the Thomas J. Dodd Research Center, University of Connecticut, Storrs, Connecticut.

5 See Vassiliki Betty Smocovitis, “Unifying Biology: The Evolutionary Synthesis and Evolutionary Biology,” Journal of the History of Biology 24 (1992): 1–65; Joseph Allen Cain, “Ernst Mayr as Community Architect: Launching the Society for the Study of Evolution and the Journal Evolution,” Biology and Philosophy 9 (1994): 387–427; Vassiliki Betty Smocovitis, “Organizing Evolutionary Biology: Ernst Mayr and the Founding of the Society for the Study of Evolution and Evolution (1939–1950),” Journal of the History of Biology 27 (1994): 241– 309.

6 Julian Huxley, Essays of a Biologist (New York: Alfred A Knopf, 1923), p. 235. Undoubtedly Greene would challenge this essay as well as others from Huxley’s collection with titles such as “Progress, Biological and Other,” and “Rationalism and the Idea of God.” Perhaps they should be considered not so much as “essays of a biologist,” as compared to essays of a thoughtful person developing a philosophical outlook based on personal experience. An unfortunate irony concerning Huxley as a progressive visionary was his reputation for suffering from severe bouts of depression.

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rationalizing such visions of progress (or any vision of progress) as science, if only modern science as a professional discipline.

The first two components of this study presented an examination of the personal histories of Mayr and Greene to better understand the influences that shaped their worldviews and ideological commitments, and more specifically, the intellectual proclivities they each brought to their pursuit of the history and philosophy of science. Mayr’s worldview had roots immersed in

German cultural ideals, whereas Greene’s worldview was grounded in the American Midwest, with a family background going back to the early New England Congregationalists. Both grew up in educated families – Greene’s father was a Harvard-educated college professor, while

Mayr’s was a high court magistrate from a family of medical doctors. Both pursued advanced studies that led to Darwinian theory, and in particular focused on the intellectual and cultural influences that facilitated its success. Beginning in 1959, they each began to publish influential works analyzing these concerns. It also happened to be the year marking the hundredth anniversary celebration of Darwin’s publication On The Origin of Species.

The third component of this project examined Mayr’s and Greene’s professional backgrounds. Greene was initially interested in political science and American history, but during his time at Harvard, his curiosity piqued in what he saw as a profound shift in worldview from a static perception prominent through the European Enlightenment and Early American

Republic, to the dynamic contemporary worldview entwined with Darwinian theory. While technically he wrote his dissertation on American history, its emphasis was in intellectual history, and in particular the intellectual history of evolutionary thought. This same dissertation research provided the basis for his influential book The Death of Adam (1959), which established

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Greene as one of the leading intellectual historian of science and became a foundation for his academic career. His historical interests thus took him to science.

Mayr, as mentioned, came in contact with a number of respected European naturalists through his early interest in ornithology. Most notable among them was Erwin Stresemann, who subsequently encouraged the teenager to pursue his interest professionally, and facilitated his early career. While at the AMNH, Mayr came in contact with a variety of leading biologists, including a number who would prove fellow pioneers in helping establish the neo-Darwinian synthesis. Together they established the professional infrastructure for a highly respected scientific discipline. During the early 1950s Mayr changed course and moved to Boston, where his trajectory toward the history and philosophy of science manifested itself. Mayr’s experience as a highly accomplished zoologist brought him to the history of science.

Thus, Greene came to his study of the history of biological thought with a broad appreciation for historical context, and with specific interests in intellectual and cultural history.

Undoubtedly he had a comparative lack of practical experience with the technical scientific details. Mayr, of course, came to the history and philosophy of biology as an elite scientist with a personal interest to explore the larger context of his own and his colleagues’ scientific achievements. The weakness of this historical approach was a tendency to look at the past in terms of its relative contribution to the present. That tendency was all the more problematic given the author’s own participation in the historical events under study. Greene, however, appeared significantly more aware of this concern, influenced as he was by his training as a historian.

In addition, Greene continually professed that he was not critiquing Darwinian theory as science but rather critiquing its intellectual history by suggesting that leading scientists, and often

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without conscious intent, too often used metaphorical language that revealed ideologies and worldviews held close to their hearts but that otherwise had little to do with professional science.

Other historians, such as Jacques Roger, found value in Greene’s analysis, in part inspiring him to orchestrate the 1986 exchange between Mayr and Greene, as the editor of the Revue de

Synthèse. Mayr appeared to have a surprisingly difficult time perceiving a distinction between his achievements as a scientist and his personal view of the world. He could be dismissive even when discussing divergent worldviews (from his perspective) held by other leading scientists, such as Dobzhansky.7

Though Mayr claimed his proclivity for “Hegelian tactics” better got to the heart of problem and its subsequent solution, perhaps there is more to be considered about Mayr’s indulgence in such strategies. Mayr also appeared deeply influence by a positivistic appreciation of a naturalistic “reality” that could be exclusively perceived through empirical scientific methodology. As such, surely a “right” scientific conclusion on all such matters could be revealed.8 At the same time, Mayr enjoyed the company of people, and would admit that his tendency to be blunt could at times be problematic. Ironically, Mayr would also argue that scientific methodology lacked access to an ultimate metaphysical conclusion, and rightly so.

Nonetheless, on a personal level, he projected a certainty that his own perspectives on all matters were as close to right as right could be (even though he also admitted to changing his mind on occasion!) This is a familiar human proclivity undoubtedly shared by many, most of whom are not professional scientists.

7 For a summary of the variety of worldviews held by many of the leading architects of the neo-Darwinian synthesis, see Stewart Kreitzer, “Ernst Mayr as ‘The Darwin of the 20th Century’: Defining a Discipline while Defending a Faith” (master’s thesis, University of Florida, 2006), pp. 41–62, http://etd.fcla.edu/UF/UFE0015739/kreitzer_s.pdf.

8 Although in his last letter to Greene and likely elsewhere, Mayr could also admit there were things about the natural world that might never be known.

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In contrast, Greene’s background as a historian was responsible for his focus not just on the history of evolutionary thought but on an intellectual critique of what he viewed as an all too frequent, and often inadvertent presentation of worldview as science by prominent scientists such as Mayr. Mayr’s interests in science, on the other hand, and in particular his interests in his own science, led to his study of the history and philosophy of biology. It could be argued that Mayr’s focused appreciation held a kind of tunnel vision that challenged a broader historical examination of science. The common interest shared by these two scholars was the history of biological thought, though they each brought a significantly different academic toolkit to their study.

The fourth component of this project examined the specifics of the religious beliefs of

Mayr and Greene, and how those beliefs shaped and contributed to the dispute between them.

Though Mayr grew up in a cultured European family that identified with Protestant values,

Mayr’s family was also mildly agnostic. Greene similarly grew up in an environment of

Protestant values, though in contrast to Mayr, Greene’s family was mildly theistic. Though neither Mayr nor Greene recalled being victimized by ideological or metaphysical indoctrination involving metaphysical commitments, Mayr did participate in a program of state-sponsored religious education during his public school days. Ironically, an anti-clerical tradition was also prevalent on the Continent at the time. In contrast, though Greene would attend a Sunday school program and regular church sermons, he commitment to Christian metaphysics was left to him as a personal choice. Interestingly, to the degree that Greene admitted feeling confronted by “really bad sermons,” something he claimed he found not that unusual, he appeared to take it more as an intellectual challenge than a personal affront. Greene maintained he found something experiential within the tradition, specifically concerning its description of human nature, despite

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otherwise admitting he was unable to intellectually reconcile various dogmas with a modern understanding of the natural world. Though Mayr also professed respect for other people’s affinities to traditional religion, he could not find enough substance in it to reconcile the dilemmas he experienced while growing up. He broadly described theology as “the problem of evil.” He made it clear his difficulty was with the revealed aspect of theistic religion, and he claimed to have little attraction for inherited dogmas that demand fealty. His attempt to achieve certainty through scientific exploration offered far more potential, and that was something his personal experience appeared to justify.

Both Greene and Mayr were thoughtful about their philosophical views, and expressed much about them in their personal correspondence.9 For example in one particularly revealing exchange from 1994, Mayr wrote shortly after the publication of Greene’s essay, “Science,

Philosophy, and Metaphor in Ernst Mayr’s Writings”:

Curiously I did not uncover much [in your essay] that I would disagree with. When you say I am vague, I am indeed vague, because I don’t have clear answers. There is so much in this world I do not understand. That is why I claim that I have religion! (Even though I do not believe in a personal god. There is so much evil and awfulness in this world that I could not believe any god would tolerate it!) What I do say is that all that can be interpreted, [handwriting unclear] the Darwinian explanation remarkably well. But there are things we will never understand. And for me to invent supernatural explanations would be no help at all. It would mean sweeping all riddles under the rug.10

It is interesting that Mayr, a self-professed atheist, would equate the idea that “there is so much about this world I do not understand” with the declaration “that is why I say I have religion.”

Amusingly, Mayr appeared to profess a religious faith in an apparently godless “god of the gaps”

9 In contrast to Mayr, Greene did not publish essays describing his metaphysical inclinations.

10 Ernst Mayr to John Greene, 18 September 1994, Greene Papers. Mayr would also write that overall his personal life had been very good, and that he had few serious complaints other than losing his wife. Mayr added that, “There are a few things where I am still changing my mind, for instance, my former enmity against philosophy has as its target teleological empiricism. Now that we have a new philosophy of biology, which is not limited just to ‘logic chopping,’ I have no longer any ‘in principle’ objectives to philosophy.”

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argument!11 In any event, his argument leaned on sympathies that could be identified with certain schools of natural theology – an appreciation of religion as an attempt to reconcile human experience with the empirically unknown.

Mayr bluntly admitted, and with reasoning Darwin had used during his later years, that the idea of a personal God was too difficult to reconcile with a rational explanation of the numerous challenges overwhelming life on Earth. All the same, resolving the so-called “problem of evil” is not a scientific question. An introspective inquirer should not expect a conclusive answer from Darwinian theory to any such questions, unless, of course, it is a testament of faith that all unanswerable questions can be exclusively, and successfully, directed to the natural sciences. That sort of faith in natural science is something other than the practice of professional science. Mayr’s dismissal of the so-called supernatural, suggested a faith in a positivistic analysis.12

Mayr at times accused Greene of having difficulties with Darwinian theory because of a theistic sentiment that placed all unanswered questions in the hands of God, a proclivity Mayr could be said to have replaced with affection for Darwin. A polemical attack like this could suggest that Mayr perceived, on some level, a potential challenge from a competing metaphysical ideology. The fact of the matter is that Greene never claimed to deny the veracity of Darwinian theory, but rather that his critique concerned nonscientific ideologies too often hidden behind it. He additionally criticized Dobzhansky for doing just that same thing, though with a Christian sympathetic ideology of evolutionary progress. Greene held a broad

11 Also referred to as an “anything but god of the gaps” argument – in other words, metaphysical naturalism.

12 Undoubtedly the use of the term “supernatural” has a long history in western intellectual history. But if something were beyond the capacity of a natural explanation, as Mayr suggested in a letter to Greene, then such a phenomenon would in a sense be “super natural,” or superior to naturalistic methodology. Whether or not that is evidence of a Platonic ideal or revealed religion is another matter.

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appreciation of religious expression, with the so-called revealed religions not the only source of difficulties.

Mayr concluded his 1994 epistolary exchange with Greene with a genuinely endearing message, as he would often do. He wrote: “How wonderful that our disagreements have led to cement our friendship! This is all due to your tolerance, because I suspect I was sometimes rather aggressive. I guess I have been a fighter all my life. Very many thanks for your friendship! –

Ernst.”13 Once again, it is difficult not to admire that no matter how hard-nosed Mayr could be, there was also something very sincere and human, and almost, ironically, humble about him.

Greene’s reply to Mayr’s letter was just as interesting, It was written while he was finalizing arrangements to visit Mayr at his New Hampshire farm in October 1994. Greene wrote:

In regard to . . . your letter, I, too, am less confident of the truth and adequacy of my assertions than might appear. At times I think that I should call myself an “Anglican agnostic,” i.e. one who finds the Episcopal liturgy moving and challenging but who has intellectual difficulties in arriving at interpretations of basic Christian doctrines compatible with accepting science as a valid way to studying nature. . . . On the philosophical level, moreover, I find that the intellectual difficulties presented by Christian doctrine are no greater than those presented by your emergentist scenario or by T. H. Huxley’s idea of “nature’s grand progression from blind force to conscious will and intellect.”14

Greene also reflected on “the problem of evil,” in response to which he admitted “I have no satisfactory answer, but I doubt that Darwinism supplies one either.” He then asked: “How can it be that a creature produced by the struggle for existence should stand in judgment on that

13 Mayr to Greene, 18 September 1994, Greene Papers.

14 Greene to Mayr, 22 September 1994, Greene Papers. Greene added as a personal testimonial of his Christian faith: “I cannot claim to have ever had an experience of God-in-Christ, but when I reflect that Christian faith is not primarily an intellectual quest but rather a challenge and invitation to attempt an experiment in living after the model and teaching of Jesus, and when I recognize further that (as Ellen continually reminds me) I have made no such attempt but have devoted myself almost exclusively to the devices and desires of my own heart, namely the study of intellectual history, I then realize that I have no right or reason to expect to attain experiential knowledge of God-in- Christ.”

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process, as Darwin does in contemplating ‘the clumsy, wasteful, blundering, low, and horribly cruel works of nature’?”15 How could Darwin, or anyone, Greene seemed to wonder, consider themselves in a position to offer a comprehensive “judgment” on the meaning of natural selection, while at the same time admitting to being enmeshed within that very same process. In other words, the experience of the intellectual inquirer would be limited to a relative perception from within the matrix, so to speak, and thus lack ultimate objectivity for examining the phenomenon.16

Perhaps Darwin, and subsequently Mayr, could be accused of indulging in a

“teleological” appreciation of natural selection when claiming that the evidence suggested chance as an ultimate reality. But there is a difference between utilizing naturalistic methodology in an empirical investigation, and indulging in metaphysical naturalism by claiming chance is the final cause.17 In such a scenario, Darwin admitted all a human could do was find meaning wherever he or she could, which in a sense is prescribing human values based on his own metaphysical conclusions. Undoubtedly Darwin, as a thoughtful human being, was interested to seek out the greatest good for the greatest number. Nonetheless, is it the responsibility or natural conclusion of evolutionary theory, as a natural science, to determine human values based on

15 Ibid.

16 Perhaps another argument reminiscent of Greene’s Job 38 testimonial. In The Evolution–Creation Struggle (2005), Michael Ruse points out: “One might argue (in a toned-down version of Platinga’s argument against naturalism) that if we are the products of selection, then we should not expect to have that lead to knowledge of ultimate reality or nonreality. As of all people has so rightly said: ‘Modern physics teaches us that there is more to truth than meets the eye; or that meets the all too limited human mind, evolved as it was to cope with medium-sized objects moving at medium speeds through medium distances in Africa.’ … Perhaps there are things beyond – forever beyond – our ken.” See Michael Ruse, The Evolution–Creation Struggle (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2006), p. 284. The Dawkins quotation is taken from: Richard Dawkins, A Devil’s Chaplain: Reflections on Hope, Lies, Science, and Love (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2003), p. 19.

17 Perhaps it is just as easy to claim, “the appearance of design is the result of chance,” as it to argue, “the appearance of chance is by design.” In both scenarios the metaphysical consideration of chance or design are philosophically analyzed in terms of human experience and value.

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metaphysics? Whatever the case may be, it is not clear how it would be expected that an empirical scientific study should reach final conclusions in response to speculative questions about ultimate causation and human ethics.

An irony here is that no matter what metaphysical convictions a scientist upholds, the testable scientific evidence remains the same, as does the methodological criteria for judging a scientific result. Greene would argue that there was a “tendency of evolutionary biologists,” much like their Bridgewater Treatise predecessors, to bring their sense of teleology with them to the study of the natural world – thus rather than finding sermons in stones, they brought them “to the stones.”18 Of historical interest, only a few years after the publication of William Paley’s famous treatise Natural theology, or, Evidences of the existence and attributes of the Deity collected from the appearances of nature (1802), the 18th century German philosopher, Jakob

Friedrich Fries, explicitly argued in Knowledge, Belief, and Aesthetic Sense (1805), that human beings bring metaphysical purpose, or teleology, to their observations of the natural world.19

Perhaps that is what they metaphysically find, reflected back at them.20

Whatever the case may be concerning attempts to empirically capture an ultimate reality,

Mayr’s and Greene’s exchange of letters in 1994 offered a number of direct perspectives into

18 John Greene, “Introductory Conversation,” in History, Humanity, and Evolution: Essays for John Greene, ed. James Moore (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1989), pp. 9–10.

19 Jakob Friedrich Fries, and Frederick Gregory, Knowledge, Belief and Aesthetic Sense (Köln: J. Dinter, Verlag für Philosophie, 1989). Gregory offers an overview of Fries’ book in the introduction. For additional analysis of J. F. Fries philosophical perspectives, see Frederick Gregory, “‘Nature is an Organized Whole’: J. F. Fries’s Reformulation of Kant’s Philosophy of Organism,” in in Science: Science in Europe, 1790–1840, eds. Stefano Poggi and Maurizio Bossi (Boston: Kluwer Academic, 1994), p. 93.

20 Mayr presented arguments for dealing with teleology and purpose in a scientifically manageable form in an essay originally published in 1974 as “Teleological and Teleonomic: A New Analysis,” in Methodological and Historical Essays in the Natural and Social Sciences, eds. Robert S. Cohen and Marx W. Wartosfsky (Boston: Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science, 1974), pp. 91–117. Mayr reprinted the essay near verbatim as “The Multiple Meanings of Teleological,” in Toward a New Philosophy of Biology (1988), pp. 38–66. He also discussed his views in “The Problem of Teleology,” in The Growth of Biological Thought (1984), pp. 47–51.

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their sense of a religious worldview. Interestingly, Mayr described this exchange as the “‘swan song’ of [their] dialogue,” suggesting it was the furthest limit to which he wished to pursue the topic.21 Whereas Greene could compartmentalize his religious worldview as something distinct from his academic career (though hardly distinct from his sense of self), it was less clear that

Mayr could make a similar distinction between his psychological proclivities as a human being and his interests and responsibilities as a scientist. Greene directed exactly this complaint at

Dobzhansky’s Christian-influenced presentation of Darwinian theory – that it is difficult to distinguish whether Dobzhansky considered himself speaking as a philosopher, a theologian, a scientist, or just a generally thoughtful human being. Are Mayr’s “religious” views, akin to

Huxley’s evolutionary humanism, a certain conclusion to a genuine scientific investigation?

Mayr’s presentation suggested that this was a likely probability.

Greene admitted in his critique of Huxley’s evolutionary humanism that he and Huxley shared a number of values. But Greene’s view was that these values came from the long experience of western civilization in its Greco-Roman heritage, Judeo-Christian theology, and in the experience of the European Enlightenment. Huxley, meanwhile, only recently coopted these values and wrapped them within a revelation he claimed was exclusive to an evolutionary perspective.22 Though Greene admitted he found challenges in his personal allegiance to a worldview influenced by Christian theology, he claimed to see similar yet more problematic philosophical dilemmas in Huxley’s evolutionary humanism. Meanwhile, though Mayr was dismissive when confronted by a philosophical worldview different from his own (and all the more so if that person was a leading evolutionary biologist like himself), he nonetheless wished

21 Mayr to Greene, 18 September 1994, Greene Papers.

22 The most obvious example from Huxley’s prolific work is: Religion without Revelation (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1927).

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to remain respectful when others – at least according to his perception – suffered from excessive sentimentality. Even though Mayr was hardly shy (or perhaps never shy) about expressing his personal opinions, he was not, unlike like Huxley, an enthusiast for evangelizing metaphysical views.

Greene’s background in an academic environment supportive of liberal Protestant values, left him with a respect for a voluntary and genuine religious commitment, a commitment he personally found at first in the Congregational tradition and later in the Episcopalian service.

Though Greene did not consider himself a standard bearer for these traditions, he felt they had something significant to say about human nature and values that he did not find elsewhere. There is no evidence that Greene felt societal pressure to make any such personal commitments.

Mayr, meanwhile, professed to share Greene’s attraction to Protestant values, but he could not find resolution between what he had experienced in his own life, and the concept of a personal God. Apparently, while among missionaries in New Guinea, he had made the attempts a young man to renew his religious commitment, but he found himself unable to rationally reconcile the intellectually challenging aspects of Christian dogma. Though he was hardly reserved about expressing his own views and occasionally wrote about his own sense of values based on his experience as an evolutionary biologist, he did not make it a career to evangelize his metaphysical views, claiming he also respected the personal commitments of others (though on occasion justifying his own commitments in a way that would appear patronizing).

Nonetheless, in Mayr’s published essays on human ethics, in works like Toward A New

Philosophy of Biology (1988), it is difficult to find a distinction between Mayr the scientist and

Mayr the ethical philosopher. Greene argued that that was the crux of his critique – that Mayr could not understand the problematic nature of his regular use of value-laden metaphors within

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his presentations of evolutionary biology. Mayr, meanwhile, could appreciate there was intellectual substance in Greene’s analysis of the history of biological thought, but with Mayr’s metaphysical views so intimately enmeshed within his scientific career, it was difficult to compartmentalize one from the other. When feeling challenged, especially in a public forum, he could lash out in defense of a critique of one view as an attack on all. In that sense, there was cross-talk going on in the Revue exchange; Mayr argued against Greene as if Greene were attacking Darwinian theory as a science, whereas Greene claimed to limit his critique to the intellectual development of the theory that included a form of Darwinian worldview that, to the exclusion of other traditions, proposed to have answers to all the problems of humankind.

Though Greene felt he found on a personal level a superior sense of values in his understanding of Christian theology, promoting that appreciation was not a noticeable part of his academic career.

The fifth component of this study explored the historical details of the relationship between Mayr and Greene, and how their exchange brought the issue of science, ideology, and worldview into sharp focus. Mayr and Greene first crossed paths during the 1959 Darwin

Centennial Celebrations of the publication of On The Origin of Species. Mayr, as well as many of the architects of the synthesis, saw the event as an opportunity to celebrate the establishment of a wide consensus on Darwinian theory and the mechanics of natural selection. At the same time, the event also proved itself to be a platform for advocates wishing to promote something more philosophically ambitious – a synthesis of evolutionary and metaphysical thought. The prominent example was Sir Julian Huxley’s “sermon” on evolutionary humanism from the pulpit of the Rockefeller Chapel at the University of Chicago celebrations. Greene rightly saw an increasing tendency among leading biologists to incorporate teleological language within their

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public presentations of evolutionary biology, and he pointed out as examples not just Huxley, but also Dobzhansky and his writings that promoted evolutionary progress laden with constructs sympathetic to a Christian worldview. Greene felt that while many of these scientists were not entirely aware of their tendency to mix scientific analysis with language that suggested something more, they nonetheless had the potential to create serious difficulties.

The first correspondence between Greene and Mayr occurred shortly after the conclusion of the Chicago celebrations. As the 1960s came to a close, Mayr and Greene crossed paths once again as they both offered critiques of Marvin Harris’ analysis of the detrimental influence of

Darwin and Spencer on early anthropological studies. Mayr subsequently found himself genuinely impressed with Greene’s critique of Thomas Kuhn’s model of “scientific revolutions” which suggested that Kuhn’s theories were a better fit for the physical sciences, than they were for the biological sciences. Mayr then invited Greene to participate in the AAAS sponsored conference that he had organized to study the history of the evolutionary synthesis. The two also began to exchange copies of their manuscripts, soliciting comments from the other while Mayr was working on The Growth of Biological Thought in the late 1970s, and Greene was working on Science, Ideology, and World View. At this point, their exchange began to focus sharply on the issues referred to in Greene’s title.

For obvious reasons, Greene was more keen to solicit Mayr’s views than Mayr was to solicit his. After all, Mayr was counted among the century’s leading evolutionary biologists, and he was now working in the history and philosophy of science. Suffice it to say, Greene found many instances where Mayr incorporated personal meaning in metaphorical language into public science, and in ways that Mayr appeared genuinely oblivious to. Greene’s critique of Huxley, with whom Mayr philosophically aligned himself concerning his own admittedly “religious”

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worldview, inspired an interesting response from Mayr, not all of it critical.23 Arguably, it was

Greene who drove this exchange forward, particularly since Mayr was a living example of a prominent scientist who genuinely appreciated the importance of the history and philosophy of science, yet who could also genuinely confuse the role of science, ideology, and worldview in his own work. For Mayr’s part, he appeared to also genuinely appreciate there was something intellectually significant about Greene’s historical critique, while also suspecting parts of it were philosophically motivated by a religiously motivated aversion to Darwinian theory. Nonetheless,

Mayr offered a strong recommendation to the publishers on behalf of Greene’s work, and continued to actively correspond with Greene throughout their senior years.

Coincidently, with the publication Mayr’s historical magnum opus, The Growth of

Biological Thought (1982), Greene redoubled his focus on the use of teleological metaphor in

Mayr’s scientific work and philosophical analyses. While this was likely in part due to Mayr’s growing importance in the field, Greene would also soon retire from teaching and thus have time to pursue his intellectual interests in ideology and the evolutionary synthesis. Greene spoke on the topic at a history of science conference held in Berkeley in 1985, which led to an offer to publish in Jacques Rogers’ Revue de Synthèse, an important French journal exploring intellectual history and the sciences. Roger also solicited Mayr, and other leading scientists engaged with evolutionary biology, for comments and a rebuttal. Mayr responded to Greene’s essay “The

History of Ideas Revisited” with his double-barreled polemic, “The Death of Darwin?” Mayr lashed out at Greene’s critique on the intellectual history of evolutionary thought as if it were an attempt to undermine the scientific legitimacy of Darwinian theory. But, in his role as a leading evolutionary scientist, Mayr would have perhaps better served the cause by instead defending

23 In particular, in Mayr to Greene, 18 September 1994, Greene Papers.

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evolutionary biology as a scientific discipline, rather than by leaving the impression of having defended Darwinism as a comprehensive worldview, itself all too often evangelized as ideology.

Greene would summarize the crux of their dispute as follows:

To me . . . it seemed obvious that science as conceived since the seventeenth century ignored the value aspect of reality in its attempt to discover how nature works and hence was in no position to provide a basis for ethics of any kind. . . . In return, Mayr denied that evolutionary biologists were trying to derive ethics from science. They contended only that ethical principles were indispensable to the functioning of societies and that natural selection had produced in the human animal “open programs” which permitted the development of ethical beliefs. In my view, this line of argument conceded what I had been insisting on, namely, that science by its self-definition is confined to the study of what is and has no way to ascertain what ought to be. As to “non-material causation,” the investigator as a scientist might choose to reject this idea a priori, but that in no way constrained him to do the same in his investigations as a philosopher, unless science and philosophy were the same thing (which, I suggested to Mayr, seemed to be the nub of the issue between us.) The rules governing science should not be conceived as embracing the entire field of rational inquiry. To do so would make it impossible to say why science itself is valuable or important.24

Fortunately, despite some bumps along the road, their relationship soon rebounded.

Among the highlights, Greene proposed and organized a 90th birthday symposium dedicated to

Mayr’s accomplishments as an important ornithologist and one of the leading evolutionary biologists of the twentieth century (if not the leading evolutionary biologist), along with his subsequent influential career exploring the history and philosophy of biology. Years later,

Greene would mention that Mayr remained “very much in my thoughts still.” He fondly recalled seeing Mayr sitting in the front row at the symposium. After the last presentation, Mayr indicated to Greene (who had presided over the festivities as master of ceremonies) that he would like to say a word. Greene recalled: “I invited him to the podium, and he said some nice things about me, and then he came over and embraced me. I tell you this story just to emphasize the fact that throughout our whole debate, you might say, written and otherwise, we remained good friends.”

24 John C. Greene, Debating Darwin: Adventures of a Scholar (Claremont, CA: Regina Press, 1999), p. 23.

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Greene concluded: “He was a convinced atheist, and I was a Christian of sorts, and we traded some pretty sharp blows . . . he called it our mutual education correspondence.”25

Around the time of the Revue exchange, Greene revealed in an exchange with James

Moore concerns that he also engaged in his dispute with Mayr:

All science has ideology overtones and elements of worldview, but there is a strong element of honest inquiry inspired by the desire to know for the sake of knowing. Newton’s laws of motion and the law of universal gravitation were a great intellectual achievement, as was Darwin’s theory of natural selection whatever the ideological context in which they arose.26

Moore replied:

There may be, as you say, “a strong element of honest inquiry inspired by the desire to know for the sake of knowing” in the history of science, but this element is no guarantee that the knowledge produced will be a non-contingent reflection of some platonic world of natural truths. . . . There is a real world; it doesn’t go out of existence when we’re asleep or dead. But our knowledge of the real world is always and inevitably mediated by the conditions under which we organize ourselves into societies.27

To which Greene concluded:

You comment . . . “our knowledge of the real world is always inevitably mediated by the conditions under which we organize ourselves into societies.” I suppose at bottom I think that human beings transcend in some degree, however, both nature and society. True, we are conditioned in our thinking in many ways – e.g. by prevailing ideas and feelings about nature, human nature, etc. But I do not believe that we are absolutely conditioned (which may make a mockery of freedom) or even that, to the extent that we are conditioned, the conditioning boils down to “the way societies are organized with respect to production.”28

Greene appeared to consider that there was autonomy to human being as individuals, and that perhaps individuals thus had the potential to transcend conditioning, societal and otherwise.

Thus, in the end, he found real value in scientific endeavor that idealized objective inquiry

25 John C. Greene, in an interview with the author, August 7, 2007.

26 Greene to Moore, 24 October 1985, Greene Papers.

27 Moore to Greene, 5 November 1985, Greene Papers.

28 Greene to Moore, 10 November 1985. Greene Papers.

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guided by rational analysis in a pursuit of knowledge for the sake of knowing. It appeared he felt there was a part of the human experience that could, theoretically, step outside the cultural box that was the conditioning of the times, so to speak, and then look back in. So in one sense Greene and Mayr were not at all talking past each other, as they shared a high esteem for the potential of both history and science.

Thus it was not science, but something else promoted in its good name that Greene wished to contest. He would later write in a letter to Sharon Kingsland, the Johns Hopkins historian of biology: “I’m glad we agree that science, ideology, and worldview are interdependent variables influencing each other. I still like my description of science . . . as a prolific but cruel mother, forever spawning scientisms and forever abandoning her illegitimate offspring.’ Much of my writing has been a crusade against scientisms.”29

He would further explain in his autobiographical essay published in Debating Darwin:

I encountered the evolutionary humanism of Julian Huxley, George Gaylord Simpson, Ernst Mayr, and other founders of the neo-Darwinian synthesis, a secular faith which regarded Darwin as its prophet and imputed to him the positivistic beliefs and unbeliefs that characterized their own thinking on religious, philosophical, and historical topics. As an amateur philosopher I found their efforts to derive knowledge of human duty and destiny from evolutionary biology unconvincing. As a historian I found their ideas about the role of religion in the rise of evolutionary concepts dubious. [By great good fortune30] in due course my

29 Greene to Sharon Kingsland, 25 February 1997, Greene Papers. The quotation referenced by Greene is from his book, Science, Ideology and World View, p. 87. Greene also wrote to Kingsland, “It was good to hear from you and to receive a reprint of your article ‘Debates on Human Progress.’ It goes well with my current reading of Michael Ruse’s Monad to Man [1996] and Betty Smocovitis’s Unifying Biology [1996]. ‘Progress’ has really come into its own since I first began calling attention to the ambivalent status of the concept in evolutionary biology more than thirty years ago.” The Norton Dictionary of Modern Thought offers a definition of scientism: “the view that the characteristic inductive methods of the natural sciences are the only source of genuine factual knowledge and, in particular, that they alone can yield true knowledge about man and society.” Allan Bullock and Stephen Trombley, eds., The Norton Dictionary of Modern Thought (New York: W. W. Norton, 1999), p. 775.

30 Greene, Debating Darwin, p. 17.

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published thoughts on these subjects drew me into the correspondence with Ernst Mayr.31

In his postscript to Science, Ideology, and World View, written in response to Mayr’s critical correspondence goading Greene to directly state his personal views, Greene offered an interesting definition of how he viewed his role both in their exchange and in his career:

The historian of ideas cannot be expected to be a profound metaphysician and moral philosopher, but his search for presuppositions underlying the thought of an age and the factors responsible for changes in those presuppositions must eventually bring him face to face with the deepest questions human beings can ask. . . . If I have been strongly critical of the claims made for evolutionary science as the best and safest guide to human duty and destiny, it is as much out of concern for the integrity and autonomy of science as for the interests of philosophy and religion.32

Greene then presented a quotation from his second book, Darwin and the Modern World:

“Every great scientific synthesis stimulates efforts to view the whole of reality in its terms, and

Darwin’s theory of natural selection was no exception. But the views of reality that originate in this way are not themselves scientific, nor are they subject to scientific verification.”33 This statement preceded Greene’s concluding paragraph, the following excerpt, previously offered in the introduction to this study. It also presents a summary of one of the project’s arguments.

Greene wrote:

To ignore the difference between science, philosophy, and religion and roll them all into one evolutionary gospel claiming to disclose the meaning of existence is as dangerous to science as it is to philosophy and religion. If scientists aspire to be prophets and preachers, they cannot expect society to grant them the relative autonomy they have enjoyed in Western culture in recent centuries. The current misguided campaign to require the teaching of “creationist science” alongside evolutionary biology is sufficient evidence of that. The hard won ideal of disinterested inquiry guided by insight and logic but rigorously controlled by

31 Ibid., p. 19.

32 Greene, Science, Ideology, and World View (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1981), p. 196.

33 John C. Greene, Darwin and the Modern World View (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1961), pp. 132133.

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generally accepted methods of empirical testing is too precious an acquisition of the human spirit to be sacrificed by grandiose but delusory and self-destructive dreams of an omnicompetent science of nature-history, society, and human duty and destiny.34

Greene then concluded: “I am convinced that science, ideology, and world view will forever be intertwined and interacting. As a citizen concerned for the welfare of science and of mankind generally, however, I cannot but hope that scientists will recognize where science ends and other things begin.”35

The relationship between science and religion is a complicated one, particularly in recent history. But the needless evangelization of metaphysical concerns in the name of scientific achievement unnecessarily inflames the competitive passions of other ideologues, who may well be misrepresenting their own traditions in a manner similar to evangelical scientists.36 Science, as well as modern intellectual culture, has enjoyed relative autonomy in the West with an ideal of

“disinterested inquiry guided by insight and logic.” If in the name of presenting scientific facts, those with an agenda insist on implying the relevancy of their empirically unprovable metaphysical paradigms, and perhaps worse, aspire to write them up as required reading in government funded educational textbooks, society runs the risk of undermining the integrity of science, and likely religion as well, if at least among certain sections of the American public.37

34 Ibid., p. 197.

35 Ibid., p. 197.

36 Ruse offered an analysis in this regard: “The English philosopher Richard Braithwaite said that the price of the use of models is eternal vigilance, and the same is true of metaphors. But even if a scientist … does not exploit his metaphors to send a message, others surely will take them up and make more of them, deliberately, especially people in the public realm. One can write about evolutionary biology for general readers without sending a message, and often people do. But just as often others write about evolutionary biology precisely because they do have a message – a message about progress and the virtues of modern society – and they look to evolutionary biology to express it.” Michael Ruse, The Evolution–Creation Struggle (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2006), pp. 285– 86.

37 Not to make a major case of this, but the author recalls many years ago reading a stirring introduction to evolutionary humanism in an accelerated biology course textbook as a public high school sophomore. In addition, while attending a respected preparatory school in the Berkshires for the last two years of high school, the school

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The philosopher of biology, Michael Ruse, offered an interesting summary of this dilemma in his book, The Evolution–Creation Struggle (2005):

Evolutionists, by virtue of being scientists, tend toward progressivism, and they have in their hands a theory that lends itself precisely to such a philosophy. The slide from epistemological progress to the social and moral progress is quick and easy . . . My analysis is that we have no simple clash between science and religion but rather between two religions. The outcome of the conflict is not obvious.38

Those of us who love science must do more than simply restate our position or criticize the opposition. We must understand our own assumptions and, equally, find out why others have (often) legitimate concerns. This is not a plea for weak- kneed compromise but for a more informed and self-aware approach to the issues. First understanding, then some strategic moves.39

A recent article in national British newspaper The Guardian suggested there are a number of prominent scientists who do appreciate that simple message. In a published interview Peter

Higgs, the famed Higgs boson theorist, discussed his views regarding Richard Dawkins’s “epic disdain for religion.” Although he appreciated some of Dawkins’s criticism of the “unfortunate consequences that have resulted from religious belief,” he was, however, “unhappy” with the evolutionary biologist’s approach to “dealing with believers.” He also agreed with those who found Dawkins’s approach “embarrassing.” Higgs argued that although he himself was not a

“believer,” many of his fellow scientists held “beliefs” of various sorts. He then criticized

Dawkins in his interview as follows: “What Dawkins does too often is to concentrate his attack on fundamentalists. . . . Fundamentalism is another problem. I mean, Dawkins in a way is almost a fundamentalist himself, of another kind.”40

headmaster addressed a convocation performance with a speech that sounded like Sir Julian Huxley wrote the script! Fortunately, no permanent damage was done, though the author defers to the reader’s judgment for final confirmation.

38 Michael Ruse, The Evolution–Creation Struggle (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2006), p. 287.

39 Ibid., p. 288

40 Alok Jha, “Peter Higgs Criticises Richard Dawkins Over Anti-religious ‘Fundamentalism,’” The Guardian, December 26, 2012, http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2012/dec/26/peter-higgs-richard-dawkins-fundamentalism,

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While Dawkins’s ideological stance is surely a source of enthusiasm to those who share his philosophical attitudes, it is no more scientifically verifiable than those of the religious fundamentalists he justifiably criticizes. Undoubtedly, his opponents are just as vehemently self- assured of their own metaphysical views as he is. What is the cost if this kind of exchange?

Perhaps the ultimate casualty may be the ideal of disinterested inquiry guided by insight and logic. That would indeed be a loss no student of the history of science would want to make.

accessed February 15, 2013. Jha, The Guardian’s science correspondent, reported that the Spanish newspaper, El Mundo, originally published Higgs’ interview. An abbreviated version appears on the website at: http://www.elmundo.es/elmundo/2012/12/27/ciencia/1356611441.html, accessed February 15, 2013. Dawkins’ has a well-deserved reputation as a polemicist on behalf of his secular humanist belief. Of course he is hardly the only polemicist promoting an ideological agenda while debating the alleged metaphysical relevance of evolutionary theory. Perhaps in a manner similar to Julian Huxley’s 1959 Chicago Darwin Centennial Celebration sermon having a galvanizing effect on the scientific creationists in the early 1960s, more recent proponents for the scientific relevancy of the intelligent design position, such as Phillip Johnson, have claimed inspiration from reading Richard Dawkins’ works such as The Blind Watchmaker (1986), and The God Delusion (2006). The concern here is not that these are fascinating books to read, but rather that Dawkins has used his celebrity status based in good part on his credentials as an evolutionary biologist, to promote his metaphysical musings with the appearance of being a natural conclusion of a scientific investigation. That in turn inspires other metaphysicians with an agenda to do the same through forums such as creationist science or intelligent design theory. The argument presented in this study is that speculative philosophical debates about the “ultimate meaning” of evolutionary theory are something extraneous to evolutionary theory as a professional biological science. Natural science, after all, forever remains an open-ended investigation.

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APPENDIX ADDITIONAL GREENE FAMILY HISTORY*

Greene’s family history reflects the cultural legacy of American Protestantism. As

Greene would describe, formative influences such as these, can nurture “ideas one takes in like mother’s milk.”1 A number of branches from Greene’s lineage trace back to the New England

Puritans. In fact, he shared Puritan relations with two of the leading architects of the 20th Century

Neo-Darwinian synthesis, George Ledyard Stebbins and Sewall Wright.

Notable among Greene’s Puritan relatives were Richard (1584–1670), Matthias (1623–

1662), and Robert Treat (1624–1710), all first wave European settlers of the Hartford,

Connecticut area.2 In addition to establishing the Hartford colony, Richard’s son Robert led a community of settlers that founded New Haven, CT, and then another group that established

Newark, NJ. In the 1670s, Robert Treat eventually returned to Connecticut and served as the elected Royal Governor for nearly fifteen years.3 Treat was also a leading participant in the

“Charter Oak” pastime, when the original colonial charter granting a great deal of autonomy to the Connecticut colony was hidden (allegedly in a hollow tree) from a recently appointed

Governor-General sent by King James II, who wished to revoke it. Treat resumed his elected

* This account offers historical information in addition to what is presented in Chapter 4, though short sections may overlap in order to maintain the narrative flow.

1 John C. Greene and James R. Moore, “Introductory Conversation,” in History, Humanity and Evolution, ed. James R. Moore (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1989), p. 5.

2 John Greene’s direct ancestor was Matthias Treat. Though different sources propose Matthias could be a nephew or even a son of Richard Treat, best evidence suggests Matthias was a close relation. A notation dated from 1647 in John Winthrop, Jr.’s medical journal reported how he treated the young daughter of “Mathias Treat alias Trott – a kinsman of Mr. Trott,” acknowledging Matthias’ relation to Richard Treat, as well as the variations on the spelling of the name at the time. See John Henry Treat, The Treat Family: A Genealogy of Trott, Tratt, and Treat (Salem, MA: The Salem Press, 1893), p. 534; Donald Lines Jacobus and Edgar Francis Waterman, Hale, House and Related Families: Mainly of the Connecticut River Valley (Baltimore: Genealogical Publishing Co., 1978, or. 1952), p. 764.

3 A brief, comprehensive essay describing the life of Robert Treat is offered by the Connecticut State Library at: http://www.cslib.org/gov/treatr.htm, accessed 15 Sept 2012.

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duties after the English also had had enough of King James, forcing him to abdicated and flee for

France during the Glorious Revolution.4

Another member of the Hartford colony, Thomas Wright (1610–1670), was the Puritan ancestor of the evolutionary geneticist, Sewall Wright. A cousin of the Thomas Wright, the

Deacon Samuel Wright (1606–1665), settled just to the north in Springfield, Massachusetts. The

Deacon’s daughter Hannah Wright (1626–1660) married Thomas Stebbins (1620–1683)5 in

1645. Not only did the famed evolutionary botanist George Ledyard Stebbins directly descend from this Puritan couple, but so too did Greene’s great-grandmother, Sarah Louis Stebbins Treat

(1834–1924).6

The Quartermaster George Colton was another important Springfield resident. John

Colton Greene owed his middle name to the Quartermaster through his grandmother, “Belle”

Colton Greene (1841–1926).7 Coincidently, during his senior years, the Quartermaster married

Hannah Wright Stebbins’s sister, Lydia, as his second wife (Lydia’s fourth husband). Thus with

Quartermaster Colton’s second marriage to a Puritan Wright who claimed a Puritan Stebbins for a brother-in-law, the Connecticut Valley Coltons, Wrights, and Stebbins were all more or less

4 The deposed King James’ Governor-General Amdros, who had presided over an expansive region called the Dominion of New England, had been arrested in 1689 during an uprising in Boston, an event that perhaps set a precedent for the more famous uprising nearly a century later. Massachusetts would receive a new charter in 1691 as the Massachusetts Bay Colony, which now included the dominion of Plymouth, as well as Martha’s Vineyard, Nantucket, and other islands off Cape Cod. The new charter lacked provisions for theocratic government, which effectively ended Puritan rule with its lack of toleration for the Church of England and other Christian denominations.

5 Thomas Stebbins was the son of Rowland Stebbins (1592–1691) and Sarah Whiting.

6 Sarah Louis Stebbins Treat and her husband Robert Treat raised Helen and her sister Alice, following the death of their mother (the Treat’s daughter) in the early 1890s.

7 George Woolworth Colton, A Genealogical Record of the Descendants of Quartermaster George Colton (Philadelphia: J. M. Colton, 1912), p. 318. See record #2235.

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Puritanical family members!8 All the same, most of the Puritan ancestors in question shared a more orthodox genetic lineage with the sixteenth century English gentry couple, Sir John Wright

(1488–1551) and Lady Olive Hubbard Wright (c.1486–1560), as described in Chapter 4.9

The Treat Family of Helen Carter Greene

Greene’s family becomes all the more interesting the closer we get to the present. Listed among his many American branches are a number of Revolutionary War veterans.10 For example, one of Greene’s Treat ancestors, John Treat (1745–1832), enlisted as a wagoner and served as private in Colonel Elisha Sheldon’s Light Dragoons, one of the first cavalry divisions in the American army. After the war, Treat entered politics and won election to “the Connecticut

State Legislature in 1800, and in 1802; appointed justice of the peace 1804, 1808, 1816; [and] was a member of the Constitutional Convention in 1818, which drew up the present constitution of the state.” Accounts described Representative Treat as “a man of strong constitution, and his countenance showed that he was possessed of a firm will. He was rather sour and Puritanical in

8 Unfortunately, Thomas and Hannah had already passed along to the Puritan “Great Beyond” ten years prior to George and Lydia’s golden year nuptials.

9 Genealogy information was culled from a variety of New England family genealogy works published around the turn of the last century, as well as online genealogy sites such as Ancestory.com. In addition, numerous historical city directories and US census records were available online or through digital repositories such as Google Books. For information specifically concerning the connection of Thomas Wright (Sewall Wright’s ancestor) and Deacon Samuel Wright (one of Greene and Stebbins’ common ancestors) to Sir John Wright that includes additional historical information See Curtis Wright, Genealogical and Biographical Notices of Descendants of Sir John Wright of Kelvedon Hall, Essex, England : in America Thomas Wright, of Wethersfield, Conn., Dea. Samual Wright, of Northhampton, Mass. 1610–1670, 16141665 (Carthage, MO: Wright, 1915). A less complete source is: William Henry Wright and Gertrude Wright Ketcham, History of the Wright Family . . . showing a direct line to John Wright, Lord of Kelvedon Hall, Essex, England (Denver: Williamson-Haffner Co., 1913).

10 There are also Revolutionary War records for another Greene ancestor, Moses Stebbins (1750-c.1825), who was the grandfather of Sarah Louisa Stebbins, John Greene’s maternal great grandmother. Moses Stebbins was listed as a private serving in “Capd. Dan’l Cadwell’s Company; Col. Timo. Robinson’s Regiment; . . . Detachment of Hamp. Co. militia. Service performed at Ticonderoga.” In Ralph Stebbins Greenlee and Robert Lemuel Greenlee, The Stebbins Genealogy in two volumes, Vol. II (Chicago, M. A Donahue, 1904), p. 1185; see also Greenlee and Greenlee, Vol. I, pp. 236–37, record #473. There are similar references for Elias Carter (1737–1821) having fought in the French and Indian War and the American Revolution. Eli Colton (1737–1800) also did “military service in the French War.”

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his appearance, yet full of humor and fun; was a man of strict integrity, well-informed, of sound judgment, and of the highest social standing.”11

Robert’s son, Colonel Chester Treat (1790-1860), was “one of the early pioneers in the

Erie tract” who moved to Ohio as a “prospector for land.” The Colonel was a “deacon in the

Congregational church; colonel in the militia; postmaster; member of the Ohio legislature,” and

“a good farmer” who could work “in the stone masons’ trade.” 12 It appeared Chester also was an accidental archeologist. The Pioneer and General History of Geauga County (1880) reported:

“While quarrying stone he found a live toad imbedded in a solid sandstone rock. . . . On being released he [the frog] soon hopped like other toads.” The account proposed that this information

“may be of interest to the naturalist, or please the curious.”13 In other areas of interest, Colonel

Treat voted Republican during the years leading to the Civil War.

Chester Treat’s second marriage, to Frances Carter (1805–1897) in 1857, brought to the relationship a grown son named Consider B. Carter (1832–1910). As it turned out, Carter became John Greene’s grandfather when he married Colonel Treats’ granddaughter, Alice

Louisa Treat (1852–1893) in 1883. Alice’s father (Colonel Treat’s son), Robert Treat (1831–

1911), thus became John Greene’s great-grandfather Treat, as well as the stepbrother of his grandfather Carter, who in turn became his great-grandfather’s son-in-law. Victorian family life hardly lacked for complexity!14

11 Treat, p. 540.

12 Ibid., p. 548.

13 The Historical Society of Geauga County, Pioneer and General History of Geauga County: with sketches of some of the pioneers and prominent men,” (Burton, Ohio: The Historical Society of Geauga County, 1880), p. 391.

14 Perhaps the simplest way to put it would be through the eyes of John Greene’s mother, Helen Carter. From her genealogical perspective, prior to her parents marriage, her father and her mother’s father were stepbrothers for twenty-five years or so. This was due to Helen’s father’s mother (her paternal grandmother) having previously married Helen’s mother’s grandfather (her mother’s paternal grandfather) in a second marriage for both.

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The stepbrother in-laws, Greene’s Grandfather Consider B. Carter and Great-grandfather

Robert Treat, both found success in the business world. As a young man, Robert Treat initially worked in the lumber trade while living by the family farm in northern Ohio. He eventually moved to Cleveland where he took “great interest” in “commercial business.” Treat soon secured a position as an “agent” connected “with the Columbia Refining Company, New York City,” a

Broadway firm noted as “manufacturers of cylinder oils, lubricants and greases.”15

Meanwhile, Consider B. Carter moved to Chicago with his siblings and established a construction business – “Carter Brothers” building contractors. They set up their office in the historic Chicago Loop, the city’s commercial, cultural, and government center. Each of the brothers had a house close by one another. Consider B.’s home was on the same Chicago block that the Willis (formerly Sears) Tower now stands as the tallest office building in North

America.16 This was the location that Helen (John’s mother) first called home.17

Consider Carter, Helen’s father, was also active in civic affairs, serving on the Board of the West Chicago Park Commission during the 1880s. Consider B.’s older brother and business partner, Marshall, was similarly elected president of the Master Masons & Builders Association and the Builders & Traders’ Exchange. In addition, Helen’s father penned several published evangelical poems, as well as an 18-page pamphlet with the title Religion and Philosophy

15 Treat, pp. 560. Helen is mentioned Matthias Treat’s descendent #412 on p. 563; Greenlee and Greenlee, vol. I, p. 584; “W. Gregory & Company,” in Boston; Its Finance, Commerce and Literature (New York: The A. F. Parsons Publishing Company, 1892), p. 127.

16 New York City’s Freedom Tower is set to surpass the height of Chicago’s Willis Tower in 2013.

17 The Lakeside Annual Directory of the City of Chicago 1885 lists Consider B. Carter’s residence at “314 W. Jackson.” Marshall W. Carter, his brother and business partner, is listed as living a block away at “384 W. Adams,” while their business is listed as “Carter Bros. (Marshall W. and Consider B.) contractors 2, 87 Washington.” Their brother, “Wallace Carter, contractor,” had a home next to Consider B’s at 318 W. Jackson.

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(1906).18 Perhaps unsurprising, then, was that Consider B. could trace an ancestry back to the early Puritan Reverend Thomas Carter (1608–1684), who became the first pastor of Woburn,

Massachusetts in 1642.19 A 19th Century painting of the Reverend’s ordination hangs on display at Woburn’s historical Winn Memorial Public Library.

In an unfortunate stroke of ill luck, none of Consider’s three wives lived past forty, with all them leaving young children. Alice Louisa Treat, wife number three, died in 1893 as the mother of two young daughters, an eight-year old Helen and one-year old Alice. The two sisters soon moved to New York City to live with their Grandfather Robert and Grandmother Sarah

Louisa Stebbins Treat, at their place on Fifth Avenue.20 Consider also moved east to live with the family of his youngest son (Helen’s older half brother), Robert Carter, a nationally acclaimed editorial cartoonist working at the time for William Randolph Hearst’s New York American.21

18 It appears the University of Toronto may hold the sole extant copy. See “Carter, Consider B., Religion and philosophy, [s.n.] 1906,” University of Toronto Libraries, http://search.library.utoronto.ca/UTL/index?N=0&Nr=p_oclc_id:219554896, accessed 12 February 2013. In addition, Consider B. Carter wrote evangelical themed poems published in a variety of journals.

19 Clara A. Carter and Sarah A. Carter, Carter: A Genealogy of the Descendants of Samuel and Thomas, Sons of Rev. Samuel Carter 1640–1886 (Clinton, MA: W. J. Coulter, 1887), pp. 7, 11, 90-91. Consider B. Carter is listed as record #825 and #998. Helen Carter is listed as record #1005. The “Rev. Samuel Carter” mentioned in the title was the son of the “Rev. Thomas Carter of Woburn,” both direct ancestors. Coincidently, Rev. Samuel Carter was a Harvard College graduate, Class of 1660.

20 The 1900 US Census listed the Treats and their two granddaughters as “lodgers” at the address of 2066 5th Avenue. The 1910 US Census (as well as two 1907 editions of The Crescent; see fn. 20) listed their address at 138 W. 129th Street. The two addresses are within a block and a half from each other and only a couple of miles of Barnard College. The area is near the Mount Morris Park Historical District, known for its “remarkable cross- section of late 19th- and early 20th-century residential and church architecture representing all of the various eclectic styles associated with the Gilded Age.” See New York City Department of City Planning; 11. Mt. Morris Park Historic District,” http://www.nyc.gov/html/dcp/html/mxb/mxsite11.shtml, accessed 20 September 2012.

21 The 1900 census listed Consider B. Carter a living with his son Robert Carter (1875–1918) and family in Brooklyn, NY. For more information on Robert Carter’s career as a editorial cartoonist, See “Robert Carter, Cartoonist,” Obituary No. 2, New York Times, March 1, 1918. It appears the Philadelphia Inquirer, Washington Post as well as other respected papers published similar articles on March 1. Two memorial essays, one with a photograph, were published in Cartoon Magazine: with selected editorial comment form the leading journals of the world, ed. H. H. Winsor, vol. 13, no. 4 (April 1918): 573 and vol. 13, no. 5 (May 1918): 713. The Rochester Institute of Technology offers a short biographical sketch with two digital images of Carter’s editorial cartoons held in the “RIT Art Collection” at: http://artoncampus.rit.edu/artist/33/, accessed 20 September 2012. In an odd stroke of fortune, a 1910 census entry listed “Consider B. Carter” (same age and birthplace) as an “inmate” at the Bloomingdale Hospital in White Plains, NY. Bloomingdale was known as a private institution

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Helen would later attend Barnard College at Columbia University, not far from her grandparents’ home. She earned her degree in 1907 as a Phi Beta Kappa honor student, and worked the following year “teaching in the New York high schools.”22

Greene’s Green Family Ancestry

There are certain family records of Greene’ Green ancestors23 going back to at least the

American Revolution, when in 1779 Jeremiah and Elizabeth Woolson Green moved to

Hillsborough County, New Hampshire.24 Jeremiah and family were noted as Hillsborough’s first settlers “bearing that sirname [sic].” Jeremiah “is said” to have grown up in Reading,

Massachusetts in a family tracing its ancestry to the Puritan Thomas Greene, but the report also mentioned that “the records of the family are very meager,” with aspects of it “somewhat doubtful.”25 Even more curious, the New Hampshire birth certificates for Jeremiah and

dedicated to the progressive “treatment of the insane.” Unfortunately, the “inmate” in question apparently died later that year. And in a particularly curious coincidence, a New York Times article dated from May 19, 1888 reported on the move of the Bloomington Asylum from Manhattan to White Plains, NY. It also prominently mentioned efforts to preserve the institution’s “magnificent brownstone structure” at its former site in Manhattan, which the article referred to as “the Mrs. John C. Greene memorial building.” See http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive- free/pdf?res=F50615FC355C10738DDDA00994DD405B8884F0D3, accessed 20 September 2012. According to the Documents of the Senate of the State of New York, Volume 5 (“Testimony taken before the Senate Committee on Taxation and Retrenchment”: New York, March 10, 1888), the hospital’s “John C. Greene Memorial Building” for women was located on Broadway between 115th and 116th, and thus next to Barnard College. This particular Greene in whose honor the building was named had been the president of the institution’s board of governors. Surely Helen did not name her own John C. Greene after a beautiful brownstone by Barnard?

22 The Crescent of Phi Beta Kappa: A Quarterly Magazine Vol. VII No. 4 (October 1907): 213. Helen is listed as an associate editor.

23 Records suggest that Greene’s direct ancestors began to change the spelling of “Green” to “Greene” during the early nineteenth century.

24 Their names show up on property tax records the following year. The city of Nashua is located in Hillsborough County.

25 George Waldo Browne, The History of Hillsborough New Hampshire 1735-1921: Volume 2 Biography and Genealogy (Manchester, NH: John B. Clarke Company, 1922), pp. 269–271, 290; See also Browne, History of Hillsborough, Vol. 1 History and Description (Manchester, NH: John B. Clarke Company, 1921), pp. 39, 43, 53. Browne’s Green family account, produced in the early 1920s, listed Martin V. B. Greene (John C. Greene’s grandfather) on p. 270, but Browne is not able to accurately connect Martin’s great grandfather Jeremiah Green’s alleged biographical and genealogical information (about which he expressed reservations) with the information provided by: Samuel S. Greene, Genealogical Sketch of the Descendants of Thomas Green[e] of Malden, Mass

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Elizabeth’s numerous grand and great-grandchildren list “Canadian” as their family’s

“ethnicity.” Could Jeremiah have been a Canadian draft dodger hiding from the British Empire during the early years of the American Revolution?26

But in another Green family scenario, there is a 1763 marriage certificate from Middlesex

County, Massachusetts mentioning a “David Green” with a similar birth year as Jeremiah, who married the same woman at the same place and subsequently had a son with the same name – very coincidental! That David Green (born c1740) fought during the Revolutionary War at the

Battle of Bennington. His father, Col. David Green, Sr. (1715–1781), even more notably commanded the “2d Middlesex County” Regiment of minutemen who “marched on the

Lexington alarm of April 19, 1775.” Multiple genealogical accounts link this line of “David

Greens” with the previously mentioned Elizabeth Woolson, who in turn is mentioned in a variety of accounts as the ancestor of John C. Greene’s father and grandfather.27 This Green lineage offers an established lineage to Thomas Greene, a well-documented early Puritan settler.28

(Boston: Henry W. Dutton & Son, 1858), pp. 18, 29–30. Though both account report similar information for the parents and other ancestors for the name “Jeremiah Green,” the personal biographical information is different. In other words, John C. Greene’s ancestor Jeremiah is not the same Jeremiah recognized in the Descendants of Thomas Green[e] account. Browne’s History of Hillsborough account also listed a Jeremiah Green who was a creditor in Boston involved in a variety of Hillsborough land transactions during the latter eighteenth century. This Jeremiah Green was also noted as a respected Boston merchant and distiller. Historical documents appear to show that he spelled his last name “Greene.”

26 If so, it would offer an intriguing historical twist to the draft dodging take place along the border nearly two centuries later.

27 Mrs. Thomas Martin Egan of the Indiana Daughters of the American Revolution, offered biographical information for the two veteran Greens in her work, A Roster of Revolutionary Ancestors of the Indiana Daughters of the Revolution (Evansville, IN: Unigraphic, 1976), pp. 352–54. Egan’s account described a Revolutionary War private named David Greene from “Captain Taylor’s Company” of the Amherst [N.H., about fifteen miles from Nashua] militia, with otherwise many of the same biographical dates and other information offered for Jeremiah Green and family, though there are a few minor discrepancies. Eagan’s account of David Green reported that he fought in the Battle of Bennington as part of the Saratoga campaign along the New York–Vermont border. Eagan credited the information to “Descendant: Schlosser, Georgia Duckworth, No. 69009.” Browne’s The History of Hillsborough account appears to offer a reliable version for the descendants after “Jeremiah” Green, the person he reported appearing on the Hillsborough tax records in 1780. Especially beginning in the early nineteenth century, multiple sources confirm Browne’s genealogical account. Browne was considered a reputable author and historian who lived in New Hampshire and thus had physical access to extant historical

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In another interesting twist, the 1789 marriage certificate of David Green (born c.1760) son of Elizabeth Woolson Green, noted that the ceremony took place at his wife Lydia’s hometown church in Malden, Massachusetts, where the Greene Puritan ancestry initially settled.29 This David and wife Lydia’s son, David Greene, Jr. (1791–1876), was a War of 1812

records. For more information on Brown, See Brown, George Waldo, http://www.ulib.niu.edu/badndp/browne_george.html, accessed 20 September 2012. But that does not settle the issue for the eighteenth century. There is a Middlesex County, Massachusetts marriage certificate with the same name, Elizabeth Woolson (born 1839), as the woman Browne reported as having been married to the N.H. Jeremiah Green. Browne wrote that the couple (Jeremiah and Elizabeth) were married “probably [in] Reading” before moving to Hillsborough. But in Egan’s report, as on the marriage certificate, Elizabeth Woolson rather wed someone named David Green on April 21, 1763, also in Reading, supporting Egan’s account of the name David Green in place of Browne’s Jeremiah Green. Browne admitted that the background information he had available for “Jeremiah” was limited and not entirely clear. Egan’s account would add another Revolutionary War veteran, as well as perhaps a Revolutionary hero who led a regiment of minutemen at Lexington and Concord, to John C. Greene’s ancestry. Egan listed David a.k.a. Jeremiah Green as having a father named Colonel David Green, Sr. (1714–1781). Coincidently, there was also a Col. David Green mentioned on several occasions in the book Massachusetts Society of the Sons of the American Revolution: Register of members, records of revolutionary ancestors, proceedings of the Society and Board of Managers Constitution and By-laws (Springfield, MA: F. A. Bassette Co., 1916), pp. 128, 131, 139, 140, 158, 174. Col. David Green’s “2d Middlesex County” Regiment (part of Capt. James Walton’s Company) “marched on the Lexington alarm of April 19, 1775.” This information was confirmed in Egan’s account. In addition, Col. David Green can trace lineage back to the Puritan Thomas Greene as described in Samuel Greene’s Descendants of Thomas Green[e]. Suffice it to say, it is difficult to reconcile all the details offered by these reports, but synthesizing Samuel Greene’s, Mrs. Thomas Martin Egan’s, and George Waldo Browne’s account offers a credible lineage from intellectual historian John C. Greene back to the Revolutionary War Col. David Green to the Puritan Thomas Greene, if Browne’s discrepant use of the name “Jeremiah” is overlooked. (Also of interest, Col. Green’s 1778 will named his grandson David Green as a beneficiary. There are consistent accounts of David-Jeremiah and Elizabeth having a son named David.) Still, this does not explain why the N.H. birth certificates of so many of David-Jeremiah Green’s descendants had “Canadian” reported for an ancestry. Another oddity: Egan listed David Green, husband of Elizabeth Woolson, as having died in May 5, 1778 in Hillsborough. But Browne listed Elizabeth Woolson appearing in Hillsborough in 1779 with a husband named Jeremiah Green (more specifically, Green appeared on the tax records in 1780) – a curious detail. Browne suggested they might have previously lived in the town of Amherst in Hillsborough County, and that is something confirmed by other accounts though for the alternate name of David Greene, with his wife Elizabeth Woolson and son David. Discrepant details such as these could be the result of faulty recollections, or perhaps suggest something dire. Even more curious: May 5, 1778 is the date that Egan reported for the death of Elizabeth’s husband David Greene, and that is the exact same date Samuel Greene reported that Col. David Greene, Sr. signed his will with the name of his grandson (Elizabeth’s son David) listed as a beneficiary. In any event, it would appear that Elizabeth (b. 1739) remains John C. Greene’s great-great-great-grandmother. Her name was included in both Col. David Green (1714–1778) and son’s biographical lineage tracing back to the Puritan Thomas Green, and in Browne’s Hillsborough history lineage that included the name of Edward Greene, John C. Greene’s father. All the same, there are many conflicting details in the extant accounts. As far as investigating Browne’s use of the name Jeremiah instead of David as Elizabeth Woolson’s husband, likely the best place to check is the Hillsborough County tax records beginning with the year 1780.

28 Puritan Thomas Greene is reported to have spelled his name with the “e” at the end. Some of his descendants dropped its use (for a time) in favor of the spelling “Green.”

29 The marriage certificate noted that the church was located in Malden, Massachusetts.

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veteran who worked in the carpentry trade.30 He was also an enthusiastic supporter of Jacksonian democracy! During the President Jackson’s second term, David and Lydia named their youngest son in honor of Jackson’s Vice President, Martin van Buren. Little Martin Van Buren Greene was still a small toddler when his namesake won election for his own term as President of the

United States.

As a teenager, John’s grandfather Martin V. B. Greene (1834–1893) worked as a

“manufacturer” while living with his sister’s young family. Martin’s brother-in-law was likewise listed as “manufacturer” in a Nashua neighborhood filled with machinists, millwrights, and painters.31 Around this time, Martin’s oldest brother, Norman P. Greene (1817–1876), began to clerk for a Nashua “bookbinder” (a local printer and publisher). Not long after, Norman opened his own Main St. operations, where Martin in turn worked as a clerk while boarding around the corner.

In time, Martin established his own business. The 1868 Nashua Directory listed Martin

V. B. Greene as a “bookseller” on 57 Main St., while Norman was a “bookseller and binder” at the “4 Exchange building, Main” St.32 Their establishments were located directly across the

Nashua River from each other on either side of the Main St. bridge.33 (Fortunately, the competition appeared to be all for the good since their families lived as next-door neighbors.) A railroad line ran along by the river, with Nashua’s railroad station and post office situated just across the way with Nashua’s numerous downtown businesses surrounding the town square. A

30 As mentioned, 19th century documents begin to consistently add an “e” at the end.

31 This information was offered in the 1860 census.

32 Martin acquired Norman’s business location after his brother’s death in 1876. Another account listed Martin V. B. Greene as a “job printer, stationer and bookbinder.”

33 There appears to be a small waterfall flowing over a dam built by the bridge since the early eighteenth century.

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mile to the east the Nashua River entered the Merrimack, where eighteen miles downriver it flowed by the famous textile mills of Lowell, Massachusetts.34

Martin also served as a member of the Rising Sun Lodge No. 39 of the Free and

Accepted Masons. The chapter was described as “rich in membership” with “some of the most brilliant and influential men in Nashua.” In 1870, a group of members petitioned the Rising Sun to form a new lodge. The board granted approval, with Martin V. B. Greene becoming a charter member of the new Ancient York Lodge No. 89. In 1872, the York Masons elected Martin their leader for the following year with the title, “Most Worshipful Master.”35

Likely Martin met the future New Hampshire Governor George A. Ramsdell (who held office 1897–1899) as a brother Mason. Coincidently, Martin earned a long-term contract publishing the New Hampshire’s Supreme Judicial Court Dockets while Ramsdell served as

Clerk of the Court from 1864–1887.36 Martin also did business with the City of Nashua and other local municipalities.

Meanwhile, the future Governor’s son, Harry Ramsdell, worked seven years for Martin

V. B. after graduating high school in 1879. Young Harry began as a “printer’s devil” while

Greene expanded his book selling and stationary operations.37 One of Greene’s side projects can be found in the New York City Public Library archive – a set of “Nashua, N.H. And Vicinity”

34 Ernst Mayr’s Wilton, New Hampshire farm was located about sixteen miles northwest of the city of Nashua.

35 “Down The Years with Nashua’s Organizations: Ancient York Lodge No. 89 F. & A.M.”, Nashua Telegraph, March 30, 1953, page 12. See also “A Brief History of Ancient York Lodge No. 89,” Ancient York Lodge No. 89, accessed 20 September 2012, http://www.ancientyork89.org/History.html.

36 Greene published the “Court Dockets” using variations on the name “Supreme Judicial Court: Hillsborough County.” As for the New Hampshire Supreme Court, state legislation in 1901 split it in two. The Supreme Court subsequently heard appeals, while the new Superior Court handled trials. The New Hampshire Supreme Court is currently located in Concord, the state capital. Each county has a Superior Court, though Hillsborough has two.

37 Ezra S. Steams, ed., “Governor George Allen Ramsdell,” and “Harry William Ramsdell,” in Genealogical and Family History of the State of New Hampshire (New York: Lewis Publishing Company, 1908), pp. 369–70. See also “Down The Years with Nashua’s Organizations: Ancient York Lodge No. 89 F. & A.M.”, Nashua Telegraph, March 30, 1953, p. 12.

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stereoscopic photographs with “M.V.B Greene, No. 4 Exchange Building” printed boldly on the viewing card.38 Along with young Ramsdell, here was another notable Nashuan who worked for a time with Greene by the name of Francis P. Whittemore. He was known as the “oldest printer in the state who was elected to office at Nashua’s first municipal election,” and also the former publisher of Nashua’s first newspaper, The Gazette.39

John’s Grandfather Martin married Isabelle “Belle” Colton (1842–1926) on August 5,

1868, at Thornton’s Ferry along the Merrimack River eight miles north of Nashua.40 As a young girl, Belle had moved to the area from her father’s Vermont farm to live with relatives after the death of her mother. Though her family could trace their ancestry back to the Puritans of

Quartermaster Colton fame, they also noted how “one of her ancestors on her father’s side married an Indian princess belonging to a Massachusetts tribe.”41 Belle and Martin’s only child

(John Greene’s father) was born on November 4, 1873 in Nashua. The couple named him

Edward Martin Greene.

As mentioned in Chapter 4, John Greene’s grandmother Belle was an author with a national reputation. A two-volume “comprehensive encyclopedia of the lives and achievements of American women during the nineteenth century” (published in the 1890s) described Belle as

38 Wikipedia Commons offers digital images of four of Greene’s stereoscopic views of “Nashua, N.H. And Vicinity” (the originals are held in the New York Public Library collections). See http://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?title=Special%3ASearch&profile=default&search=M.+V.+B.+Greene &fulltext=Search&uselang=en. Two photographs offer views of the downtown area where Greene had his business. See “Main Street, looking north, by M. V. B. Greene” and “Railroad Square, No. 1, by M. V. B. Greene.” After Norman died, Greene secured his location at “No. 4 Exchange Building.”

39 “Senior Printer of the State,” Nashua Daily Telegraph, February 23, 1903, p. 5.

40 One N.H. marriage record cited Nashua, the other Thornton’s Ferry. The History of Hillsborough County (v. 2, p. 270) reported Belle was from Thornton’s Ferry. The village of Thornton’s Ferry is now a part of Merrimack, New Hampshire, where the Souhegan River meets the Merrimack River. Coincidently, the Souhegan runs through the town of Wilton, the location of Mayr’s N.H. farm that he bought nearly a century later.

41 Frances E Willard and Mary A. Livermore, eds. American Women: Fifteen Hundred Biographies with over 1400 Portraits (New York: Mast, Crowell & Kirpatrick, 1897 rev. ed.), p. 337. It appears that the family of Belle’s mother, Lucy F. Baker, also had Puritan roots.

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an acclaimed humorist and short story writer whose career began in the early 1880s.42 Among the national journals Belle frequently contributed were Godey’s Lady’s Book, The Continent

Weekly Magazine, and Frank Leslie’s Popular Monthly, as well as a number of newspapers. She enjoyed her greatest popularity during the last two decades of the century.

The July 1881 issue of Ladies’ Home Journal featured Belle’s short story, “Isabel’s

Father.”43 It reads nearly autobiographical: “Isabel” was Belle’s full name; Isabel’s father was named Hiram both in the essay and in real life; and the essay’s Hiram mentioned the name of a brother, who coincidently had the same name of one of Belle’s uncles. Meanwhile, young

Isabel’s mother had the same name as Belle’s actual mother, and she unfortunately died when both girls were still quite young. In a stroke of good fortune for the Ladies’ Home Journal Isabel, her father Hiram’s prayers were answered when a distant relative took in his intelligent and spirited young daughter. These prosperous relatives were able to provide Isabel with a proper education and an introduction to the good things in life.

Unfortunately, for a time, the father and daughter must separate. Isabel grew up to marry a successful gentleman (perhaps much like her husband Marvin van Buren Greene), and she invited her father to live with them in their beautiful home, fulfilling her prayers. At the story’s conclusion, the father and daughter realize that the old man was most happy not living among the city folk and their modern ways, but living with his hardscrabble New England farming kin. Old

Hiram decided to return to his home in the country with the intention to share some of his newfound prosperity as Isabel’s father. Belle’s Ladies’ Home Journal essay proved to be an authentic Victorian tearjerker, complete with illustrations!

42 Ibid.

43 Belle C. Greene, “Isabel’s Father,” The Ladies’ Home Journal vol. viii no. 8 (July 1891): 1–2.

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In addition to the books and essays mentioned in main text, Belle wrote another work that appeared to reflect her motherly experience. Titled The Hobbledehoy (1895), it was advertised in

The Dial as a “unique story of a ‘changing’ boy.” The Bookman reported in its review (May

1895): “Mrs. Belle C. Greene has written . . . with a measure of success hitherto unreached, the difficult task of drawing the boy as he moves, lives, and has his awkward being when he is passing into young manhood. . . . Mrs. Greene, of whose New England idyll, The Adventures of an Old Maid, sold 150,000 copies, is staying in Rome with her son, whose age would suggest that the ‘hobbledehoy’ has been drawn from life.”44

It would have been interesting to learn what Edward thought about his mother’s book

“Dedicated To A Boy I Know”! Perhaps he felt fortunate that he had recently moved to Boston as a member of Harvard’s “Class of 1895.” But whatever the case, John recalled hearing how in the middle of his father’s Harvard career, Belle “decided that he needed a break for his health” and the two subsequently traveled to Europe. At the time Belle was likely living on her own since Martin passed away about a year prior shortly before Christmas.45

John mentioned that his father and grandmother toured “Munich for a year . . . to the opera and all that sort of thing. He had some German as well as French. French was his specialty.”46 Soon thereafter, Edward spent 1896–97 as “a student at Rouen, France.”47

44 “News Notes,” The Bookman: A Literary Journal, vol. 1, no. 4 (May 1895): 227–28. The Merriam-Webster defines “hobbledehoy” as “an awkward gawky youth.”

45 It appeared that Edward completed his junior year, in which case they may have left for Europe during the summer 1894 around six months after Martin’s death. Another possibility to consider: the father character in Hobbledehoy had a dependency problem involving brandy, though in true Victorian fashion, fortunately he was on the mend by the end of the story. Perhaps Belle felt concern for Edward’s health with respect to the general excess often associated with college life. The mother and son characters in Hobbledehoy had a trusting relationship.

46 John C. Greene, in an interview with the author, 19 May 2008. The “Secretary’s Fourth Report, June 1911” for the “Harvard College Class of 1896,” also noted that Greene was “a student in the Lawrence Scientific School” who withdrew at the end of his junior year.

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Belle and Edward travelled quite a bit.48 The 1900 US Census (dated June) found the two staying with the family of the Reverend Evan L. Davies in Lake Forrest, Illinois, a college town along the shores of Lake Michigan about thirty miles north of Chicago. Information entered by the census worker provides insight into the social circles Belle and Edward moved.

For example, the Reverend Davies daughter, Alice, was the same age as Edward and a fourth guest, Frank R. Page, who coincidently also graduated from Harvard, Class of 1896.49

Both Frank and Edward worked for the public schools – Frank as a principal and Edward as a teacher.50 That year, Frank became Superintendent of the Watertown public schools ten miles west of Boston, where Edward would hold a position as German instructor at Watertown High

School. In 1907 Page became headmaster of the Staten Island Academy, while earning a national reputation as an advocate for progressive education reform.51

47 The “Faculty” section of the 1912 Butler College yearbook, The Drift, offers a list of Greene’s professional activities (approximately p. 22) over the preceding dozen or so years. It also includes a photograph of “Edward Martin Green.”

48 According to the Cook County Herald: “Her son, Edward was her constant companion and together they made several trips across the continent to California as well to Europe.” in “Deaths Claim Many People in this Vicinity: Mrs. Isabel Colton Greene,” Cook County Herald, March 19, 1926, p. 1.

49 The census worker listed Belle, Edward, and Frank as “lodgers” living at the Davies’ household.

50 In an alternative account, the Delta Upsilon Decennial Catalogue reported that “Edward Martin Greene” was headmaster of the Lake Forest High School between 1899–1901, which would coincide with his stay at the Davies home prior to teaching at Watertown High School while also completing his Harvard degree. The Catalogue also noted that Greene had previously taught at the Suffield Academy in Connecticut between 1896–99, dates that would overlap with other accounts of Greene being a student in France during 1896–97. Perhaps such discrepancies were attempts to simplify his early academic resume, though curious that his headmaster position at Lake Forest was not reported elsewhere, and in particular on the 1910 US Census. In Melvin Gilbert Dodge, ed., Delta Upsilon Decennial Catalogue, (Ann Arbor: The Richmond & Backus Co., 1903), p. 767.

51 Many of John Greene’s Puritan ancestors stayed in Watertown for a time before settling the Connecticut River Valley. For an account of Frank R. Page’s tenure as superintendent of the Watertown High School while Edward Greene taught German there, See “‘Real Things’ – A Glimse [sic] at Watertown Schools” The School Journal, Volume LXX: From January 7, 1905, to June 24, 1905 (Boston: United Educational Company, 1905), pp. 732-34. Also available at: http://books.google.com/books?id=Kf9KAAAAYAAJ&lpg=PA732&ots=xFDzNJS97D&dq=%22Frank%20R.%20 Page%22%20watertown&pg=PA732#v=onepage&q&f=false, accessed 20 September 2112.

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Their hosts, the retired Reverend Davies and family, had previously been active developing congregations in southern Illinois and along the Midwestern prairie during the wave of settlement that followed the Civil War. A historical account of Union County, Illinois, described that though the Reverend was affiliated with the Presbyterian Church, the Plymouth

Congregational Church of South Cobden invited him in 1871 to “supply,” or minister to their small community located “in what was then a semi-wilderness area,” about forty miles north of

Cairo where the Ohio River meets the Mississippi. The Cobden Congregationalists considered

Davies “very acceptable as a preacher and pastor. He was a fine scholar, a close student, and well versed in the natural sciences.” They thought highly of Mrs. Davies as well, for her

“sprightliness, tact and good judgment [that] supplemented her husband’s gravity of temperament and manner.”52

Their daughter, Alice J. Davies, attended Lake Forest College during the 1890s. Alice was noted for her involvement in student activities, while also earning her master’s degree. She would take a position teaching English at the Logansport (Indiana) High School for a number of years before settling into her life’s career as a social service worker at the College Settlement

House in Philadelphia.

Not long after Belle and Edward’s stay with the Davies, Edward reentered Harvard and completed his degree in 1903 with a major in French. After teaching at Watertown High for two years, Edward secured teaching positions at two of Connecticut’s leading preparatory schools: first as “Head of the French Department”53 at “the Cheshire School [1905–1907] . . . and later at

52 William Henry Perrin, ed. History of Alexander, Union and Pulaski Counties, Illinois (Chicago: O.L. Baskins & Co., Historical Publishers, 1883), p. 400. See also “A Brief History of the First Presbyterian Church (USA) of Cobden, Illinois,” http://www.cobdenpresbyterian.org/index.php/worship-and-fellowship/fellowship-building- project/81-who-we-are/church-history, accessed 20 September 2012.

53 “Faculty” section of the 1912 Butler College yearbook The Drift.

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the Hotchkiss School [1907–1909] in Lakeville.”54 In a report to his fellow Harvard alumni,

Edward acknowledged: “I fancy my chief claim to distinction during these years was industry and recognized ability to get the ‘boys’ to work.” He also admitted to indulging in the “enemy’s country” while teaching at the Cheshire School, when he took up a “little language work in the

Yale graduate school.”55

After Hotchkiss, Edward pursued a master’s degree at the University of Wisconsin where he held a teaching fellowship in Romance languages. He shared an apartment with Belle close by campus. In other news, Edward confided to his fellow Harvardians in an alumni report: “If you don’t believe that a New Englander can profit by the acquaintance with the West, take my word for it. It was in the West that I met and married my wife, who, after my travels, has made of me, in Mr. Dooley’s phrase, ‘a converted cruiser, leading now a quiet, dacint and rayspictable life.’

Nothing like it!”56

Perhaps Helen, John Greene’s mother, had been visiting her Carter family relations in the

Chicago area when she first met Edward. Now with a Wisconsin master’s in one hand and a fiancé in the other, Edward left for Indianapolis in 1910 when he took a position at Butler

College as an assistant professor teaching French and Spanish “as head of the department of

Romance languages.”57 Edward also noted that his recent “appointment by the Modern Language

54 Edward Martin Greene, “Edward Martin Greene,” in Harvard College Class of 1903 Decennial Report, June, 1913, pp. xi, 204–05, 592, 628. See also “Faculty” section of the 1912 Butler College yearbook, The Drift.

55 E. Greene, Decennial Report, p. 204. The Cheshire School is about seventeen miles north of New Haven.

56 Ibid., 205. “Mr. Dooley” was Finely Peter Dunne’s nationally syndicated comic character famous for his commentary on political and popular culture, with a thick Irish brogue. For more on “the wisdom” of the “bartender- philosopher,” See “‘Mr. Dooley’ and Theodore Roosevelt,” Library of Congress, http://myloc.gov/Exhibitions/hopeforamerica/politicalhumor/artofridicule/ExhibitObjects/DooleyAndRoosevelt.aspx , accessed 20 September 2012.

57 Ibid., 205. The 1922–23 Catalogue of the University of South Dakota listed that Edward Greene initially worked at Butler College as an Assistant Professor of Romance Languages between 1910–13, and then as Professor from 1914–1919. The Greenes subsequently moved to USD in Vermillion, South Dakota. The 1912 Butler Drift

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Association . . . to foster and improve the study of French in the State would be counted an honorable recognition of my efficiency as a teacher, I suppose.”58

The students at Butler College appeared to receive him well, fondly offering insider jokes about the Professor and family in their yearbook commentary for the 1911–12 academic year.59

Greene also served as a faculty advisor for the French Club, described in the 1917 Butler College

Drift as a “cosmopolitan aggregation” of coeds, whose “qualifications for membership are [an] ability at finding English translations of French texts assigned for class reading, and [a] capacity for consuming unmeasured quantities of various eatables that are served at the club’s weekly feeds.”60

Little Robert arrived in 1911 (and subsequently anointed by the students as “Paris

Greene”; see fn. 48), followed by Edward, Jr. in 1915. Soon thereafter, John C. followed suit at the Greene family home about a half mile from the old Butler campus.61 But before the two younger boys could present themselves, Helen and Edward travelled to France a year before the

Great War with toddler Robert in tow. Edward had secured a leave of absence from Butler to study “French life at first hand” as guests of “a faculty of distinction” from the University of

calendar for the 1911–12 academic year noted that on November 23: “The wedding bel. ring for Prof. Greene” (p. 96), suggesting Helen might have arrived toward the end of the semester. In another account suggesting student affection for Greene, the Drift published a poem titled “Is That True? A College Epic” that offered the stanza: “While football raged on Turkey Day, Professor Greene was far away; We heard amidst the rooter’s yells, The echo of his wedding bells” (p. 100).

58 Edward Martin Greene, “Edward Martin Greene,” Harvard College Class of 1903 Quindecennial Report, June, 1920 (Norwood, MA: Plimpton Press, 1920), p. 122. Greene was “one of three committeemen to the State Committee of Indiana.”

59 Sounds like you had to be there! Examples: “December 2. ‘Paris Greene’ arrives in our midst”; “December 9. Professor Greene lectures upon ‘Training of children’”; “March 21. Exams! Was Robert Greene. Jr., sick?”

60 1917 edition of the Butler College yearbook The Drift.

61 The March 5th 1917 event was proudly announced in the Butler Alumnal Quarterly: Founder’s Day Number, April 1917 (Vol. VI, No. 1), p. 55. The Greenes lived at 330 S. Emerson at the time.

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Rennes that Edward had met through his Harvard contacts.62 The young family enjoyed time in

Brittany, France, along with “several stays in Paris and a tour of the Chateaux country and to

England,” before catching “one of the last boats to America” on August 1, 1914.63

In 1919 Edward, Helen, and Grandma Belle, along with little Robert, Edward, and John, moved from their Indiana home to a small town along the wide Missouri seven hundred miles to the northwest where Edward had secured “an interesting position heading the Romance

Language Department at the University of South Dakota, in Vermillion.” Edward noted in his

June 1920 Harvard alumni report: “I expect the change will prove for the better in every essential way. I am glad to believe that wherever I am, I can continue to help interpret the ideals of a noble race such as the French.”64

John Greene later described his South Dakota hometown as a “university and market town of about 3500 inhabitants (800 of whom were college students).”65 The family initially moved to a rented house by campus. Not long after, they bought a home on the edge of town a block or so away from the near eighty-foot bluffs overlooking the Vermillion River. A broad valley stretched a few miles across toward the hills of Nebraska beyond the Missouri River.

Greene remembered it as “a beautiful view.”66

Lewis and Clark’s Corps of Discovery were the first explorers to make a record of a visit in August 1804. They camped along the confluence of the Vermillion and Missouri Rivers (at the

62 Helen likely reported the following information published in the “Alumnae Personals,” Barnard Bulletin, January 12, 1914: “Mrs. Edward M. Greene (Helen Carter, 1907), and her son, Robert, accompanied Professor Greene this fall. Prof. Greene is absent on leave from Butler College, Indianapolis, to spend the year studying at various French Universities.”

63 E. Greene, Quindecennial Report, p. 121.

64 Ibid., p. 122 .

65 John C. Greene, Debating Darwin: Adventures of a Scholar (Claremont, CA: Regina Books, 1999), p. 3.

66 J. Greene, History, Humanity and Evolution, p. 14.

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time near where Greene’s house was coincidently located on Lewis St.)67 The Corps of

Discovery made note of their first buffalo hunt while in the area. The following day, Lewis and

Clark “along with several of their men and Lewis’s dog Seaman, walked nine miles to Spirit

Mound,” an area normally avoided by the local Sioux “and other neighboring nations” due to rumors of short devilish beings inhabiting the mound. Seaman, unfortunately, turned back due to heat exhaustion, though undoubtedly the pooch was otherwise fearless! Meanwhile, upon reaching the Vermillion peak (reported at seventy feet), the rest of the company “beheld a most beautiful landscape; Numerous herds of buffalo were seen feeding in various directions; the

Plain to the North, N.W. and N.E. extends without interruption as far as can be seen.”68

Following in their footsteps thirty years later, John James Audubon, the famous naturalist, artist, and ornithologist, also explored the region while birding along the Vermillion Ravine during the spring of 1843.69

Perhaps in a bit of the mood of Lewis and Clark and Audubon, a young John Greene took his turn exploring the Vermillion River bluffs in what he later would call “going on nature rambles.” He described that once he grew older: “From time to time I would also go up to [the] small [University] museum – and describe for Mr. [W. H.] Over, the curator, some bird I had

67 The 1930 and 1940 US Census listed Greene’s home at 323 Lewis St., not far from Vermillion’s Cotton Park. The confluence of the Vermillion and Missouri is now about 3.5 miles southeast of Cotton Park. Lewis and Clark called the Vermillion the White Stone River. See “The Vermillion and Missouri Rivers Change Course,” http://www.spiritmound.com/missouririver.htm, accessed 20 September 2012. Lewis St. paralleled Clark St. a block away. The address of the Greene family’s first home was listed in the 1920 census as rented on 16 East Dartmouth.

68 This is an excerpt from “The Diary of Captain Clark, 25 August 1804.” The National Park Service offers an informative description of the visit to Spirit Mound on their “Lewis and Clarke Expedition” website. See http://www.nps.gov/nr/travel/lewisandclark/spi.htm, accessed 20 September 2012. In good part due to the changing course of the Missouri, Spirit Mound is considered “one of the few remaining physical features . . . readily identifiable as a place Lewis and Clark visited and recorded.”

69 “History of Vermillion,” Clay County Historical Society, Vermillion Area Visitor/Tourism, http://www.vermillionchamber.com/history.shtml, accessed 20 September 2012.

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seen. Sometimes he would say, ‘There ain’t no such bird,’ my descriptions not being very good, and other times he would say, ‘That’s a Bell’s vireo,’ or something like that.”70 Historical records suggest that may well have been the high water mark of young John Greene’s career as a field naturalist!

70 J. Greene, History, Humanity and Evolution, p. 14. The USD curator William H. Over had a colorful personality. Though he only had an eight-grade education, Over possessed such a thorough understanding of the local natural history that in 1912 the USD natural history museum offered him a position as assistant curator. A biographical essay reported that: “In 1936, the board of regents and the university recognized Over’s accomplishments by granting him the honorary degree of doctor of science. After 35 years of service to the university, [he] retired in 1948 at age 82. The following year the regents named the University Museum the W. H. Over Museum.” In Otto Neuhaus, “A Seed on Fertile Ground: How W. H. Over learned and taught the natural history of South Dakota,” in the South Dakota Magazine Vol. 16, No. 1 (May/June 2000), p. 33.

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BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH

Stewart Edward Kreitzer’s interest in a graduate degree in the history of science developed while completing his Bachelor of Arts in history at the University of Florida (cum laude, 2004). He began to focus on the life and career of Ernst Mayr for his Master of Arts

Thesis, titled, Ernst Mayr as “The Darwin of the Twentieth Century”: Defining a Discipline

While Defending a Faith (2006). Through his research on Mayr, Kreitzer became fascinated with the exchange between Ernst Mayr and John C. Greene on the topic of “science, ideology, and world view.” He received his Ph.D. from the University of Florida in the summer of 2013.

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