The Essence of Darwinism and the Basis of Modern Orthodoxy 139
in this negative formulation, acted only to preserve the type, constant and inviolate,
by eliminating extreme variants and unfit individuals who threatened to degrade
the essence of created form. Paley himself presents the following variant of this
argument, doing so to refute (in later pages) a claim that modern species preserve
the good designs winnowed from a much broader range of initial creations after
natural selection had eliminated the less viable forms: "The hypothesis teaches,
that every possible variety of being hath, at one time or other, found its way into
existence (by what cause or in what manner is not said), and that those which were
badly formed, perished" (Paley, 1803, pp. 70-71).
Darwin's theory therefore cannot be equated with the simple claim that natural
selection operates. Nearly all his colleagues and predecessors accepted this
postulate. Darwin, in his characteristic and radical way, grasped that this standard
mechanism for preserving the type could be inverted, and then converted into the
primary cause of evolutionary change. Natural selection obviously lies at the
center of Darwin's theory, but we must recognize, as Darwin's second key
postulate, the claim that natural selection acts as the creative force of evolutionary
change. The essence of Darwinism cannot reside in the mere observation that
natural selection operates—for everyone had long accepted a negative role for
natural selection in eliminating the unfit and preserving the type.
We have lost this context and distinction today, and our current perspective
often hampers an understanding of the late 19th century literature and its
preoccupations. Anyone who has read deeply in this literature knows that no
argument inspired more discussion, while no Darwinian claim seemed more
vulnerable to critics, than the proposition that natural selection should be viewed as
a positive force, and therefore as the primary cause of evolutionary change. The
"creativity of natural selection"—the phrase generally used in Darwin's time as a
shorthand description of the problem—set the cardinal subject for debate about
evolutionary mechanisms during Darwin's lifetime and throughout the late 19th
century.
Non-Darwinian evolutionists did not deny the reality, or the operationality, of
natural selection as a genuine cause stated in the most basic or abstract manner—in
the form that I called the "syllogistic core" on page 125 (still used as the standard
pedagogical device for teaching the "bare bones" logic of Darwinism in general
and introductory college courses). They held, rather, that natural selection, as a
headsman or executioner, could only eliminate the unfit, while some other cause
must play the positive role of constructing the fit.
For example, Charles Lyell—whom Darwin convinced about the factuality of
evolution but who never (much to Darwin's sadness and frustration) accepted the
mechanism of natural selection—admitted that he had become stymied on the issue
of creativity. He could understand, he wrote in his fifth journal on the "species
question" in March 1860, how natural selection might act like two members of the
"Hindoo Triad"—like Vishnu the preserver and Siva the destroyer, but he simply
could not grasp how