The Modern Synthesis as a Limited Consensus 567
the two centennials therefore provides a striking example and epitome of the
success (and rigidification) of the Modern Synthesis.
Consider two of the leading symposia in 1909: the "official" celebration held
in Cambridge (Seward, 1909), and the major American vernacular Festschrift,
published as a special issue of Popular Science Monthly in 1909. The cardinal
message reeks with ambiguity (for a celebration of Darwin's accomplishments):
complete confidence in the fact of evolution; lavish praise for Darwin as midwife
of the factual confirmation; admission that no consensus has been reached on
mechanisms of evolutionary change; and a general feeling that natural selection
plays, at most, a minor role.
A few strong selectionists restated their claims, most notably the two sur-
viving members of Darwin's inner circle: Joseph Hooker and Alfred Russel
Wallace. But even Wallace, the most ardent of selectionists, could no longer
muster the confidence and enthusiasm of former years. The qualifiers in his
"triumphalist" statement could not be more revealing—for he can now only assert
that selection has been adopted as a "satisfying" solution by "a large number" of
qualified experts: "And this brings me to the very interesting question: Why did so
many of the greatest intellects fail, while Darwin and myself hit upon the solution
of this problem—a solution which this celebration proves to have been (and still to
be) a satisfying one to a large number of those best able to form a judgment on its
merits" (Wallace, 1909, p. 398).
The range of opinions expressed at the Cambridge symposium illustrates the
turmoil in evolutionary theory at Darwin's 100th birthday. Participants spanned the
full spectrum from August Weismann's defense of selection's Allmacht (all-
sufficiency) to Bateson's claims for selection's impotence (accompanied by lavish
praise for Darwin's other achievement in establishing the fact of evolution—see p.
396). More commonly, authors tried to assimilate Darwin to their own disparate
views, thereby turning the profession's hero into a chameleon. For de Vries,
Darwin became a closet saltationist (see p. 416 on editor Seward's annoyance at de
Vries' false and self-serving reinterpretation of Darwin). For Haeckel, Darwin
ranked as a pluralist, a true kin to the speaker who had dedicated volume 2 of his
Generelle Morphologie collectively to Darwin, Lamarck, and Goethe! (Haeckel,
1866). Haeckel wrote (1909, pp. 140-141), trying to distance Darwin from
Weismann's position (called "neoDarwinism" at the time), and to reinvent the
symposium's hero as a man in the middle between selectionism and Lamarckism:
"It seems to me quite improper to describe this [Weismann's] hypothetical structure
as 'NeoDarwinism.' Darwin was just as convinced as Lamarck of the transmission
of acquired characters and its great importance in the scheme of evolution ...
Natural selection does not of itself give the solution of all our evolutionary
problems. It has to be taken in conjunction with the transformism of Lamarck, with
which it is in complete harmony."
The strategy of Henry Fairfield Osborn (in heaping praise on Darwin while
denying any substantial power to natural selection) well illustrates the most
consistent theme of both 1909 symposia. "There is no denying," Osborn writes
(1909, p. 332), "that there is today a wide reaction against the central