Recently, we noted the continuing claim that the term “Darwinism” is used only among Christians. Now, the claim is so obviously untrue that it exists to fulfil a need: To put off the day of reckoning for Darwinism (or neo-Darwinism, or the modern evolutionary synthesis, or whatever you want to insert [here]).
Darwinians can always find fresh, eager ears, people who want peace with an establishment known for destroying careers otherwise…
But it would be a pity not to record some comments that friends have kindly sent. From one:
All you have to do is go to Google Scholar and search on Darwinian, Darwinist, Darwinism. Any of those terms will yield multiple results.
Exactly. So the characters in our story boil down to 1) People making the claim who know it is untrue. 2) People who need to believe the claim too badly to risk looking it up. 3) People who just want to go along to get along (the vast majority). That’s one way bad data can stay in a system indefinitely.
Another friend offers excerpts from Jonathan Wells’s The Politically Incorrect Guide to Darwinism and Intelligent Design (2006, pp. 10, 213):
Harvard sociobiologist Edward O. Wilson recently claimed that the word “Darwinism” was coined by enemies of Darwin to make him look bad. “It’s a rhetorical device to make evolution seem like a kind of faith, like ‘Maoism’,” said Wilson in Newsweek in November 2005. “Scientists,” Wilson added, “don’t call it Darwinism.” [21]
Yet according to the Oxford English Dictionary, Thomas Henry Huxley (Darwin’s most famous defender in Britain) used “Darwinism” in 1864 to describe Charles Darwin’s theory. In 1876, Harvard botanist Asa Gray (who despite their disagreement over whether evolution was guided was Darwin’s most ardent defender in America) published Darwiniana: Essays and Reviews Pertaining to Darwinism, and in 1889 natural selection’s co-discoverer Alfred Russel Wallace published Darwinism: An Exposition of the Theory of Natural Selection. Two of Wilson’s former Harvard colleagues, evolutionary biologists Ernst Mayr and Stephen Jay Gould, used the word extensively in their scientific writings, and recent science journals carry articles with titles such as “Darwinism and Immunology” and ³The Integration of Darwinism and Evolutionary Morphology.” [22]
[21] Jerry Adler, “Evolution of a Scientist,” Newsweek (November 28, 2005), pp. 50-58, esp. p. 53.
[22] J. A. Simpson and E. S. C. Weiner, The Oxford English Dictionary, Second Edition (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989), Vol. IV, p. 257.
Also, some citations:
Asa Gray, Darwiniana: Essays and Reviews Pertaining to Darwinism (New York: D. Appleton, 1876).
Alfred Russel Wallace, Darwinism: An Exposition of the Theory of Natural Selection, With Some of Its Applications (London: Macmillan, 1889).
Ernst Mayr, The Growth of Biological Thought (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1982), pp. 116-117, 505.
Stephen Jay Gould, The Structure of Evolutionary Theory (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2002), pp. 13, 22-23, 33, 163-167, 353, 543,
585-591, among others.A. M. Silverstein, “Darwinism and Immunology,” Nature Immunology 4 (2003): 3-6.
G. S. Levit, U. Hossfeld, and L. Olsson, “The Integration of Darwinism and Evolutionary Morphology,” Journal of Experimental Zoology B: Molecular and Developmental Evolution 302 (2004): 343-354.
We can benefit from these facts as long as we remember that they have no impact apart from our own correct information. Science today is not about facts or evidence, it is about the spin, narrative, and talking points that comfort and empower In groups and those who wish to join them.
See also: Claim: Evolutionists do not use the term “Darwinism.” Yes they do. This is just another word game.