Science in the Making
The Reception of Darwin's Theory
Charles Darwin formulated the basic outline of this theory of natural selection in 1838 but he waited more than 20 years to publish his findings. This delay was not simple procrastination. Eventually, learning that another British naturalist, Alfred Russell Wallace, developed similar ideas, Darwin hastened to get his book ”Origin of Species”
Written in accessible prose and published in a widely available edition, his theory evoked intense reactions. Some theologians denounced the book for its denial of a miraculous creation and relatively short Earth History, which they claimed by a literal reading of the Bible.
Equally disturbing to Darwin was the reaction of many readers who embraced the “theory of evolution“ as scientific evidence for God's hand in the progress of nature, and thus proof of man's moral and spiritual superiority. Those readers seized Darwin's discovery as an example of God's wisdom and beneficence. Some intellectuals of the late nineteenth century even went so far to cite Darwin in their defense of an economically and socially stratified society—the most “fit“individuals rose to the top of society.
Ironically, Darwin never intended his theory to suggest the idea of inevitable “progress“ in nature—only inevitable change. Indeed, Darwin, never used the word “evolution“—a word that connotes improvement—in his book, nor did he address the question of human origins in the book. Far from being guided by a divine hand, he saw natural process as violent and amoral—a constant struggle for survival in which the ability to reproduce fertile offspring was the only measure of success. He observed successful natural strategies that his contemporaries would view as repulsive in any moral sence—species whose females devour their mates, species whose offspring eat each other until just a few survive and parasites and predators that kill without thought in the frantic quest for energy to survive. To Darwin, human ascendancy seemed an evolutionary accident rather than a divine plan. Nevertheless, in his own concluding words.There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed by the Creator into a few forms or into new one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being evolved.
