Can-a-revolution-hide-another-one-Charles-Darwin-and-the-Scientific-Revolution_2014_Endeavour.pdf

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Endeavour
Vol. 38 No. 3–4
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Can a revolution hide another one?
Charles Darwin and the Scientific
Revolution
Richard G. Delisle
University of Lethbridge, Liberal Education and Philosophy, 4401 University Drive, Lethbridge, Alberta, Canada T1K 3M4
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‘Je me suis rencontre entre les deux siecles comme au
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confluent de deux fleuves; j’ai plonge dans leurs eaux
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troublees, m’eloignant a regret du vieux rivage ou
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j’etais ne, et nageant avec esperance vers la rive
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inconnue ou vont aborder les generations nouvelles’;
‘I found myself in between the two centuries like at the
junction of two rivers; I plunged in their troubled
waters, pulling away with sorrow from the old shore
where I was born, swimming with expectation towards
the unknown bank where the new generations will
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¸
land on’’ (Francois-Rene de Chateaubriand, Revue des
Deux Mondes, March 15, 1834; translation mine).
Not unlike Chateaubriand, who faced an unsettled fu-
ture after losing his aristocratic privileges to the French
Revolution, Charles Darwin was forced to live between two
worlds: the Scientific Revolution and the Transformist
Revolution. Historians of science today are not inclined
to use the expression the ‘Scientific Revolution’ without
qualifications, if only because it tends to dissolve on closer
analysis; after all, changing intellectual movements have
no essences.
1
Yet, the fact remains that very few scholars
would be prepared to go so far as to claim that nothing of
significance happened in Western science between
1500 and 1800. The Scientific Revolution consisted of
distinct intellectual currents, several of which contributed
to the establishment of a mechanistic philosophy of na-
ture.
2
Among the intellectual threads contributing to this
philosophy are the following: (1) the quantification or
Corresponding author:
Delisle, R.G. (richard.delisle@uleth.ca).
H. Floris Cohen,
The Scientific Revolution: A Historiographical Inquiry
(Chicago,
1994); Marcus Hellyer, ‘Editor’s Introduction: What Was the Scientific Revolution?’, in
M. Hellyer (ed.),
The Scientific Revolution: The Essential Readings
(Oxford, 2003), 1–
15; Margaret Osler, ‘The Canonical Imperative: Rethinking the Scientific Revolution’,
in M. Osler (ed.),
Rethinking the Scientific Revolution
(Cambridge, 2000), 3–22; John
Schuster, ‘The Scientific Revolution’, in R. Olby, G. Cantor, J. Christie and J. Hodge
(eds.),
Companion to the History of Modern Science
(London, 1990), 217–242; Steven
Shapin,
The Scientific Revolution
(Chicago, 1996).
2
Edwin Burtt,
The Metaphysical Foundations of Modern Physical Science
(London,
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1924); Alexandre Koyre,
Etudes galileennes
(Paris, 1939); Herbert Butterfield,
The
Origins of Modern Science, 1300–1800
(London, 1949); A. Rupert Hall,
The Scientific
Revolution, 1500–1800
(London, 1954); Eduard Dijksterhuis,
The Mechanization of the
World Picture
(Oxford, 1961); Thomas Kuhn, ‘Mathematical Versus Experimental
Traditions in the Development of Physical Science’,
Journal of Interdisciplinary
History,
7 (1976), 1–31; Richard Westfall,
The Construction of Modern Science: Mech-
anisms and Mechanics
(Cambridge, 1977).
Available online 10 November 2014
1
mathematization of nature: the book of nature is assumed
to be written in the language of mathematics; (2) the
mechanization of nature: not unlike actual machines,
the world is seen as being analogically organized like a
clockwork mechanism in motion; (3) the corpuscularian
view of nature: natural bodies are viewed as consisting of
inert particles of matter in motion and nothing else; (4) a
new attitude towards knowledge: nature’s secrets must be
actively pursued through observation and experimenta-
tion. Lists of names attached to these intellectual currents
vary in the historiography, but scholars often associated
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with them include: Francis Bacon, Robert Boyle, Rene
Descartes, Galileo Galilei, Pierre Gassendi, William Gil-
bert, William Harvey, Christian Huygens, Johannes
Kepler, Pierre-Simon de Laplace, Marin Mersenne and
Isaac Newton.
Although essentially restricted to areas such as mathe-
matics, mechanics, astronomy and physiology, this corpus
of classical science at the heart of the Scientific Revolution
is sometimes believed to have gone through a Second
Scientific Revolution which both extended in time to in-
clude the nineteenth century (and beyond) and expanded
in content to cover such new areas as chemistry, the earth
sciences, biology, electromagnetism and others.
3
Of course,
the fundamental question is whether this was a mere
continuation of the original Scientific Revolution or a
profound modification of it? This is not the place to attempt
an answer; only a thorough, systematic and transdisciplin-
ary approach could provide a satisfactory answer. More
modestly, this special issue on the theme of
Charles Darwin
and Scientific Revolutions
will offer a more restricted focus
on the areas of the earth sciences and evolutionary biology.
As presented in Michael Ruse’s opening paper, Darwin
was a product of the Scientific Revolution, while simulta-
neously acting as an agent of change by introducing new
vistas, perhaps justifying the expression ‘Darwinian Revo-
lution’. As argued in Jonathan Hodge’s paper, however, the
positioning of Darwin in the intellectual context of his time
Herbert Butterfield,
The Origins of Modern Science, 1300–1800,
Revised Edition
(London, 1957), 203–246; Thomas Kuhn,
The Essential Tension: Selected Studies in
Scientific Tradition and Change
(Chicago, 1977), 147, 218–220; Stephen Brush,
The
History of Modern Science: A Guide to the Second Scientific Revolution, 1800–1950,
Iowa State University Press, (Ames, 1988).
3
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http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.endeavour.2014.10.001
158
Endeavour
Vol. 38 No. 3–4
and of the previous centuries constitutes a complex task
imbued with historiographical uncertainties and difficul-
ties. Because the understanding of the ‘Darwinian Revo-
lution’ should not be the exclusive domain of modern
thinkers, Barbara Continenza’s paper exposes the unset-
tled and somewhat changing view of Darwin’s own assess-
ment of his role and place within that revolution.
Several contributions to this special issue will deploy
more specific analyses, showing the theoretical tensions in
the work of a Darwin simultaneously situated between the
Scientific Revolution and the Transformist Revolution.
Gabriel Gohau holds that while Darwin embraced key
notions of the Scientific Revolution (such as steady-state
view in geology), Darwin was nonetheless sometimes pre-
pared to go beyond the uniformitarian doctrine underlying
such a notion. As much as Darwin believed in biological
progress – a concept totally foreign to the Scientific Revo-
lution – Richard Delisle argues that this support was
rather superficial in light of Darwin’s own commitment
toward a static worldview, as seen in his biological theory
which incorporated concepts such as unity, permanence,
stability, completeness, timelessness and uniformity. And
as is argued here by Thierry Hoquet, as much as Darwin
searched for some kind of ‘law’ of variation to explain the
rise of biological diversity, thus complying with a Scientific
Revolution based on a nomological universe – an explana-
tion that would fit with and support his own law of natural
selection – Darwin failed on this count. Clearly, biology
presented complexities not met with in physics.
More than any other scholar of the Scientific Revolution,
Newton was truly the inspirational figure for Victorian
minds when Darwin became an accomplished scholar in
England in the 1830s, 1840s and 1850s. As Richard Bellon
holds, Newton was emulated at the time for both his way
(method) of doing science and the self-discipline (moral
virtues) that accompanied it. And if Darwin was strongly
committed to methodological experimentalism irrespective
of the fact that the recent historiography has since down-
played this aspect of Darwin’s work, as argued here by
Richard Richards, it is precisely because Darwin reflected
on the nature of the relationship between Nature and
Artifice. As put by Andrew Inkpen in his contribution, if
nature is seen as God’s Created Art, experimentalism and
the analogy between artificial selection and natural selec-
tion both become justified in evolutionary biology.
As the field of evolutionary biology continued to change
in the twentieth century, it is no surprise to learn that the
revolution of which Darwin was a part came to be per-
ceived differently, reminding us that historical objects and
figures are not fixed in time but are rather moving targets.
Indeed, Ronald Amundson illustrates how the picture of
Darwin today differs when looked at from the vantage
point of competing theories. Finally, this special issue
concludes with a paper from authors Georgy Levit, Uwe
Hossfeld and Lennart Olsson, who argue that the intellec-
tual frontiers of the Darwinian Revolution, broadly con-
strued, are more diffused than often believed, going well
beyond the British tradition connecting Darwin to New-
ton. Undoubtedly, much work remains to be done for a
complete picture of the so-called Darwinian Revolution to
emerge.
I would like to conclude this Introduction by extending
my gratitude to the Editor of
Endeavour,
John Waller, for
welcoming this special issue within its pages.
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