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Geological Controversies

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Geological Controversies 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 geology 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- CHARLES DARWIN came home with the Beagle in the autumn of 1836 as a Uni- formitarian geologist. In early 1837 he met Charles Lyell 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, William Whewell, to be Secretary, and finally accepted as of the anniversary meeting in February 1838. This chronology, and the fact 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 Principles of Geology 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. Downloaded from http://pubs.geoscienceworld.org/jgs/article-pdf/132/4/377/4885311/gsjgs.132.4.0377.pdf by guest on 25 September 2021 378 W. F. Cannon 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 Charles Babbage 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 evolution, 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 natural selection 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 geologists 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 Downloaded from http://pubs.geoscienceworld.org/jgs/article-pdf/132/4/377/4885311/gsjgs.132.4.0377.pdf by guest on 25 September 2021 Whewell-Darwin controversy 379 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 nature, 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 adaptation: 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 'reductionism'. 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 (Aristotle'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.
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