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Natural Theology and Natural History in Darwin’S Time: Design View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by ETD - Electronic Theses & Dissertations NATURAL THEOLOGY AND NATURAL HISTORY IN DARWIN’S TIME: DESIGN, DIRECTION, SUPERINTENEDENCE AND UNIFORMITY IN BRITISH THOUGHT, 1818-1876 By Boyd Barnes Dissertation Submitted to the Faculty of the Graduate School of Vanderbilt University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY in Religion May, 2008 Nashville, Tennessee Approved: Professor James Hudnut-Beumler Professor Dale A. Johnson Professor Eugene A. TeSelle Professor Richard F. Haglund Professor James P. Byrd William Buckland “The evidences afforded by the sister sciences exhibit indeed the most admirable proofs of design originally exerted at the Creation: but many who admit these proofs still doubt the continued superintendence of that intelligence, maintaining that the system of the Universe is carried on by the force of the laws originally impressed upon matter…. Such an opinion … nowhere meets with a more direct and palpable refutation, than is afforded by the subserviency of the present structure of the earth’s surface to final causes; for that structure is evidently the result of many and violent convulsions subsequent to its original formation. When therefore we perceive that the secondary causes producing these convulsions have operated at successive epochs, not blindly and at random, but with a direction to beneficial ends, we see at once the proofs of an overruling Intelligence continuing to superintend, direct, modify, and control the operation of the agents, which he originally ordained.” – The Very Reverend William Buckland (1784-1856), DD, FRS, Reader in Geology and Canon of Christ Church at the University of Oxford, President of the Geological Society of London, President of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, Dean of Westminster. ii Dedication To Adam and Abigail, in love to Dale Johnson, in gratitude and appreciation to L. Preston Barnes, in memoriam to Noreen Myra McDow, in sympathy of understanding. iii TABLE OF CONTENTS Page FRONTISPIECE ii DEDICATION iii LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS vi Chapter I INTRODUCTION 1 Natural theology and nineteenth-century science 4 Natural theology and Christian theology 18 II NATURAL THEOLOGY IN BRITAIN, 1818-1838: SCIENTIFIC THEOLOGY IN A LIBERALIZING ANGLICAN ESTABLISHMENT 31 William Buckland: natural theology and “Genesis and geology.” 42 Adam Sedgwick: Science, Natural Theology, and Anglican Education in a time of Reform 57 Natural Theology and the Anglican establishment in the 1830s 68 III NATURAL THEOLOGY IN BRITAIN, 1844-1856: SCIENTIFIC RESPONSES TO THE THEOLOGICAL CONTENT OF VESTIGES OF THE NATURAL HISTORY OF CREATION 81 Geology, superintendence, and Anglican science – the “catastrophism”/“uniformitarianism” debate in advance of Vestiges 89 Anglican philosophical debates in response to Vestiges: William Whewell 98 Baden Powell 105 Superintendence, natural theology, and science in response to Vestiges 111 Huxley’s review of Vestiges: natural theology and professional science 123 IV HUXLEY, NATURAL THEOLOGY, AND PROFESSIONAL SCIENCE PRIOR TO THE PUBLICATION OF ORIGIN OF SPECIES 129 iv Huxley’s early science and its relation to natural theology 138 V NATURAL THEOLOGY AND HUXLEY’S DEFENSE OF ORIGIN OF SPECIES 151 Natural theology and science in Huxley’s defense of Origin of Species 155 Natural theology and the meaning of “Darwinian” evolution in Huxley’s defense of Origin of Species 171 VI DARWINIAN NATURAL THEOLOGY, 1860-1876 183 Asa Gray and Darwinian natural theology 190 A. R. Wallace and Darwinian natural theology 200 Huxley and Darwinian natural theology 217 BIBLIOGRAPHY 236 v LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS In reference notes, CE references Thomas Henry Huxley, Collected Essays, nine volumes (London : Macmillan & Co. 1893-1898). vi CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION William Whewell This dissertation concerns the history of design argument and natural theology in nineteenth-century Britain. Design arguments, as a general definition, attempt to prove or confirm the existence of God by providing evidence that the natural world is ordered, to some degree, according to a logically pre-existent plan or for a specifiable purpose. The difference between design arguments and natural theology is important although largely contextual, and it may be determined by whether the argument is restricted to a philosophical interest or is represented as an aspect of a larger theology. 1 Observing the logic of various design arguments is essential to this dissertation, but the proper subJect is nineteenth-century British natural theology. Until the 1960s, the historiography of natural theology had focused upon studying how seventeenth- and eighteenth-century utilitarian design arguments, which in their day had seemed to confirm a supernatural, special creation of the earth, had been displaced in the nineteenth century by the scientifically discovered “truth” of the earth’s self-formation by natural processes of development and evolution. 1 This historiography of intellectual displacement was never entirely satisfactory because, at least in small part, of problems in correctly distinguishing naturalistic from divinely “guided” or “directed” development and evolution. 2 These distinctions are notoriously slippery because the meanings of “evolution” and “development” overlap and, more notably, the adJectives “guided” and “directed” do not distinguish between mechanical, organic and volitional forms of guidance and direction. These ambiguities have been tolerated (they remain prevalent today) because the general tendency of natural science to disprove or, at the very least, dispense with the claims of supernatural creation and immaterial direction seemed clear. Indeed, this clarity obtained very soon after the publication of Charles Darwin’s Origin of Species, and it quickly led to a severe and general disparagement of supernaturalism in natural theology 1 A utilitarian design argument seeks to demonstrate that natural forms are designed to suit the uses they are discovered to have in their natural environments. Historically, prior to Darwinism, the best resource for utilitarian design arguments was the structure of plants and animals. 2 Bowler, Peter J. Fossils and Progress: Palaeontology and the idea of Progressive Evolution in the Nineteenth Century (New York : Science History Publications, 1976), pp. 15-46, especially called attention to distinctions between evolution, development, and direction in the history of science. 2 that was as much theological as scientific and philosophical in impetus. 3 In view of so much that is plainly apparent, it has seemed harmless to gloss what are mainly considered to be the terminological difficulties of defining a precise, logical relationship between natural and theological forms of direction. 4 My dissertation attempts to be more precise, as well as less disparaging of design arguments, by carefully attending to a type of direction, commonly called superintendence, which may and, for the purposes of this dissertation, will signify not only intentional and volitional direction but, most importantly, direction according to logically pre-existent plans of both action and form. A fair metaphor would be to a construction site superintendent planning, scheduling and directing work according to pre-existing architectural plans. The superintendent’s and the architect’s plans are distinct but related. Because 3 Darwin, Charles. On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection (London : John Murray, 1859). George Campbell, the Duke of Argyll, The Reign of Law (London : Alexander Strahan, 1867). 4 There are three historical and critical surveys of design arguments in the modern scientific era. The most recent, Michael Ruse’s Darwin and Design: does evolution have a purpose? (Cambridge, MA and London : Harvard University Press, 2003) expertly and comprehensively discusses historical and contemporary design arguments in relation to Darwinian explanations of biological complexity. Ruse concludes “that natural theology is now gone,” although the relation of natural theology to complexity and to a theology of nature is somewhat unclear (pp. 332-333). The earlier studies are L. E. Hicks, A Critique of Design Arguments (Charles Scribner’s Sons : New York, 1883); and Robert H. Hurlbutt III, Hume, Newton, and the Design Argument, revised edition (Lincoln, NB and London : University of Nebraska Press, 1985). Hicks and Hurlbutt each distinguish design arguments based upon utility from design arguments based upon order, and each is highly critical of utilitarian argument. Their criticisms are grounded in a belief that utilitarian arguments historically committed two errors by presuming that utility may be directly observed and by presuming that utility in nature must be there by design. Correct procedure would require arguing from certain instances of order in nature to utilitarian design as that order’s cause. Despite the persistence and certainty with which Hicks and Hurlbutt have brought this charge against historical utilitarian argument, however, not everyone agrees. The issues are fairly discussed in philosophical although not historical terms by Thomas McPherson, The Argument from Design (London and Basingstoke : Macmillan Press, 1972), pp. 1-13. 3 superintendence directs by intentional volition and with reference to two kinds of “plan,” it may be understood as a form of design argument – a natural theology. Natural theology and nineteenth-century
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