Adam Sedgewick, professor of biology and geology at Cambridge University, and a mentor to the young Darwin similarly concluded he had “. . . leaped beyond the evidence.” In an 1859 letter to Darwin, the aging Sedgewick remarked concerning Origin that parts of it made him laugh till his sides were sore, and other parts he read with sorrow, lamenting that his former student abandoned “that tram-road of all solid physical truth – the true method of induction.” Emily Morales, “Not the First Time Darwin Suffered Rebuke by the Hallowed Scientific Order” at Salvo
Morales discusses other examples. But actually, come to think of it, atheist philosopher Jerry Fodor, one of the the Altenberg 16, did get away with writing a book called What Darwin Got Wrong (2010). And then there’s J. Scott Turner, author of Purpose and Desire: What Makes Something “Alive” and Why Modern Darwinism Has Failed to Explain It.
But it’s not so much the philosophers, actually, as the lecturers who need a thesis that explains everything and saves so much thinking. The decline of Darwinism is a real threat to such.
See also: Natural selection: Could it be the single greatest idea ever invented?
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