Another Review of Durant Darwin and divinity:
Darwinism and Divinity: Essays on Evolution and Religious Belief
Edited by John Durant
New York, Basil Blackwell, 1985. 210 pp. $24.95.
This collection of essays began with four papers (Brooke, Moore, Peacocke, and Barker) given at a meeting organized by the British History of Science Society in 1982 during the centenary of Darwin’s death. Three more were added, especially commissioned for this volume.
Durant sketches sporadic periods in the history of Darwinism and evolution in relation to theology, beginning with the context of nineteenth century British natural theology before Darwin and ending with “scientific theology” in the thought of Harvard’s sociobiologist E. O. Wilson and Zygon’s Ralph Burhoe, and sets the other essays into context. I found it surprising that although Durant mentions social Darwinism in relation to Bryan’s opposition to evolution, he does not mention those who criticize sociobiology as one more chapter in the conservative backing of the status quo.
Historian of science John Hedley Brooke’s essay, “The Relations Between Darwin’s Science and His Religion,” focuses on two main issues: the relation between Darwin’s thought and the traditions of natural theology found in British biological thought, and the reasons for Darwin’s estrangement from theology and his removing it from his final evolutionary framework. We learn here, for example, how the design and harmony themes in natural theology both helped and hindered Darwin in fathoming his way to natural selection. We also explore
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various theories of how Darwin’s cultural and scientific knowledge might account for his increasing agnosticism, originating in his abhor-. ring the traditional damnation of all unbelievers. Brooke suggests that one reason for the turning point in 1838 was his discussing religious questions with Emma Wedgewood during their engagement.
Jim Moore, also a historian of science, penned the essay “Herbert Spencer’s Henchmen: The Evolution of Protestant Liberals in Late Nineteenth-Century America.” He shows that liberals such as Henry Ward Beecher, Lyman Abbott, and others followed Spencer’s metaphysics of evolution and did not wrestle with Darwinian science. Unfortunately, Moore does not discuss, in relation to these Spencerians, how the American scientist Asa Gray and other nineteenth century scientists accommodated their natural theology of design in nature with. Darwinism, a subject he explored in his major work, The Post-Darwinian Controversies.
In the essay “Biological Evolution and Christian Theology-Yesterday and Today,” theologian-scientist Arthur Peacocke reviews a variety of positive theological responses to evolution in the past and present, identifies the key ideas in the evolutionary framework of modern science-beginning with a clear statement that science, including microbiology, supports the Darwinian thesis that evolution with continuity among diverse species is a fact-and concludes with a series of comments on how theology should model the relationships between God, nature, and humanity in order to keep alive the dialogue with modern science. Peacocke favors the tradition that affirms our physical and personal worlds as two views of a single reality and believes that theology can offer “a perspective in which the world’s continuous and seamless web of self-development, of self-organizing by its own inherent properties, generates forms of matter that are capable of being persons and perceiving meaning, those meanings, indeed, with which the creator imbued his creation.” But, I must ask, which meanings share more with the depths of faith?
Although perhaps written especially for this volume, “The Effects of Religion on Human Biology,” by social scientists Vernon Reynolds and Ralph Tanner proved a disappointment. It attempts to relate the doctrines of major religions to policies with regard to child-bearing in order to examine whether religious belief has a bearing on survival, thus using the survival concept in Darwinism to think about cultural evolution. The descriptions of doctrines in the major world religions (black Africa is ignored) seem too far removed from the concrete realities of believers’ lives today and are applied to populations too diverse to classify meaningfully under one and the same religion, for example, Japan, Vietnam, South Korea, Sri Lanka, and China under Buddhism, though the authors do include per capita GNP in their final tabulation.
In contrast to this quasi-empirical approach, philosopher Mary Midgley’s analysis, “The Religion of Evolution,” is both witty and wise. After chiding scientists for making immoderate claims for future “Omega
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men,” she states the problem that all scientists should ponder: the difference between searching for facts out of curiosity and building those facts into a harmonious system out of a desire for intellectual order that transcends empiricism and enters metaphysics. She closes with astute comparisons of Dobzhansky and Wilson. For example: “One last contrast-Dobzhansky really does understand the difference between predictions and ideals, and Wilson does not. Prophets can fairly deal in both these wares, but it is vital that they should grasp the distinction. Predictions get their support from factual evidence. Ideals get theirs from considerations of value.”
Scientific creationists are the focus of the final essay by Eileen Barker, known for her sociological study, The Making of a Moonie. She adds something new to this overworked subject with information about the recent activity of such groups in Britain and by analyzing this kind of creationism as a curious blend-seeking security for an uncertain value system that is made insecure by science, by cloaking it with scientific authority, all the while calling science relative.
Edward E. Daub
University of Wisconsin
Madison, Wisconsin