8 Michael Ruse
Darwin was not about to tell the scientific world of his conversion. The big
problem with evolution in the late 1830s was not so much its anti-biblical cast, but
more the fact that it was associated with radical ideas. Evolution was taken to be
unabashedly progressive — scum to animal, monad to man, blob to Briton. Indeed,
amusingly, Lyell reinforced this connection by portraying Lamarck’s evolution as
trying to explain a progressive fossil record, when truly Lamarck was doing no
such thing at all. The trouble with biological progress was that properly it was
taken to be a cousin of social progress, and with reason social progress was taken
to be a radical idea — it had led to the American Revolution and, far worse,
the French revolution. More than this, the social notion of progress was thought
anti-Christian. It implies that we humans unaided can make for a better world,
whereas the Christian knows that we are sinners, and only through God’s grace is
improvement possible. Providence rather than progress.
The late 1830s radicals, including Robert Grant, had taken up evolution with
enthusiasm, seeing it as support for their anti-Christian, progressivist program
[Desmond, 1989]. There was no way that the socially respectable young Darwin,
terrifically ambitious and desperate to be well regarded in the scientific world, was
going to blot his copy book by announcing himself an evolutionist. (Interestingly,
the one person with whom he might have discussed evolutionary ideas in a semi-
friendly manner was a new pal, the anatomist Richard Owen. Although Owen was
later to become the violent enemy of the Darwinians, after theBeaglevoyage he
and Darwin became close and there is evidence that there was some vague talk
about the transmutation of forms.)
NATURAL SELECTIONSo Darwin stayed quiet, filling notebook after notebook with his readings and
speculations [Barrettet al., 1987]. Why did he bother? Simply because he was an
Englishman, educated at Cambridge. The greatest scientist of them all, another
Cambridge-educated Englishman, Isaac Newton had made his name by finding the
cause behind the Copernican Revolution. Before Newton, others like Kepler and
Galileo had done the spadework. Now it was for Newton to provide the universal
force of gravitational attraction, that made everything work. Darwin wanted to
be the Newton of biology. He was not the first to propose evolution. He was going
to be the first to find the cause. Remember the point about Darwin not being the
Christian God and not making everything form nothing. Keep this in mind, as we
follow him through to his great discovery.
It seems that it was a quick move for Darwin to sense that some kind of selection
must be the key behind change. Darwin knew of so-called Lamarckism – the
inheritance of acquired characteristics — it is inZoonomiaapart from anything
else. He always accepted that it is true in some respects, but he could see that
it could never be a fully adequate explanation of change. Apart from anything
else, animal and plant breeders told him this. But they did also tell him that if
you want change in your cows or sheep or turnips or pigeons, then what you must