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Geological controversies

The Whewell-Darwin controversy

W. FAYE CANNON

SUM MARY In formulating his approach to natural history mantic view of natural history such as thc one in 1837-8, Darwin combined ideas and tech- held by WiUian Whcwcll. The Romantics niques from several areas, of which five are challenged the adequacy of rcductionist sys- identified. But these do not show why he formu- tems which, they said, could not explain the lated such an all-embracing approach, going 'higher' faculties. Darwin sought a reduction- from to human instincts, morality, and ist ('materialist') system which would meet aesthetic responses. The hypothesis presented the Romantic objections. here is that Darwin was responding to a Ro- came home with the Beagle in the autumn of 1836 as a Uni- formitarian . In early 1837 he met and became good friends with him, settled in London, and gave his first paper to this Society. In July 1837 he opened his first notebook on what he called the 'Transmutation of Species.' He was asked by the President of the Society, , to be Secretary, and finally accepted as of the anniversary meeting in February 1838. This chronology, and the that this Society was his primary professional environment, makes it seem clear that Darwin was responding to one of the chal- lenges which Whewell had presented in reviewing LyeU's of 183o- 3. Whewell named LyeU's position 'Uniformitarianism' and said, in ad- dition to some very nice things, x) Lyell says that geological forces have always been of the same extent and intensity as they are at present; but this is not demon- strable; 2) Lyell says that there has been no developmental sequence from a more primitive to a more organized state of things; but the evidence suggests that there has been some kind of development, although not any simple or straight-line devel- opment; 3) Lyell postulates that species come into being uniformly and individ- ually, more or less at random throughout geological history; but he gives no in- dication of any process now in progress which could produce new species, and indeed he refutes transmutationists such as Davy and Lamarck at considerable length. The first and second of these points were prominent in the Uniformitarian- Catastrophist debates in the Geological Society. The third was of particular in- terest in Geological Society circles in 1836 and early 1837 because of two events: x) The great John Herschel, astronomer, physical scientist, and a member of this Society, wrote a letter from the Cape of Good Hope to Charles LyeU praising Lyell's Principles highly, and especially highlighting 'that mystery of mysteries the origination of new species.' He, like WheweU, said that there has not yet been proposed any process actually in progress--that is, any Uniformitarian process-- which might account for it. Jl geol. So¢. Lond. vol. x32, x976, pp. 377-384. Printed in Northern Ireland.

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2) In the spring of I837, Whewell's important History of the Inductive Sciences was on the verge of appearing, and Lyell was eager to be fairly represented in it. When it came out, in May, it essentially repeated WheweU's objections of six years earlier. Darwin looked at some parts of it earlier than the autumn of 1838-- just when and just what parts, he does not say. Charles Darwin had not seen the relevant paragraph of Herschel's letter by July I937, although it was published by in his Ninth Bridge- water Treatise in May; and another long section of the letter was the subject of a meeting of this Society, also in May, at Whewell's instigation. Darwin may or may not have seen the relevant sections of Whewell's History at that time (he went through it in considerable detail later, in the autumn of 1838). But Darwin was, I suggest, responding to the atmosphere of Geological Society circles in tackling one of Whewell's three challenges. Why he chose to tackle it along evolutionary lines, I do not know. An evolutionary explanation of the origin of species would, as Whewell had pointed out, necessarily overthrow one of the principles of Uni- formitarianism (I use the word to mean Lyell's position as expressed in his Prin- ciples) : its denial of a developmental sequence. If there has been a secular devel- opment of organisms, and if organisms are closely adapted to their environments, then there must have been a secular development of the environment. But be- lieving in transmutation, and what we call , as possibilities seems not to have been much of a personal problem for young Darwin by 1837. Making these beliefs plausible was another matter. Darwin noted this quite early in his note- books: he needed to refute not only Lamarck's theory of evolution, but also Lyell's refutation of Lamarck's theory. His theory of is specifically de- signed to refute Lyell. Now from the standpoint of Uniformitarian geology, major problems that the origin of species can help solve are those of the geographical distribution of both living organisms and of fossils. Geographical distribution is one of the things that Alexander Humboldt had drawn the attention of to, and Lyell had gone into it at length. This is what Darwin recalled as the origin of his views: current distribution, as on the Galapagos Islands, and the fossil distribution of South American mammals. And this is where my real problem begins. Why wasn't that enough for Darwin ? Why didn't he go from geographical distribution to the mechanism of natural selection operating under conditions of Malthusian superfecundity and then say, I have met the Whewell-Herschel challenge. I have a Uniformitarian process for the origination of new species which will explain geographical distribution. Perhaps it will explain other things also; if so, good. I have at any rate shown myself to be a good Humboldfian and a good Uniformitarian. This is roughly what Alfred Wallace did do, twenty years later. And this, I think, is why Wallace was not the equivalent of Darwin. He came out with a particular solution to a particular set of problems, which would not have disturbed anyone very much, especially if interpreted (as it was by Wallace, eventually) as further evidence of a Creative Mind controlling natural processes, and as specifically not the com- plete explanation of the origin of man's highest faculties. I want to draw attention particularly to Darwin's notebooks between July

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1837 and September 1838, that is, up to the time he read Malthus and located the engine or 'spring' which would power his system: intense population pressure; what Darwin described as 'a force like a hundred thousand wedges trying to force every kind of adapted structure into the gaps in the economy of , or rather forming gaps by thrusting out weaker ones.' My question is, by September 1838 what kinds of things did Darwin want a solution for ? What was his system intended to explain, even before he located the mechanism which would make it work ? The answer is: he was not content with a theory which would explain geographical distribution. He saw how to do that in the first few months, but he kept on devel- oping his speculations. Nor was he content, in the Origin of species merely to ex- plain the origin of structure--anatomy, and physiology, and things like that. He also wanted a theory to explain habits and instincts; reasoning power; emotions and the expression of emotions, including such an abstract emotion as the love of beauty; and morality, the moral sentiment in men and animals. He wanted a theory which showed that there is no break, no saltus, between man and the other animals. And he wanted to show all of this by concentrating on the phenomena of : by explaining all of them as being in some way a beneficial re- sponse to the environment. In intellectual language, Darwin's desires to explain all of these things in this way led him, as he gradually came to realise, to sketch out a complete system of utilitarian materialism. 'Materialism' is not here a smear word, or equivalent to 'atheism', but is the name of a standard mid-I8th century school of thought, derivative from Locke and represented in the I8th-century by Hartley. Some degree of 'materialism' was common and well-accepted in England because it was compatible with Newtonian ideas of atoms or corpuscles, of explaining the more complex by combinations of simpler, more elementary elements. We might call it ''. Of course, for orthodox Christian Newtonians, this process of ex- planation could go only so far; given elementary particles and their rules of com- bination, you could not explain adaptation without invoking a Designer. That is why I call Darwin's scheme a complete materialist system; in it the Unmoved Mover ('s idea of God) which is responsible for patriotism, love, and morality, is the geological environment. Although Darwin was aware of philosophers and philosophic ideas, I do not mean that Darwin sat down to erect a particular philosophic system deliberately. He began with the desire to establish 'descent with modification' as 'my theory' and went on to see if he could plausibly explain all of the things I have mentioned on that basis. By the end of the summer of 1838 he was sure that he could, if only he had a mechanism to make descent with modification work, and he was fairly sure that what he needed was some natural process analogous to what English breeders had been doing with dogs, horses, and cattle. As he went along, however, he noted that he was getting further and further into materialism--'O you ma- terialist !' is one of his entries--and this did not bother him very much; he thought it made God grander than other ways of thinking did. ,Utilitarianism' is also an old creed. For Darwin, all lasting are lasting because they are useful to the owner, or at least not harmful. And focusing on adaptation had been the standard English naturalist's way ever since John

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Ray c. 17oo---perhaps earlier, but at least since then. For the English naturalist (and therefore for the natural theologian also), that organisms are adapted in manifold ways to do well in their environments is the most obvious part of natural history. Not that adaptation is perfectmabsolute perfection is a meaningless con- cept (what would a perfect eye be like ? like a man's eye, or like a fly's eye ?) but there is a great deal of quite useful adaptation. 'Perfect' in orthodox Anglican natural theology of the I83os, and in Darwin, means that useful adaptation is omnipresent, is everywhere, not that adaptation is ideally efficient. I will note here, in case you think that I am discussing many more matters than are treated in the Origin of Species, that the Origin does not contain all of Darwin's system. All of his books after 1859 are part of the system he outlined in I838, none more typically so than The Expression of Emotions in Man and Animals. Why Darwin so often chose old-fashioned, I8th-century approaches to his scientific problems (evolution, utilitarianism, materialism are all old-fashioned by I837) is a personal matter which I will leave to others such as Dr Sandra Her- bert at the University of Maryland, whose interest in Darwin's notebooks has rekindled mine. However, why Darwin felt that he needed a complete solution which included an explanation of man and his higher faculties is something I can answer. It was because of William Whewell, whose Bridgewater treatise, Astron- omy and General Considered with Reference to Natural Theology he was reading in I838 before Malthus, at the same time as he was sketching out the full scope of his own theory. He was also reading Whewell's I838 Presidential Address to this Society, and, of course, working with Whewell in such ways as your secretary does work with your president. And he had looked at some parts of Whewell's History. This opposition, between Whewell's public statements and Darwin's private jottings in his notebooks, is what I call the Whewell-Darwin controversy, even though Whewell did not know it was going on (he found out 21 years later, of course). The Oxford English Dictionary allows this usage in antique intellectual matters: one used to speak of the controversy between, say, Aristotle and Luc- retius, even though Aristotle never heard of Lucretius, being safely dead. More important, I think that Whewell in the 183os was a good representative of a posi- tion which was a major one in the Darwinian controversies after i859. Indeed I think it was the most stubborn and long-lasting of all the anti-Darwinian posi- tions, and is still strongly with us, most obviously with poets and the young, but also with some scientists. The position is that of Romanticism. Obviously it was not Whewell who originated this position, or even the scientific version of it I am going to describe. But WheweU was the advocate whom I know Darwin paid detailed attention to. Another good presentation of the position was made by another leading member of this Society whom Darwin knew well, Adam Sedg- wick, professor of geology at Cambridge, in his Discourse on the Studies of the Uni- versity (I833). But I don't know that Darwin had studied that book in x838 (al- though he did later). The new scientific approach being presented by such men in the I83os was related to but rather carefully modified from the positions of Coleridge and the German philosophers to whom Coleridge had drawn attention. Sedgwick and

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Whewell were Christians and scientists, so I call theirs the Christian Romantic position in science; their arguments, being scientifically based, were available for non-Christian Romantics to use as well. Their starting-point was the assertion that x8th-century materialism could now be seen to be a failure, because it could not explain some main features of natural history. Man, said Sedgwick and Whe- well, is not structurally very different from the other animals. It may be that his reasoning faculty is explicable along Hartley's line of argument; moreover the power of reasoning is not a novelty in man. Other animals can reason, to a cer- tain extent; reason is at its highest in man. But, said the Romantics, reason is not man's highest faculty. Man's highest faculties are his ability to have moral sentiments, and his emotions of love, including the love of beauty. These faculties are not rational; they are innate, or instinctual, or something like that. They are not utilitarian in any simple sense: morality does not lead the individual to maxi- mize his advantages. It is an imperative within him which is quite often anti- utilitarian for the individual; it may lead him to sacrifice his . Eighteenth-century materialism has not been able to explain these higher faculties in man, yet these are the interesting ones. Note that these faculties, like reason, are not unique in man. Does a dog have moral sentiments ? Of course he does: a dog can be ashamed of himself. Do animals love ? Of course they do: mother love is mother love, in female animals and humans alike, an innate in- stinct, not learned by association. There is a higher degree of these faculties in man than in animals. The systems which cannot explain them in man cannot ex- plain them in animals either. But, in English natural history, animals are as much characterized by their behaviour as by their structure. A system which cannot explain behaviour cannot be a full and satisfactory scientific approach. It might explain a static classificatory scheme, but that is not what natural history is. (Young Darwin, for example, noted that in South America he could not distinguish species and varieties of jaguars just by looking at them; one had to learn whom they grouped and mated with). What is an instinct? What is a habit? What is innate behaviour? The one thing we can be sure of (said the man of the x83os) is that we do not know. These are terms we use to cloak our ignorance. Therefore, from the Romantic standpoint, utilitarian materialism was an out- moded approach to science which had been tried, and had failed to explain enough. The Romantics did not say that they had as yet developed a complete new system, but at least they did not leave out major portions of the evidence. Since trying to explain the higher faculties as derivative from lower ones had failed, it was now time to reverse the process. Find the laws which apply to the higher faculties directly; perhaps the lower ones could then be shown to be de- rivative from them. For example, study the evolution of languages directly so as to find the laws of linguistics; don't rely on a hypothetical psychology of associa- tion when there is real evidence available. In particular, a noteworthy failure (said these men of the i83os ) in trying to explain the higher as derivative from the lower has been in ideas of organic evolu- tion. The theory of a transmutation of species, starting from some basic impulse in organisms and leading to more and more complexity, has been tried out by a

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quite good anatomist, Lamarck, and has failed. If you don't believe me when I assert that Lamarck's evolutionary scheme, while interesting, is quite inadequate to explain all the of natural history we now know, you should consult Charles Lyell's Principles of Geology, Volume II. This, then, I suggest, was the challenge which Darwin accepted to revive the transmutation of species within a system which would explain everything which the president of the Geological Society said a satisfactorily complete natural history system should explain. Otherwise, Sedgwick and Whewell had refuted him in advance. If Darwin had tried to present a simple system for the explana- tion of geographical distribution alone, or for the origin of structure alone, his senior colleagues could have dismissed it as a theory of no great importance. And since Darwin's was an evolutionary system, the Uniformitarian Charles Lyell might have joined with the Catastrophists in rejecting it. As far as I can make out, young Darwin utilized approaches from at least five distinguishable sources: I. The orthodox universe of Anglican natural theology, from John Ray through Malthus and William Paley to and Wil- liam Whewell. Most of this derives from natural scientists, of course; natural theology was based on generalizations which scientists accepted. 2. The overall 'vision' of Alexander Humboldt: topographical principles at work in time and space (as I now summarize that vision). 3. The theoretical methods of Charles Lyell, especially the use of systems of hypotheses and deductions. 4. English rural life as seen by the gentry. 5- A collection of eighteenth-century ideas (evolution, transmutation, utilitarianism--of course Paley is utilitarian also) which I cannot trace on my own authority but which do not seem inappropriate in Darwin. What brought all of these (and others) together was the need to develop an out. line of natural history, including humankind, which would be competitive in all of the areas which the Romantic scientists had insisted on. Darwin's theoretical scheme of 1838, then, was not a simple extension of Lyell's Uniformitarianism in the scope of the subjects it set out to explain, just as it was not Lyellian in its evolutionary character. It was a response to the case put forward by Lyell's opponents; it was an extension, if you like, of the debates for which the appearance of Lyell's Principles gave the occasion. It was fitting, therefore, that literally the first passage in the Origin of'Species is a quotation from Whewell's Bridgewater Treatise, facing the title page, above one from . My concluding queries are two: i. Was WheweU correct in saying that Lyell's Uniformitarianism was inconsistent, because it denied all developmental change ? Or is it only that we can no longer conceive of a non-evolutionary explanation of the origin of species ? Are we, with Darwin, so old-fashioned that we would not accept a non-evolutionary theory if a satisfactory one were ever presented ? I am not advocating any current schemes that I have heard of; I am quite content with Darwin. But I want to be sure that historically we give sympathetic attention to various schemes of that period--mostly Ideal Type schemes--which were not then obscurantist but were serious scientific proposals. One such, for example, was by Edward Forbes, an ardent Uniformitarian; he was trying to find a non- evolutionary theory of the origin of species because (it seems obvious) that is what Lyell's Uniformitarianism needed. Darwin did finally cause Lyell, in the I86OS

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to 'renounce my old creed,' but it was surely reasonable to try to complete Uni- formitarianism rather than to throw away one of its major features at once. 2. Isn't it fortunate that Lyell had such vigorous opponents: friends, of course, but strong controversialists ? If they had not decided to put forward a complete counter-case--not merely because of Lyell, but that gave a good opportunity to open the discussionbDarwin would not have been challenged to look for so com- plete a counter-counter-case. By September I838 he saw that he could give a plausible explanation for all of the attributes Romantics exphasized in men and animals, provided only that he could find something in the wild state similar to what breeders find in the domestic state. He therefore knew what he needed when he opened Malthus on Population and found, not the mechanism we now call 'natural selection'--simply as a mech- anism he, and Lyell, and many others knew of it already (it is the basis of Luc- retius's reply to Aristotle)--but the enormous population pressure which would force the mechanism not only to be preservative of the type (its role in Lyell) but also sometimes to favour deviations from the type. With this, he had a process actually in progress to make his system go. Of course he still did not have enough evidence to prove that the system was correct; and there were many points that were still obscure. He did not have a case that could be expected to convince others. My answer to the question, 'Why did Darwin delay in publishing his theory until I859 ?' is that he did not delay. His conduct was professionally valid. He had no proper scientific case in I839, only a set of speculations; he needed twenty years or so to develop one. Even then it came out, under pressure, in bits and pieces; there is no one later work by Darwin which lays out his whole system as it can be seen in speculative outline in his notebooks. But the system of I838-I84 o had the proper dimensions which his seniors had insisted on, so that if it were correct, it would be a satisfactory scheme for natural history as a whole. And this is the characteristic I wanted to explain: why Darwin's thinking from its beginning, in his first fourteen months of informal speculation, was intended to furnish an approach for all of natural history, not just one theory for one important problem area.

Bibliography

BABBAGE,(]. 1837. The Ninth Bridgewater Treatise. London. DARWXN, Cl. X960, X96I, I967 . Notebooks on Transmutation of Species. de Beer, G., Rowlands M.J. & Skramovsky, B. M. (eds) Bull Brit. Mus. (Nat. Hist.), Hist. Ser. 2 (2-6), 3 (5)- I974. 'M and N Notebooks' and 'Old and Useless Notes' In H. Gruber & P. Barrett, Darwin on Man. New York, pp. 266-3o 5, 329-6o, 382-4o5 • (The M and N notebooks are the essen- tial new evidence suggesting the need for a new approach. I am indebted to Dr Sandra Her- bert for making available the Skramovsky transcription, which is substantially the same as the one here published by Barrett.) LYBLL, Cl. X833. Principles of Geology, 2nd ed. II. London. (This is the first version of volume II). PALEY, W. 18o2. Natural Theology. S~DGWXCX, A. I83O--3. Anniversary Address of the President x83o, x83i. Proc. geol. So¢. Lond. x, I87-212, 28x-316. x833. A Discourse on the studies of the university. Cambridge.

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WHEBrELL, W, I83I. Lyell--Prindples of Geology. British Critic (3) 9, x8o-2o6. I832. Lyell's Geology, Vol. 2. Quart. Rev. 47, to3-32. 1834. Astronomy and General Physics Considered With Reference to Natural Theology, 4th ed. London. x837. Histmy of the Inductiw Sciences. London. (esp. III. Books XVII and XVIII). i838. Anniversary Address of the President (I838). Pro¢. Geol. Soc. Lond. zp 624-49.

CANNON, W. F. I960. The problem of miracles in the I83O'S. Victorian Studies, 4, 5-32. 196i. The bases of Darwin's achievement: a revaluation. Victorian Studies 5, zog-I34- z961. The impact of uniformitarianism: two letters from John Herschel to Charles Lyell, 1836-x837. Proc. Amer. Phil. Soc. zos, 3oz-z4. 1968. Darwin's vision in On the Origin of@ecies. In G. Levine & W. Madden, Theartof Vic- torian Prose. New York, 154-76. HODGE, M.J.S. On the origin of Darwinism in Lyellian historical geography. Paper given at the BHtish Society for the meeting in July t 97 z. My paper was conceived as a respome to Dr. Hodge. Read at 'Geological controversies' meeting, on t8 October x972. W. FA~ CANNON, Division of Physical Sciences, Smithsonian Imtitution, Washington, D.C. 2o56o.

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