The PreDarwinian Worldview

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The Pre-Darwinian Worldview

• Science and Religion Between 1700 and 1859

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The Static Universe

• World created in 4004 BC Usher, Lightfoot
  (17th century)
• Doctrine of Sufficient Reason if theres a
  reason for anything to exist, surely God has
  created it.
• Doctrine of Plenum Formarum the earth is full
  of all forms God could possibly want to create.
  No changes are necessary no extinction, no
  fresh creation
• All Things Bright and Beautiful the
  nineteenth century hymn by Cecil Alexander says
  it all!

3
All Things Bright and Beautiful

• All things bright and beautiful,All creatures
  great and small,All things wise and
  wonderful,The Lord God made them all.Each
  little flower that opens,Each little bird that
  sings,He made their glowing petals,He made
  their tiny wings.

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The Static Universe (2) The Great Chain of
Being

• Common but not universal in 17th and 18th
  centuries
• Idea of a hierarchical chain or ladder linking
  lowest and highest organisms (primarily animals
  and plants but allowing for rocks at the bottom
  and angels at top)
• Every organism occupies a link or a rung
• There are no gaps in the chain
• Man is at the top
• Idea does NOT imply evolutionary sequence

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Disturbing Discoveries

• Mammoth bones discovered in Siberia in early
  eighteenth century
• Mastodon bones found in North America 1739,
  1767, 1780
• 1699. Tyson dissects infant chimpanzee from
  Angola
• 1724. Wild Peter in Hanover
• 1735 Linnaeus, Swedish naturalist, lists humans
  and monkeys as Anthropomorpha
• 1751 Guettard finds extinct volcanoes in Auvergne
• 1790 John Frere finds hand axes in Hoxne, E.
  England
• 1795 James Huttons Theory of the Earth
• - no vestige of a beginning no end in sight

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Disturbing Discoveries (2)

• 1799 Jefferson and Wistar report discoveries of
  giant sloth
• 1799 Cuvier and Blumenbach distinguish between
  mammoth and mastodon
• 1809 Lamarcks Philosophie Zoologique
• 1825-29 MacEnery excavates Kents Cavern
• 1827-30 Schmerling uncovers Neandertal(??)
  fossils and stone tools at Engis
• 1810s and1820s First dinosaur discoveries

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Disturbing Discoveries (3)

• 1831-1836 Darwin on HMS Beagle
• 1830s and 1840s Boucher de Perthes finds hand
  axes and other paleolithic tools in Somme Valley
• 1844 Vestiges of Creation revives idea of
  evolution, but the book has a hostile reception
• 1856 Discovery of Neandertal Man. Significance
  denied by many
• 1858 Falconer and Pengelly excavate Brixham
  Cave-prove existence of Paleolithic humans
• 1858 Darwin and Wallace present findings
• 1859 Origin of Species

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Uniformitarians Catastrophists 1

• Rival schools in Geology
• Many catastrophists try to reconcile fossil
  remains of extinct animals and evidence of
  extensive geological change (and distinct strata)
  with the Genesis account of creation. Some cannot
  do so.
• Their key idea is that change has been
  occasional and rapid, the result of catastrophes
  such as eruptions, glaciations and floods (like
  Noahs Flood) on a global scale. Many allow for
  extension of time scale from 6000 to 50000 years.
  Catastrophists include Cuvier, William Smith,
  Buckland, Agassiz.
• .

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Uniformitarians, Catastrophists 2

• Uniformitarians believe that the earth is a
  uniform system of matter in motion.
• Infinite time was necessary for earth to cool
  from molten mass and for rocks to form.
• The uniformitarian principle, derived from
  physics and astronomy, would be a lynchpin of
  evolution, but uniformitarians such as Lyell had
  first to be convinced that extinction of species
  was possible. Uniformitarians include James
  Hutton, author of The Theory of the Earth and
  Charles Lyell, author of The Principles of
  Geology (1829-1833) and The Antiquity of Man
  (1863) .

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Uniformitarians and Catastrophists 3

• Although the catastrophists were in a sense the
  losers of this battle, the techniques of
  stratigraphy developed by Cuvier and Smith were
  utlized by scholars like Pengelly, Falconer and
  Evans to provide critical evidence for the
  existence of the Paleolithic era and to provide a
  timeline for both cultural and biological
  evolution

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Monogenists and Polygenists 1

• The two pre-Darwinian schools conducted a debate
  over human origins and the boundaries of the
  human species between 1775 and 1860.
• Species could be defined according to
  formal resemblance
  
  fixity of type
  
  reproductive isolation.

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Monogenists and Polygenists 2

• Monogenists believe all humans are a single
  species
• Whose members have the same ancestry, and
• All Humans can interbreed.
• Within the species the differences between human
  VARIETIES or RACES are caused by differences in
  climate, diet and mode of life.
• Differentiation increases over generations
• Skin colour, size of limbs, intelligence all vary
  in this way.
• Most monogenists believe whites are superior, but
  that environmental change may be reversible
• Many but not all believe in Genesis and in
  Ushers 6000 year chronology

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Monogenists and Polygenists 3

• Polygenists believed that the different races
  were NOT varieties of one species but distinct
  SPECIES which were
• Separately created in different parts of the
  world
• That their characteristics were fixed and
  immutable they had not changed since the time
  of the Pyramids
• That mulattoes and other hybrids were
  absolutely or relatively infertile
• That races could be hierarchically ranked
• Many but not all polygenists defended slavery

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Comparative Philology

• Now historical linguistics
• William Jones in the late 18th century, Bopp,
  Pott, Jakob Grimm, Muller and Pictet in the 19th
  trace the relationship and between grammatical
  and lexical forms in Greek, Latin, Celtic,
  Germanic, Persians, Sanskrit and Russian
  Languages.
• Hypothesis of Aryan race and culture a result
• ANALOGY between tracing of common origin through
  linguistic roots through different periods of
  history and the discovery of fossils and stone
  tools in different strata

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Sources of Comparative MethodSurvivals, Fossils
and Sound Shifts

• 1 The conjectural history and four-stage theory
  of the Scottish Enlightenment from foraging
  through pastoralism and horticulture to
  polished society
• 2 Fossils arrayed in different strata
• 3 Recapitulation theory from the embryology of
  Van Baer as misunderstood by Haeckel (1866) and
  others - ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny
• 4 Comparative philology using word roots and
  sound shifts to trace history
• 5 Lamarckian evolution
• 6 Darwin on the evolutionary significance of
  useless organs (the appendix, aspects of
  structure of outer ear)

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What distinguishes Darwin (and Wallace)

• They combine evolution and natural selection, and
  provide PROOF for their ideas
• We find evolution with the wrong mechanism
  (inheritance of acquired characteristics) in
  Erasmus Darwin, 1790s, Lamarck 1809, Chambers
  1844 and early Herbert Spencer
• Principle of inheritance of acquired
  characteristics is also found in the theory of
  MONOGENESIS (which is NOT about creation of new
  species)
• We find natural selection without evolution in
  Malthus (1798), William Charles Wells (1813)
  where it is used to explain racial changes ,
  Patrick Matthew (1831), and Herbert Spencer
  (1852) where it is used to explain why
  intelligence may be an advantage. Spencer also
  coins the term, survival of the fittest