The Modern Synthesis as a Limited Consensus 569
the limbo of defunct hypotheses, together with Darwin's views on Pangenesis,
sexual selection and the origin of species from fluctuating variations, we must, I
believe, still admit that the great English naturalist opened up before us a vast new
world of thought and endeavor" (Wheeler, 1909, p. 385).
T. H. Morgan, who would later become a strong supporter of natural
selection, began his centennial contribution by expressing the standard argument
that Darwin's importance transcends the limitations of natural selection: "The
loyalty that every man of science feels towards Darwin is something greater than
any special theory. I shall call it the spirit of Darwinism, the point of view, the
method, the procedure of Darwin" (Morgan, 1909, p. 367). Morgan then ended his
article, entitled "For Darwin," by heaping tangential scorn on natural selection
while praising the liberating generality of evolution itself: "We stand today on the
foundations laid 50 years ago. Darwin's method is our method; the way he pointed
out we follow, not as the advocates of a dogma, not as the disciples of any
particular creed, but the avowed adherents of a method of investigation whose
inauguration we owe chiefly to Charles Darwin. For it is this spirit of Darwinism,
not its formulae, that we proclaim as our best heritage" (1909, p. 380).
William Bateson, the least Darwinian of the symposiasts, began his article on
the same theme, and then stated his own view right up front: "Darwin's work has
the property of greatness in that it may be admired from 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"
(Bateson, 1909, p. 85). Bateson then added (see p. 596 for more on this quotation
and Bateson's general views), in a statement that strikes me as the most
appropriately generous, genuine and cogent expression of an argument that could
be advanced with equal validity today: "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" (1909, p. 85).
Finally, consider the dilemma of A. C. Seward, general editor of the "official"
Cambridge celebration, who followed a British tradition of fairness in inviting all
sides, but then struggled to find some coherence amidst the Babel of papers he
received: "The divergence of views among biologists in regard to the origin of
species and as to the most promising directions in which to seek for truth is
illustrated by the different opinions of contributors. Whether Darwin's views on the
modus operandi of evolutionary forces receive further confirmation in the future,
or whether they are materially modified, in no way affects the truth of the
statement that, by employing his life 'in adding a little to Natural Science,' he
revolutionized the world of thought" (Seward, 1909, p. vii).
I can imagine no contrast more stark, no reversal so complete, as the
comparison of these doubts in 1909 with the confidence and near unanimity
expressed