178 life
entirely accurate, is certainly arresting: “For centuries scientists have been pick-
ing holes in the unified world view of the great monotheistic religions. Yet,
through the DNA code, one branch of their learning, genetics, has uncovered
an astonishing unity in all created things. Its findings point to a common
ground on which both sides of the debate could fruitfully meet.”^59
The historical observation in that first sentence is surely misleading be-
cause, as I have argued in this paper, from the seventeenth century onwards,
there have been many facets of scientific activity that have contributed to a
further articulation, rather than a critique, of a unified world view. The possi-
bility of a fruitful meeting of minds, seemingly engendered anew by the DNA
code, is a possibility that has been actualized around the theme of unity many
times in the past. But it is also true that we should not overlook the existence
of a rich diversity in the world of nature with which attempts to unify stand in
dialectical relation. There assuredly have been advances in science associated
with shifts away from simplistic and premature schemata. In the life sciences
there is the well-known example of Georges Cuvier’s splitting the single great
chain of being into independent chains in order to achieve a more refined
taxonomy. The interplay between unity and diversity has, nevertheless, sur-
faced in so many contexts that it surely takes us beyond particularities of time
and place. We do not have to accept the Kantian principle that the imposition
of unity is one of the preconditions of the possibility of attaining a knowledge
of nature to recognize that ideals of unification have exercised a regulative role
in both scientific and religious thought.
notes
- David Kohn, “Theories to Work By: Rejected Theories, Reproduction and Dar-
win’s Path to Natural Selection,”Studies in the History of Biology4 (1980): 67–170;
Dov Ospovat, “Darwin after Malthus,”Journal of the History of Biology12 (1979):
211–230; Antonello La Vergata, “Images of Darwin,” inThe Darwinian Heritage, ed.
David Kohn (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1985), 901–972, especially 953–
- Charles Darwin,The Autobiography of Charles Darwin, ed. Nora Barlow (Lon-
don: Collins, 1958), 120. - Walter (Susan) Cannon, “The Bases of Darwin’s Achievement: A Revaluation,”
Victorian Studies5 (1961): 109–134; David Kohn, “Darwin’s Ambiguity: The Seculari-
zation of Biological Meaning,”British Journal for the History of Science22 (1989): 215–
- David Burbridge, “William Paley Confronts Erasmus Darwin: Natural Theol-
ogy and Evolutionism in the Eighteenth Century,”Science and Christian Belief 10
(1998): 49–71. - John Brooke, “The Relations between Darwin’s Science and His Religion,” in
Darwinism and Divinity, ed. John Durant (Oxford: Blackwell, 1985), 40–75. - Charles Darwin,The Descent of Man, 2nd ed. (London: Murray, 1906), 92.