CHAPTER TWO
The Essence of Darwinism and the
Basis of Modern Orthodoxy:
An Exegesis of the Origin of SpeciesA Revolution in the Small
Our theatrical and literary standards recognize only a few basic types of heroes.
Most are preeminently strong and brave; some, in an occasional bone thrown to the
marginal world of intellectuals, may even be allowed to triumph by brilliance. But
one small section of the pantheon has long been reserved for a sideshow of
improbables: the meek, the mild, the foolish, the insignificant, the ornamental—in
short, for characters so disdained that they pass beneath notice and become demons
of effectiveness by their invisibility. Consider the secretaries or chauffeurs who
learn essential secrets because patrician bosses scarcely acknowledge their
personhood and say almost anything in their presence; or the pageboys and
schoolgirls who walk unnoticed through enemy lines with essential messages to
partisans in conquered territories.
Though few scholars have considered the issue in this light, I would argue
that the intellectual agent of Darwin's victory falls into this anomalous category.
To be sure, Darwin succeeded because he devised a mechanism, natural selection
that possessed an unbeatable combination of testability and truth. But, at a more
general level, Darwin triumphed by allowing the formerly meek to inherit the
entire world of evolutionary theory.
Darwin's theory explicitly rejected and overturned the two evolutionary
systems well known in Britain during his time (see next chapter for details)—
Lamarck's (via Lyell`s exegesis in the Principles of Geology) and Chambers's (in
the anonymously printed Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation). Both these
theories sunk a deep root in the most powerful of cultural biases by describing
evolution as an interaction of two opposing forces. The first— considered
dominant, intrinsic and fundamental—yielded progress on the old euphonious (and
sexist) theme of "the march from monad to man." The second—designated as
secondary, diversionary and superimposed—interrupted the upward flow and
produced lateral dead-ends of specialized adaptations, from eyeless moles to long
necked giraffes. Darwin, in his greatest stroke of
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