ABSTRACT
Charles Darwin is often presented not only as a most eminent naturalist, but also as a prototypical empirical scientist, inductively deriving his theory of evolution based on empirical evidence rather than on theoretical, or even metaphysical or religious grounds. During his voyage on the HMS Beagle Darwin assembled a huge collection of animal-specimens, which contributed to the theory that changed our view of life. Such observations as those of the Galapagos finches were crucial for the paradigm shift linked to his specific theory of evolution, replacing belief in Genesis as well as pre-Darwinian theories of evolution. This positivist success story, dominating biology textbooks, sometimes presents Darwin’s theory of natural selection as simply a great victory of modern empirical science over earlier religious or philosophical prejudices. Although indeed this interpretation is broadly in line with today’s intellectual frontline between radicalized gene-Darwinism (Dawkins, 1976, 2007; Dennett, 1995, 2006) and radicalized religious literalism, the view involves gross simplifications. A detailed historical analysis shows that the relationship between Darwinism on the one side and religion, philosophy, and metaphysics on the other side has been much more volatile and intricate than this simple success story suggests (Desmond and Moore 1991; Depew and Weber 1995; Gould 2002; Knight 2004; Brooke and Cantor 2000; von Sydow 2005, 2012). Paradoxically, Darwin’s belief in natural theology, even after the voyage with the Beagle, had a strong impact on his theory of natural selection, even though this theory later subverted his religious tenets, ultimately rendering him agnostic at least (e.g., Ospovat 1995; Gould, 2002; von Sydow 2005). As a young man at the University of Cambridge, Darwin had studied theology. Although he was more interested in the ‘book of nature’ than in the Bible, the naturalist community in Cambridge brought him into further contact with England’s natural theology. Darwin read Paley’s Natural Theology (1802) voluntarily and with delight, learning it almost by heart. Even later he wrote that he has ‘hardly ever admired a book more than Paley’s Natural Theology’ (Darwin, 1985, vol. 7, letter to J. Lubbock, 22 November 1859: 388). Darwin’s theory of natural selection appears in fact to have absorbed ideas from Paley’s natural theology – among them his early beliefs in pan-adaptationism and in an unchangeable and universal law of natural selection (von Sydow 2005): The so-called ‘Panglossian’ perfectionism (cf. Gould 2002: 264) is found in Paley’s Natural Theology (1802) and is linked to his argument that organisms provide evidence for an omniscient designer. Even after adopting the general idea of a transformation of species in 1837 (an idea discussed by romantic and Lamarckian biologists before) and sketching a first version of his theory of natural selection in 1838, Darwin still retained a Paleyan belief in the ubiquity of adaptations, which he retained perhaps until 1844 (Ospovat 1981/1995: xv, 60–86). For Paley (1802), universal and unalterable natural laws, quite similar to adaptations, suggest the existence of a designer. Influenced by Paley – as well as by the general predominant Newtonian approach of the time – Darwin fashioned his theory of natural selection as one based on a simple, unchanging, uniform and universal mechanism (von Sydow 2005) that seems to exclude, for instance, an evolution of evolutionary mechanisms (von Sydow 2012).
