Species

138 Species

Other Fixist Views

The view that species were fixed as they had been created was held religiously (in the

strict sense) in 1844 by the marine biologist and founder of the fashion of aquarium

keeping, Philip Henry Gosse in his An Introduction to Zoology:

Each order was distributed into subordinate groups, called Genera, and each genus

into Species. As this last term is often somewhat vaguely used, it may not be useless

to define its acceptation. It is used to signify those distinct forms which are believed to

have proceeded direct from the creating hand of God, and on which was impressed a

certain individuality, destined to pass down through all succeeding generations, with-

out loss and without confusion. Thus the Horse and the Ass, the Tiger and the Leopard,

the Goose and the Duck, though closely allied in form, are believed to have descended

from no common parentage, however remote, but to have been primary forms of the

original creation. It is often difficult in practice to determine the difference or identity

of species; as we know of no fixed principle on which to found our decision, except the

great law of nature, by which specific individuality is preserved—that the progeny of

mixed species shall not be fertile inter se.^109

He repeated this in his famous book, known popularly as Omphalos, in which

he argued that the world was created as the Bible said, but was made to look old.

He says

I demand also [as well as the creation of matter out of nothing—JSW], in opposition

to the development hypothesis [pre-Darwinian evolutionism—JSW], the perpetuity of

specific characters, from the moment when the respective creatures were called into

being, till they cease to be. I assume that each organism which the Creator educed was

stamped with an indelible specific character, which made it what it was, and distin-

guished it from everything else, however near or like. I assume that such character has

been, and is, indelible and immutable; that the characters which distinguish species

from species now, were as definite at the first instant of their creation as now, and are

as distinct now as they were then.^110

Here we see both fixism and essentialism, and it is essentialism of the kind that
Mayr and the Received View objected to—a real or material essentialism as well
as a taxonomic one. But there is no comfort for the Received View here—Gosse
was not regarded as a leading professional naturalist (though Huxley called him
the “honest hodman of science”^111 ), and his book was not well received; it sold
so poorly that most copies were pulped, and as his son wrote, “alas! Atheists and

(^109) Gosse 1844, xv; cf. Simpson 1925, 175.
(^110) Gosse 1857, also known as Creation (Omphalos). I am indebted, literally and metaphorically, to
Dr Noelie Alito for purchasing an original copy of Gosse’s Creation (Omphalos) on my behalf. A
scanned copy is available on the Internet from archive.org. The title of physical copies I have seen
include both Omphalos and the title above. Possibly the publisher reissued it with another title to
increase sales by making the subject matter clearer.
(^111) Numbers 1992, 141. The source of the Huxley comment is Gosse’s son’s book Father and Son
[Gosse 1970, chapter V]. I cannot locate an original.