280 THE STRUCTURE OF EVOLUTIONARY THEORY
To reassert the importance of both poles in this dichotomy, I again cite my
primary candidate for the unenviable title of most worthy "invisible man"—an
important and influential thinker and educator in his day, but now entirely
forgotten. I tried to resurrect the Reverend James McCosh, president of Princeton
University, in Chapter 2 (pp. 116-118), and I now again want to call upon his fine
book, published in 1869 in collaboration with George Dickie: Typical Forms and
Special Ends in Creation. The Greek inscription on the title page—typos kai telos
(type and purpose)—epitomizes the argument. The two poles of the dichotomy
inhere in all natural objects, and full explanation demands attention to both:
In taking an enlarged view of the constitution of the material universe, so
far as it falls under our notice, it may be discovered that attention, at once
extensive and minute, is paid to two great principles or methods of
procedure. The one is the Principle of Order, or a general plan, pattern, or
type, to which every given object is made to conform with more or less
precision. The other is the Principle of Special Adaptation, or particular
end, by which each object, while constructed after a general model, is, at
the same time, accommodated to the situation which it has to occupy, and a
purpose which it is intended to serve. These two principles... meet in the
structure of every plant and every animal (McCosh and Dickie, 1869, p. 1).McCosh also recognized the contingent and socially embedded nature of
national preferences. He notes that English tradition—from Robert Boyle and John
Ray through Paley to the Bridgewater Treatises—has favored the adaptationist
theme. Thus, he argues, recent discoveries in formalist morphology have been
viewed as threatening by some biologists (McCosh cites the French and German
schools of ideal or transcendental morphology, especially in their English
translation through the work of Richard Owen, whom I treat later in this chapter):
"The arguments and illustrations adduced by British writers for the last age or two
in behalf of divine existence, have been taken almost exclusively from the
indications in nature of special adaptation of parts. Hence, when traces were
discovered in the last age of a general pattern, which had no reference to the
comfort of the animal or the functions of the particular plant, the discovery was
represented by some as overturning the whole doctrine of final cause; not a few
viewed the new doctrine with suspicion or alarm" (McCosh and Dickie, 1869, pp.
6 - 7).
But McCosh regards this perceived threat as false, and urges that formalist
insights be welcomed—for full explanation demands attention to both poles.
McCosh expresses the two key ideas in religious terms as natural illustrations of
"lofty wisdom" (formalism) and "providential care" (functionalism). We call the
same themes constraint and adaptation, but the image of exquisite balance remains
every bit as valid today:
We do not know whether to admire most the all-pervading order which runs
through the whole of nature, through all the parts of the plant and