116 THE STRUCTURE OF EVOLUTIONARY THEORY
rarely that we can entertain little hope for direct observation during the short span
of human history. The disabling Lamarckian paradox—what is important can't be
studied; and what can be studied isn't important—therefore disappears, and
evolution becomes, under Darwin's system, a working science for the first time.
These features of methodology potentiate Darwin's theoretical overview (as we
shall see in the next section), and therefore contribute indispensably to what may
legitimately be called the essence of Darwinism, the sine quibus non for a
Darwinian view of nature. This book argues that we can define such a set of basic
commitments, but then maintains that these commitments have become inadequate
in our times.
Darwin as a Philosophical Revolutionary
THE CAUSES OF NATURE'S HARMONYDarwin and William Paley
In November 1859, just a week before the official publication date of the Origin,
Darwin wrote to his neighbor John Lubbock* "I do not think I hardly ever admired
a book more than Paley's 'Natural Theology.' I could almost formerly have said it
by heart" (in F. Darwin, 1887, volume 2, p. 219).
The Reverend James McCosh receives my vote for the most interesting
among a largely forgotten group of late 19th century thinkers who played a vital
role in their own time—liberal theologians friendly to evolution (though not
usually to Darwin's philosophy), and who prove that if any warring camps can be
designated in this realm, the combatants surely cannot be labeled as science vs.
religion (see Gould, 1999b), but rather as expressions of a much deeper struggle
between tradition and reform, or dogmatics and openness to change. McCosh
doesn't even merit a line in the Encyclopedia Britannica, though he did serve as
president of Princeton University, where he had a major influence on the career of
Henry Fairfield Osborn and other important American evolutionists.
In 1851, McCosh published an article entitled "Typical Forms" in the North
British Review. Hugh Miller, the self-taught Scottish geologist and general thinker,
called this article "at once the most suggestive and ingenious which we have
almost ever perused," and urged McCosh to expand his argument to an entire
volume. McCosh accepted this advice and, in collaboration with George Dickie,
published Typical Forms and Species Ends in Creation in 1869. The Greek
inscription on the title page—typos kai telos (type and pur-
- Later Lord Avebury and an author of many fine evolutionary works himself. But
Lubbock's greatest contribution to human thought was probably indirect, a result of
neighborly fellowship—for he sold to Darwin a corner of property that became the
famous "sandwalk" where Darwin, perambulating and kicking aside a flint cobble for
each circumnavigation, solved several riddles of life and human existence. Darwin
graded the difficulty of his problems by the number of circuits required for solution—
two-flint problems, five-flint problems, etc. I suspect that macroevolutionary theory must
present us with at least a fifty-flint problem!