darwin, design, and the unification of nature 175any value or at all trustworthy. Would anyone trust in the convictions of a
monkey’s mind?”^49
Darwinism and the Unity of Nature
Was it possible to be a Darwinian and still believe in the unity of nature? In
many respects the theory of natural selection proved so divisive that it may be
difficult to think in terms of unities. It emphatically did not unite those ele-
ments of nature we call human beings. As Gillian Beer has pointed out in her
delightful bookDarwin’s Plots, many of the metaphors Darwin used to articu-
late his theory, including that of selection, could be read in different ways.^50
The metaphor of a branching tree, which Darwin used to illustrate divergence
from common ancestors, was ambiguous in that it both denied and affirmed
progress. There was no linear progression to the human race as top dog; and
yet the overall growth of a tree was upwards. The theory was ambiguous on
what was to become the sensitive question of race. All humans were ultimately
from a single origin and yet the subtitle of Darwin’sOriginwas The Preser-
vation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life.
Within Christendom, the theory was deeply divisive. The Bishop of Oxford,
Samuel Wilberforce, fell out with one of his own ordinands, Frederick Temple,
over the correct response to Darwin and other liberalizing trends. The pervasive
legend that Wilberforce baited Darwin’s disciple, Thomas Henry Huxley, by
asking whether he would prefer to think of himself descended from an ape on
his grandmother’s or grandfather’s side, only to be humiliated by a scathing
reply in which Huxley implied that he would prefer to have an ape for an
ancestor than a certain bishop, misses the seriousness with which Wilberforce
reviewed Darwin’sOrigin of Speciesand the fact that the story was largely a
retrospective invention, one of the foundation myths of scientific profession-
alism.^51 Unlike Temple, who was to become both an evolutionist and Arch-
bishop of Canterbury, Wilberforce was, however, a resolute critic of Darwin.
In America, there were similar divisions. At Princeton, Charles Hodge found
the mechanism of natural selection atheistic, while James McCosh simply con-
cluded that the prevalence of accident could not be accidental.
We may associate Darwinism with divisiveness for another reason. As a
scientific theory it has been exploited to support every political creed from
socialism to an unrestrained capitalism to a vehement nationalism. Nor, surely,
does Darwin give us a picture of nature at one with itself? Images of gladiatorial
struggle and of nature “red in tooth and claw” were a long way from Paley’s
happy world. The contented face of nature, Darwin once wrote, is but a mask.
And yet in such statements nature was still in the singular. Were there not
respects in which Darwin achieved one of the most remarkable unifications in
the entire history of science? Scientists themselves almost invariably believe