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The Evolution Debate 1813-1870 The Evolution Debate 1813-1870 Edited by David Knight The Evolution Debate 1813-1870 Edited and with new introductions by David Knight Volume I Essay on the Theory ofthe Earth Georges Cuvier Volume II Geology and Mineralogy, Considered with Reference to Natural Theology, Volume I William Buckland Volume III Geology and Mineralogy, Considered with Reference to Natural Theology, Volume II William Buckland Volume IV Omphalos Philip Gosse Volume V On the Origin ofSpecies Charles Darwin VolumeVI Palaeontology Richard Owen Volume VII Man's Place in Nature Thomas Henry Huxley Volume VIII The Geological Evidences ofthe Antiquity ofMan Charles Lyell Volume IX Part I: Contributions to the Theory ofNatural Selection AlfredRusselWallace Part II: On the Tendency ofSpecies to Form Varieties Charles Darwin andAlfredRusselWallace The Evolution Debate 1813-1870 Volume I Essay on the Theory ofthe Earth Georges Cuvier with a new introduction by David Knight Published in Association with the Natural History Museum i~ ~~o~1~~n~~;up ~}~ NATURAL HISTORY LONDON AND NEW YORK MUSEUM First published 1813 This edition reprinted 2003 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada by Routledge 270 Madison Ave, New York NY 10016 Transferred to Digital Printing 2008 Routledge is an imprint ofthe Taylor & Francis Group Editorial material and selection © 2003 David Knight Typeset in Times by Keystroke, Jacaranda Lodge, Wolverhampton All rights reserved. No part ofthis book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library ofCongress Cataloging in Publication Data A catalog record for this book has been requested ISBN 0-415-28922-X (set) ISBN 0-415-28923-8 (volume I) Publisher's Note The publisher has gone to great lengths to ensure the quality ofthis reprint but points out that some imperfections in the original may be apparent Georges Cuvier (1769-1832) © The Natural History Museum, London, England. THE EVOLUTION DEBATE 1813-1870 General Introduction David Knight In 1859 Charles Darwin published his theory of descent with modification, propelled by natural selection. People often suppose that he had invented the idea ofevolution, and that subsequent debate was between benighted bishops and Bible-bashers on the one hand, and enlightened scientists on the other; or maybe between decent upholders of traditional values and ruthless materialists. But evolution was an old idea, and Darwin's role was to work out a scientifically respectable version of it, one which involved stretching the boundaries of what most people saw as scientific method. Nobody had ever seen one species change into another, and so Darwin could not generalise from a number ofauthentic cases as the inductive logic ofFrancis Bacon would have allowed. Thus his arguments were like legal pleas, manifestos, or sermons, aiming to convince beyond reasonable doubt - a rope of weak fibres twisted together into something stronger, but not a rigorous deductive chain like Euclid's geometry, which provided another model ofscientific inference. So to many contemporaries expert in natural history, his theory seemed speculative, unnecessary and untestable, all too liable to divert serious students from the real business of classifying organisms and strata, or understanding anatomy and physiology. Incredulous critics saw mere higgledy­ piggledy chance in the supposed operation of natural selection: Darwin, and his great ally Alfred Russel Wallace, tried to get them to see law and probability, and to take more seriously the great sweep of geological time. Inthis series, reproduced in facsimile from the rich collections ofthe library ofthe Natural History Museum in London, we shall encounter important but accessible scientific books making the case for and against evolution during Darwin's lifetime. A prologue to our story: in the opening years ofthe nineteenth century, three important authors published works that renewed debate about design and evolution. In 1802, William Paley's Natural Theology came out, making the case in classic prose that the world was a great clock (the best of all possible clocks), we and other organisms little clocks, and God the clockmaker. Everywhere Paley saw vii THE EVOLUTION DEBATE contrivance and he believed that God's goodness could be inferred from the general prevalence ofhappiness. In that same year, the eminent doctor and poet Erasmus Darwin died, and in 1803 his long evolutionary poem The Temple ofNature - with scientific footnotes - was published. 1 He saw progressive change everywhere, and evolution leading inexorably onward and upward: but his views were not bland, as his line 'One great slaughterhouse the warring world' indicates - he had lived after all in revolutionary times. In 1809 his grandson Charles was born, and also that year lB. Lamarck, based at the great natural history museum in Paris, who had published standard works on the classification of invertebrates, brought out his evolutionary treatise, Philosophie zoologique.? His theory was again pro­ gressive; but use, disuse and environment determine the exact course ofevolution rather as the terrain determines the exact course ofa river to the sea. In Lamarck's writing, nature's strivings could also be unsympathetically read as the urge among animals and plants to improve themselves. In that decade evolution seemed an idea that had had its day: it belonged with the speculative systems of the eighteenth century, an outdated kind ofscience propounded by the elderly, out oftouch with the latest high standards ofaccuracy and detail in science. English speakers learned about Lamarck's ideas chiefly through a chapter refuting them, in Charles Lyell's influential Principles ofGeology, 1830-33.3 In France, Lamarck had a rival at the museum, Georges Cuvier, who specialised in vertebrates. The museum adjoined the zoo, and Cuvier would dissect animals which died there; he became also particularly interested in fossils. By 1800, enough was known in Europe about America, Australia, Africa and Asia to make it evident that fossils were the remains of creatures most of which were no longer to be found: they were extinct. This idea, startling especially to those who believed that this was the best ofall possible worlds and would have been made that way in the beginning, fascinated Cuvier's contemporaries. As Napoleon sought to emulate Augustus by rebuilding his capital in marble, the limestone quarries ofMontmartre were worked, and they proved to be rich in fossils. Workmen were ordered to report their finds to Cuvier who, by comparing these skeletons to those of animals now living, found that he could reconstruct extinct creatures, sorting out which bones went together from the disordered and incomplete remains found in the rocks." He followed Aristotle, who had noted that nature did nothing in vain - that is, all the parts of animals are in proportion, and are relevant to its mode of life. Herbivores do not have great claws, or canine teeth: all ofa creature's organs are interdependent, and Cuvier after a bit believed that from a single bone he could reconstruct a complete animal. But this to him meant (as it had to Aristotle) that there could be no element ofchance in the design ofanimals; and he had no time for what to him seemed Lamarck's absurdities. As Permanent Secretary to the Institut (Academy of Sciences),' it fell to him to deliver Lamarck's obituary, and Cuvier did his best to inter his ideas along with their progenitor. What especially struck Cuvier was that beneath Paris there were several distinct and distinguishable species of bears, elephants and other creatures: indeed, there was clear evidence ofa whole series ofextinct faunas. Any idea that extinct creatures might all have viii THE EVOLUTION DEBATE missed the same boat at the time ofNoah's flood would not do: there must have been a series ofcatastrophes. And by the 1820s, evidence from England indicated that before these mammals there had been ages ofreptiles. William Buckland had been the first to describe what Richard Owen was later to call a dinosaur, a marine species, and Cuvier confirmed the reptilian character ofthe first land species, named by the Sussex doctor Gideon Mantell (who found it) 'iguanadon' after its supposed affinity to the iguana. Buckland, both an ordained clergyman and the first Professor of Geology at Oxford University, believed in the 1820s that he had found convincing evidence of Noah's flood in a Yorkshire cave that had been a hyena's den. But Lyell, his former pupil, convinced him in the 1830s that geological changes were slow and steady and that, as far as possible, past changes were to be explained in terms of causes now operating. By 1836 Buckland had abandoned beliefin a unique deluge, and believed that the Earth was very old - there had been millions ofyears before any ofthe events described in the Bible, as his wonderful fold-out plate in volume 3 shows. By then he had become fascinated by dinosaurs, and made a study of their footprints and their excreta as well as their bones. He believed that catastrophes and new creations separated the various geological epochs; and, like Cuvier, that since every fossil belonged to some distinct species or other, and the parts ofanimals were so fitted to their role, there could have been no gradual evolutionary process like Lamarck's or Erasmus Darwin's. In 1844, Charles Darwin, home from his voyage on HMS Beagle and married, wrote up the sketch ofhis theory written in 1842 into an essay to circulate among a few friends, to be published ifhe should die. That same year the publisher Robert Chambers of Edinburgh published anonymously Vestiges ofthe Natural History ofCreation.; an extremely successful evolutionary book that went through edition after edition, with a sequel, Explanations, published in1845.
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