Really, it wasn’t the science:
One particularly intriguing, not to say perplexing aspect of the ongoing reception of Darwin’s Origin of Species is the way in which a work almost universally vilified by accredited scientific reviewers in the 1860s should over the next century and a half have become promoted to the status of biological gospel. What could possibly account for such a discrepancy in perception on the part of cohorts of persons separated chronologically yet otherwise sharing a remarkably similar intellectual profile in terms of scientific and scholarly distinction? The following observations, in a series at Evolution News, will seek pointers towards an understanding of what on the face of it seems to be an unaccountable disparity.
Neil Thomas, “Origin of Species: From Discussion Document to Nihilist Dogma” at Evolution News and Science Today (March 17, 2022)
Darwinism was never very good at explaining the world of nature as such. It provided a fashionable basis for atheism in a world otherwise dominated by finely tuned laws. Thomas provides a fine tour of the nineteenth century in which that was just the thing many were looking for.
Note: This is the first article in Thomas’s Victorian Crisis of Faith series. Read all the articles to date here.
You may also wish to read:
At Evolution News: Darwin and the ghost of Epicurus. One way of looking at it: Darwinism enabled thinkers to retain the thought of Epicurus and Lucretius when, in general, the thinkers themselves were forgotten.
and
Neil Thomas on Darwinism’s place in the Victorian culture wars. Anyone familiar with popular science writing on evolution will see what Thomas means here. Darwinism is introduced as a hypothesis/theory but then treated as a dogma/article of faith — and (this is emotionally very important) a way of segregating the Smart People from the Yobs and Yayhoos. Appeals to science-based analysis fall on deaf ears because the dogma has become what “science” now means.
Nihilism was a very exciting idea for some people in those days.
Some college kids still think it is exciting and daring. But it’s really the most boring idea imaginable.
It’s unfortunate that we don’t have some kind of copyright protection for ideas. Darwin’s estate would have made billions from 150 years of misuse, and Marx’s estate would have done the same.
I suppose we can allow Thomas a touch of the hyperbole to which new converts to a faith can be prone.
Was Origins “almost universally vilified by accredited scientific reviewers”? My impression was that it was more of a mixed bag.
And I suspect you will have a hard time finding any evolutionary biologist today who would claim Darwin’s work was now elevated to the status of “biological gospel”, unless you are pointing out that it now mostly of historical interest.
How about the fact that Darwin’s theory lacked a plausible mechanism of inheritance until Mendel’s work and the later discovery of DNA filled the gap?
Darwin’s theory was better than anything else around in offering a naturalistic account of how life had changed and diversified over time. That is why it had such an impact.
I wouldn’t rely entirely on Thomas just because he is a recent convert to your cause. There are differing perspectives just as there are concerning Weikart’s campaign to depict Darwin’s work as a primary inspiration for Nazism.
Seversky:
Almost everything you’ve said above is wrong.
PaV/4
No, it isn’t.
It isn’t just that Thomas seems to be a recent convert to anti-Darwinism, it’s that he is so overtly hostile towards all things Darwin.
The Origin was not “almost universally vilified by accredited scientific reviewers.” As Sev points out, reviews were mixed. The public apparently couldn’t get enough. I believe all 6 editions printed during Darwin’s life were sold out within days of release. And so what if the Origins was vilified by “accredited scientific reviewers”? The Big Bang didn’t exactly experience a warm reception out of the gate. Nor did quantum mechanics. If that were the benchmark, the sun would still be revolving around the earth. Thomas needs to take a spin through Kuhn’s Structure of Scientific Revolutions to get a little perspective…..
CD
He wasn’t making that comment as a critique but as a contrast to how the theory was elevated so such a high status following that.
SA
The problem is that Thomas overlooks (or perhaps ignores) the obvious reason natural selection gained such prominence–it works.
CD
He’s posing the question because he doesn’t accept that reason. As you said, he’s a convert to anti-Darwinism.
Yes and no.
It works for trivial things in genetics.
It has nothing to do with Evolution. So using Darwin’s criteria, it definitely does not work.
ChuckDarwin is still batting a thousand for being wrong.
Seversky:
Simply your opinion. Thomas speaks out of his own experience of finding out that he’d been had for so long a time: Darwinism is a logically flawed ‘argument’ with facts disputing its truth. Thomas is just filling in some details.
I find it a bit rich that you accuse Thomas of being a “new convert,” since the only thing that holds Darwinism in place is the radical ‘faith’ of its practitioners. But the ‘gospel’ according to Darwin cannot withstand the science of today. It’s just a matter of time–until the “true believers” are relieved of their faculty positions through death and retirement.
Don’t forget about continental drift, germ theory and heliocentrism.
The Darwinian trolls on this thread have, as usual, made a number of patently false claims.
For prime example ChuckyD claims, “The problem is that Thomas overlooks (or perhaps ignores) the obvious reason natural selection gained such prominence–it works.”
Yet ChuckyD, nor any other Darwinist, have any empirical evidence whatsoever that natural selection actually ‘works’.
Moreover, as the late William Provine himself pointed out, “Natural selection as a natural force belongs in the insubstantial category already populated by the Necker/Stahl phlogiston or Newton’s ‘ether’.”
In other words, when Darwinists utter the words “Natural Selection” they are not talking about anything that can be physically, and/or scientifically, measured.
As Brian Miller pointed out, “imagine attempting to craft an evolutionary barometer that measures the selection pressure driving one organism to transform into something different (e.g., fish into an amphibian). The fact that no such instrument could be constructed highlights the fictitious nature of such mystical forces.”
Thus when Darwinists utter the words ‘natural selection’ they are in fact speaking far more of a fictitious literary device that belongs in the realm of imaginary ‘just-so story telling’ than they are speaking of anything real that can ever be physically measured in the real world.
As Stephen Jay Gould himself honestly admitted, “When evolutionists study individual adaptations, when they try to explain form and behaviour by reconstructing history and assessing current utility, they also tell just so stories – and the agent is natural selection. Virtuosity in invention replaces testability as the criterion for acceptance.”
Moreover, besides empirical science, the mathematics of population genetics has also now shown that natural selection does not ‘work’.
For instance, because of the “waiting time problem”, (among other problems in population genetics), Darwinists were forced to cast natural selection, Charles Darwin’s supposed ‘designer substitute’, by the wayside and adopt ‘neutral theory’. A theory where it it is held that the majority of evolutionary change is due to chance instead of natural selection,
Thus in conclusion, it is simply a patently false claim on ChuckyD’s part for him to try to claim that natural selection ‘works’. If anything, time and time again, empirical science and mathematics have shown us that, most definitely, natural selection does NOT ‘work’ as the supposed ‘designer substitute’ that Darwin falsely imagined it to be.
Verse:
Pav
Every once in a while we see mainstream scientists stumble into that awareness. They seem surprised and then defensive. But there are far too many problems for science to ignore.
Guys who are already retired like Dennett, Coyne, and Dawkins seem to be the last of the big-name entities (all three born in the 1940s). Being an atheist evolutionary spokesman doesn’t have the prestige it once did.
I was checking out a local library book sale recently and the entire section of evolution books was being discarded. This wasn’t a religious-right conspiracy. I asked the librarians and they just matter-of-factly said that “circulation on those has dropped”.
Nobody is excited about reading convoluted speculations like that and more people are realizing how useless evolutionary theory really is. It’s like reading about astrology, but not as interesting.
All one has to do is add the phrase “the organism evolved over time to …” and you’ve eliminated the need for any evolutionary research whatsoever. People will read it, nod and move on. A follow up is unnecessary and nobody cares about it.
Yes and no.
Darwinism is
1) Variation in genome – 100% true
2) heritability – 100% true
3) natural selection – 100% true
So where is the issue?
First, DNA has nothing to do with Evolution but everything to do with genetics. So one of the issues is there. Darwinism is great for genetics.
Second, even if DNA was the source for Evolution, it would fail not because of natural selection but because the variation can not lead to even major changes in the genome let alone Evolution.
The ID people are right that Darwinism is flawed but often for the wrong reasons.