The Essence of Darwinism and the Basis of Modern Orthodoxy 137
Darwin offers two sources for solace. First, the struggle, however fierce,
usually brings no pain or distress to organisms (humans, with their intrusive
consciousness, have introduced a tragic exception into nature). "When we reflect
on this struggle, we may console ourselves with the full belief, that the war of
nature is not incessant, that no fear is felt, that death is generally prompt, and that
the vigorous, the healthy, and the happy survive and multiply" (p. 79).
Second, this struggle does lead to general improvement, if only as an
epiphenomenon, and whatever the cost: "As natural selection works solely by and
for the good of each being, all corporeal and mental endowments will tend to
progress towards perfection" (p. 489). Darwin could never compromise his central
logic; for even this "softest" of all his statements explicitly asserts that selection
can only work on organisms—"for the good of each being." And why not? The
logic of organismal struggle includes both fierce beauty and empirical adequacy—
whatever the psychic costs. And, since roses by other names smell just as sweet,
then beauty, even as an epiphenomenon, becomes no less pleasing, and no less a
balm for the soul.
The Second Theme: Natural Selection as a Creative Force
CREATIVE FORCE
The following kind of incident has occurred over and over again, ever since
Darwin. An evolutionist, browsing through some pre-Darwinian tome in natural
history, comes upon a description of natural selection. Aha, he says; I have found
something important, a proof that Darwin wasn't original. Perhaps I have even
discovered a source of direct and nefarious pilfering by Darwin! In the most
notorious of these claims, the great anthropologist and writer Loren Eiseley
thought that he had detected such an anticipation in the writings of Edward Blyth.
Eiseley laboriously worked through the evidence that Darwin had read (and used)
Blyth's work and, making a crucial etymological mistake along the way (Gould,
1987c), finally charged that Darwin may have pinched the central idea for his
theory from Blyth. He published his case in a long article (Eiseley, 1959), later
expanded by his executors into a posthumous volume entitled "Darwin and the
Mysterious Mr. X" (1979).
Yes, Blyth had discussed natural selection, but Eiseley didn't realize—thus
committing the usual and fateful error in this common line of argument—that all
good biologists did so in the generations before Darwin. Natural selection ranked
as a standard item in biological discourse—but with a crucial difference from
Darwin's version: the usual interpretation invoked natural selection as part of a
larger argument for created permanency. * Natural selection,
*Only two exceptions have been noted to this generality—both in the domain of
anomalies that prove the rule. The Scottish fruit grower Patrick Matthew (in 1831) and
the Scottish-American physician William Charles Wells (in 1813, published in 1818)
spoke of natural selection as a positive force for evolutionary change, but neither
recognized the significance of his speculation. Matthew buried his views in the appendix
to a work entitled "Naval Timber and Arboriculture"; Wells published his conjecture in a
concluding section,