Ideas similar to those propounded by Darwin had been in circulation for some two generations before the publication of the 'Origin of the Species', and were discussed under such rubrics as 'development' or 'descent with modification' [by Robert Chambers, Lamarck, and William Chambers among others].
Much of the contemporary discussion of Darwin's theses centered not around 'evolution', but around the issue of whether humans constituted an exception. Nicols' dilemma ...
There were three objections that Darwin's intellectual contemporaries could make, and Darwin was very sensitive to each and every one of them, and his diaries specifically mention these three:
- Religious: The book of Genesis is explicit that the organisms we see around us had all been created by God, and in the form that we now perceive them. Included here is the perception of humans as 'special'.
- King James Bible Gen 1.25. And God made the beast of the earth after his kind, and cattle after their kind, and every thing that creepeth upon the earth after his kind: and God saw that it was good.
- King James Bible Gen. 1.26: And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.
- Aristotle: The usual interpretation of Aristotle's natural teleology assumes that plants and animals are "for the sake of humans" and entails an axiologically anthropocentric view of nature. However, others that noted 'Natural objects have morally relevant interests. Because having a nature is sufficient for intrinsic value, it is wrong to associate Aristotle with the dominion thesis'.
- Cultural Objection: The idea of descent or evolution was a product of the French Enlightenment and its focus on the mechanical [shades of Descartes]. The emerging scientific discourse was inextricably associated with revolutionary republicanism, with regicide, with anti - religious terrorism, and with the reign of terror. Those who accepted some form of evolution tended in Britain also to be those who admired the French Revolution (including Darwin's grandfather). Those who accepted such ideas were not 'mainstream members of the Church of England' or of the Establishment. Darwin was by choice somewhat of a 'loner'. We will not spend time on this issue.
- Scientific: No naturalist claimed to have ever seen / observed a new species evolve out of another. And even if it were true, what could be the explanation for the change? What is the mechanism that drives evolution? ...the mechanism that explains for example the complexity of the human eye?
Here are texts that exemplifiy especially the first and third points:
On the religious: consider the words of Bishop Samuel Wilberforce [aka 'soapy Sam': the Bishop's manner, so Disraeli was "unctuous, oleaginous, saponaceous":
On Darwin's Origin of Species, 1860, Wilberforce writes
"Mr. Darwin writes as a
Christian, and we doubt not that he is one. We do not for a moment believe him
to be one of those who retain in some corner of their hearts a secret unbelief
which they dare not vent; and we therefore pray him to consider well the grounds
on which we brand his speculations with the charge of such a tendency.
- First,
then, he ... declares that he applies his scheme of the action of
the principle of natural selection to man himself, as well as to the animals
around him.
- Now, we must say at once, and openly, that such a notion is absolutely
incompatible ... with single expressions in the word of God..
- Man's
derived supremacy over the earth; man's power of articulate speech; man's gift
of reason; man's free will and responsibility; man's fall and man's redemption;
the incarnation of the Eternal Son; the indwelling of the Eternal Spirit---all
are equally and utterly irreconcilable with the degrading notion of the brute
origin of him who was created in the image of God, and redeemed by the Eternal
Son ...
- Equally inconsistent, too, is Mr. Darwin's daring notion of man's further development
into some unknown extent of powers and shape, and size, through natural selection
acting through that long vista of ages which He casts mistily over the earth
upon the most favored individuals of His species...
David L. Hull, The Spectator, 1860:
But I cannot conclude without expressing my detestation of the
theory, because of its unflinching materialism;—because it has deserted
the inductive track, the only track that leads to physical
truth;—because it utterly repudiates final causes [shades of Aristotle see above], and therby indicates a
demoralized understanding on the part of its advocates.
On point three: natural selection and the objections to natural selection:
You have seen this passage earlier in Bothun's presentation, so consider it a reminder: Darwin wrote: Can it, then, be thought improbable, seeing that variations useful to man have undoubtedly occurred, that other variations useful in some way to each being in the great and complex battle of life, should sometimes occur in the course of thousands of generations? If such do occur, can we doubt (remembering that many more individuals are born than can possibly survive) that individuals having any advantage, however slight, over others, would have the best chance of surviving and of procreating their kind? On the other had, we may feel sure that any variation in the least degree injurious would be rigidly destroyed. This preservation of favorable variations and the rejection of injurious variations, I call Natural Selection. Origin, p. 80
Critique of Natural Selection: method:
St. George Mivart was, even to Darwin, the most important critique of evolution: He called it
"The Incompetency of 'Natural Selection' to account for the
Incipient Stages of Useful Structures." If this phrase sounds like a
mouthful, consider the easy translation: we can readily understand how
complex and fully developed structures work and owe their maintenance and
preservation to natural selection---a wing, an eye, the resemblance of a
bittern [heron] to a branch or of an insect to a stick or dead leaf. But how do
you get from nothing to such an elaborate something if evolution must
proceed through a long sequence of intermediate stages, each favored by
natural selection? You can't fly with 2% of a wing or gain much
protection from an iota's similarity with a potentially concealing piece
of vegetation. How, in other words, can natural selection explain these
incipient stages of structures that can only be used (as we now observe
them) in much more elaborated form?"
And the BigBang Thoery: Sheldon moves to East Texas to teach Darwinism to Creationists.
How did Darwin respond especially to the 3rd Issue? Basically, and concurrently with Alfred Wallace, by recognizing the implications of some of the ideas of Mathus. Specifically [and Nic is paraphrasing here:
- a population of a species is always as large as its food supply allows it to be = 'the principle of population'.
- Analogy of the pine tree: the prodigious number of viable pine seeds would produce pines to cover all the earth if every seed survived to become an actual tree. But that clearly does not happen.
- As population presses on the food available, there will be competition, and most competitors will, indeed must fail. It is only natural that those best adapted will survive [...implications? Should we humans help Nature by breeding more productive milk cows? beef with less fat? dogs that don't bark? ...?]
- Within populations there are variations [look around the room], the possession of some advantage that others lack; and from this advance a 'favored group' will emerge
- When a favored group becomes, by virtue of its accumulated advantages, so distinct from the norm that the two groups can no longer breed together, the 'favored race' will have become in fact a new species.