396 THE STRUCTURE OF EVOLUTIONARY THEORY
Saltation as a Theory of Internal Impetus:
A Second Formalist Strategy for Pushing Darwinism
to a Causal Periphery
William Bateson: The Documentation of Inherent Discontinuity
DISCONTINUITY
Darwin, as noted earlier, viewed his own accomplishment as dual and
distinguishable: establishing the fact of evolution by copious data, and devising a
theory, natural selection, to explain the mechanism of change. Darwin also stated
that the first achievement must be ranked as more fundamental, for the deepest and
most disturbing implications flow from the simple fact of genealogical continuity
itself, whatever the philosophically radical character of natural selection as a cause
of change.
William Bateson, speaking at the major Darwinian centennial celebration of
1909, made the same point—and the same assessment of the two achievements:
Darwin's work has the property of greatness in that it may be admired for
more aspects than one. For some the perception of the principle of natural
selection stands out as his most wonderful achievement to which all the rest
is subordinate. Others, among whom I would range myself, look up to him
rather as the first who plainly distinguished, collected, and
comprehensively studied that new class of evidence from which hereafter a
true understanding of the process of evolution may be developed. We each
prefer our own standpoint of admiration; but I think that it will be in their
wider aspect that his labors will most command the veneration of posterity... We shall honor most in him not the rounded merit of finite
accomplishment, but the creative power by which he inaugurated a line of
discovery endless in variety and extension (Bateson, 1909, p. 85).
Bateson's and Darwin's motives, however, could scarcely have been more
different. Darwin, while ranking his joys, took great pride in both achievements.
But Bateson viewed natural selection as an insignificant force and a
methodological disaster. In downpeddling natural selection, Bateson presented his
argument as an attempt to save Darwin's wider viewpoint from its own worst error,
thus preserving the centennial season as a time of triumph.
William Bateson (1861-1926), son of a classical scholar who served as master
of St. John's College, Cambridge, shared with Charles Darwin both the enormous
advantages of birth and the potential impediment of a slow educational start.
Darwin's father reproached him in 1825: "You care for nothing but shooting, dogs,
and rat-catching, and you will be a disgrace to yourself and all your family."
Bateson, at a similar stage in his education, was branded as "a vague and aimless
boy" by his headmaster at Rugby. Yet Bateson finally focused his interests on
zoology and morphology, studying with Sedgwick and Weldon at Cambridge, and
from 1883 to 1884 (in an interesting