Evolution Is a Question of Philosophy, Not Biology
An Influential Thinker
The publication of Darwin’s The Origin of Species1 was as revolutionary as the publication of Copernicus’s On the Revolution of Heavenly Spheres. Yet as revolutionary as the shift from geocentricity to heliocentricity was, it pales in comparison with the impact of Darwin’s ideas. His name has become synonymous with the word evolution, though theories of evolution predated his work, and there is no single, monolithic “theory” of evolution but multiple theories with various nuances. That is, the idea of evolution has itself evolved and undergone various changes, but Darwin’s name remains central to this development.
It is natural to expect a link to emerge between natural science and history. History deals not only with the activities of human beings over time but also with the setting for these activities in the realm of nature. One’s understanding of the universe’s origin (cosmogony), nature (cosmology), and age has a profound impact on one’s anthropology and theology. In these two fields Darwin’s work provoked the greatest crisis.
The Consequences of Ideas
R. C. Sproul
R. C. Sproul surveys history’s greatest philosophers and thinkers, helping readers understand the ideas that have shaped the world—and continue to shape nearly everything we think and do.
Darwin and Theology
The issue of human origins becomes one of fierce emotions, fueling the Scopes trial and more recent controversies over teaching creation in public schools. If the Copernican revolution created a rift between science and religion, the Darwinian revolution expanded this rift into an unbridgeable canyon.
At stake in the controversy, in the first instance, is the dignity of human beings. If, as some contend, human beings emerged not due to divine intelligence and action but due to impersonal forces of nature, the question of human dignity becomes acute. Man’s present dignity is inseparably bound up with his past and future, with his origin and destiny.
As in various forms of nihilism and pessimistic existentialism, the issue of origin is critical. One philosopher mused that man is but a grown-up germ. He emerged fortuitously from the slime and sits precariously on the rim of one cog of one gear of a vast cosmic machine that is destined for annihilation. If indeed we came from the abyss of non-being and are being hurled relentlessly back to this abyss, what value, worth, or dignity do we have? If our origin and destiny are meaningless, how can our lives now have any meaning? To assign dignity to such a cosmic accident, who is at best bestial, is to succumb to maudlin forms of wish-projection and philosophical naiveté. This was clearly understood by Friedrich Nietzsche, Jean-Paul Sartre, and others.
Radical evolution has the salutary appeal to some of eliminating the threat of a supreme Judge before whose judgment they will be held accountable for their lives and behavior. If radical evolutionary theory is correct, then one has nothing to fear from such a judge. Grown-up germs are not morally accountable in any ultimate way. The price tag for this escape from accountability, however, is Sartre’s “useless passion.” Simply stated, if we are not ultimately accountable for our lives, then our lives do not and cannot count ultimately.
In 1831 Charles Darwin set sail for an around-the-world voyage to make scientific observations and do empirical research. He took along Charles Lyell’s book Principles of Geology, 2 a lucid defense of uniformitarian geology. Uniformitarianism argues strenuously against theories of catastrophism, which raised the serious issue of the earth’s age. Uniformitarian geology requires an earth millions of years old to account for profound changes in rock and soil, the raising and lowering of mountains, and so forth.
Design without a designer, like aim without an aimer, begs the question of intelligence.
Darwin rhapsodizes about Lyell’s book and its influence on his thinking. While near Tahiti, well into his voyage, Darwin worked out his theory of the formation of coral atolls. Darwin convincingly argues that since living coral requires sunlight and cannot live at a depth greater than 100 feet, the formation of layers of coral into an atoll must take time and cannot, even through catastrophic upheaval, be instantaneous.
In 1859 Darwin published The Origin of Species. He had begun it in 1839 and had basically finished it by 1844. He withheld it from publication for fifteen years, probably fearful of the outrage it might provoke. In the book he theorizes that all living organisms on earth have descended from a single primordial form. From that single source all varieties of life have evolved and continue to evolve. This is the essence of macroevolution. This differs from microevolution, which restricts evolution to changes and adaptations within a group.
Darwin’s Major Premises
Timothy Ferris, in Coming of Age in the Milky Way, cites the three major premises of Darwin’s theory:
Premise 1: Each individual member of a given species is different. The uniqueness of the individual is certainly affirmed today for the species.
Homo sapiens. In modern times individual distinctives are linked to the genetic code. To prove an individual’s identity, forensic pathology now prefers DNA over such techniques as fingerprinting. In nineteenth-century England, great interest had developed in animal husbandry and plant hybridization. Darwin’s father-in-law was an animal breeder interested in how individual characteristics could be bred into the next generation. Darwin’s grandfather, Erasmus Darwin, wrote a book titled Zoonomia3 (The Laws of Organic Life), in which he argues that all life could have evolved from a common ancestor.
Premise 2: All living creatures tend to produce more offspring than the environment can support. This leads some to see in nature (or in God) a certain wastefulness or crudity. Only a percentage of newborn insects, animals, fish, and so forth live long enough to reproduce. Even in human reproduction, though the egg of the female is fertilized by only one sperm, a single male ejaculation may contain millions of sperm. Why the waste? (A more sanguine way to see this picture is in terms not of waste but of assurance. If 999,999 sperm are “wasted” to assure the fertilization of one egg, this indicates a powerful drive toward species survival and continuity.) This leads Darwin to his third premise, which involves the process of “natural selection.”
Premise 3: Differences among individuals, combined with environmental pressures, affect the probability that a given individual will survive long enough to pass along its genetic traits.
An example is the peppered moths near Manchester, England. Throughout the eighteenth century all moths collected in the region were pallid in color. In 1849 a single black moth was caught. By 1880 the black moths were the majority. Why? What changed the balance of moths? Darwin looks not to some inherent strength or weakness of the moths, but to changes of environmental processes. In Manchester the industrial revolution represented an outside force that changed the moth’s environment. Soot from factories blackened tree trunks, robbing the original moths of the benefits of camouflage and decreasing their numbers. Darker trees bestowed a singular camouflage on the few black moths, however, so they proliferated. When antipollution laws went into effect, the soot slowly washed off of the trees and the pale-moth population rebounded.4
Darwin and Macroevolution
From these basic premises, which had the benefit of empirical corroboration, a much more complex and far-reaching theory could develop. Darwin concludes that natural selection not only prompts changes within species but leads to the origination of new species. Macroevolution requires that new species evolve from different species. This is what has provoked such controversy and has raised the specter of humans descending from brutish beasts.
Some maintain that macroevolution can no longer be called a theory or hypothesis but should be regarded as incontrovertible fact. This reflects the almost religious zeal accompanying the current theories, which rivals in intensity the religious zeal that opposes them.
Much remains, however, for evolutionary theory to establish. The origin of biological species, in the final analysis, is not so much a biological as a historical question. That organisms in this world evidence change is nothing new. It was evident to Thales and was an article of truth for Heraclitus. The question of how becoming relates to being is as old as philosophy. How and why becoming moves has been for philosophers a perennial concern.
We frequently hear that our modern understanding of the nature of living organisms proves macroevolution. As the argument goes, the fact that all living things are composed of the same basic substance or “stuff,” such as amino acids, proteins, and so forth, proves that all life came from the same source. But to conclude common source from the premise of common substance is fallacious reasoning. Common substance no more requires a common source than the occurrence of one thing after another proves that the first caused the second (the post hoc fallacy).
Evolutionary theories usually assume that all changes involved in mutations, natural selection, and so forth are part of an upward spiral of progress. Such “progress” suggests a goal or a purpose. But this involves an assumption of teleology or design. Design without a designer, like aim without an aimer, begs the question of intelligence.
Why do not such theories of change assume that the changes are devolutionary or regressive? Why not simply deem these changes meaningless? When examining these questions, we see quickly that in the final analysis evolution is a question not so much of biology as of philosophy.
Notes:
- Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species, ed. Gillian Beer, Oxford World’s Classics (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998).
- Charles Lyell, Principles of Geology, 3 vols. (1832; reprint New York: Cramer, 1970).
- Erasmus Darwin, Zoonomia; or, The Laws of Organic Life, 2 vols. (Philadelphia: Dobson, 1797).
- Timothy Ferris, Coming of Age in the Milky Way (New York: Morrow, 1988), 236-38.
This article is adapted from The Consequences of Ideas: Understanding the Concepts That Shaped Our World by R. C. Sproul.
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