The Essence of Darwinism and the Basis of Modern Orthodoxy 163
This issue exposes another essential Darwinian theme not yet discussed (but
receiving full treatment in Chapter 6)—the nature of competition; the prevalence of
biotic over abiotic effects; the metaphor of the wedge; and the fundamental role of
Darwinian ecology as a validator of progress (in the absence of any available
defense from the bare-bones mechanism of natural selection itself). Thus, the
argument for uniformitarian change in geology undergirds a central conviction of
the Darwinian corpus.
We cannot overestimate the depth of Darwin's debt to his intellectual hero,
Charles Lyell. The uniformitarianism of his mentor not only provided, by transfer
into biology, a theory of evolutionary change. The doctrine of uniformity also
supplied, on its original geological turf, a world that could grant enough slow and
continuous environmental change to fuel natural selection—but not so much, or so
quickly, that selection would be overcome, and the rein of pattern seized by
environment in its own right. In natural selection, environment proposes and
organisms dispose; this subtle balance of inside and outside must be maintained.
But in a world of too much environmental change, the external component does
not only propose, but can also dispose of organisms and species without much
backtalk. Darwinism does not run well on such a one-way street.
Judgments of Importance
In the difficult genre of comprehensive historical reviews, a few special books
stand out as so fair in their judgments and so lucid in their characterizations that
they set the conceptual boundaries of disciplines for generations. In morphology,
E. S. Russell's Form and Function (1916) occupies this role for the brilliance and
justice of its characterizations, even though Russell, as an avowed Lamarckian,
made no secret about his own preferences (and made the wrong choice by modern
standards). In evolutionary biology, similar plaudits may be granted to Vernon L.
Kellogg's Darwinism Today (1907). Kellogg, a great educator and entomologist
from Stanford, had collaborated with David Starr Jordan on the best textbooks of
his generation. He also played an ironic role in the history of evolution by serving
a term (while America maintained her early neutrality) as chief agent for Belgian
relief, posted to the German General Staff in Berlin during World War I. There, he
listened in horror to German leaders perverting Darwinism as a justification for
war and conquest—and he exposed these distortions in his fascinating volume,
Headquarters Nights (1917). William Jennings Bryan read this book and,
understanding the abuse but blaming the victims of misinterpretation rather than
the perpetrators, launched his campaign to ban the teaching of evolution as a result
(see Gould, 1991b).
As the Darwinian centennial of 1909 neared, Kellogg decided to write a
volume providing a fair hearing for all varieties of Darwinism, and all alternative
views in a decade of maximal agnosticism and diversity in evolutionary theories.
Kellogg's book adopts the same premise as this treatise—that