Historical Interpretations of Non-Darwinian Evolutionary Theories of the Late Nineteenth Century and their Social and Religious Implications

 

Daniel J. Castellano

HI369 Roberts

Boston University

 

April 16, 2004

Discussion of late nineteenth century evolutionary thought is naturally inconceivable without reference to the towering legacy of Charles Darwin; yet twentieth-century historians have increasingly sought to contextualize Darwin’s influence within a much broader scope of evolutionary theorizing, particularly when they are dealing with evolution’s relation to religious and social issues.  This approach requires a distinction between Darwinian and non-Darwinian evolutionary thought, which in turn can generate more contestable identifications of Darwinian and non-Darwinian evolutionist thinkers.  The diversity of non-Darwinian evolutionism admits various schemes of categorization, but historians rarely fail to include at least one Lamarckian or neo-Lamarckian school of thought.  A historian’s choice of definition for non-Darwinist evolution, and Lamarckian or neo-Lamarckian evolution in particular, informs and is informed by his or her perception of Darwin in comparison to his social milieu.  Those who see Darwin or his theory as materialistic may have a broader definition of Darwinism if they think late-nineteenth century scientific thought was materialistic, or a narrower definition if they perceive most evolutionists were uncomfortable with philosophical materialism.  The same holds for interpretations of the views of Darwin and his contemporaries on matters of teleology and theology.  Historical theses also have a reflexive interaction with the perceived relationship between Darwinian and Lamarckian or neo-Lamarckian thought.  One theory or another may be perceived as a precursor or a throwback, if the historian has a triumphalist view of science, or the Darwinian and Lamarckian categories can show considerable overlap if one takes a more conciliatory approach.  Interdependence between choice of constructs and conclusions does not invalidate the latter, but our awareness of this relation should cause us to examine these constructs more critically, especially when they are mentioned only casually.  Without pretending to give a comprehensive historiography on Lamarckian evolution, we may look at how several authors have treated the interaction between Darwinism and Lamarckism, particularly in the context of their religious and social implications.  In some cases, assumptions about the distinction and relation of these categories are explicitly central to establishing the author’s thesis.

            The common high school biology characterization of Jean-Baptiste Lamarck as a primitive forerunner of Darwin who lacked only the latter’s insight into the true mechanism of evolution has been steadily eroded by recent historical scholarship, to the point that Madeleine Barthélemy-Madaule has devoted an entire book to opposing this “myth”.  To be sure, even mid-twentieth-century historians were skeptical of Lamarck’s designated role of playing Jean-Baptiste to Darwin’s gospel.  For one thing, it was already understood that Lamarck had made little impression in his own time, and that there was no continuous evolutionary debate from the eighteenth century to Darwin.  Charles Coulston Gillispie, in his definitive work of the period, Genesis and Geology (1951), expressed this point emphatically:

Mutation of species was not seriously under discussion before 1844, and not seriously in prospect until 1859 – nowhere, that is, except in Darwin’s immediate and restricted circle…. In general, Lamarck was classified with the visionary speculations of a bygone age, and no more thought to be dangerous than Whiston, or Buffon, or even Lucretius.[1]

 

This disavowal of continuity was not all that prevented Gillispie from characterizing Lamarck as a true forerunner of Darwin. He saw Lamarck’s theory as part of “the contracting and self-defeating history of subjective science”, while Darwin imposed mechanism on biology.[2]  This notion of Lamarck as a throwback was explicitly shared by an English botanist, C.D. Darlington, who upheld Erasmus Darwin as “the great precursor” and regarded Lamarck as a step backward, though a necessary one.[3]  Richard Burckhardt, in his pivotal work The Spirit of System (1977) distances himself equally from the views that Lamarck was “ahead of his time” or an example of “bad science” as Gillispie would hold.[4]  Lamarck was a creature of his time both in his successes and his failures.[5]  Burckhardt’s approach refuses to judge the past in terms of the future, either positively or negatively.  Gillispsie’s assessment of Lamarck is inseparable from his view that quantitative or mechanistic science is the way of progress, and that Darwinian theory embodies this ideal.  Burckhardt purposefully avoids this normative judgment, and we are left with what Camille Limoges, in a review of The Spirit of System, has called an “equivocal” depiction of Lamarck, who is alternately characterized as “skillful” and “inept”.[6]

            While, for one reason or another, few modern historians are willing to consider Lamarck a precursor of Darwin, there has been much greater inclination to associate Lamarck with late nineteenth century neo-Lamarckians, owing to their shared belief in the inheritance of acquired characteristics.  Once again, historians of the Darwinian centenary were generally aware that this correlation was problematic.  For one thing, Lamarck shared nothing of the supposedly vitalist ideas of neo-Lamarckians, though it seemed that way because he regarded change itself as a fundamental entity.  Gillispie found Lamarck’s view that “activity” is “ontologically fundamental”, rather than bodies, to be “no longer a familiar view” and “not even recognizable” in 1959.[7]  This conceptual gap was meant to show the disparity between Lamarck and all later evolutionary views, though ironically, more recent evolutionists like Stephen Jay Gould have rehabilitated the “primacy of process” and understand this to be one of the major conceptual advances of Darwinism.[8]  A more compelling criticism of any link between Lamarck and neo-Lamarckians is directed at the identification of Lamarckism as a theory of “inheritance of acquired characteristics”.  C.D. Darlington suggested that the inheritance of acquired traits was taken for granted, until Lamarck’s unacceptable conclusions caused this assumption to be challenged.[9]  Burckhardt also regards the inheritance of acquired characters as a mere assumption, and of only secondary importance to Lamarck’s theory.[10] Limoges concurs that Neo-Lamarckism “bore no continuity in tradition with Lamarck”, remarking that neo-Lamarckians had scant knowledge of Lamarck’s writings, and that Lamarck did not even address the same questions as Darwin.  Madeleine Barthélemy-Madaule has compiled all these criticisms in a single work, Lamarck: ou le mythe du précurseur (1979), and agrees with Limoges, “there is no problem-set of adaptation in Lamarck”.[11] She also points out that “inheritance of acquired characters” is an anachronism, since “heredity” was not a current scientific concept. Lamarck spoke instead of the “preservation of acquisitions” or “acquired changes”.[12]  Thus Lamarck is denied a role even as a precursor of the Neo-Lamarckians.

            Sharply differentiating the personal theories of Lamarck from those of the so-called neo-Lamarckians does not prohibit historians from legitimately creating a category called Lamarckism or neo-Lamarckism.  Indeed, such a definition has proved essential to most discussions of the intellectual history of evolution.  As noted, the most common definition of (neo-) Lamarckism has centered on a belief in the inheritance of acquired traits.  When this is taken as an essential characteristic, Lamarckism can encompass such diverse thinkers as Cope, Packard, Spencer, and even Darwin himself.  Even if we admit that there was great diversity of opinion among the Lamarckians, the mere act of defining Lamarckism along these lines has the effect of setting Darwinism in tension with itself.  This internal tension is obvious in Darlington’s study, which characterizes Darwinism as a “mixed theory” or a “double standard of explanation”, owing to Darwin’s acknowledgment of both natural selection and soft inheritance as causal factors.[13]  This contradiction is particularly acute in Darlington’s view, since he regards Lamarckism as “directed” evolution, in contrast with random, accidental natural selection.  Peter Bowler introduces more sophisticated distinctions among non-Darwinian evolutionists, but continues to identify “Lamarckism” or the “inheritance of acquired characteristics” as an alternative to Darwin.  Bowler distinguishes Lamarckism from “orthogenesis” (borrowing German biologist Theodor Eimer’s term) on the basis that the former is directed by adaptive goals, but the latter is directed by non-adaptive goals.  In this view, Cope and Packard are Lamarckians, but Hyatt’s theory is really orthogenesis.[14]  Spencer is similarly distinguished from the volitional theories of Cope.  These distinctions somewhat clarify the relationship between Lamarckism and various forms of teleology, but do not abolish the implications of setting belief in soft inheritance in opposition to Darwin.  Darwin’s progressive emphasis on factors other than natural selection constitutes a retreat, and attention directed toward soft inheritance as a mechanism for creating variations indicates the declining relevance of Darwinism.

            Definitions of Lamarckism often contain the idea that Lamarckism was teleological or compatible with teleology, at least with respect to adaptive ends.  These constructions usually assume            that natural selection is inherently anti-teleological, so Lamarckism offered evolutionists a way to keep a sense of direction and purpose in natural history.   According to Burckhardt, Lamarck’s “first and predominant cause” was a “plan of nature”, while environmental constraints, use and disuse, and the like, were “accidental” causes.[15] While Bowler would characterize such a “plan of nature” as orthogenesis, he is nonetheless able to discern teleology even in accidental mechanisms. Bowler asserts that “Lamarckism was the direct heir to theistic evolutionism” by virtue of assigning a mechanism to development, which was compatible with teleology and providence.[16]  Darwinism, in contrast, “denied the orderliness of development.”[17]  Bowler has written (1988) that most contemporaries avoided the radically anti-teleological conclusions of Darwin, and defused any “Darwinian revolution” by introducing purposeful mechanisms.  Ronald Numbers has recently (1998) declared his support of Bowler’s thesis, though he considers the demise of special creationism significant enough to merit continued use of the term “Darwinian revolution”.[18]

The reintroduction of orthogenesis as a class of non-Darwinian evolutionary thought accentuates the assumption that natural selection is anti-teleological.  Regardless of whether they are distinguished from neo-Lamarckians, orthogenetic evolutionists have been depicted as cultural conservatives or moderates who were unprepared to accept Darwin’s purposeless model of natural history.  George Daniels has described the American neo-Lamarckian need for a “vital force” as necessary to reconciling evolution with Christianity, as well as being more compatible with the notion of human progress.[19]  Stow Persons drew similar links by showing the influence of Herbert Spencer, “a Neo-Lamarckian rather than a Darwinian”, on the American evolutionary theist, Minot J. Savage:

The peculiar appeal of the Lamarckian explanation of evolution for students of the social and spiritual life lay in the fact that conscious or unconscious effort by the individual to achieve more satisfying adjustments to the physical or psychical environments, was presumed to effect such adjustments in the course of time.[20]

 

Persons cites the writings of E.D. Cope to justify this correlation.  He also holds that this sort of compromise between Christianity and evolution was possible only among those who were less than orthodox.  Bowler regards “Lamarckism” (soft inheritance), theistic evolution, and orthogenesis as three distinct alternatives to natural selection, yet these all share a goal-directed nature.  As noted earlier, orthogenesis is distinguished by its appeal to non-adaptive causes, allowing Bowler to separate American neo-Lamarckians from their European counterparts.  Orthogenesis is the more distinctive element of American neo-Lamarckism, and it is precisely this non-adaptive aspect that was unintelligible to Darwin.  Bowler is not altogether consistent in deciding whether Cope, Hyatt, and Packard each lean toward Lamarckism or orthogenesis, but he does clearly affirm that, “The American school rejected Darwinism from the start precisely because it denied the orderliness of development.”[21]  David Livingstone has a more temperate assessment of Darwinism, suggesting that Darwin only abolished the utilitarian teleology of Paley’s watchmaker, thereby forcing teleology to become more “holistic” or “idealist”, as in the case of Richard Owen.[22]  This moderate view of Darwinian teleology permits Livingstone to depict Americans not as rejecting Darwinism, but instead supplementing it with a “Lamarckian veneer”.[23]  Like Bowler, he sees Lamarckism as alleviating tension between science and religion, but since he takes a milder view of the theological problems created by Darwin, he does not need to assert the presence of non-Darwinian influences as forcefully.

            We have seen that reducing Lamarckism to a single property such as “inheritance of acquired characteristics”, though consistent with late nineteenth century usage, can be extremely problematic as a category in the history of evolutionary thought.  The obverse of this difficulty consists in defining Darwinism as the espousal of natural selection as a primary or exclusive cause of evolution.  A narrow definition of Darwinism can yield some unintuitive results.  Bowler, for example, holds that the essence of Darwin’s theory is “adaptation as the sole driving agent of evolution”, from which follows a host of other concepts, including the notion that evolution must be irregular and haphazard.[24]  This comes dangerously close to retrojecting modern biologists’ understanding of Darwin into how he was understood in his own time, but Bowler makes a case that these ideas were in fact important to Darwin.  Still, with this rigid definition, we are forced to recognize that Huxley and Haeckel were “pseudo-Darwinians”; Huxley for his belief that evolution could be affected by internal factors that were independent of the environment, and Haeckel for drawing an evolutionary tree that seemed anthropocentric.  Another self-professed Darwinian, the American paleontologist Othniel Marsh is exposed as a crypto-Lamarckian for proposing a “law of brain growth”.[25]  Once this is admitted, we can hardly escape Bowler’s conclusion that Darwinism had little to do with the evolution revolution, since virtually no one is a Darwinian.  To Bowler, any attempt to identify “orderly trends” without “haphazard divergence” is contrary to the spirit of Darwin’s insight.[26]  James Moore, by contrast, takes care to distance Darwin from modern interpretations of his theory, and is thus able to adopt the radically contrarian position that Darwinism actually restored teleology to biology.[27]  Rather than depict Darwin’s occasional search for intrinsic causes or Lamarckian mechanisms as a betrayal of principle or a loss of nerve, Moore sees these speculations as no less essential to Darwinism, thus Christian Darwinians are true Darwinians because of, not in spite of their teleology.

            When Darwinism is closely identified with natural selection, Weismann often becomes the central Darwinian figure, and the neo-Lamarckian versus neo-Darwinian debate is defined by reactions to Weismann.  Barthélemy-Madaule and Bowler agree that it was only after Weismann challenged the generally accepted principle of soft inheritance and insisted that natural selection alone explained evolution that evolutionists began to strenuously affirm non-selective means of adaptation.[28]  Identifying negative responses to Weismann with an anti-Darwinian reaction results in a profoundly non-Darwinian picture of late nineteenth century evolutionary thought, particularly in North America.  Numbers has noted that virtually no historian names any Americans on the “neo-Darwinian” side of the Weismann debate, since there were none who would enlist natural selection as the sole cause of evolution.[29]  Yet Numbers is reluctant to depict the Weismann affair as polarizing the scientific community, and instead points to the similarities between neo-Lamarckians and neo-Darwinians, who were both equally concerned with finding naturalistic external causes of variation.  Also, there was a wide variety of opinion among members of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), very few of whom could be strictly considered neo-Lamarckians, and even these few did not collaborate as a “school”.  He cites the neo-Lamarckism historian Theodore Greenfield as determining that there is “no evidence…that they coordinated their efforts, assigned special tasks among themselves, or pursued their special areas in relation to other’s choices”.[30]  Although Numbers emphasizes how splintered the American scientific community was regarding evolutionary mechanisms, he does not challenge Bowler’s basic conclusion that natural selection played a minor role in American scientific discourse.  Yet by shifting focus away from whether evolutionists were for or against Weismann, he is able to direct our attention on a genuinely Darwinian revolution of abandoning special creationism through a variety of naturalistic causes.

            Another means of distinguishing Darwinism from other forms of evolution is to associate it with philosophical materialism.  John C. Greene and Ernst Mayr have both identified Darwinism with the rise of materialism, though only Mayr views this as a positive development.[31] Gertrude Himmelfarb had even credited Darwin with actually accomplishing a materialist revolution,[32] which is precisely the sort of thesis Bowler has opposed at great length.  Bowler agrees with his predecessors that Darwin’s unique theoretical contributions were materialist in nature, but denies that these ideas had any real impact in the late nineteenth century.  Once again he separates Haeckel from Darwin:

For all Haeckel’s self-proclaimed materialism, his system contained a strong element of an almost mystical belief in a purposeful nature.  That such an explicit progressionism was able to flourish under the name of Darwinism illustrates the extent to which the spirit of Darwin’s thinking had been perverted by those who regarded themselves as his followers.[33]

 

Materialism, anti-teleology, and natural selection are practically equivalent for Bowler’s purpose of showing the irrelevance of true Darwinian thought.  Darwin merely catalyzed the transition to naturalistic explanations of phylogenetic development; his more radical ideas would not be accepted until well into the twentieth century.

            Christian responses to Darwinism, in the narrowly defined senses discussed, have generally been seen as tepid at best, owing to the need to modify Darwin’s theory in a manner that is congruent with divine purpose.  Stow Persons views nearly any sort of Christian evolutionism as a compromise with heterodoxy, since evolutionary theology required “abandonment of the old literal anthropomorphic dualism in favor of a belief in the immanence of God.”[34]  Christian evolutionists tended toward theological liberalism, reducing faith to personal experience, focusing on Christ’s humanity, and discarding the “old Christian economy of salvation…in favor of a more charitable universalist economy of abundance.”[35]  Livingstone holds that Asa Gray’s “Christian orthodoxy” obligated him to search for a “right evolutionary teleology” in collaboration with George Frederick Wright.[36]  Doctrinal considerations made most intellectuals unwilling to adopt the Darwinian gospel in its unadulterated, anti-teleological form.

A more positive assessment of the encounter between Christianity and Darwin is possible only when one substantially broadens the definition of either Christianity or Darwinism.  Hudson Winthrop considers Darwinism in a broad sense when he says, “Within a decade after the Civil War, practically every important American scientist had been converted to Darwin’s theory of evolution.”[37]  Winthrop is basically following the nineteenth century equation of Darwinism with evolution.  James Moore is able to correlate Darwinism with Christian orthodoxy only by emphasizing Darwinism’s grounding in natural theology and by stretching the limits of orthodoxy to include immanentists such as James Iverach.[38]  Livingstone’s discussion of evangelical Protestants also pushes the bounds of orthodoxy in order to include more evolutionary theists.  Numbers points out the limitations of associating responses to Darwinism with theological orthodoxy.  The special creationist Louis Agassiz, for example, was a liberal Unitarian who found the story of Adam and Eve an “absurdity”, and objected to evolution on paleontological grounds.  Asa Gray was similarly unconcerned with harmonizing the Bible with science. [39]  Numbers disavows any correlation between Darwinism and Calvinism or any other denomination in the United States, and he does not see any evidence of Darwinism causing American scientists to abandon religion or undergo a spiritual crisis, though he does find a positive correlation between liberal social attitudes (including religion) and the acceptance of Darwinism.[40]

The social attitudes of evolutionists have been a fertile ground for explanations of the acceptance or rejection of Darwinian theory.  Central to any such discussion are the social and biological theories of Herbert Spencer, who is often classified as a Lamarckian or neo-Lamarckian by virtue of his belief in non-volitional soft inheritance.  Bowler carries this association to its logical conclusion, and decides that the Spencerian moral views espoused by Carnegie and Rockefeller had little to do with natural selection, and would be more properly called “social Lamarckism”.[41]  An analogy between Lamarckism and human social progress appears appropriate, since human beings can learn the technical abilities and cultural values their predecessors developed throughout their lives.  Yet neo-Lamarckians, according to both Bowler and Livingstone, had deep misgivings toward Spencer’s morality and laissez-faire capitalism.  Livingstone regards this counter-example as evidence that there was no correlation between evolutionary opinion and social practice.[42]  Moore finds Spencer’s thought consistent with liberal Protestant theology and morals, and is eager to distinguish Darwin from social Darwinism.[43]

Just as most historians are loath to identify Darwin with social Darwinism in the pejorative sense, the idea that Darwinism dovetailed with the Victorian notion of human progress has found little recent support.  Instead, non-Darwinian influences such as Spencer are invoked to effect the reconciliation of evolution with Victorian progress. We have seen previously how Lamarckism and orthogenesis supported goal-directed progress.  Bowler has gathered all this evidence to support his thesis that evolutionism or Darwinism in the Victorian era contained the idea of progress.  Even the term “evolution” was Spencer’s preference, not Darwin’s, for this had been previously applied to embryonic growth, which appears orderly and directed.[44]  Darwin’s immediate significance then becomes his role in the history of “developmental” or “progressivist” evolution.

            Recent trends in scholarship have tended to scrupulously avoid the practice of interpreting the past in terms of the present.  Burckhardt and Barthélemy-Madaule have completed the deconstruction of Lamarck as a forerunner of Darwin or the neo-Lamarckists.  The popularity of natural selection, materialism, and purposeless random variation among modern biologists has made Darwin into a modern prophet, when in his own day he was successful for reasons quite unrelated to the features of his theory that are admired today.  Thus a demythologizing of Darwin has been in order, and this work has been largely completed by Bowler, perhaps even to excess.  Despite their potential for misuse, distinctions between Darwinian and non-Darwinian evolution have helped clarify the social and theological implications of the encounter of Darwin with the Victorian intellectual world.  David Hull has attempted a social definition of “Darwinians” as those who expressed loyalty to Darwin as the founder of evolutionary theory,[45] but the utility of this scheme is questionable, since self-professed Darwinians have shown highly divergent views on matters theological, philosophical, and scientific.  The social definition of Darwinians would only reflect the Victorian understanding of Darwinism as any form of progressive, naturalistic evolution.  Hull’s proposal does have its merits, as it would highlight the fact that disagreement with Darwin on theological or scientific grounds did not necessarily translate into antipathy.  Numbers has characterized as a myth the notion that American evolutionists were divided into hostile camps, reminding us that, despite their explanatory utility, anachronistic categories such as Darwinian and non-Darwinian should not be projected into the conscious attitudes of the times.  Huxley would probably have been horrified to hear himself called a pseudo-Darwinian, but the real differences between his thought and Darwin’s cannot be ignored when we are discussing the immediate and long-term impact of ideas.

By describing the numerous categorizations historians have constructed and how these are logically bound with their conclusions, I do not mean to deny the legitimacy of arguments based on contructs, much less declare that the questions they address subjectively depend on the preconceived notions of the historian. Darwin’s letters to Asa Gray and Joseph Hooker clearly reveal, for example, that Darwin, though not an atheist, did not see natural selection as operating by design or with direction.  Thus we must side with the majority against Moore that Darwin was indeed opposed to teleology in nature. Ultimately, the weight of the primary evidence must determine the utility of particular social and intellectual categories.

 

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Barthélemy-Madaule, Madeleine. Lamarck the Mythical Precursor, translated from the French by M.H. Shank. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1982.

Bowler, Peter J. The Eclipse of Darwinism. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Univ. Press, 1983.

Bowler, Peter J. Evolution: The History of an Idea. Berkeley: Univ. of California Press, 1984.

Bowler, Peter J. The Non-Darwinian Revolution. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Univ. Press, 1988.

Burckhardt, Richard W. The Spirit of System. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Univ. Press, 1977.

Corsi, Pietro. The Age of Lamarck, translated from the Italian by Jonathan Mandelbaum. Berkeley: Univ. of California Press, 1988.

Daniels, George, ed. Darwinism Comes to America. Waltham, Mass.: Blaisdell, 1968.

Darlington, C.D. Darwin’s Place in History. Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1959.

Gillispie, Charles Coulston. Genesis and Geology. New York: Harper & Row, 1951.

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Gould, Stephen Jay. Ontogeny and Phylogeny. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Univ. Press, 1977.

Limoges, Camille. “Lamarck in His Milieu.” Science 199 (1978): 1427-1428.

Livingstone, David N. Darwin’s Forgotten Defenders. Edinburgh: Scottish Academic Press, 1987.

McKinney, H. Lewis., ed. and trans. Lamarck to Darwin: Contributions to Evolutionary Biology 1809-1859. Lawrence, Kansas: Coronado Press, 1971.

Moore, James R. The Post-Darwinian Controversies. Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1979.

Numbers, Ronald L. Darwinism Comes to America. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard Univ. Press, 1998.

Persons, Stow, ed. Evolutionary Thought in America. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1950.

Winthrop, Hudson S. Religion in America, 2^nd ed. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1973.