Osiris, Volume 16: Science in Theistic Contexts

Science in Cognitive Theistic Contexts Dimensions Edited J.Osler, andJitseM.vanderMeer Brooke, byJohnHedley Margaret ...

Author: John Hedley Brooke | Margaret J. Osler | Jitse M. van der Meer

87 downloads 1066 Views 13MB Size Report

This content was uploaded by our users and we assume good faith they have the permission to share this book. If you own the copyright to this book and it is wrongfully on our website, we offer a simple DMCA procedure to remove your content from our site. Start by pressing the button below!
Report copyright / DMCA form

DOWNLOAD PDF

Science in Cognitive

Theistic Contexts

Dimensions

Edited J.Osler, andJitseM.vanderMeer Brooke, byJohnHedley Margaret

I

I

History of Science Society The History of Science Society was founded in 1924 to secure the future of Isis, the international was foundedby George review thatGeorge Sarton(1884-1956) foundedin Belgium in 1912. OSIRIS was published in fifteen Sarton in 1936, as a companion volume to Isis. The first series of OSIRIS volumes between 1936 and 1968. in 1985. OSIRIS The History of Science Society launched the second series of OSIRIS publishes annual volumes devoted to a single theme or topic of wide interest to the history of science community. EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE PRESIDENT

EDITOR

SECRETARY

RONALD L. NUMBERS

MARGARET W. ROSSITER

MARGARET J. OSLER

University of Wisconsin-

Cornell University

University of Calgary

TREASURER

EXECUTIVEDIRECTOR

Madison VICE-PRESIDENT

MARC ROTHENBERG

JOHN SERVOS

Smithsonian Institution

Amherst College

COUNCIL To serve through 2001

(EX OFICIO)

ROBERTJ. MALONE

University of Washington

PAMELA H. SMITH

Pomona College

JOHN C. GREENE

University of Connecticut RICHARD S. WESTFALL

LESLEY CORMACK

University of Alberta, Edmonton

To serve through 2003

Indiana University

KATHERINE PARK

ROBERT P. MULTHAUF

EVELYNN M. HAMMONDS

Harvard University

Smithsonian Institution

Massachusetts Institute of

KAREN PARSHALL

FREDERICL. HOLMES

University of Virginia

Yale University

PAMELAMACK

PHILIPJ. PAULY

GERALD HOLTON

Harvard University

Technology Clemson University

Rutgers University

PHILLIPR. SLOAN

MARGARET L. SCHABAS

EDWARD GRANT

University of Notre Dame

YorkUniversity

Indiana University

M. NORTON WISE

ROBERT S. WESTMAN

MARY Jo NYE

University of California at Los Angeles

University of California at San Diego

STEPHEN G. BRUSH

To serve through 2002

Former Presidents ex officio

SALLY GREGORY KOHLSTEDT

Oregon State University University of Maryland

JANET BROWN

University of Minnesota

Wellcome Institutefor the History of Medicine

I. BERNARD COHEN

DAVID C. LINDBERG

Harvard University

RICHARD KREMER

MARSHALL CLAGETT

University of WisconsinMadison

Dartmouth College

Institutefor Advanced Study

FREDERICK GREGORY

KATHRYN OLESKO

CHARLES C. GILLESPIE

University of Florida

Georgetown University

Princeton University

ALBERT VAN HELDEN

ALAN E. SHAPIRO

ERWIN N. HIEBERT

Rice University

University of Minnesota

Harvard University

9sirisi

A RESEARCHJOURNALDEVOTED TO THE HISTORYOF SCIENCE AND ITS CULTURALINFLUENCES

EDITOR

MANAGING EDITOR

MARGARET W. ROSSITER

STEPHEN P. WELDON

ASSOCIATE EDITOR KATHRYNM. OLESKO

MANUSCRIPT EDITOR CHRISTIEA. LERCH

OSIRIS EDITORIAL BOARD V. BETTY SMOCOVITIS University of Florida JOHN HARLEYWARNER Yale University

JAN V. GOLINSKI University of New Hampshire

PAMELAH. SMITH Pomona College

MICHAELNEUFELD National Air and Space Museum

HSS COMMITTEE ON PUBLICATIONS M. SUSAN LINDEE

SPENCER WEART

Worcester Polytechnic Institute

University of Pennsylvania

American Institute of Physics

KAREN REEDS National Coalition of Independent Scholars

THEODOREPORTER

MICHAEL M. SOKAL

University of California at Los Angeles

EDITORIAL OFFICE DEPARTMENT OF SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY STUDIES CORNELL UNIVERSITY 726 UNIVERSITY AVENUE ITHACA, NEW YORK 14850 USA

SUGGESTIONSFORCONTRIBUTORSTO OSIRIS OSIRISis devoted to thematic issues, often conceived and compiled by guest editors. 1. Manuscripts should be typewritten or processed on a letter-quality printer and double-spaced throughout, including quotations and notes, on paper of standard size or weight. Margins should be wider than usual to allow space for instructions to the typesetter. The right-hand margin should be left ragged (not justified) to maintain even spacing and readability. 2. Bibliographic information should be given in footnotes (not parenthetically in the text), typed separately from the main body of the manuscript, double- or even triple-spaced, numbered consecutively throughout the article, and keyed to reference numbers typed above the line in the text. a. References to books should include author's full name; complete title of the book, underlined (italics); place of publication and publisher's name for books published after 1900; date of publication, including the original date when a reprint is being cited; page numbers cited. Example: 'Joseph Needham, Science and Civilisation in China, 5 vols. vol. 1: Introductory Orientations (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1954), p. 7. b. References to articles in periodicals should include author's name; title of article, in quotes; title of periodical, underlined; year; volume number, Arabic; number of issue if pagination requires it; page numbers of article; number of particular page cited. Journal titles are spelled out in full on first citation and abbreviated subsequently. Example: 2JohnC. Greene, "Reflections of the Progress of Darwin Studies," Journal of the History of Biology 8 (1975):243-272, on p. 270; and Dov Ospovat, "God and Natural Selection: The Darwinian Idea of Design,"' J. Hist. Biol. 13 (1980): 169-174, on p. 171. c. When first citing a reference, please give the title in full. For succeeding citations, please use an abbreviated version of the title with the author's last name. Example: 3Greene, "Reflections" (cit. n. 2), p. 250. 4Needham, Science and Civilisation (cit. n. 1), p. 7. 3. Please mark clearly for the typesetter all unusual alphabets, special characters, mathematics, and chemical formulae, and include all diacritical marks. 4. A small number of figures may be used to illustrate an article. Line drawings should be directly reproducible; glossy prints should be furnished for all halftone illustrations. 5. Manuscripts should be submitted to OSIRISwith the understanding that upon publication copyright will be transferred to the History of Science Society. That understanding precludes OSIRISfrom considering material that has been submitted or accepted for publication elsewhere. OSIRIS(SSN 0369-7827) is published once a year. Subscriptions are $39 (hardcover) and $25 (paperback). Address subscriptions, single issue orders, claims for missing issues, and advertising inquiries to Osiris, The University of Chicago Press, Journals Division, P.O. Box 37005, Chicago, Illinois 60637. Postmaster: Send address changes to Osiris, The University of Chicago Press, Journals Division, P.O. Box 37005, Chicago, Illinois 60637. Osiris is indexed in major scientific and historical indexing services, including Biological Abstracts, Current Contexts, Historical Abstracts, and America: History and Life. Copyright ? 2001 by the History of Science Society, Inc. All rights reserved. The paper in this publication meets the requirements of ANSI standard Z39.48-1984 (Permanence of Paper).O Hardcover edition, ISBN 0-226-07564-8 Paperback edition, ISBN 0-226-07565-6

Science

in

Cognitive

Dimensions

Theistic

Contexts

Edited by John Hedley Brooke, MargaretJ. Osler, and Jitse M. van der Meer

A RESEARCH JOURNAL DEVOTED TO THE HISTORY OF SCIENCE AND ITS CULTURAL INFLUENCES SECOND SERIES VOLUME 16 2001

2001 OSIRIS OSIRIS 2001

VOLUME16 SECONDSERIES SERIES VOLUME SECOND

PREFACE

vii

INTRODUCTION Religious Belief and the Content of the Sciences Religious Beliefs, Metaphysical Beliefs, and Science Historiography of

JOHN HEDLEY STEPHEN

BROOKE:

3

J. WYKSTRA:

29

CASE STUDIES Freeing Astronomyfrom Philosophy: An Aspect of Islamic Influence on Science NOAH J. EFRON and MENACHEM FISCH: Astronomical Exegesis: An Early Modern Jewish Interpretation of the Heavens PETER BARKER and BERNARD R. GOLDSTEIN: Theological Foundations of Kepler'sAstronomy F. JAMIL RAGEP:

49 72 88

MAURICE A. FINOCCHIARO: Science, Religion, and the Historiography

of the Galileo Affair: On the Undesirability of Oversimplification MARGARET G. COOK: Divine Artifice and Natural Mechanism: Robert Boyle's Mechanical Philosophy of Nature MARGARET J. OSLER: Whose Ends? Teleology in Early Modern Natural Philosophy "God of gods and Lord of lords": The Theology STEPHEN D. SNOBELEN: of Isaac Newton's General Scholium to the Principia Four Case MICHAEL J. CROWE: Astronomy and Religion (1780-1915): Studies Involving Ideas of Extraterrestrial Life MARTIN FICHMAN: Science in Theistic Contexts: A Case Study of Alfred Russel Wallace on Human Evolution PHILLIP R. SLOAN: "The Sense of Sublimity": Darwin on Nature and Divinity RICHARD ENGLAND: Natural Selection, Teleology, and the Logos: From Darwin to the Oxford Neo-Darwinists, 1859-1909 THOMAS DIXON: The Psychology of the Emotions in Britain and America in the Nineteenth Century: The Role of Religious and Antireligious Commitments GEOFFREY CANTOR: Quaker Responses to Darwin BERNARD LIGHTMAN: Victorian Sciences and Religions: Discordant Harmonies

114 133 151 169 209 227 251 270

288 321 343

NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS

367

INDEX

369

COVER: "Newton" by William Blake. Copyright Tate, London, 2001.

INTRODUCTION

CASE STUDIES

Preface HE CHANGING FACE of the history of science is affecting the way historians and philosophers of science approach the relationship between science and religion. As recently as twenty years ago, when scholars were in the thrall of positivism in its various forms, they emphasized the separateness of science and religion and asked how two such different enterprises could possibly relate to each other. Ian Barbour, wittingly or not, adopted this assumption in 1997 and earlier when he classified the possible relationships between science and religion into four categories: conflict, independence, dialogue, and integration.' His taxonomy has left its mark on recent literature2and, even when under critical scrutiny, has spawned a proliferation of "models for the current dialogue."3 Today the history of science is no longer dominated by positivist assumptions. Social, cultural, economic, political, philosophical, and religious factors have all been shown to be intimately connected with the growth, support, and even conceptual development of science. The essays in this issue of Osiris reflect these changes in the historiography of science. Two aphorisms have dominated popular discussion of science and religion. The one-Laplace's alleged quip to Napoleon that in his cosmology he had no need of that hypothesis-retains its appeal for those who see in scientific progress a rationale for the exclusion of God-talk.4The other Einstein's formula that science without religion is lame, religion without science blind5-has become iconic for those who prefer models of complementarity, even engagement, to those of exclusion. Both parties are strongly represented among the science popularizers of today. For Richard Dawkins, religious beliefs are a kind of virus in a world where natural processes are devoid of purpose and meaning.6 For Paul Davies it is the study of those very physical processes that provides the best access to the world of religious meaning.7 To add to the commotion, there are those writers such as Stephen Jay Gould Ian G. Barbour, Religion and Science: Historical and Contemporanr Issues (San Francisco:

Harper,1997), chap.4. This book is a revised andexpandededition of volume 1 of idem, TheGifford

Lectures, 1989-1991, 2 vols. (London: SCM Press, 1990-1991), entitled Religion in an Age of Sci-

ence andpublishedin 1990. Books adoptinga more contextualizedapproachinclude David C. Lind-

berg and Ronald L. Numbers, eds.. God and Nature: Historical Essays on the Encounter between

Christianityand Science (Berkeley and Los Angeles: Univ. of CaliforniaPress, 1986); John Hedley

Brooke, Science and Religion: Some Historical Perspectives (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1991); and John Brooke and Geoffrey Cantor, Reconstructing Nature: the Engagement of Science and Religion: Glasgow Gifford Lectures (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1998; New York: Oxford Univer-

sity Press, 2000).

2 John F Haught, Science and Religion: From Conflict to Conversation (New York: Paulist Press, 1995). 3Niels Henrik Gregersen and J. Wentzel van Huyssteen, Rethinking Theology and Science: Six Models for the Current Dialogue (Grand Rapids, Mich.: Eerdmans, 1998).

4 RogerHahn,"Laplaceandthe MechanisticUniverse,"in LindbergandNumbers,God and Nature (cit. n. 1), pp. 256-76. 5 Albert Einstein, "Science and Religion"(addresspresentedat the conference "Science, Philosophy and Religion,"New York, 1940); reprintedin idem, Ideas and Opinions (New York:Crown, 1954, 1982), pp. 44-9, on p. 46. 6

Richard Dawkins, "A Reply to Poole," Science and Christian Belief 7 (1995):45-50.

7 Paul Davies, TheMind

of God (Harmondsworth,U.K.: Penguin, 1993). vii

viii

PREFACE

who choose to drive a wedge between scientific and religious discourse,assigning the one to the worldof fact, the otherto that of moral value. In Gould'saphorism, the respective"magisteria"do not, or shouldnot, overlap.8 At a deeperlevel, minedby historianssensitiveto culturalcontext,none of these positionscan be seen as normative.Laplace'sretortmayreflectthe secularmoresof the revolutionaryperiodin Francebut could not excludethe rejoinderof those British naturaltheologianswho saw in a self-stabilizingsolarsystemevidenceof greater wisdom in its Maker.Gould'srecentplea for a completeseparationhas been heard many times and is not as neutralas it seems. Depending on context, it has been protectiveof the autonomyof science, or of theology,or of both.SimilarlyEinstein's formulacan take on many meanings,dependingon the diagnosisof lameness and blindness.It is, nevertheless,the most enthrallingof the three aphorismsin that it raises the questionof how religioncould possibly be relevantto science, eitheras a body of theoryor of practice. It is not unusualto find amongscientiststhemselvesa willingnessto concede that religiousvalues may haveplayeda role in the rise of Westernscience.Afterall, it is not difficultto conceivehow therecouldbe religiousmotivationfor boththe defense and the reform of traditionallearning,for the study of a world that might reveal somethingof its Creator,and (in the case of antireligiousmotivation)for the constructionof naturalisticexplanationssufficientlyplausibleto displacereferencesto an interveningdeity.The strongersuggestionthatreligiouscommitmentsmay shape the theoreticalcontentof the sciences, whetherdirectly or indirectly,is, however, often greetedwith alarmor disdain,because it seems to threatencherishednotions of objectivityand, even worse, does so by highlightingthe intrusionof precisely thatkind of belief which has so often been seen as lame or blindcomparedwith the robusthealthof establishedscience. Alarm and disdain may,however,be inadequateresponsesif the historicalevidence points to subtleways in which personalconvictionshavefoundexpressionin the constructionand evaluationof scientifictheory.Einsteinhimself has often been thoughtto constitutejust such an example,given the metaphysical(andsome would say theological) underpinningof his resistanceto quantumindeterminacyand to claims for the completenessof that theory.In Max Jammer'ssensitiveaccount,the inculcationof a Jewish monotheismearly in life had a lasting effect in the way Einsteinwas driven,as many physicistsstill are, to seek a theorythat would unify the fundamentalphysicalforces.9A quitedifferentexample,butillustratingthe same basic point, would be FredHoyle'searly preferencefor a steady-statemodel of the universeon the groundthat it was more congenialto an atheisticworldviewthan the rivalbig-bangcosmology."' The questionis not, of course, whethersuch reasoningwas soundbut whetherit 8 Stephen Jay Gould, Rocks of Ages: Science and Religion in the Fullness of Life (New York: Ballantine, 1999). Such a complete separationhas long found favor with neo-Kantiantheologians; see, e.g., the discussion of Wilhelm Herrmannin FrederickGregory,NatureLost? Natural Science and the GermanTheologicalTraditionsof the NineteenthCentury(Cambridge,Mass.:HarvardUniv. Press, 1992). 9 Max Jammer,Einsteinand Religion (Princeton:PrincetonUniv. Press, 1999), p. 57. 10Fred Hoyle, Facts and Dogmas in Cosmologyand Elsewhere (Cambridge:CambridgeUniv. Press, 1982); God, Humanityand the Cosmos,ed. ChristopherSouthgate(Edinburgh:T. & T. Clark, 1999), p. 36.

PREFACE

ix

played the role observers have ascribed to it. The temptation, when the sciences are so thoroughly secularized, is to suppose that there are no spaces left where personal convictions might seriously affect the interpretation of scientific data. And yet to judge from the recent debate between Stephen Jay Gould and Simon Conway Morris concerning the number of archetypal forms in the Burgess shale, the degree of their evolutionary convergence, and the proportion that left no successors, personal convictions may continue to be formative. That, at least, is what each disparagingly says of the other." An immediate response to such examples might be that they are singularly inauspicious for any claim that the permeability of scientific theory to religious belief could work to the advantage of the sciences. The constraints in the case of Einstein and Hoyle were clearly constrictive and in the dispute between Gould and Conway Morris the insinuation of ideological intrusion is part of a rhetoric of abuse, irrespective of which interpretationmay turn out to be closer to an eventual consensus. There are, however, well-known examples where theistic presuppositions appear to have done constructive work in the shaping of scientific theories. In Johannes Kepler's revision of Copernican astronomy, it is not difficult to see both Pythagorean and Lutheran elements contributing to the disclosure of an elegant and harmonious solar system. Prominent natural philosophers of the early modem period did not distinguish what we would call the scientific aspects of their work from what we would call theology. Their study of the natural world was conceived as a study of God's creation, disclosing something of the nature of God. There were certainly exceptions such as Thomas Hobbes, who famously denied that anything concerning the nature of God could be inferred from the principles of natural science. But such critiques of natural theology only confirmed the resolve of others to reassert a providential understanding of the world. 2 From within a theology of creation they argued against the perceived dangers of both the Epicurean denial of divine intervention and the physical determinism exemplified by the ancient Stoics. As Margaret Osler argues in her contribution, this could mean the retention of a role for final causes in nature, reinterpreted in terms of God's purposes imposed on the natural world. The consequence, explored by Margaret Cook, is that the Aristotelian distinction between art and nature was replaced with an understanding of the world as a work of art produced by the divine artificer.These themes are evident in the writings of the mechanical philosophers Pierre Gassendi and Robert Boyle, both of whose conceptions of nature were inextricably linked to their assumptions about God's relationship to the world. The same could be said of Isaac Newton, in whose conception of a universal law of gravitation it is possible to see the role played by his conviction that space is constituted by the omnipresence of the one true God who had freely chosen not only the laws of nature but the parameters governing their outcomes. An ellipse was not the only curve that might have been generated from an inverse square law! For these and other reasons Kepler, Boyle, and Newton receive detailed consideration in this collection. " Simon Conway Morris and Stephen Jay Gould, "Showdownon the Burgess Shale,"Natural History,Dec. 1998-Jan. 1999, pp. 48-55. 12Jon Parkin,Science, Religion and Politics in RestorationEngland: Richard Cumberland'sDe LegibusNaturae(Woodbridge,U.K.: Boydell Press, 1999).

PREFACE

x

Where theistic commitment has found expression in the content of scientific theory, or in its epistemological status, the effect has sometimes been beneficial, sometimes injurious. It is not possible to generalize. As a phenomenon, however, such expression has not been systematically studied.'3 There are pressing questions concerning the extent to which it has occurred, in which sciences, and in what contexts. There are absorbing questions, too, concerning how one recognizes the phenomenon when it occurs. It was to address such questions that an international conference, entitled "Science in Theistic Contexts: Cognitive Dimensions," was held in July 1998 at the Pascal Centre for Advanced Studies in Faith and Science, Redeemer College, Ancaster, Ontario, Canada. Contributors were invited to present specific case studies or surveys of the development of a specific science in order to uncover the hidden role of religious beliefs within the sciences where this seemed appropriate. For some readers such language may appear strange, even irresponsible. In some historical contexts it would certainly be anachronistic. Contributorsto the conference themselves responded in a variety of ways to the challenge, as have those who kindly provided additional essays for this volume.'4 The collection, nevertheless, has a coherence in that the various essays revolve around a common question: in what capacity have religious (and antireligious) beliefs shaped the sciences, as presuppositions, guiding principles, and constraints? Can it be shown that they have been involved in concept formation, in determining what counts as an acceptable explanation and in ways of seeing reality? The editors wish to emphasize that this volume does not pretend to be comprehensive either chronologically or geographically. We recognize that there is exciting work to be done in comparing the different ways in which relations between science and religion have been constructed in different religious cultures and contexts. Our volume offers only a very modest contribution to such a project, but it does include essays on Judaic and Islamic sensibilities. Most of the essays focus on either seventeenth-century or nineteenth-century issues, reflecting the fecundity of current scholarship in those areas. This concentration is not entirely coincidental, because what Edwin A. Burtt long ago called the "metaphysical foundations" of modern physical science are most clearly visible in seventeenth-century Europe, in the various systems of natural philosophy that provided alternatives to the commoner forms of scholasticism.15 If Amos Funkenstein was correct in speaking of an "unprecedented fusion" of the sciences with theology in the seventeenth century, it would not be surprising to find instances where the cognitive content of the new sciences was colored by theological infiltration.'6 The nineteenth-century focus reflects the fact that, with the professionalization of the sciences, the scope given to overt forms of religious intrusion was markedly reduced, if not eliminated, with the consequence 13Preliminarystudies were included in vols. 2 and 3 of Jitse van der Meer, ed., Facets of Faith and Science (Lanham,Md.: Univ. Press of America, 1996). 14 The following authorspresentedpapers (now revised as chapters in the present book) at the conference:John Brooke, Geoffrey Cantor,MargaretCook, Noah Efron, RichardEngland,Martin Fichman,MauriceFinocchiaro,MenachemFisch, MargaretOsler,Phillip Sloan, StephenSnobelen, and StephenWykstra. 15Edwin A. Burtt, The Metaphysical Foundations of Modern Physical Science (New York: Har-

courtBrace, 1932). 16

Amos Funkenstein, Theology and the Scientific Imagination from the Middle Ages to the Seven-

teenthCentury(Princeton:PrincetonUniv. Press, 1986).

PREFACE

xi

that new controversiesarose concerninghow "science"and "religion"were to be related.As BernardLightmandemonstratesin his contribution,the resultingconflict was not so much between "science"and "religion"as between the differentmetalevel positions concerninghow the two, as currentlyunderstood,should be integratedor kept apart.The importanceof examiningthe issues at that meta-levelis also suggestedin MauriceFinocchiaro'sdiscussionof the Galileo affair and of its laterreconstructions-a discussionthatalso remindsus how thebeliefs of historians of events. themselvescan hardlyfail to shapetheirinterpretation It has sometimesbeen objectedthatto speakof "science"and "religion,"even in such an informedmanner,is still to encourageboth a reificationof terms and an insensitivityto otherculturalforces that,in specific contexts,shapedthemor mediatedbetweenthem.17In manycases this is a fair criticism,andwhereit is unheeded the resultingscholarshipcan be bothprosaicandarchaic.Thereis no denying,however,thatmanyof the greatscientistsof the pasthave,as Darwindid, "thoughtmuch aboutreligion"18 It is not unknownfor physicalscientists,even today,to repeatthe adage attributedto Kepler that they are thinkingGod's thoughtsafter Him. And turningfrom scientificto religious thinkers,manyhave soughtto demonstratethat they can talk sense aboutscience and (thinkof RichardBentley pumpingNewton) the latestinsightsfor theirpurposes.These arerecurrentphenomhaveappropriated ena and offer scope for original study.It is the editors'belief that the essays pubof boththe historyandthe historioglishedherecontributeto a richerunderstanding in so of these and, doing,mayincreasean awarenessof the variety phenomena raphy of ways in which religiousbeliefs may bearon the sciences. Discerningreadersmay note thata distinctionbetween"theology"and "religion" has notbeen rigorouslyimposed.Therearedifficultieswiththequestfor consistency here, for while it is often said thatby theology one means systematicreflectionon (sometimestheoreticaljustificationfor) religiouspractices,therearereligioustraditions in which a theology mightbe said to be embodiedin liturgicalpractice.Similarly,if by theologyone means,as some assuredlyhave,a "scienceof God,"it is not clear thatone would alwaysbe able to distinguisha theologicalpropositionfrom a religious belief. For these reasons we have been relativelyrelaxedover the use of these termsby the variouscontributors.It is, however,impossibleto addresssuch issues withoutraising deeper critical questions.One that is exploredin essays by John Brooke, Thomas Dixon, and by Noah Efron and MenachemFisch concerns the problemof proof.How areplausibleconjecturesfor the substantiverole of reliAnother,apparentin GeoffreyCantor'sessay,congious belief to be corroborated? cernsthe most appropriateform of analysisto use when examiningthe appraisalof a controversialscientifictheoryby a religious groupfor whom it may be a divisive issue. Yet anotherconcernsthe natureand applicabilityof the distinctionbetween 17 James R. Moore, "Speaking of 'Science and Religion'-Then and Now" Hist. Sci. 30 (1992):311-23; David B. Wilson, "On the Importanceof EliminatingScience and Religion from the Historyof Science and Religion: The Cases of OliverLodge, J. H. JeansandA. S. Eddington,"in de Meer,Facets (cit. n. 13), vol. 1, pp. 27-47. For the contentionthat"science"and "religion"must not be hypostatizedinto somethingdifferentfrom what their practitionersat a given time say they are, see AndrewCunningham,"Gettingthe Game Right:Some Plain Wordson the IdentityandInvention of Science,"Stud.Hist. Phil. Sci. 19 (1988):365-89, especially pp. 381-2. 18 Gavin de Beer, "Darwin'sJournal,"Bull. Brit. Museum (Natural History), Historical Series, vol. 2, pt. 1 (1959):8.

xii

PREFACE

"religious"and "metaphysical"beliefs, exploredhere by StephenWykstra.These difficultquestionshavenot been ducked,andourhope is thatreaderswill findthem attractivelydiscussed. Thanksaredue to the membersof the conferenceprogramcommittee:JohnBrooke, GeoffreyCantor,MargaretOsler,TomSettle, andJitse van der Meer (chair)as well as to the membersof the organizingcommittee:WayneNorman,WillardPottinger, Maggie van der Meer, Jitse van der Meer (chair), and Kevin VanderMeulen.The organizersgratefullyacknowledge financialsupportfor the conference from the JohnTempletonFoundation,which also assistedwith publicationcosts; The Social Sciences and HumanitiesResearchCouncil of Canada;The John J. Reilly Center for Science, Technologyand Values;The Institutefor Scholarshipin the Liberal Arts, College of Arts and Lettersat the Universityof Notre Dame; RedeemerCollege; The Pascal Centrefor AdvancedStudies in Faith and Science, at Redeemer College;andDr.ThaddeusTrenn.The editorsalso thankthe referees,whose suggestions haveenhancedthe qualityof each contribution,and the anonymousreaderfor Osiris,who respondedso constructivelyto the collectionas a whole. We aregrateful to ChristieLerchfor her intelligent,informed,and meticulouscopy editing.

Religious of

Belief

and

the

Sciences

the

Content

By John Hedley Brooke*

AN

ALTERNATIVE TITLE for this essay might have been "The Sacred in the Secular": my theme concerns the manner in which religious preconceptions may shape the content of the sciences. That they have sometimes done so can seem a startling claim when we are tuned to the norms of modem scientific culture. If there is one convention that has dominated the culture of "moder science," it is surely the exclusion of religious sentiment and religious interference from the pursuit of an ostensibly objective knowledge. Much of the vigor of this exclusionist position derives from the social transformations of the nineteenth century, when selfconsciously professionalizing scientists raised their profile by campaigning against what they saw as the defective standards of clerical amateurs. For Darwin's cousin Francis Galton the pursuit of science was simply incompatible with a priestly temperament.' But the roots of the exclusion go back at least as far as the seventeenth century, when fledgling scientific societies made it their official policy to exclude political and theological debate from their affairs. The contrast drawn by Thomas Sprat (1635-1713) between the disinterested (and therefore unifying) character of experimental knowledge and the divisive world of the passions was part of a recurring rhetoric in defense of a "scientific" culture.2 In his recent book on the "scientific revolution" (1996) Steven Shapin concludes with a paradox emanating from this rhetoric: "The more a body of knowledge is understood to be objective and disinterested, the more valuable it is as a tool in moral and political action."3 Such knowledge, he adds, could be useful to theology for that very reason. Elaborating the paradox, Shapin writes that "the most powerful storehouse of value in our modern culture is the body of knowledge we consider to have least to do with the discourse of moral value." Such a conclusion could easily act as a deterrent to the enterprise enshrined in the present volume, where each contributor was invited to offer a case study that might reveal the constitution, penetration, or permeation of scientific theory by religious precepts. If theology has had an important stake in the presumed disinterestedness of scientific knowledge, there HarrisManchesterCollege, Oxford,U.K. 0X1 3TD ' FrankM. Turner,"The VictorianConflictbetween Science and Religion:A ProfessionalDimension," Isis 69 (1978):356-76; and Colin A. Russell, "The Social Origins of the Conflict Thesis," Science and Christian Belief 1 (1989):3-26. 2 Paul B. Wood, "Methodology and Apologetics: Thomas Sprat's History of the Royal Society," Brit. J. Hist. Sci. 13 (1980):1-26. 3 Steven Shapin, TheScientificRevolution(Chicago:Univ. of Chicago Press, 1996), p. 164.

? 2001 by The Historyof Science Society.All rightsreserved.0369-7827/01/1601-0001$2.00 Osiris, 2001, 16:00-00

3

4

JOHN HEDLEY BROOKE

could even be theological objectionsto a demonstrationthat that knowledge has, afterall, been informedor shapedby religiousinterests. Nor is this the only objectionthat might be leveled at such a project.As several contributorshavethemselvesprotested,therewouldbe a seriousloss of perspective if a supposedrelevanceof religious belief to the sciences were simply reducedto the issue of theoreticalcontent.An additionalproblemrelatesto the use of language. To ask how religiousbeliefs, howeverindirectly,may have informedthe contentof scientific theories seems immediatelyto assume the existence of boundariesthat allow the two domains to be sharplydifferentiatedfor the purpose of asking the question.No historiansworththeir salt would admit the kind of essentialismthat such languagecan so easily imply, and there have indeed been salutarywarnings againstinsensitivityto changingboundaries.In some forms of seventeenth-century "naturalphilosophy"for example,theologicalquestionswereincorporatedas a matter of course.4Andrew Cunningham,James Moore, MartinRudwick, and David Wilson have each arguedin their differentways that if we wish to understandthe historicalinteractionbetween "religion"and "science"it may be wise to dispense with those two terms, so much freightdo they carry,so easily are they reified.5In practiceit is difficultto dispensewith them,becausethey constitutefirstapproximations, heuristicaids to formulatingquestions of greaterrefinement.But then the linguisticproblembecomes particularlyrecalcitrant.It might even be expressedin this paradoxicalform: if the questionis whetherreligious belief has informedthe contentof a particularscientifictheory,then an affirmativeanswerwouldproveit to havebeen the wrong question!A differentiationpresupposedin the formulationof the questionis dissolved by an affirmativeanswer.The same risk of anachronism ariseswith otherformulations.If, as I suggest later,therehavesometimesbeen elements of the sacredin the secular,does it make sense any longer to speak of the secularas secular? I underlinethis semanticproblemat the outset because other contributorshave experiencedcomparabledifficultyin theirown explorations.ThusGeoffreyCantor, in his chapter"QuakerResponses to Darwin,"raises the question of whetherthe differentiationpresupposedin the articulationof the questiondoes not alreadyplay into the handsof those who adhereto essentialistaccountsof conflictbetween"science" and "religion."Historicaldatahave often been marshaledin defense of such accounts,and they do, of course, provide winning anecdotes.One thinks of Disraeli's speech in Oxford when, alluding to Darwin, he reducedthe question to a simple either/or:"Is man an ape or an angel?"Depicted with angels' wings in the press, Disraeli had let it be known on which side he stood!6Historiansof science committedto the contextualizationof past debateshave,however,long pointedout 4 John H. Brooke, Science and Religion: Some Historical Perspectives (Cambridge:Cambridge Univ. Press, 1991), pp. 7-11. 5 AndrewCunningham,"How the Principiagot its name,"Hist. Sci. 29 (1991):377-92; James R. Moore, "Speakingof 'Science' and 'Religion'-Then and Now"'Hist. Sci. 30 (1992):311-23; Martin J. S. Rudwick,"The Shape and Meaningof EarthHistory,"in God and Nature:Historical Essays on the EncounterbetweenChristianityand Science, ed. David C. Lindbergand RonaldL. Numbers (Berkeley and Los Angeles: Univ. of CaliforniaPress, 1986), pp. 296-321; and David B. Wilson, "On the Importanceof EliminatingScience and Religion from the Historyof Science and Religion: The Cases of Oliver Lodge, J. H. Jeans and A. S. Eddington,"in Facets of Faith and Science, ed. Jitse van der Meer (Lanham,Md.: Univ. Press of America, 1996), 4 vols., vol. 1, pp. 27-47. 6 AdrianDesmond and JamesMoore, Darwin (London:Michael Joseph, 1991), p. 527.

RELIGIOUSBELIEFAND THE CONTENT OF THE SCIENCES

5

the inadequacy of popular generalizations in which the mutual bearings of "science" and "religion" are presented in essentialist terms of conflict or harmony. In an essay now twenty years old, Martin Rudwick insisted on the need for a more sensitive historiography-one subservient neither to the triumphalist rhetoric of scientific rationalism nor to religious apologetics. Other sensibilities also required sharpening. Rudwick expressed surprise that, despite their emancipation, "historians of science seem incapable of giving the religious beliefs of past cultures the same intelligent and empathic respect they now routinely accord to even the strangest scientific beliefs of the past."7Instead of reifying terms, instead of demeaning religious belief, it was necessary to bring to the great controversies of the past the recognition that rival cosmologies had been at stake, that contenders on both sides of an issue routinely appealed to some aspect of nature to justify their position, and that when we speak of a position this includes views of the meaning of personal and social life and of the conduct appropriateto that life.8 Controversies there were, and manifestly still are, about the meaning to be attached to new forms of science, but to reduce the negotiation of those meanings to some inherent "relations between religion and science" is to misunderstand them. It is to miss the social and existential dimensions of a person's deepest convictions, whether those convictions are formulated in religious terms or not. The principal consequence of this historiographical shift is to underline the artificiality of abstracting the "science" and the "religion" from past (and present!) contexts with a view to establishing some notional, unmediated, relations between them. Consequently, when we ask whether it is possible to show that a particular piece of science was shaped by religious belief or a religious belief by science, we have to recognize that the very terms in which we formulate these questions can at best be linguistic crutches-that behind and beyond them lie forms of intellectual life, together with social and political realities, of great complexity. One response, then, might be that we should abandon such questions altogether, at least when couched in their customary form. Yet this would surely be throwing too much away. We do recognize that concepts of theistic evolution in late nineteenth-century theological literature were, in part at least, a response to theories of evolution in the biological sphere. As one British theologian, Aubrey Moore, put it, under the guise of a foe Darwin had done the work of a friend, liberating Christian theology from naive images of an interfering deity whose acts of creation were those of a magician.9 The reinterpretation of theological doctrine in the light of exciting new science has a very long history and continues apace today. It is perhaps not quite so obvious how scientific work has been stamped by religious concerns. When arguing for the catalytic effect of "puritan"values on the expansion of science in seventeenth-century England, Robert Merton made a point of denying that particular discoveries or particular theories were a direct consequence of religious belief.10At 7Rudwick, "EarthHistory"(cit. n. 5), pp. 296-7.

8 Ibid., p. 297. 9 ArthurR. Peacocke, "Biological Evolution and ChristianTheology: Yesterdayand Today,"in Darwinism and Divinity, ed. John Durant (Oxford: Blackwell, 1985), pp. 101-30, especially pp. 110-12. 10RobertK. Merton,Science, Technologyand Societyin Seventeenth-Century England(New York: Harper,1970), p. 75. Mertonwrote, "Specific discoveriesand inventionsbelong to the internalhistory of science and are largely independentof factorsotherthan the purely scientific:"

6

JOHN HEDLEY BROOKE

first sight it may seem especially implausible to suggest that hypotheses about the intricate workings of nature could be entailed by or deduced from theological premises. In the last analysis, however, this may reflect a failure of imagination on our part, since claims for such deducibility have certainly been made-most famously, perhaps, by Descartes, with his deduction of the conservation of motion from the conserving action of an immutable God." The key question, however, is more subtle than whether beliefs about the minutiae of creation have somehow been determined by religious belief in a one-to-one relation of direct dependence. The more subtle approach is to recognize that religious beliefs and practices can shape worldviews, that worldviews may find expression in a commitment to metaphysical principles that govern theory construction, and that these, in turn, may govern the degree of assent one might give to particular explanatory theories. On this more elaborate model, religious beliefs may not be so readily detectable in the execution of a piece of scientific research but may nevertheless have an indirect, regulative role in conferring different degrees of legitimacy on competing inferences that might be drawn from it. This is what I have described elsewhere as the "selective" role of religious belief.'2 THE QUESTION OF PRACTICE

An obvious feature of the more elaborate model is the stress that falls on theory construction. How, then, is the model affected by recent trends in the historiography of science that have diverted attention from the analysis of theory to the analysis of practice?'3 This is an important question for two reasons. Literatures concerning "science and religion" have largely concentrated more on bodies of ideas than on bodies of practice. A shift from the one to the other represents a reorientation that must surely bear on what the word "interaction"means when we speak of interaction between "religion" and "science." A second reason for introducing the category of practice is that it might help us to meet another objective of the present volumenamely, the differentiation, where possible, of metaphysical and religious beliefs. This issue is addressed in depth by Stephen Wykstra in his chapter "Religious Beliefs, Metaphysical Beliefs, and Historiography of Science," but as a preliminary point it would seem plausible to argue that whether a belief, say in the unchanging character of God, is described as "metaphysical" or "religious" might depend on the practices with which it is associated, and that these could vary from individual to individual. What in one case might simply be a postulate for a philosophical argument could in another be a basis for worship. At first sight sociologies of scientific practice might make it less plausible to suppose that religious preconceptions have left their mark on science. We can understand that completed scientific work can receive various cultural interpretations, but 1"Rene Descartes, Principia Philosophiae (Amsterdam, 1644), in Descartes: Philosophical Writ-

ings, ed. ElizabethAnscombe and PeterT. Geach (London:Nelson, 1971), pp. 215-19. 12Brooke, Science and Religion (cit. n. 4), p. 28. For a more detailedarticulationof this approach, see Stephen J. Wykstra,"Should worldviews shape science? Towardan IntegrationistAccount of ScientificTheorizing,"in van der Meer,Facets (cit. n. 5), vol. 2, pp. 123-71. 13Jan V. Golinski, "The Theory of Practiceand the Practiceof Theory:Sociological Approaches in the Historyof Science,"Isis 81 (1990):492-505.


7

this is a very different matter from discerning religious influence in the practices involved in bringing that work to completion. It may be far from obvious how the study of earthworms or the dissection of barnacles could be laden with religious meanings. If we seek to differentiate sciences from religions in terms of their practices, is not the effect to drive new wedges between them that might not have been there in the older histories of ideas? Might not the effect of investigating Newton's practices as a natural philosopher and his practices as an heretical Christian be to divide what he expressly united? "This most beautiful system of the sun, planets, and comets," he wrote, "could only proceed from the counsel and dominion of an intelligent and powerful being."14 Although the study of scientific and religious practices may increase sensitivity to their differences, it can also furnish examples of their engagement. Indeed, connections between scientific and theological discourse may come to light that might otherwise be missed. In short, to focus on practices can be another way of showing how the sacred can be present in what might otherwise pass as the secular, and vice versa. There are telling examples of this in the iconography of early modern science, where religious and experimental practices often coalesced. In Heinrich Khunrath's Amphitheatrum sapientiae aeternae (1598), the oratorium, the place of prayer, is placed opposite the laboratorium, the place for the alchemical experiment-but they are under the same roof. Having achieved an appropriate spiritual state and having sought divine blessing on the experiment, the alchemist passes continuously from the one to the other.'5 Experimental practices themselves, for much of the seventeenth century, were justified in theological terms. For advocates of an experimental philosophy such as Francis Bacon, Marin Mersenne, Robert Boyle, it was the height of presumption to seek to determine through reason alone how God had made the world. Mersenne took particular exception to the Aristotelian notion that the earth had to be at the center of the cosmos because that was its natural place. A God with free will had surely been free to create whatever world God wished. Only through humble empirical methods could the divinely chosen world be grasped.'6 At a more intimate level Boyle spoke of feeling a sense of divine guidance in the very execution of his chemical experiments. It was as if he had been led to make certain decisions: "pregnant hints" was how he described the assistance he had received from the greatest of all chemists, sparing him dreadful explosions and other chemical mishaps.'7 14 Isaac Newton, General Scholium to the Principia (1713), in Newtons Philosophy of Nature: Selectionsfrom his Writings,ed. H. S. Thayer(New York:Hafner,1953), p. 42. 15JanV. Golinski,"TheSecretLife of anAlchemist,"in LetNewtonBe!, ed. JohnFauvel,Raymond Flood, Michael Shortlandet al. (Oxford:OxfordUniv. Press, 1989), pp. 147-67, on p. 158. 16 Mersenne'svoluntarist theology is discussed by RobertLenoble, Mersenneou la naissance du mecanisme(Paris:Vrin, 1971), and Peter Dear, Mersenneand the Learningof the Schools (Ithaca, N.Y.: CornellUniv. Press, 1988). Links between a voluntaristtheology of the Creationand the advocacy of experimentalmethodswere given prominenceby Michael Fosterin a series of articlespublished in Mind duringthe 1930s. For a critical updateon the resultingliterature,see CameronWybrow, ed., Creation,Nature, and Political Order in the Philosophy of Michael Foster (1903-1959) (Lampeter:Mellen, Press, 1992), andMargaretJ. Osler,Divine Willand the MechanicalPhilosophy: Gassendiand Descartes on Contingencyand Necessityin the CreatedWorld(Cambridge:Cambridge Univ. Press, 1994). 17 JamesR. Jacob,"The Ideological Originsof RobertBoyle's NaturalPhilosophy,"J. Eur.Stud.2 (1972):1-21, on p. 16.

8

JOHN HEDLEY BROOKE

Even the practical application of knowledge acquired through experiment was given a religious meaning by Bacon. Altruistic applications, as in medicine or agriculture, could not possibly be sacrilegious and even had a strategic role in fulfilling biblical prophecy. Bacon's rhetoric presupposed a theological vocabulary of Fall and Restoration. A dominion over nature lost at the Fall would eventually be restored through the reform of learning. An increase in knowledge, according to the prophecies of Daniel, would be one of the signs of the last things and was therefore to be prized. 8 If we turn to the practices that lead to the production of scientific knowledge, there are spaces in which religious language has often gained access, albeit indirectly. There has been renewed interest recently in the place of aesthetic considerations in all aspects of scientific inquiry, and not merely in the context of theory appraisal.19References in scientific discourse to elegance, symmetry, and beauty need not carry religious meanings, but many times in the past they have. The lure of a hidden beauty in nature that the scientist might expose and represent in aesthetically pleasing form has often been expressed, and in language that can graduate from the aesthetic to the theistic-and vice versa. One of my favorite examples is the occasion when Kepler finally grasped what we know as his Third Law of planetary motion: he confessed to being "carriedaway by unutterableraptureat the divine spectacle of heavenly harmony."2'In a sense it may not matter that nature has so often turned out to be messy; it is the lure of the hidden beauty of order that has so frequently beckoned. For the physical sciences and for the twentieth century, the point was made perfectly, if a touch presumptuously, by Einstein: when confronted by a new physical theory he would always consider whether, had he been God, he would have made the world that way. Or so he said.2' Even those scientific practices that superficially seem far removed from religious incursion can be lodged in programs that impinge on religious sensibilities. The dissecting of living things can take on meanings that cut sensitive souls to the quick. John Ruskin was finally disillusioned with science in Oxford when, from the lecture theater adjacent to his own, he heard the cries of a screaming cat.22For at least one great scientist of the nineteenth century, Charles Darwin, the close study of worms and barnacles was part of a far larger program that he well knew would disturb public sensibilities.23 It was from a series of barnacles that he illustrated the gradual emergence of separate sexes from an unknown hermaphrodite ancestor, and it was when reporting this work to Joseph Hooker that he declared, "[M]y species theory is all gospel."'4 To focus on religious practices may also reveal engagement rather than disenls CharlesWebster,The GreatInstauration:Science, Medicineand Reform,1626-1660 (London: Duckworth,1975), pp. 19-27. 19Nicholas Jardine,TheScenes of lnquirv (Oxford:OxfordUniv. Press, 1991), pp. 193-224, especially p. 208; JohnBrooke andGeoffrey Cantor,ReconstructingNature:TheEngagementof Science and Religion (Edinburgh:T & T Clark, 1998), pp. 207-43. 20 Max Caspar,Kepler (London:AbelardSchuman, 1959), p. 267. 21 S. Truthand Beautw:Aestheticsand Motivationsin Science (Chicago:Univ. of Chandrasekhar, Chicago Press, 1987), p. 68. 22 RobertHewison, Ruskinand Oxford:TheArt of Education(Oxford:OxfordUniv. Press, 1996), p. 42. 23 StephenJay Gould. Hen'sTeethand Horse'sToes(New York:Norton, 1983), pp. 120-33. 24 JanetBrowne, Charles Darwin Voyaging(London:Pimlico, 1996), pp. 475-80.


9

gagement. I have already suggested that it may be only through the study of practices that it becomes possible to discriminate between religious beliefs and metaphysical statements involving a deity. By "religious practices" I have in mind such activities as private devotions, the reverential study of sacred texts, the analysis of prophecy, and efforts to evangelize. At this point I should like to draw on recent Newtonian scholarship. With grateful acknowledgment to the work of Betty Jo Dobbs, James Force, Robert Iliffe, Scott Mandelbrote, and Stephen Snobelen, it is possible to see that Newton's religious practices did not merely resonate with his scientific activities but were integrated with them. Newton's overarching goal was to establish definitive hermeneutic principles for the decoding of God's two books. To that end he himself made a point of studying religious practices-those of the ancient world. It was this study that convinced him that almost every recorded society had based the central rituals of its culture on a heliocentric view.25 Newton's devotional practices included private confession and intensive Bible study. Although to outward appearance he was an Anglican, one of his deepest convictions was that there should be freedom for individuals to undertake their own spiritual pilgrimage without deference to ecclesiastical authority. "Let me therefore beg of thee," Newton once wrote, "not to trust to ye opinion of any man concerning these things . . . much less the judgement of ye multitude ... but search the scriptures thyself ... by frequent reading and constant meditation."26For Newton, the pope was Antichrist, the Anglican Church idolatrous.27Evidence of a puritan conscience early in his life exists in the content of his coded confessions. Offenses such as making a mousetrap on the Sabbath, eating an apple in the house of God, and lying about a louse took their place alongside threatening to burn his mother and stepfather "and the house over them."28There is a recent suggestion that we can make most sense of many of Newton's theological manuscripts if we see them as devotional exercises.29 Viewed in this light, there is reflexivity in Newton's private jotting that "[t]o celebrate God for his eternity, immensity, omnisciency, and omnipotency is indeed very pious and the duty of every creature."30This may seem to take us far away from the rarefied mathematics of the Principia Mathematica, but there were connections, for it was through his natural philosophy that Newton gave new content to words like "omnipotence" and "omnipresence." As Amos Funkenstein pointed out, it was the fusion of scientific and theological meanings that actually made Newton's God more vulnerable to attack during the Enlightenment. 25 RobertIliffe, "'Is he

like other men?' The Meaning of the PrincipiaMathematica,and the Au-

thor as Idol," in Culture and Society in the Stuart Restoration, ed. Gerald Maclean (Cambridge:

CambridgeUniv. Press, 1995), pp. 159-76, especially pp. 165-6; andidem, "A 'ConnectedSystem'? The Snare of a Beautiful Hand and the Unity of Newton's Archive,"in Archives of the Scientific Revolution: The Formation and Exchange of Ideas in Seventeenth-Century Europe, ed. Michael

Hunter(Suffolk, U.K.: Boydell, 1998), pp. 137-57, 56. 26 Newton, YahudaMS 1.1, fols. 2r-3r, cited by Scott Mandelbrote,"'A Duty of the Greatest Moment':Isaac Newton andthe Writingof Biblical Criticism,"Brit.J. Hist. Sci. 26 (1993):281-302, on p. 300. 27 Robert Iliffe, "Those 'Whose Business It Is to Cavil': Newton'sAnti-Catholicism,"in Newton and Religion, ed. JamesE. Force and RichardH. Popkin(Dordrecht:Kluwer,1999), pp. 97-119. and 28 Newton'sNotebook, FitzwilliamMuseum,Cambridge:RichardS. Westfall,"Short-Writing the State of Newton's Conscience," Notes and Records of the Royal Society of London 18

(1963):10-16; andFrankManuel,TheReligionof Isaac Newton(Oxford:OxfordUniv. Press, 1974), pp. 14-16. 29 Mandelbrote,"Newtonand Biblical Criticism"(cit. n. 26), pp. 299-300. 30Cited in ibid., p. 300, n. 109.

10

JOHN HEDLEY BROOKE

Divine attributes, specifiable through the categories of natural philosophy, became that much more sharply defined and, as such, an easier target.31 In self-defense Galileo had once written that an understanding of nature was one of the best aids to the correct interpretation of Scripture.32That view had been tendentious in post-Tridentine Rome, but it was not so for Newton. As Scott Mandelbrote has recently written, "Newton's naturalphilosophical and theological discoveries removed the obscurities from divine language, in the books of nature and of scripture. In the life of the true believer, the two could not be separated."33It is often pointed out that Newton reacted against the practice of finding multiple meanings in a biblical text.34As in the book of nature, there was a single, uniquely correct answer that one had to discover.35The parallel between the respective hermeneutic practices was quite explicit: "It is the perfection of all God's works that they are done with the greatest simplicity.... And therefore as they that would understand the frame of the world must endeavour to reduce their knowledge to all possible simplicity, so it must be in seeking to understand these visions."36 The interpretationof prophecy was the exegetical practice in which Newton most heavily invested. The reason appears to be that he saw the fulfillment of prophecy as the most convincing proof of Providence at work in the world.37For Newton, the issue was fundamental, because (in his own words) to reject the prophecies of Daniel would be to reject the Christian religion: "For this religion is founded upon his Prophecy concerning the Messiah."38The God at work in nature was the same God at work in human history. The omnipotence and dominion of this deity could be proved in both domains. But more than analogy was involved. In order to prove that specific prophecies had been fulfilled, a knowledge of chronology was required, and that in turn presupposed a knowledge of astronomy. Newton's successor in the Lucasian Chair of Mathematics at Cambridge, William Whiston, listed fulfillment after fulfillment, prompting Stephen Snobelen to say that in Whiston's case "fulfilled prophecy was as empirically certain as a Boylean experiment or a Newtonian demonstration."39Whiston's Boyle Lectures were in effect a "textbook of replicated prophetic experiments."4?1 The reader could read the prediction and "'test' it against the supplied historical fulfilment." A parallel has been drawn between this rhetorical 31Amos Funkenstein,Theologyand the ScientificImaginationfrom the MiddleAges to the SeventeenthCentury(Princeton:PrincetonUniv. Press, 1986), pp. 89-97 and 116. 32Galileo, "Letterto the GrandDuchess Christina"(1615), in The GalileoAffair:A Documentary History,ed. MauriceA. Finocchiaro(Berkeley and Los Angeles: Univ. of CaliforniaPress, 1989), pp. 87-118, on p. 93. 33Mandelbrote,"Newtonand Biblical Criticism"(cit. n. 26), p. 301. 34 Ibid., p. 298, and Funkenstein,Theologyand ScientificImagination(cit. n. 31), pp. 89-97. 35This same hermeneuticprinciple,as developed by Newton'ssuccessor in the LucasianChairof Mathematicsat Cambridge,WilliamWhiston,is discussedby StephenD. Snobelen, "TheArgument over Prophecy:An Eighteenth-CenturyDebate betweenWilliamWhistonandAnthonyCollins,"Lumen 15 (1996):195-213, especially p. 200. 36 Newton, "Rulesfor Interpretingthe Wordsand Languagein Scripture," YahudaMS 1.1, reproduced in Manuel, "Newton'sReligion"(cit. n. 28), pp. 116-25, on p. 120. 37 James E. Force, "Newton's'Sleeping Argument'and the Newtonian Synthesis of Science and Religion,"in Standingon the Shouldersof Giants:A LongerViewof Newtonand Halley, ed. Norman J. Thrower(Berkeley and Los Angeles: Univ. of CaliforniaPress, 1990), pp. 109-27. 38 Newton, ObservationsUpon the Propheciesof Daniel, and the Apocalypseof St. John (London: J. Darbyand T. Brown, 1733), p. 25; and Snobelen, "Argument over Prophecy"(cit. n. 35), p. 197. 39 Snobelen, "Argumentover Prophecy"(cit. n. 35), p. 205. 4) Ibid., p. 206.


11

strategy and the virtual witnessing in experimental philosophy on which Steven Shapin and Simon Schaffer have written with such effect. Whiston's reader participated "virtually" in a providential event of another time and place.41 Evangelistic practices have also become of interest to historians of science, because there can be parallels between the methods employed to win religious converts and those employed to gain adherents to new forms of science. It is the disanalogies that may strike us at first, but at the interface between scientists and their publics there are similarities as well. We could take as an example the most reluctant proselyte of them all-and that would again be Newton: reluctant to publish his natural philosophy, because this would be to cast pearls before swine and risk misperception and distortion; reluctant to publish his theology, because of its heretical Christology. And yet, we are beginning to see that Newton did have a strategy for promoting both his natural philosophy and his heretical religion, and this through the use of agents who were given access to his private world. The parallel between Newton's deployment of agents in both domains is currently attracting special attention.42The absorbing point is that the most prominent of them, men such as Whiston and Samuel Clarke, were active in promoting both his natural philosophy and his theology. Indeed, in a significant revision of traditional scholarship, it has recently been suggested that Newton did eventually go public himself-that the General Scholium written for the second edition of the Principia Mathematica was in fact an Arian manifesto, and informed by a knowledge of Socinian texts in which the dominion of God was stressed.43This argument is taken farther by Stephen Snobelen in his contribution to the present volume (" 'God of gods and Lord of lords': The Theology of Isaac Newton's General Scholium to the Principia"). Studies of the popularization of Newtonian science by metropolitan and itinerant lecturers during the first half of the eighteenth century have pointed to explicit parallels between the "scientist" and the "priest."As part of the rhetoric of their public performances, the Newtonian lecturers would often claim to be demonstrating divine powers, the powers placed by the deity in nature. Theologically, such displays were deeply ambiguous. They could be presented as reverential, as a form of natural theology, but they could also be seen as presumptuous, in that here were men with their impressive apparatus manipulating forces in a manner that had once been a divine prerogative.44Where there was opposition to Newtonian science in eighteenthcentury Britain, it often came from High Churchmen, among whom Newton and his acolytes were perceived as heretics. But there was also concern that those peddling the new science in popular lectures and demonstrations were usurping clerical authority.As Larry Stewart has recently suggested, the audience for naturalphilosophy 41 Ibid., pp. 206 and 213; cf. Steven Shapin and Simon Schaffer,Leviathan and the Air-Pump: Hobbes, Boyle and the Experimental Life (Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 1985). 42 See, e.g., StephenD. Snobelen, "Newtonas Heretic:The Strategiesof a Nicodemite,"M. Phil. diss., CambridgeUniv., 1997, pp. 24-31; published with modification in Brit. J. Hist. Sci. 32 (1999):381-419. 43 LarryStewart,"Seeing throughthe Scholium:Religion and ReadingNewton in the Eighteenth Century,"Hist. Sci. 34 (1996):123-65; StephenD. Snobelen,"IsaacNewton and Socinianism,"typescript, Cambridge, 1997; and also Snobelen, "Caution,Conscience and the Newtonian Reformation: The Public and Private Heresies of Newton, Clarke and Whiston,"EnlightenmentDiss. 16 (1997):151-84. 44 Simon Schaffer,"NaturalPhilosophyand Public Spectacle in the EighteenthCentury,"Hist. Sci. 21 (1983):1-43.

12

JOHN HEDLEY BROOKE

arguably "outstripped the capacity of religious authority to control the experimental medium."45

No one controlled the experimental medium more effectively than that giant of nineteenth-century physical science, Michael Faraday.In Geoffrey Cantor's biography (1991), there is the striking suggestion that we need to understand the religious practices of the small Sandemanian sect to which he belonged if we are to understand his attitudes to the culture of science.46 There is a useful critique here of a traditional historiography in which Faraday'sscience and his religion have been kept in separate compartments. What did it mean in practice to be a member of a minority nonconformist sect whose beliefs implied a withdrawal from the rewards of this world? It clearly meant a life of moral discipline, of regular attendance at the meetinghouse. The Sunday service involved hours of prayer,Bible study, and exhortation. Faradaybecame an elder in the church and certainly delivered exhortations. In these, biblical texts were in the foreground, minimizing the distortion of God's word that might come from the human voice. Living by the Bible also meant pastoral duties, ministering to the sick and dying. Faraday was conspicuous in supporting other Sandemanian fellowships outside of London. When schism threatened, he would be active as a diplomat. His religion, in brief, made ster practical demands, a life of discipline within a framework of moral law. And here there may indeed be a parallel with his role as a disciplined scientist, investigating what he believed to be a created and law-like universe. Cantor makes the even stronger claim that Faraday "transferred the Sandemanian social philosophy to science."47Faraday'svision of the scientific community was distinctively otherworldly: there was to be no avarice, partisan interest, or personal dispute. In the practice of science, as in the practice of religion, he mistrusted earthly rewards. He may have had his fair share, but he mistrusted the entrepreneurialspirit and interventionist forms of patronage. These could easily besmirch the purity of scientific investigation. The scientist was emphatically a moral agent whose knowledge was for sharing and edification.48If Cantor is right, to focus on practices does not diminish the relevance of Faraday's religion to his science. If anything, it becomes more plausible to argue that the metaphysical convictions regulating his empirical work-ideas about the unity of nature and the interconvertibility of forces-may have been reinforced by, perhaps even rooted in, his religion. Nor should we forget that the practice of preaching served as a model for T. H. Huxley when he preached the virtues of scientific naturalism in what he himself called his "lay sermons." Huxley's zeal in confronting what he called the "mistaken zeal of Bibliolaters" is well known: he said that "extinguished theologians lie about the cradle of every science as the strangled snakes beside that of Hercules."49Reflecting on the rise of scientific naturalism in mid-nineteenth-century Britain, Martin Rudwick made a telling intervention in 1981. At the time, colleagues associated with Stewart,"Seeing throughthe Scholium"(cit. n. 43). Geoffrey Cantor,Michael Faradav:Sandemanianand Scientist(London:Macmillan, 1991). 47 Ibid., p. 295.

45 46

4X Ibid.

49ThomasHenryHuxley,CollectedEssays (London:Macmillan,1893-4), 9 vols., vol. 2, pp. 52-3; James R. Moore, The Post-Darwinian Controversies(Cambridge:CambridgeUniv. Press, 1979), pp. 58-68; AdrianDesmond, Huxley: The Devil's Disciple (London:Michael Joseph, 1994); idem, Huxley. Evolutions High Priest (London:Michael Joseph, 1997); and David M. Knight, "Getting Science Across,"Brit. J. Hist. Sci. 29 (1996):129-38.


13

what became known as the "Edinburgh program" in the sociology of knowledge were stressing that to account for the success of a particular scientific theory it was not helpful to invoke a retrospective reference to the truth of the theory as part of the explanation for how consensus had been achieved. To understand the processes of scientific negotiation, it was unhelpful to adopt some teleological notion of a "naturaloutcome." Rudwick insisted that the same principle should be applied when explaining the rise of scientific naturalism itself. To treat the metaphysics of scientific naturalism as the most "natural"would be to introduce an asymmetry in historical reconstruction. We have perhaps not yet drawn out all the implications from that intervention.50It also reminds us that the processes conventionally subsumed under the label "secularization" will be perceived very differently according to whether the loss of religious belief is seen as the painful loss of something precious (when it is the loss that must be explained) or as the simple shedding of what were intrinsically irrational beliefs in the first place (when what needs explanation is the sustenance of such "nonnatural"beliefs for a time). Before leaving religious practices we need to note that they, rather than doctrines per se, could attractcritiques and fuel antireligious sentiment. During the Enlightenment, deistic attacks on established churches pointed to Catholic practices such as confession, which in Matthew Tindal's scathing indictment allowed priests to profit from the knowledge so gained.51 The practice of the Anglican Church in extracting tithes even from dissenters was deeply abhorrentto the Unitarian philosopher Joseph Priestley.52It was a particular anathema to Priestley that what he considered to be a corrupt form of Christianity enjoyed political power through an arbitrarylink to the state. In both his chemistry and his theology he sought to rid the world of corrupting "spirits" in almost every sense of the word "spirit."53 My provisional conclusion is that to concentrate on practices, rather than theories and doctrines, does not make it any easier to speak of an absolute separation of "science" from "religion" at some notional point in the evolution of Western cultures. It might be objected, of course, that in pursuing analogies between "scientific" and "religious" practices one has tacitly presupposed that very separation against which the argument is directed. I hope, however, that a closer study of the examples that I have given would show that there need be no essentialism in the supposition. As I have argued elsewhere, it is possible to identify various levels at which cross traffic can occur and levels at which various degrees of differentiation have been achieved in specific contexts.54To give just one example: Boyle positively urged that anthropocentric criteria should not intrude in the appraisal of scientific theories.55 50MartinJ. S. Rudwick, "Senses of the NaturalWorldand Senses of God: AnotherLook at the HistoricalRelationof Science and Religion,"in The Sciencesand Theologyin the TwentiethCentury, ed. ArthurR. Peacocke (London:Oriel, 1981), pp. 241-61. 51MatthewTindal, Christianityas Old as the Creation,3rd ed. (London, 1732), p. 102. 52 Chapel,Birmingham(London: Joseph Priestley,LettersTo the Rev.EdwardBurn of St. Maryn's J. Johnson, 1790), p. xv. 53 JohnH. Brooke, "'A sower went forth': JosephPriestleyandthe Ministryof Reform"in Motion toward Perfection: The Achievementof Joseph Priestley, ed. A. TrumanSchwartz and John G. McEvoy (Boston: Skinner,1990), pp. 21-56, especially pp. 38-41. 54 JohnH. Brooke,"ReligiousBelief andthe NaturalSciences: Mappingthe HistoricalLandscape" in van der Meer, Facets (cit. n. 5), vol. 1, pp. 1-26. 55This was arguablyone facet of Boyle's insistenceon the disinterestednessof respectableknowledge claims. On this see Steven Shapin,A Social History of Truth:Civility and Science in Seventeenth-CenturyEngland(Chicago:Univ. of Chicago Press, 1994), pp. 223-7 and 237-8.

14

JOHN HEDLEY BROOKE

But, as both Margaret Cook and Margaret Osler insist in their respective contributions to the present volume, this did not prevent him from being a champion of the design argument and a defender of final causes in nature. (See Cook, "Divine Artifice and Natural Mechanism: Robert Boyle's Mechanical Philosophy of Nature," and Osler, "Whose Ends? Teleology in Early Modern Natural Philosophy.") Boyle's theology of nature involved an active deity,56and his very credibility as a scientific authority was reinforced by his being a Christian gentleman.57It is clearly possible to tell many stories about the way in which old and new sciences gained their independence from theological reference, but there has been no magic moment when scientific practices and results have ceased carrying moral meanings-certainly for commentators, if not for practitioners themselves. To focus on scientific and religious practices can be to expose more than merely analogy between them. Indeed, the existence of parallels between sacred and secular clerisies has been at the heart of recent writing on the exclusion of women from science. I am thinking of Margaret Wertheim's Pythagoras' Trousers (1995), where communities of physicists, in particular, are portrayed as secular priesthoods, and where women are therefore hit hard.58I am not suggesting that because analogies between the two priesthoods can be found Wertheim's conclusions always follow. The generous assistance given to Mary Somerville by an archetypal scientist-priest, William Whewell, shows that there were counterexamples to her metanarrativeeven in the Cambridge of the 1830s.59It was Whewell who invented the word "scientist" in that very decade and Whewell who continued to argue that, in the life sciences, it was impossible to achieve a correct understanding of anatomy and physiology without reference to final causes-final causes that were indicative of a Creator.The stamp of an Anglican theology is visible both in the content of Whewell's science and in his epistemology.6"That it is so in the very man who gave the world "scientists" takes us back to our basic questions. How has the cognitive content of the sciences been shaped by religious (and antireligious) preconceptions? I turn now to some illustrative examples, but with a critical eye on the difficulties that arise in translating plausible conjectures about such input into substantiated claims. After identifying some difficulties that stand in the way of corroboration, I devote my last section to a consideration of the criteria that might need to be satisfied if objections are to be removed. THE SHAPING OF SCIENTIFIC CONTENT

There certainly are well-known examples from early modern science where propositions derived from a religious culture have featured in an explanatory enterprise. 56Timothy Shanahan, "Teleological Reasoning in Boyle's Disquisition about Final Causes," in Robert Boyle Reconsidered,ed. Michael Hunter (Cambridge:CambridgeUniv. Press, 1994), pp. 177-92. 57 Shapin, "Social Historyof Truth" (cit. n. 55), pp. 126-92. 58

Margaret Wertheim, Pythagoras' Trousers: God, Physics, and the Gender Wars (New York:

RandomHouse, 1995). 59 Thereare numerousreferencesto Whewell's encouragement(and thatof JohnHerschel)in Martha Somerville, Personal Recollections of Mary Somerville with Selections from Her Correspondence (London: Murray, 1873). See also John H. Brooke, Does the history of science have a future?, "Presi-

dentialAddress,"British Society for the Historyof Science, 1997, Brit.J. Hist. Sci. 32 (1999):1-20. 6) William Whewell: A Composite Portrait, ed. Menachem Fisch and Simon Schaffer (Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 1991).


15

Elements of the sacred within the secular are famously visible in Thomas Buret's Sacred Theory of the Earth (1691), where Noah's Flood is both an explanans and an explanandum in the earth'sphysical history.6'Buret gives a mechanistic account of how the Flood occurred, but its very occurrence is also used to explain how the earth's surface came to be in such a ruinous state. Such examples of a direct input from sacred history into geological history clearly problematize the terms "sacred" and "secular."It is also crucial to recognize that Buret's mechanistic account was meant to reinforce a sense of Providence, not detract from it.62The marvel was the coincidence of timing whereby the cataclysmic event occurred just when it was needed to purge a sinful people. Buret's vision of the seven phases through which the earth must pass is so clearly informed by biblical precepts that he has often been accused of "mixing science and religion." But, as Stephen Jay Gould has forcefully argued, such criticism misses the point by importing anachronistic boundaries.63 Burnet's modem critics are using the words "science" and "religion" in the essentialist terms that we have tried to discourage. It is clear that Burnet did not consider himself guilty of any such mixup, because he took the moral high ground in accusing Saint Augustine of that very mistake.64The fact that Augustine, too, had warned about mixing secular knowledge with the exegesis of Scripture only confirms yet again the need for vigilance in the way our questions are formulated. In some early sciences-mathematical astronomy, for example-the sacred was invoked to underwrite the very possibility of cognitive content. If this is less than clear in Copernicus, it is arguably transparentin Kepler, where the disclosure of a hidden cosmic harmony gave support to realist rather than merely instrumentalist goals for astronomical practice.65Owen Gingerich has recently proposed that it may even be clear in Copernicus, who, at the end of the cosmological chapter (I.10) of De Revolutionibus (1543), exclaimed, "[S]o vast, without any doubt, is the handiwork of the Almighty Creator."For Gingerich this expression of pious enthusiasm is the sign that Copernicus "really believed that the Creator had placed the planets heliocentrically."66In one of Robert Westman's classic essays the enthusiasm of Georg Joachim Rheticus for just such a realist interpretation of Copernican astronomy is assimilated to a form of zealotry.67 Claims for a subtle, indirect shaping of acceptable science have arguably become easier to sustain as a consequence of sophisticated scholarship in the history of 61 ThomasBumet, TheSacred Theoryof the Earth,reprintof the 1691 editionwith an introduction by Basil Willey (London:Centaur,1965). 62 Ibid., p. 89. 63

Stephen Jay Gould, Time s Arrow, Time's Cycle: Myth and Metaphor in the Discovery of Geologi-

cal Time(New York:Penguin, 1988), pp. 23-7. 64 Bumet, "Sacred Theory"(cit. n. 61), p. 16; and John H. Brooke, "Science and the Fortunesof NaturalTheology: Some HistoricalPerspectives,"Zygon 24 (1989):3-21. 65 Gerald Holton, ThematicOriginsof ScientificThought(Cambridge,Mass.: HarvardUniv. Press, 1973), pp. 69-90; Nicholas Jardine, The Birth of History and Philosophy of Science: Kepler's A Defence of Tycho against Ursus, with Essays on its Provenance and Significance (Cambridge: Cam-

bridge Univ. Press, 1984); RichardS. Westfall, "The Rise of Science and the Decline of Orthodox Christianity:A Study of Kepler,Descartesand Newton,"in Lindbergand Numbers,God and Nature (cit. n. 5), pp. 218-37; Femand Hallyn, The Poetic Structure of the World: Copernicus and Kepler

(New York:Zone, 1993). 66 Owen Gingerich,"The Copemican Revolution,"in The History of Science and Religion in the WesternTradition,ed. Gary B. Femgren (New York:Garland,2000), pp. 334-39, on p. 335. 67RobertS. Westman,"TheMelanchthonCircle,Rheticusand the WittenbergInterpretationof the CopemicanTheory,"Isis 66 (1975):165-93.

16

JOHN HEDLEY BROOKE

science. The underdetermination of theorychoice by empiricaldata,exposed by the Hesse68 and in much contemporaryworkin the social underlined philosopherMary of has focused attention on the gap to be filled when accountingfor science, history choices-a the specific theory gap, infillingof which in termsof social interests(or other categories)has certainlyincluded space for religious preferences.That religious beliefs mightoperatein this way has sometimesbeen explicit amongreligious thinkersthemselves. One of the many competinghermeneuticprinciplesin postReformationEuropewas Melanchthon'sproposalthat if a deadlockin naturalphilosophy could not be resolvedin any otherway,it was appropriateto referto Scripture as arbiter.69 Certaindifficultiesought, however,to be anticipatedat this point. If we take the specific example first,it is not clear thatMelanchthon'sproposalreflectedanyconsensus.The workof KennethHowell has exposedthe enormousvariety of strategiesadoptedby biblicalexegetes in the wake of the Copernicaninnovation.70Then,for the historian,thereis the questionof whetheran appealto religious preferencesto makeup the explanatorydeficitmightnot confera special anddeterminativeautonomyon religious commitment,which assumesit to have a uniquely privilegedrole in accountingfor a person'schoices. The model mentionedearlier, that religious beliefs may shape worldviews,which may shape metaphysicalprinciples, which may in turnshape theory choice is seductive,but what assumptions are we makingwhen we place the religiousbeliefs at the summitof ourexplanatory pyramid?Are we not perhaps in danger of surreptitiouslyand uncriticallysuccumbingto the lure of mono-causalexplanation?A closely relatedproblemshould also be noted:if religious preferenceis invokedby the historianto explain why an choice of theory was made, should it be assumedthat otherwiseunderdetermined thathas been sufficientto fill the gap?This is a problemthat will reappearlaterin this essay. Meanwhile,it is plausibleto suggest thatin the rebuttalas well as the acceptance of particulartheoreticalconstructsreligious considerationshave left their mark. Newton'srefusal to allow that gravity might be an innate propertyof matterhas attractedattentionfor preciselythis reason.If the gravitationalforce were an essential definingcharacteristicof matter,a materialisticconstructioncould be placedon the theory.And this wouldgo againstthe grainof Newton'stheism,in which sources of activityin naturewere tracedbackto free choices madeby the Creator.Newton's correspondentRichardBentleyrejectedthe materialisticconstructionon the ground thatgravityactedfromthe centerof sphericalbodies, not theirmaterialsurfaces.He favoreda readingin which the continualactionof gravitythrougha vacuumpointed to an immaterialagent, an agent thatwas a Being with a capitalB. In an attractive case study,StephenWykstrahas arguedthat when Newton himself referredto an "immaterialcause" he is "most plausibly to be understoodas following Bentley as referringto God."7'In accordancewith the model that religious beliefs shape worldviews,which shape metaphysicalprinciples,which shape science, Wykstra 68

Mary B. Hesse, The Structureof ScientificInference(London:Macmillan, 1974).

69 KennethJ. Howell, "Copernicanismand the Bible in Early Modem Science,"in van der Meer,

Facets (cit. n. 5), vol. 4, pp. 261-84, especially p. 265. 7()KennethJ. Howell, "Copernicanismand Biblical Interpretation in EarlyModernProtestantEurope,"Ph.D. diss., LancasterUniversity,1995. 71Wykstra,"Worldviews"(cit. n. 12), p. 139.


17

exhibits a Newton "whose theistic worldview powerfully influenced his metaphysical conception of matter and its 'active principles."'72 There is plenty of evidence to support this general conclusion, but Wykstra'sanalysis might also be used to raise some difficulties. When he says that Newton is most plausibly to be understood as following Bentley in identifying the agency of gravity with the agency of God, he alerts us to the fact that we are dealing in plausibilities, not in high probabilities or certainties. The question of how corroboration might be achieved (and of the criteria to be satisfied) remains to some degree outstanding. Second, in this particular case there is another reading possible of the letters to Bentley in which Newton insists that a belief in innate gravity should not be ascribed to him. Newton concludes the pertinent paragraph by saying, "Gravity must be caused by an agent acting constantly according to certain laws, but whether this agent be material or immaterial I have left to the consideration of my readers."73It is striking that the word "agent" here does not have a capital A-striking too that Newton does not seem committed to the immateriality of whatever agent he is talking about. This would not be so surprising if he were talking only about an intermediate agency employed by the deity as an instrument of the divine will. Such an interpretation does not vitiate the claim that Newton's understanding of matter may have been in some measure controlled by his theism. Gravity is not an essential property of matter, because, at the Creation, God freely chose to invest matter with this additional property. But, as John Henry has pointed out, Newton's voluntarism, in this context, may have required no more than that divine gift at the Creation.74Newton may have entertained Bentley's equation of gravity with the continuous and direct action of God, but he entertained other possibilities as well. A further issue arises here, because it is often pointed out that anything as idiosyncratic as a religious preconception would, in any case, soon be ironed out of a theoretical system, even if it had played a role at its inception. This observation, however, generates some pointed questions about the "survival"of the sacred in the seemingly secular, and whether that survival may sometimes be less than obvious. Such survivals may be detected in general features of the scientific enterprise as well as in the particulars. The very idea of a scientific utopia probably had roots in a particular form of Protestant millenarianism, as Charles Webster (among others) has argued.75 The anticipation of, and the working toward, a future ideal state when Christ would return could easily be translated into a more secular vision. The very idea of "laws" of nature had, as one of its sources, the image of the divine legislator. In his essay "The Origin of Forms and Qualities" Boyle used a trope that would recur many times in scientific literature:"I think that the wise Author of things did, by establishing the laws of motion among bodies, and by guiding the first motions of the small parts of matter, bring them to convene after the manner requisite to compose the 72

Ibid., p. 146.

73 Newton'sThirdLetterto Richard

Bentley, 25 Feb. 1693, in Thayer,Newton'sPhilosophyof Nature (cit. n. 14), p. 54. 74 John Henry,"'Praydo not ascribethat notion to me': God and Newton'sGravity,"in The Books of Nature and Scripture,ed. James E. Force and RichardH. Popkin (Dordrecht:Kluwer, 1994), pp. 123-47. 75 Webster,Great Instauration (cit. n. 18); and Ernest L. Tuveson, Millennium and Utopia (New York:Harper,1964).

18

JOHN HEDLEY BROOKE

world."76It is true that in another essay, concerning the "notion of nature,"he insisted that "laws" was a figurative expression, because matter is too stupid to know what a law is.77But as a figurative expression the concept of laws of nature continued to underpin the fundamental presupposition of an orderly and intelligible universe until moder times. It was a metaphor to which Darwin had recourse when in the Origin of Species (1859) he, too, spoke of laws impressed on matter by the Creator.78 In some cases, as Margaret Osler has argued, the appropriationby naturalphilosophers of ideas developed in theological discussion can be shown to have done real work. The unresolvability of theological debates sometimes fed into discussions of epistemology; different conceptions of divine power, as in the debate between Pierre Gassendi and Descartes, sometimes informed different accounts of both matter and methodology.79The stamp of a religious legacy has been particularly conspicuous in theories of the earth, where the content of the "science," as in Buret, could reflect the concepts of sacred history. Even when the theology ceased to be orthodox, the legacy could still be visible. In the biogeography of Linnaeus, for example, species had been created in pairs, in different climatic zones on a paradisiacal mountain. These same species had then migrated as the surrounding waters subsided.80This marks a departurefrom a strictly biblical theology in that there is a secular conflation of Creation and Flood narratives. But the narratives themselves have not yet been so inundated as to be rendered invisible. Even in an oppositional stance, such as that of George-Louis Leclerc Buffon toward a literal reading of the Genesis Creation narrative, the template of the Seven Days reappeared in his seven epochs of nature (1778).81

Remaining with the earth sciences, the impress of a sacred teleology on the secular has been discerned both in the reconstruction of fossil forms and in the practices of geological illustration. In The Meaning of Fossils (1972), Martin Rudwick objected to the notion that early nineteenth-century natural theology had simply blinded people to the "correct" solutions to scientific problems. Rather, he insisted, natural theology had exercised its influence in the choice of problems that were addressed and in the kind of solutions that were deemed satisfactory.82While an emphasis on the divine design of each species created a powerful, and partly unconscious, opposition to evolutionary theory, it nevertheless acted as a powerful incentive for the functional analysis and ecological reconstruction of fossil species. The reason was simply that it led naturalists to expect to find evidence of adaptive mechanisms in the construction of organisms. There is a question here concerning the extent to 76RobertBoyle, "The Origin of Forms and QualitiesAccording to the CorpuscularPhilosophy," in Selected PhilosophicalPapers of RobertBoyle, ed. M. A. Stewart(Manchester,U.K.: Manchester Univ. Press, 1979), pp. 1-96, on p. 19. 77RobertBoyle, 'A Free InquiryInto the VulgarlyReceived Notion of Nature,"in ibid., pp. 17691, onp. 181. 78For a helpful commentaryon the closing pages of Darwin'stext, see Neal C. Gillespie, Charles Darwin and the Problemof Creation(Chicago:Univ. of Chicago Press, 1979), pp. 134-45. 79MargaretOsler, "MixingMetaphors:Science and Religion or NaturalPhilosophyandTheology in Early Modem Europe,"Hist. Sci. 35 (1997):91-113. 80JanetBrowne, TheSecularArk. Studiesin the Historyof Biogeography(New Haven:Yale Univ. Press, 1983), pp. 16-23. 81John Lyon and Phillip R. Sloan, FromNaturalHistory to the History of Nature:Readingsfrom Buffonand His Critics (Notre Dame, Ind.:Univ. of Notre Dame Press, 1981). 82 MartinJ. S. Rudwick,TheMeaningof Fossils: Episodes in the Historyof Paleontology(London: Macdonald,1972), p. 155.


19

which teleological reasoning might be deployed independently of a theological warrant. The Scottish gentleman-farmer James Hutton has been used as an example of one whose teleological language in his account of earth history belonged more to an Aristotelian naturalism than a Christian natural theology.83Kant's analysis, too, showed that one could have the teleology without the theology;84but that need not derogate from the theology when it was demonstrably present, in William Buckland, Adam Sedgwick, and William Whewell, for example.85 In Scenes from Deep Time (1992), Rudwick focused on the visual practices of the geologist. One facet of his argument was the continuity between methods of depicting the successive days of the Creation narrative and methods of depicting successive geological epochs. The scenes depicted in Johann Scheuchzer's Sacred Physics (1731-1733) were an "important pictorial precedent" for those based later on fossils.86 And we should not forget that there were geological practitioners in the nineteenth century for whom the respective sequences were congruent. The Scottish evangelical Hugh Miller provides a fascinating example, with his elaborate thesis that the order of the Creation as summarized in Scripture matched that of the fossil record.87The degeneracy that Miller incorporated into each epoch looks to be a reflection of both his evangelical theology and his determination to smash theories of species transformation, which tended to assume a steady linear progression from the simpler to the more complex.88 Miller's celebration of the beauty of fossil forms may also reflect his religious commitment. He wanted to show that human beings and their Maker shared the same aesthetic sensibilities.89 My next example raises the question of whether the survivals can insinuate themselves into bodies of theory to the extent that they become almost invisible. In 1981 the Darwin scholar Dov Ospovat documented more fully than before the survival of natural theology in early drafts of Darwin's theory.90Both Ospovat and David Kohn had observed that in Darwin's rudimentary notes for what became his theory of evolution, evolution was conceived as nature's way of preserving "perfect" adaptation in a changing environment.91Ospovat's thesis was that a concept of perfect adaptation placed a constraint during the 1840s on the scope Darwin could give to natural selection. Where there was perfect adaptation, natural selection would only cut in 83Gould, Hen'sTeeth(cit. n. 23), pp. 79-93. 84 TimothyLenoir, The Strategyof Life: Teleologyand Mechanics in NineteenthCenturyGerman Biology (Chicago:Univ. of Chicago Press, 1989), pp. 17-53. 85 For Bucklandas paleoecologist,whose interpretationof the functionalanatomyof the megatherium was drenchedin naturaltheology, see Nicolaas A. Rupke, The Great Chain of History: William Buckland and the English School of Geology, 1814-1849 (Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 1983), pp. 240-8. For Sedgwick andWhewell see Gillespie, CharlesDarwin (cit. n. 78), p. 38. 86 MartinJ. S. Rudwick,Scenesfrom Deep Time:EarlyPictorial Representations of the Prehistoric World(Chicago:Univ. of Chicago Press, 1992), p. 14. 87 Hugh Miller, The Testimonyof the Rocks; or, Geology in its Bearings on the Two Theologies Naturaland Revealed(Edinburgh:Constable, 1857). 88 Adrian Desmond, Archetypesand Ancestors: Palaeontology in VictorianLondon, 1850-1875 (London:Blond & Briggs, 1982), pp. 119-20; andN. Ascherson,introductionto GeorgeRosie, Hugh Miller,Outrageand Order(Edinburgh:Mainstream,1981), p. 10. 89 JohnH. Brooke, "LikeMinds:The God of Hugh Miller,"in Hugh Miller and the Controversies of VictorianScience, ed. Michael Shortland(Oxford:OxfordUniv. Press, 1996), pp. 171-86. 9XDov Ospovat, The Developmentof Darwin'sTheory:Natural History, Natural Theology,and Natural Selection, 1838-1859 (Cambridge:CambridgeUniv. Press, 1981). 91David Kohn, "Theoriesto WorkBy: RejectedTheories,Reproductionand Darwin'sPathto Natural Selection,"Stud.Hist. Biol. 4 (1980):67-170.

20

JOHN HEDLEY BROOKE

when therewas significantenvironmentalchange.This thesis has not passedunchaland"perlenged.Kohnlaterstressedthe ambiguityof wordssuch as "perfectibility" fection."92 And even on Ospovat'saccountDarwinhimself ironedout the "idiosyncrasy" by 1854, when adaptation became relative rather than absolute. Then it was

possible to thinkof naturalselectionas actingall of the time. Even so, this example showshow a deeply embeddedculturalpreconceptioncan shapescientificthinking. Darwin admitted as much himself in his Descent of Man (1871): "I was not able

to annul the influenceof my formerbelief, then almost universal,that each species had been purposelycreated;and this led to my tacit assumptionthatevery detail of structure,exceptingrudiments,was of some special, though unrecognized, service."93

There were possibly other survivalsfrom naturaltheology. In early drafts one findsthe sentimentthata deity who createdall thingsby fiat would haveto be held responsibleeven for the most devilish featuresof the createdworld,whereas,on an evolutionaryview, those obnoxiousfeaturesmight be consideredby-productsof a processin which,if it was possiblefor humanbeings to emerge,it was also possible for them to appear.But at least then there was somethingof a bufferbetween the abhorrentandthe divine.As faras I knowDarwinneverdevelopedthis into a formal theodicy,as later theologianssuch as F R. Tennantdid.94But the example shows again thatit was possible for theologicalmotifs to be woven into the very fabricof a philosophyof nature. The conversequestionof how theologicaldiscoursehas been shapedby scientific innovationis equally absorbing,not least because of the existence of apologetic practicesin which it has been importantto proveoneself familiarwith new bottles even while serving old wine. Ratherthan pursuethis particulartrajectory,I now wantto place the discussionon a deeperlevel by pursuinga moredifficultquestion: How may an apparentimpressof religious preconceptionson the contentof scientific theoriesbe confirmed?By what criteriacan we judge whetheran ostensible religious "influence"on science can be said to count?This may well be an intractablequestion,but it arisesbecausetherecan be seriousproblemswith the assertion of such influence. OBSTACLESTO CORROBORATION

In some examples the presenceof the sacredwithin the secularis so conspicuous thatit wouldbe difficultto denyits constitutiverole.This is surelytrueof the "sacred theory"of Thomas Bumet. But the presence of theological concepts in a text on naturalphilosophyor naturalhistorymightbelong to a contextof justificationrather than being germaneto the original enquiry.A scientist writing with a particular audiencein mind might introducetheologicalreferencesas a way of gainingattention or even of avoidingdisapproval.An extremecase would be one in which the theologyis no morethana veneerto coverwhatmightbe a subversivethesis.When Idem, "Darwin'sAmbiguity:The Secularizationof Biological Meaning,"Brit. J. Hist. Sci. 22 (1989):215-39. 93 Charles Darwin,TheDescent of Manand Selection in Reltioionto Sex, 2nd ed. (1874) (reprinted London:Murray,1906), p. 92. 94 F R. Tennant,"The Influenceof Darwinismupon Theology,"Quart.Rev. 211 (1909):428-40; idem, PhilosophicalTheology(Cambridge:CambridgeUniv. Press, 1930), 2 vols., vol. 2, p. 203. 92


21

the Edinburgh publisher Robert Chambers went public with his theory of organic transformation in 1844, he presented it, anonymously, as a work of natural theology. His "law of development" was ascribed to the divine legislator.95But in his private correspondence he more or less admitted that this was a ruse to smooth the ruffled feathers of those he disparaged as "the saints."96Even Darwin accused himself of "truckling" to popular sentiment when he had used biblical language in comments on the origin of the first few living forms, from which all others had been derived.97 The question then becomes: By what criteria can we judge whether particular interpreters of nature have had their interpretation genuinely informed by religious precepts when those very precepts may have been introduced for extraneous reasons? A second problem concerns the gap associated with the underdetermination of theory choice and how it should be filled. It is, of course, open to the scientist not to fill it and to abstain from theoretical commitment until such time as the "evidence" becomes less equivocal. But for the historian the problem is this: Where no such abstinence has occurred, is it appropriate to isolate a presumed "religious" input from the input of other parameters that would have to be described as social or political or philosophical? As a general rule, historians become uneasy about such isolation, favoring a holistic approach to the vagaries of the personality they are studying.9 But, if a holistic model is the more appropriate, does it then become impossible to weigh the religious component? For an illustration of the problem we might refer to an illuminating essay on Darwin by David Kohn (1989).99 The issue again was the survival of natural theology in the earliest drafts of Darwin's theory of natural selection. Kohn's argument was directed against a body of scholarship in which Darwin's debt to William Paley was allowed to overshadow more radical allegiances that Darwin both owed and owned. The point of Kohn's rejoinder was not that a legacy from naturaltheology was irrelevant to the development of Darwin's theory. On Kohn's reading, Darwin was seriously engaged in reforming natural theology along lines suggested by John Herschel. It was a reform that allowed the Creator to create through laws rather than by intervention. Kohn's complaint was that some historians had so isolated Darwin's debt to natural theology that they had ignored the more radical aspects of his metaphysics during the late 1830s, when the theory of naturalselection took shape. These included a materialistic account of the human mind with which he was flirting at the time. Kohn's essay provides real insight into a polarization that had taken place in Darwin studies during the 1980s. On the one side were those who treated Darwin as having become a completely secular thinker by the time his theory was conceived. 95RobertChambers,Vestigesof the NaturalHistoryof Creationand OtherEvolutionaryWritings, ed. JamesA. Secord (Chicago:Univ. of Chicago Press, 1994). 96 JamesA. Secord, "Behindthe Veil: RobertChambersand Vestiges,"in History,Humanityand Evolution,ed. James R. Moore (Cambridge:CambridgeUniv. Press, 1989), pp. 165-94, especially pp. 171-2. 97 Gillespie, CharlesDanvin (cit. n. 78), pp. 134-45. 98 There is a nice example of what I mean in JackMorrell,"ProfessorsRobison and Playfair,and the Theophobiagallica: NaturalPhilosophy,Religion and Politics in Edinburgh,1789-18151"Notes and Recordsof the Royal Society of London26 (1971):43-63. Morrellidentifies a religious component in Robison'srebuttalof Lavoisier'schemistryand in his fiercedenunciationof Priestley'snatural philosophy,but it is the relations between the religion and the politics in the wake of the French Revolutionthat are shown to be in particularneed of analysis, with Robison harboringa conspiracy theory aboutproponentsof materialismand of the rightsof man. 99Kohn, "Darwin'sAmbiguity"(cit. n. 92).

22

JOHN HEDLEY BROOKE

On the other were those who had concluded that in order to come up with the theory of natural selection, one had to be an Englishman well versed in nature's adaptive designs. In other words, the effect of asking the question of whether Darwin's early drafts were singularly indebted to natural theology was to encourage a situation in which the religious input was either completely privileged or completely discounted. On the more holistic approach that Kohn recommended, it is possible to say that Darwin was simultaneously a "kind of theist and a radical secularist."100A reform of natural theology could still be the theological context in which Darwin searched for a naturalistic account of biological origins. But the cultural resources on which Darwin drew in that search were so wide-ranging that to privilege the theological would be to create a caricature. Kohn's finely argued essay includes an exhortation that perfectly underlines the historiographical problem: "From my perspective, it is vital that all sides own up to the full complexity of Darwin's metaphysical situation and the creative contradiction of its role in the social production of his theory."10 Nor is the problem of weighing the religious input eased by the fact that the amount of real theology in particular forms of natural theology can also admit of many different appraisals. In a searching contribution to the present volume Phillip Sloan provides persuasive evidence that what most influenced Darwin were Alexander von Humboldt's descriptions of the beautiful and the sublime in nature. (See Phillip R. Sloan, "'The Sense of Sublimity': Darwin on Nature and Divinity.") Again, how might the weighing be done when the actors give an account of theory preference in which empirical parameters alone are asserted? The problem is that the actors can usually do this, and by modern conventions are likely to do so, rather than admit to some "extrascientific" influence. And the problem is particularly acute when the historian can see that the actors appear to hold religious beliefs that are not merely compatible with their "science" but could have informed it. Here it may be perfectly plausible to suggest such religious input and mutual reinforcement. But what kind of controls are there on such an ascription? In his discussion of Faraday, Cantor identifies a series of themes in Faraday's science that could have been informed by his theology. These include conservation principles, such as the hypothesis that no force can be created or annihilated. They include a principle of the correlation of forces, which underlay experimental work on the interconversion of forces. They also include the invariability and economy of nature-and several other metaphysical principles. Cantor presents a theology of nature (not a natural theology) that mediated between Faraday's distinctive religion and his experimental work.102 The problem, as with Newton's reference to the "analogy of nature,"is that the metaphysical statements can be made independently of theistic reference, in a sense masking the conjectured input. Do we, then, have any controls for testing the conjecture? Even references to mutual reinforcement may conceal another problem. To assert religious influence on the content of science implies that the traffic in one direction can be separated from traffic in the other. Which way was it for Newton? It is possible to map out the many connections between Newton's Unitarian theology and 100Ibid., p. 220. 101Ibid., p. 221. 102Cantor, Faraday (cit. n. 46), pp. 168-74.


23

his naturalphilosophy.The youngergenerationof Newton scholarshas largelyreaffirmedthe congruencebetween Newton'svoluntaristtheology and his exposure (throughhis naturalphilosophy)of the contingenciesin naturethat reflectchoices made by the divine will. An inverse squarelaw does not logically entail elliptical orbits,since hyperbolasand parabolasare also compatiblewith it. Planetsmove in And ellipticalorbitsbecauseinitialconditionswere so finely tunedmathematically. thereis certainlytextualevidence to supportthe contentionof JamesForce thatin Newton'smindthereis a provisionalityaboutthe lawsof naturethemselves,because, dependenton the divine will, they can be changed at any time-and will be, acof prophecy.103The problemhereis an alternative cordingto Newton'sunderstanding school of Newtonian scholarshipin which the flow is said to go in the opposite direction-from the science to the theology.Accordingto RichardWestfall,we are "morelikely to findthe flow of influencemovingfromscience, the risingenterprise, towardtheology,the old and(as we knowfromhindsight)fadingone."104An interesting featureof this remarkis thatit explicitly assertsa criterionfor judging thatthe flow is morelikely to be in one directionthanthe other.It is, however,a confessedly anachronisticcriterion,involvinga judgmentmade on the basis of hindsight.This surely raises the question of whetheralternativecriteriacould be proposedfor an alternativeview. And this is the question with which I conclude. Can we identify criteriathatwill enable us to corroborateclaims for the relevanceof religious (and antireligious)commitmentsto particularforms of scientificwork? CRITERIAFOR CORROBORATION

If we wish to test the plausibilityof claims for the role of religiousbelief in shaping scientificcontent,how might we do it? Here are a few reflectionson threekinds of criteriathat might be broughtinto play. I should make it clear that I am not here proposinga formalmethodology.I do, however,believe thatgreaterrigoris required in such discussion.It could reasonablybe objectedthat the case is essentially no differentfrom that of assertingsocial, political, or economic "influences"on the sciences and that every case has thereforeto be judged on its own merits.I do not disagreewith this butwouldsimplyaddthatbecauseof the peculiarhypersensitivity thatoften manifestsitself when religiousissues arethoughtto be at stake,it is especially importantto test one's claims as thoroughlyas possible. 1. Applyingthe simplecriterionof coherencewill not itself be sufficient,because we would expect a thinkerwith both scientificand religious intereststo seek some form of compatibilitybetweenthem.Moreover,theremust be room for the experience of dissonancein the light of some new scientificdisclosureor some new spiritual insight.A moretelling criterionmightbe satisfiedif it could be shown thatthe "scientific"and "religious"interestswere integralto a largerenterprise,which may thenbe said to confera unityon what mightotherwisebe seen as disparateendeavors. We are stuck once again with the linguistic problemsthat I indicatedat the 103James E. Force, "The Nature of Newton's 'Holy Alliance' between Science and Religion,"in Rethinkingthe Scientific Revolution,ed. MargaretJ. Osler (Cambridge:CambridgeUniv. Press, 2000), pp. 247-70. 104Richard S. Westfall, "Newton'sTheological Manuscripts,"in ContemporaryNewtonian Research, ed. Zev Bechler (Dordrecht:Reidel, 1982), pp. 139-40.

24

JOHN HEDLEY BROOKE

start,butif this criterionof a higher-levelunificationcould be met, it wouldbe more appropriateto speak of intra-actionbetween "religion"and "science"than interaction.An even more stringentcriterionmightbe necessaryif one wished to prioritize the religious dimension.This strictercriterionwould requirethatthe religious interestsand concepts can be shown to be precisely those that confer a unity on the variouspracticesof the subject. In the context of recent Newton scholarship therearecertainlyclaimsthatthis criterionof unificationcan be met, in bothweaker and more stringentforms. It has been argued,for example,thatto understandNewton one has to recognize that his historicalscholarshipwas drivenby the deep convictionthat an original, pure,monotheisticreligionhadbeen corruptedovertime andthatthingswere going to get a lot worse before the millenniumcame. What we call the science and the religion were held togetherin Newton'smind because in this ancient,purereligion there had been an intimateconnectionbetween theology,naturalphilosophy,and astronomy.The whole idea was that men were supposedto worshiptheirGod "by the study of the frame of the world"and it was Newton'smission to restorethat originaluncorruptedreality.There is more than a glimpse of this unifying goal in his theologicalmanuscripts.All overthe learnedworld,worshiphadbeen organized by the local equivalentof the priest,and "whattherewas of ye trueknowledge [of As nature]amongstye Greeks lay chiefly in ye brest of some of their Priests."105 amongthe Pythagoreans,to appreciatethe mathematicalharmoniesof naturewas a form of spiritualedification.'16Even the more stringentcriterioncan be met, accordingto the late Betty Jo Dobbs.In TheJanusFaces of Genius(1991) she argued thatNewton'smultiplescholarlyactivitiescould be given a coherencethat she herself had earliermissed, once one recognizedthatit was preciselyNewton'sconcern with the questionof how God actedin the worldthatgave meaningto them.107The decoding of alchemicaltexts had given a vocabularyfor the descriptionof sources of activity and creativityin naturethat had their ultimatesource in the deity.The chemical initiate was a co-creatorwho was privilegedto imitate nature'sorganic processes.In the morefamiliarterritoryof celestial mechanicsthatsame concernto highlight divine activity is visible in Newton'smechanismsfor the reform of the solarsystem.As is well known,he arguedthatthese mechanismswererequiredfrom time to time becausethe planetsslowed down throughfrictionaldragor becausethe sun was constantlylosing matter.Newton'swell-knowninvocationof comets as the agentsthroughwhich the deity ensuredthe continuingstabilityof the system shows how mechanisticconceptsand conceptsof Providencecould be integrated. Dobbs' accountis persuasivein many ways,but thereare difficultiesin applying the unitycriterion.Towhatextentis it we who imposethe unity,as a heuristicdevice to assist our comprehensionof so muchdiversity?Is it we who impose a coherence that may not have been so clear to the subject?How does the reconstructionof a unifiedprojectfare when, as was emphaticallythe case with Newton, his thinking on fundamentalissues-the natureof the aether,for example, changedover time? Nor is it clear that establishingan overarchingunity would clarify the directionof Iliffe, "'Is he like other men?'" (cit. n. 25), p. 167. Penelope Gouk, "The HarmonicRoots of NewtonianScience,"in Fauvelet al., LetNewtonBe!

105 See 106

(cit. n. 15), pp. 101-25. 107 Betty Jo Dobbs, The Janus Faces of Genius: The Role of Alchemy in Newton's Thought (Cam-

bridge:CambridgeUniv. Press, 1991).


25

intra-action, assuming that that was our object. It is perfectly clear that Newton used natural knowledge to illuminate his Arian theology. Gravitational forces were invoked analogically to show that Christ did not have to be consubstantial with his Father: As in a family the title of masteris to be understoodof the suprememaster... so the title of God is to be understoodof the supremeGod.... Supposea, b & c are 3 bodies of wch a hathgravityoriginallyin it self by wch it pressethuponb & c, wch arewithout originalgravitybut yet by the pressureof a communicatedto [them?]do pressedownwardsas much as A doth ... they are not threeforces but one wch is originallyin a & by descentin b & c.1'8 This is unmistakably Newton, but it does not follow from such analogical argument that the content of gravitation theory and of Newton's Christology were mutually dependent. There is yet another problem in applying the unification criterion. This concerns the testimony of the subject. It is a problem recognized by those such as Robert Iliffe, who have argued that there was a fundamental unity of thought within which the Principia was connected to the study of ancient religion and natural philosophy. The problem is that Newton sometimes said that his endeavors could be divided into two broad spheres. In this mode, he maintained that his theological work rested on distinctive foundations and could not be demonstrated with mathematical reasoning, whereas what mattered in natural philosophy was the performance of experiments and the grounding of these in the mathematical sciences.109Iliffe throws the problem into relief by noting that the attempt to ground natural philosophy in the testimony of witnesses (such as one finds in Boyle) was anathema to Newton, as were what he took to be the litigious and disputatious approaches of Jesuit commentators and of Robert Hooke. Newton was at times emphatic that "religion and philosophy are to be preserved distinct." And again: "We are not to introduce divine revelations into philosophy, nor philosophical opinions into religion." 0 I am not suggesting that this problem of personal testimony is insuperable. As Frank Manuel pointed out, Newton's public prescriptions should not be confused with his practices: "In personal practice he failed to maintain the compartmentalization of religious and scientific studies and the two were allowed to overlap and interpenetrate.What was a convincing rhetorical formula for political purposes could not be internalised in the psyche."11 Manuel's resolution of the problem was extremely neat: Newton's separation of the two books appears to signify little more than that "science had nothing to say about the dogmatic content of religion, and that Scripture was not to be quoted in a Royal Society communication'" Assuredly, "Newton did not conceive of one book as sacred and the other as secular or profane.""12 The dichotomy between prescription and practice, on which Manuel's solution rests, is extremely pertinent, but it does, of course, raise a converse problem: that a prescription in favor of a religious 108 "NewtonandBiblicalCritiNewton,YahudaMS 14, fols. 173r-173v,citedby Mandelbrote, cism"(cit.n. 26), p. 301. 109 Iliffe,"A'Connected (cit.n. 25), pp. 156-7. System'?" 110 Newton,KeynesMS 6, fol. Ir,quotedin Manuel,Newton's Religion(cit.n. 28), p. 28. I1Manuel,ibid.,p. 40. 12

Ibid., p. 48.

26

JOHN HEDLEY BROOKE

shapingof what is acceptablein science might itself have to be read as politically motivatedor expedient. 2. A second set of criteriathat might be broughtinto play would include those tacitlyused by historianswhen tryingto establishwhethera subject'sreligiousinterests are to be takenseriouslyor are merely nominal.A particulartext may suggest connections,but, withoutsupplementarybiographicalinformation,it is difficultto know how the connections should be read. How might this work in the case of Newton?How is the seriousnessof his religiousmission routinelyestablished?The telling biographicaldata might include the enormousamountof time he spent on Bible study;the natureof his library,which containedover thirtyBibles in different languages;the testimonyof contemporarieswho, like Bishop GilbertBumet, describedhim as "thewhitest soul he ever knew";the evidence of charitableworks, includingthe provisionof "manydozens of Bibles sent ... for poor people";and his intoleranceof levity in religious talk. Apparentlyhe terminatedhis friendship with John FrancisVigani when the latter told him "a loose story: about a Nun." Takentogether,this is the kindof biographicalevidence usuallycited to corroborate claims for the seriousnessof a religious commitment.13And the claims might be strengthenedfurtherif the subject, as Newton did, supportedapologetic efforts against unbelief. One contemporary,John Craig, wrote that Newton "was much more sollicitousin his inquiriesinto Religionthaninto NaturalPhilosophy;andthat the reasonof his showingthe errorsof Cartes'sPhilosophy,was becausehe thought 114Let therebe no mistake, it was madeon purposeto be the foundationof infidelity." writesone commentator:"[I]nhis biblicism,piety andmorality,Newton was a puritan throughand through."15 Such criteriaarenot of coursesufficientto establishan impressof the religionon the science. A minimalsupplementwould haveto be some textualsupportin which a move from theology to naturalphilosophyis made explicit. There are such texts in the Newton corpus. In Query 31 of his Opticks(1717) Newton explainedthat because the deity is presentin all places "He"is more able by His will to move bodies andto reformpartsof the universethanwe areto move ourlimbs. In an early essay he had statedthatto establishthatverypointhadbeen one of his goals.116And in a manuscriptdraftof Query31 the directionof the argumentwas manifestlyfrom the theology to the science: If therebe an universallife and all space be the sensoriumof a thinkingbeing who by immediatepresenceperceivesall thingsin it... the laws of motionarisingfromlife or will may be of universalextent.117 113 I1 have here followed Snobelen, "Newtonas Heretic"(cit. n. 42), in compiling a representative list. The remarksby GilbertBumet andJohnViganioccurin KeynesMS 130.7, fol. ir. See Snobelen, "IsaacNewton, Heretic:The Strategiesof a Nicodemite,"Brit.J. Hist. Sci. 32 (1999):381-419, especially pp. 408 and 412. For a sophisticatedattemptto reinstatethe existential projectsof scientists as not only legitimate subjectsof inquirybut indispensableto the genre of scientific biography,see Thomas S6derqvist,"ExistentialProjectsand ExistentialChoice in Science: Science Biographyas an Edifying Genre,"in TellingLives in Science, ed. Michael Shortlandand RichardYeo (Cambridge: CambridgeUniv. Press, 1996), pp. 45-84. 114 JohnCraig, Keynes Ms 132, fol. 2r, cited in Snobelen, "Newtonas Heretic"(cit. n. 42), p. 34. 115 Snobelen, "Newtonas Heretic" p. 34. 116 RichardS. Westfall, Force in Newtons Physics (London:Macdonald,1971), p. 340. 117 Cited by Westfall,ibid., p. 397.


27

A conclusion about the universality of the laws of motion is made to follow-tentatively, at least-from a conception of divine omnipresence. This may be as close as one could ever get to confirming a claim for the impress of a religious preconception on the content of science. Whether it is enough may well depend on the susceptibilities of the historian. In presenting this particular example, I have assumed that a temporal priority in the articulation of a theological objective confers greater credibility on the claim that the same objective was operative in shaping the later argument for universality. But to establish the necessary continuity of thought over an extended period is itself not a straightforward matter. Even if it were, there would still be residual problems. Descartes, after all, had presumed to deduce his laws of motion directly from the conserving action of an immutable God. Yet, as we have just seen, this did not prevent Newton himself from suspecting Descartes of infidelity. The criteria I have just listed to establish the seriousness of a religious commitment were met by Newton, but his fulfillment of them can be read in different ways, as they were by his contemporaries. His practices, except for those in the know, were easily read as signs of Anglican orthodoxy. And Newton had his own strategies for ensuring that they would be. "1Anecdotal information concerning Newton's religious predilections comes from material already selected by John Conduitt for a projected biography-one that would have painted him even whiter than white. The conclusion again seems to be that, although a plausible case might be made for the shaping of scientific content by religious convictions, gaining confirmation remains very difficult. The complications in the case of Newton do, however, raise a further question. Newton may have been a religious deviant, but that cannot of itself disqualify his theology from having penetrated his science. In fact one might argue that it is precisely when fighting for a heterodox cause that the religious concerns are more, not less, likely to intrude. Might we then entertain a third set of criteria that would take this possibility into account? 3. Where we see a sustained political campaign to attack a religious institution, might this not be the very place to find alternative meanings of "nature" and the quest for a science that would support them? Time and again in polemical literature we find statements of the following form: "If this scientific hypothesis turns out to be correct, it will have major implications for belief X," where X is often some form of popular religious belief. Obvious examples would be statements such as this: "If intelligent life were to be found on other worlds, it would compromise the Christian revelation"; or (to borrow from T. H. Huxley), "If all cellular tissue is ultimately composed from the same basic elements, then we can speak of a physical basis of life"; or (to borrow from a nineteenth-century Catholic evolutionist, St. George Mivart), "[I]f we can find convergent rather than divergent trends in evolution, there would be evidence for a guiding teleology"; and so on.'9 Could we then use as a criterion for asserting "religious" or antireligious influence on scientific content the presence of such conditional statements, where (a) they feature as part of a clearly discernible polemical program, and (b) where the subject or their collaborators were actively engaged in substantiating the hypothesis? The

I"Snobelen, "Newtonas Heretic"(cit. n. 42), pp. 40-5.

119Desmond, Archetypes and Ancestors (cit. n. 88), pp. 180-6. Mivart's quarrel with Darwin and

Huxley actually poses for the historianone of the dilemmas that arise when we seek to determine the strengthand scope of a "religious"constraint.Whereas Huxley ascribed Mivart'scritique of naturalselection to his RomanCatholicproclivities,this was a charge Mivartsteadfastlydenied.

28

JOHN HEDLEY BROOKE

criteriacould equally well apply to practices.In the nineteenth-centurychemical literaturewith which I am most familiar,one frequentlyfindssuchconditionalstatements;for example, "If we could only synthesizeorganic systems artificially,that wouldbe a deathblow to vitalismandreligioussuperstition."Such statementswere madeby MarcellinBerthelot,the Frenchorganicchemistand scientificguruof the ThirdRepublic.Moreover,Berthelotdevotedmuch of his researchto preciselythat program:the synthesisof increasinglycomplex organiccompoundsfrom theirelements.120Is this not a case where it is reasonableto claim that the religion of a secularpositivismwas manifestin his science?Wherethereis evidence that scientific resultsoffer a kind of wish fulfillment,do we get as close to corroborationas we can? If the term "wish fulfillment"soundstoo emotive, we could still speak in the morerestrainedtermsof conformityto metaphysicalexpectation.121In a valuable comment on the most apposite form of language,Wykstrahas observedthat the choice need not simply be between"merewishful thinking"on the one handand a metaphysicalexpectationdrainedof all emotivecontenton the other.Froma theistic perspective,there could also be room for intuitionsapprehendedthroughfaith.122 Whetherthe comparableintuitionsof the secularistmighthavethe same qualitiesis a nice question.A skepticismamong Frenchchemists towardthe atomic theoryof JohnDaltonhas often been ascribedto the pervasiveinfluenceof Comteanpositivism. The defects in thatexplanation,which includethe fact thatComtehimself was not averseto an atomic hypothesis,have been mercilesslyexposed by Bernadette A censorious attitudetoward atoms did, however, surface, Bensaude-Vincent.'23 most famouslyin Berthelotwho wishedto discountthembecausethey could neither be seen nor counted.For polemical purposes,at least, his personalcredo was bolsteredwith a theologicalcritique.Chemistswho believed in atoms, he suggested, were in danger of being as superstitiousas religious believers who accepted the RomanCatholicdoctrinalview of what happensto the breadand the wine during Mass.124UnderBerthelot'sauthorityinvisible atoms struggledto find a place in the contentof science. And if an idiosyncraticsecularcreed could so shape what was acceptablein science, it may,afterall, be more thanmerelyplausibleto claim that otherforms of religionhave,in theirtime and place, left theirmark. 120 JohnH. Brooke, ThinkingaboutMatter:Studies in the Historyof ChemicalPhilosophy(Aldershot, U.K.: Variorum,1995), chap. 8. 121 The aesthetic satisfactionoften derivedfrom the experienceof such conformityis discussed in Brooke and Cantor,ReconstructingNature(cit. n. 19), pp. 207-43. 122 Wykstra,"Worldviews"(cit. n. 12), p. 161. 123 Beradette Bensaude-Vincent,"Atomismand Positivism in French Chemistry,"Ann. Sci. 56 (1999):81-94. 124 HarryW. Paul, The Edge of Contingency:FrenchCatholicReactionto ScientificChangefrom Darwin to Duhem(Gainesville:Univ. Presses of Florida, 1989), pp. 10-12.

Religious Beliefs,

and

Beliefs,

Metaphysical of Science Historiography By Stephen J. Wykstra*

T

HEMISSION assignedto me in this essay is to providea "philosophicalanal-

ysis" of the differencebetween religious and metaphysicalbeliefs-of how (or,if the chips so fall, whether)we shoulddrawthis distinction.The taskis conceptual, but the underlyingmotivationis historiographical.By reflectingon how we drawthis distinction,my hope is to see how historyof science maybetterilluminate the distinctiverole of religiousbeliefs in past science. The essay has four parts.PartI considerssome issues raisedby recenthistorians of science which needto be takenseriouslyif a philosophicalanalysisis to haveany relevanceto workinghistorians.In particular,an analysis must help us to avoid a whiggish"essentialism"thatimposesourown metacategories("religion,""science," etc.) on the past;it must also help us to avoid"metaphysicalizing" religiousbeliefs (barbarichabitsdeservebarbaricnames!)and so to illuminatehow the conditioning effect of religious beliefs may differ from thatof metaphysicalbeliefs (whose role has long been recognized).Turning,then, to the philosophicaltask, partII suggests that in delineatingthese categories, we must fertilize a Wittgensteinianfamilyresemblanceapproachwith the epistemologist'sdistinctionbetweenbeliefs qua 'believeds' (the content of the beliefs) and beliefs qua 'believings' (the acts of believing). PartIIIthenuses some historicalcases to illustratehow this approachmight affect our process of classifying a belief as metaphysical,as religious, or as scientific. Finally,partIV suggests one way in which our vision of the natureof science needs to be broadenedif we are to accountfor the roles thatmetaphysicaland religious believings play withinthe scientificprocess. * Calvin MI 49546

College, Departmentof Philosophy,HiemengaHall 340, 3201 BurtonSt., GrandRapids,

I thankThe Pew CharitableTrustand Calvin College for sponsoringa Calvin College Seminarin ChristianScholarshipallowing me to work on aspects of the ideas presentedhere. I am indebtedto many people for helpful comments:Rev. Dr. John Polkinghome, my colleagues in the philosophy departmentat Calvin College, William Alston, Ed Manier,MargaretOsler, several anonymousreferees, and Jitse van der Meer of the Pascal Centre.But above all I wantto thankRev. David Fife, of Pigeon Cove Chapel,Pigeon Cove, Mass., for his continuedencouragement,fellowship, and support duringour sabbaticalon Cape Anne. This essay was commissioned by Jitse van der Meer for the Second InternationalPascal Centre Conferenceon Science in Theistic Contextsheld at the Pascal Centrefor AdvancedStudies in Faith and Science, RedeemerCollege, Oncaster,Ontario,Canada,21-5 July 1998. The essay was precirculated as a common referencepoint to allow participantsto clarify their own use of the adjectives "religious"and "metaphysical."In revising it for publication,I have not tried to disguise this original function. ? 2001 by The Historyof Science Society.All rights reserved.0369-7827/01/1601-0001$2.00 Osiris. 2001, 16:00-00

29

30

STEPHENJ. WYKSTRA I. HISTORIOGRAPHICAL BACKDROP

The Historian's Dilemma For most historians, "religious belief" and "metaphysical belief" are part of an understood vocabulary.Yet, many of us would be hard pressed if asked to give adequate definitions of these terms. But why, then, we might ask, use such categories at all? One answer stems from our finitude. As the historian of science Erwin Hiebert has noted, "One can ask countless questions of an historical nature, but they cannot all be asked at the same time. Choices become inevitable, and this suggests priorities."1 Our categories help us to demarcate a subject matter of interest. Moreover, in seeking to make some part of the past intelligible, we seek to see one thing in its relationships to other things. So we ask, "How, if at all, did Boyle's religious beliefs relate to his scientific study of gases?" Or, "Did Boyle's metaphysical beliefs play a role in his view of fermentation?" Such categories thus give focus and shape to our inquiries. And since our choices are grounded in our interests, and to make intelligible is to make intelligible to ourselves, it seems inevitable that our own categories play some role here. As Hiebert concludes, "Some whiggism is essential in making the choices. One cannot get rid of the 'here and now.'" But the categories we use have themselves evolved historically. And here lies the rub: what if our categories, as historians in the here and now, rub against the grain of those of the persons in the past whom we seek to understand?Physics and metaphysics, for example, are for us very far apart: in our universities, they are different disciplines housed in different divisions. But were they so far apart for a Boyle, or a Newton, or an Euler? When Newton calls his book Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy, his use of the word "philosophy" alerts us to a potential gulf between his disciplinary categories and ours. This, however, raises a thorny problem. David Wilson puts it thus: 'Science' and 'religion'are modernterms with (several)modernmeanings.They can thus all too easily become misleadinglabels when appliedto pastthought.Thereis not only the problemof whetherone'sreaderswill interpret'science', say,as one intended, but also the problemof deceiving oneself in applying"science"or "scientist"(a word not inventeduntil the nineteenthcentury)to figureslike Copernicusand Galileo. Assuming that they are scientists doing science may make it too easy for us to see the ways in which they agree with us and too difficult to recognize the ways they differ from us.2 Religious beliefs obviously change; but Wilson's point is that so too does the very notion of what it means for a belief to be "religious." What counts as "religious" is itself historically conditioned; the category of "the religious" has a historical story. And so too, of course, do the categories of "the scientific" and (Wilson might have added) of "the metaphysical." So in using our categories-of "scientific" or "meta' Erwin N. Hiebert, "The Prospect from Here" in Chemical Sciences in the Modern World, ed. SeymourH. Mauskopf(Philadelphia:Univ. of PennsylvaniaPress, 1993), p. 368. 2 David Wilson, "On the Importanceof Eliminating'Science' and 'Religion' from the Historyof Science and Religion: The Cases of Oliver Lodge, J. H. Jeans, and A. S. Eddington,"in Facets of Faith and Science, ed. J. van der Meer, vol. 1: Historiography and Modes of Interaction (Lanham,

Md.: Pascal Centrefor AdvancedStudiesin Faithand Science / Univ. Pressof America, 1997), p. 27.

RELIGIOUSBELIEFS, METAPHYSICALBELIEFS,AND SCIENCE

31

physical" or "religious"-to give focus to our study of Boyle or Newton or Euler, are we not already remaking them in our image? Wilson worries that we are. As a remedy, he proposes that we avoid using such terms altogether. But if we set aside our categories, how will we as historians choose what is of interest and seek to make it intelligible? Does not (again) "of interest" mean of interest to us, and "intelligible" mean intelligible to us? Wilson may avoid using the words "science" and "religion," but if he is still using these concepts to pick the people and texts to study, this will just make his working assumptions less visible, not get rid of them. The tension between Wilson and Hiebert on this point suggests that if historians cannot live with such categories, neither can they live without them. I will call this "the Historian's Dilemma."

Beyond Koyre It may, indeed, be the interest we have in questions about religion and metaphysics that make our study of their historical interactions with science of such interest and vitality in twentieth-century historiography of science. For about these things we find conflicting voices among-and, sometimes, within-ourselves. Frank Manuel in his important Religion of Isaac Newton (1974), thus contrasts the very different voices of George Sarton and Einstein, concerning Newton's theological manuscripts: Newton'stheologicalmanuscriptsthat are now housed in Jerusalemwere once shown to Albert Einstein. Despite the fact that it was September1940 and he was already involvedhimself in an apocalypticenterprise,he took the troubleto compose a letter praisingthe papersfor the insight they affordedinto Newton'sgeistige Werkstatt,his 'spiritualworkshop'.On the other hand, George Sarton,that prodigiousinnovatorin the historyof science, expressedcool indifference.He declaredthat as a scientist he worksthana mediwas personallyno moreconcernedwithNewton'snon-mathematical cal man wouldbe with the rabbinicalbooks of Maimonides.3 Though no one did more than Sarton to establish history of science as a professional discipline in the first half of the twentieth century, the new postwar generation of historians of science would find inspiration in a vision closer to that of Einstein. For them, as Charles Gillispie recounts, it was Alexandre Koyre, not Sarton, who provided "a revelation of what exciting intellectual interest their newly found subject might hold."4And what was the heart of this revelation? It was-as David Lindberg puts it-"the conviction that there is a fundamental unity to all human intellectual effort-an intimate linkage between science, philosophy, and theology." The development of science "was not an independent series of events, but was intimately connected with "the evolution of idees transscientifiques-philosophical, metaphysical, 3 FrankManuel, The Religion of Isaac Newton (Cambridge:CambridgeUniv. Press, 1974), p. 27. Manuel'scommentbrings out clearly the underlyingissue: "Suchpolar responsesto Newton'stheological writings may have more than passing historicalinterest,for they raise again in naive, anecdotal form awesome questionsthatbegan to emerge in the halcyonyearsof the scientificrevolution: Can there be an autonomousrealm of humanknowledge that lives by its own law? Is it possible to encapsulateactivities known as science in the mind of the scientist and to keep them free and independent, unshackledby deep passions and transcendentlongings?" Manuel argues that although Newton sometimes professedallegiance to the idea of keeping naturalphilosophy distinct from revealed religion, Newton'sactualpractice"is a far more complex matter." 4 C. Gillispie, "Koyr6,"Dictionaryof ScientificBiography,vol. 7, p. 485.

32

STEPHENJ. WYKSTRA

and religious."5 Koyre's enormous influence thus bears witness to Einstein's prophetic sense that in Newton's theological manuscripts we may find the "spiritual workshop" of his science. Perhaps, however, that witness remains incomplete. In her 1991 Janus Faces of Genius, Betty Jo Teeter Dobbs gives a fascinating glimpse of her own historiographical pilgrimage on this issue. After finishing her first book on Newton's early alchemical manuscripts, Dobbs planned a second book "focused almost exclusively on Newton and alchemy." Sixteen years later, Dobbs explains why that book took so long and turned out so differently: My slow recognitionthat alchemical studies held religious significancefor Newton himself was one of the turningpointsin my thinkingthatled me on to quite a different book. Sixteen years ago I was imperfectlydetachedfrom modernistconvictionsand from our generalculturalperceptionof Newton as a founderof modernscience. Even thoughI was willing to entertainthe hereticalnotionthatNewton'salchemywas worthy of scholarlyexamination,I was not willing to entertaina religiousinterpretationof it. Religioussentimentsarebothmoreacceptableandmoreperceptiblein this postmodern erain whichreligiousrevolutionsprofoundlyaffect manypartsof the globe, which may perhapshelp to explain why I perceiveIsaac Newton so differently.6 How, we may well ask, could this be? Dobbs learned her craft, after all, when Newton scholarship (by Richard Westfall, J. E. McGuire, and others) was doing much to illuminate the relation of religious and scientific beliefs, very much along the lines laid down by Koyre. So how could a strong religious connection come as a surprise to her? Part of the answer may lie in Dobbs' phrasing. She speaks of postmodernity making religious "sentiments" more acceptable, and she concludes her epilogue by suggesting that for Newton and others in the post-Reformation turmoil of early modem Europe, study of nature satisfied "a religious hunger" for knowledge of God (emphasis added). "Religious hunger": this, I think, is not a phrase that would come easily from the pen of Koyre, whose stress on the unity of trans-scientific guiding ideas may overlook the differences between religious and metaphysical beliefs. Dobbs' phrasing (and her surprise) suggest that we need to reflect on what makes religious belief religious, on how (in the famous words of Pascal) "the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob" differs from "the God of the philosophers." II. METAPHYSICAL AND RELIGIOUS BELIEFS: A META-ANALYSIS

Metaphysical Beliefs Turning now to the distinction itself, let us begin with the concept of "metaphysical beliefs." Since metaphysical beliefs are those having to do with metaphysics, we might begin by asking what "metaphysics" means. Here etymology is not very helpful. The term "metaphysics" seems to have been 5 David C. Lindberg,"Conceptionsof the Scientific Revolutionfrom Bacon to Butterfield:A Pre-

liminary Sketch," in Reappraisals of the Scientific Revolution, ed. David Lindberg and Robert S.

Westman(Cambridge:CambridgeUniv. Press, 1990). 6

Betty Jo Teeter Dobbs, The Janus Faces of Genius: The Role of Alchemy in Newtons Thought

(Cambridge:CambridgeUniv. Press: 1991), pp. 250-1.


33

first used in connection with Aristotle's famous work of that title, but the title seems not to come from Aristotle himself. Instead, on the standard account, it was introduced by editors in the first century B.C., who placed fourteen of Aristotle's treatises together after his works on physics, calling them "TaMeta ta Phusika" ("what comes after the writings on nature"), where "after"refers simply to their physical location.7 Still, the questions addressed-on issues regarding substance and being, change and explanation, unity and plurality, the nature of the eternal and unchanging, and impossibility-did seem related; later thinkers thus came to identify work on such questions with a specific rational enterprise called "metaphysics" where the "meta" is taken to mean that the questions go beyond (or, are prior to) "physics."8 But to say the questions "go beyond physics" tells us more about what the questions are not than about what they are. What positive defining characteristics make metaphysical questions "metaphysical"? Looking at what current philosophers say on this, perhaps the most striking thing is their reticence to answer it. In the 1995 Blackwell Companion to Metaphysics, the entry on "metaphysics" begins, "There is no clear and generally accepted definition of metaphysics, no agreement on its tasks, scope, or divisions. In these circumstances it is best simply to explain what influential philosophers have taken these to be."9Following his own advice, the author goes on to survey the conceptions of metaphysics held by Aristotle, Suarez, Hume, Wolff, Meinong, Kant, Husserl, and Ingarden. Aristotle, we learn, took metaphysics to have as its object all existing beings, "but only in respect of what belongs to them as beings." Meinong, in contrast, thought metaphysics must deal with impossibilities like round squares: though these cannot exist or have "being," they are nevertheless objects. (How else could one say of them that they do not exist?) So for Meinong but not Aristotle, round squares fall under the purview of metaphysics. A similar reticence is found in Peter Van Inwagen's recent text Metaphysics (1993). Noting that someone who has not studied metaphysics formally will almost certainly "have no inkling of what the word 'metaphysics' means," Van Inwagen says, "It seems obvious that an introduction to metaphysics should begin with some sort of definition of metaphysics. Unfortunately, it is unlikely that a definition can convey anything useful. The nature of metaphysics is best explained by example. When you have read this book, you will have a tolerably good idea of what metaphysics is."10Van Inwagen goes on, however, to endorse the definition he was given as an undergraduate:metaphysics is the study of ultimate reality. Using "World"to denote everything that exists (including God, if there is a God), Van Inwagen identifies three questions as central: 1. What are the most general features of the World, and what sorts of things does it contain? 7The standardaccount has come undercriticism by Hans Reiner and others: see Gary Hatfield, "Metaphysicsand the New Science,"in LindbergandWestman,Reappraisalsof the ScientificRevolution (cit. n. 5), p. 97 and n. 7. 8 Though he seems not to have used the term "metaphysics"for them, Aristotle did see many of these questionsas belonging to a common enterprise,which he called "firstphilosophy."See Martha Nussbaum,"Aristotle,"in A Companionto Metaphysics,ed. JaegwonKim and ErnestSosa (Oxford: Blackwell, 1995), pp. 24-5. 9 "Metaphysics,"in Kim and Sosa, Companionto Metaphysics(cit. n. 8), p. 310. '0Peter Van Inwagen, Metaphysics (Boulder: Westview, 1993), p. 1; subsequentquotationson pp. 4-5.

34

STEPHENJ. WYKSTRA

2. Why does a Worldexist, a Worldwith the featuresidentifiedin 1? 3. Whatis our place in the World?How do we humansfit into it? VanInwagenthen sketchestwo opposing metaphysicalanswersto these questions. The first is the theistic picturethat the Worldconsists of God and all that he has made; that God is self-existent and the rest is dependent;and that humanbeings were createdby God to love and serve Him forever.The second is the naturalistic picturethatthe Worldconsists of matterin motion;that matterhas alwaysexisted, so thatthereis no "why"to its existence;and thathumanbeings are complex configurationsof matter,"servingno morepurposethana puddleof spilt milk." What is strikinghere is that on Van Inwagen'saccount, answersto the central questions of metaphysicsinclude things that are also clearly mattersof religious belief-that humanbeings were "createdto love God and serve him forever,"for example.Fromthis one might easily gatherthatin theircentralideas, metaphysics andreligion are not distinctat all: we are back to Koyre's"fundamentalunity." Religious Beliefs But let us now pick up the distinctionfrom the otherend. Since a religiousbelief is one with some suitablyintimaterelationto religion,we must ask how "religion"is to be defined. The philosopherWilliamAlston has criticallysurveyeda dozen or so proposals thatattemptto identifythe essentialdefiningcharacteristicsthatmake somethinga religion."Comparingthe proposalswith a rangeof cases thatwe wouldpreanalytically count as religions,Alston arguesthat none of the definitionsfit all the cases: on some definitions,Buddhismfails to count as a religion; on others, Quakerism fails to count-and so on. The root problem,Alston urges,is thinkingwe can identify some single aspect of religion as its definingessence, the way we can identify Insteadof seeking as the definingor essentialfeatureof "triangle." "three-sidedness" an essentialistdefinition,we shouldsee the concept"religion"as coveringa spanof cases relatedin the "family-resemblance" analysisfavoredby LudwigWittgenstein. Whatholds the cases togetheris an overlappingweb of "religion-makingcharacteristics,"each of which helps tend to make somethingcount as a "religion,"without being necessaryor sufficientfor so counting.Alston lists nine such characteristics: 1. Belief in supernaturalbeings 2. A distinctionbetweenprofaneand sacredobjects 3. Ritualacts focused on sacredobjects 4. A moralcode believed to be sanctionedby the gods 5. Characteristicreligiousfeelings (awe, sense of mystery,adoration) I WilliamAlston, "Religion,"in Encyclopediaof Philosophy,ed. Paul Edwards(New York:Macmillan, 1967).

RELIGIOUS BELIEFS,METAPHYSICAL BELIEFS,AND SCIENCE

35

6. Prayer and other forms of communication with gods 7. A world view, or general picture of the world as a whole, and the place of the individual therein. This picture contains some specification of an overall purpose or point of the world, its purpose, and an indication of how the individual fits into it. 8. A more or less total organization of one's life based on the worldview 9. A social group bound together by the above Alston does not propose this list as exhaustive and warns against trying to use it to make "religion" a precise concept. There are paradigm cases to which the term clearly applies, but there are also cases which resemble these paradigm cases in some respects but not others. Ritual can thus be sharply deemphasized in some religions (Quakerism); belief in the supernaturalcan drop away in others (Unitarianism, some forms of Buddhism); morality can have no close connection with the belief system in others (cultic systems in some primitive societies). We tend to count something as a religion when enough of the aspects are present together; but there is not, Alston argues, a sharp line separating religion from nonreligion. Instead there is a continuum, ranging from paradigm cases (Christianity, Islam), to less and less obvious cases (Hinayana Buddhism, communism, humanism) sharing fewer and fewer features with the paradigm cases. Seeking a precise essentialist definition, Alston argues, rests on a mistaken assumption about how language works. Alston's Wittgensteinian approach, it seems to me, is historian-friendly and can be extended to categories like "metaphysical" and "scientific." It allows us to illuminate temporal shifts in the list of "religion-making characteristics" (or "metaphysicsmaking characteristics," etc.) and in how these are weighted, and so to articulate differences between our categories and those of the agents we study. It thus allows us to use and clarify categories such as "religious belief" without buying into an essentialism that would keep us from being genuinely historical.'2 Alston's list again, however, throws into relief the question of how we are to distinguish religious from metaphysical beliefs. His seventh feature specifies, as a feature tending to make something a religion, that it provide "a world view, or general picture of the world as a whole, and the place of the individual therein."This is notably similar to Van Inwagen's proposal that metaphysics deals with questions about the most general features of the World, why a World exists, and what our place in it is. So again we must ask how-or whether-we can distinguish religious and metaphysical beliefs. The Believed-Believing Distinction To make progress here, I suggest we draw on a further distinction. Epistemologists regularly stress that the term "belief" is ambiguous: it can refer to a propositional 12Tworecentdiscussionsof "essentialism" historiansof science, complementingAlston'sphiloby sophicalanalysis,are found in MargaretOsler,"MixingMetaphors:Science andReligion or Natural Philosophy and Theology in Early ModernEurope,"Hist. Sci. 35 (1997):91-113, and John Brooke and Geoffrey Cantor, Reconstructing Nature: The Engagement of Science and Religion (Edinburgh:

Clark, 1998), pp. 274-7.

36

STEPHENJ. WYKSTRA

content (to what is believed), or to an act (or state) of believing this content. If Dick and Jane both believe that Spot is a dog, we say that they have the same belief: what is believed by each of them (regarding Spot's doghood) is identical. On the other hand, there is also a clear sense in which they do not have the same belief: their beliefs may occur at different times, for different reasons, or with a different degree of confidence. Here, of course, we are attending not just to what is believed by each of them, but to their respective "acts" (or "states") 3 of believing. Philosophers often avoid ambiguity here by replacing "belief" with either "believed" or "believing" (used as nouns, sometimes spruced up with a qua or two): Dick and Jane have "different believings" (or different "beliefs qua believings"), but they have the same "believed" (or "belief qua believed"). Keeping close track of the distinction is especially important when discussing the conditions under which a belief is justified (or rational), because questions of "justifiedness" are person-specific and situationspecific, requiring us to look closely at relevant features of the believing (by a specific person in a specific context), not just at the believed. 14 Because it helps us to make our questions about beliefs both person-specific and situation-specific, the believed-believing distinction seems to me a historianfriendly one. And in the present context, it allows us to ask whether religious beliefs might differ from metaphysical beliefs not just in the content of the believed, but also in the character, the how and the why, of the believing. Alston's list of religionmaking characteristics now gains relevance, because even items on the list that do not specify types of propositional content may be relevant, by qualifying why and how some belief is held. Whether someone's belief in God as a "First Cause" counts as a religious believing, for example, may depend on whether it functions as a vehicle of feelings of awe, mystery, or adoration (Alston's fifth characteristic), or as a means of organizing one's life (his eighth characteristic), and so on. And since the same belief (qua "believed") might function in different ways for different people, it might be a matter of religious believing for one person, of metaphysical believing for another, and of scientific believing for yet another. III. APPLICATIONS

Metaphysics-MakingCharacteristics What features, then, might tend to make beliefs count as "metaphysical" (or as "scientific") rather than as "religious"? To see how this might go, let us now consider some texts expressing beliefs. In the first case, the author is well known, but as an exercise let us feign ignorance about this, so as to better clarify what considerations might be relevant to the classification process. Here is the passage: All these things being considered,it seems probableto me, thatGod in the beginning formedmatterin solid, massy,hard,impenetrable,moveableparticles,of such sizes and 13The act-state option points to a furtherstandarddistinctionbetween "believing"as an occurrent event (in which a person more or less consciously 'entertains'some proposition),and believing as a latent dispositionto affirm(and act on) some propositionwere it to be consciously formulated.See H. H. Price,Belief (London:Allen & Unwin, 1969). For simplicityI includebothunderthe term"act":' 14 To distinguishbetween the act and content of a belief does not mean that the two aspects of a belief haveno bearingon each other:clearly,it is often the contentof a belief thatallows the believing to function in the way it does.


37

figures, and with such other properties, and in such proportion to space, as most conduced to the end for which he formed them; and that these primitive particles being solids, are incomparably harder than any porous bodies compounded of them; even so very hard, as never to wear or break in pieces; no ordinary power being able to divide what God himself made one in the firstCreation.15

So here the author has set forth a number of propositions which, he says, "all things considered, seem probable." Let us suppose that the author takes them as probable enough so that they count as among things he or she believes to be true. What sort of beliefs are they: scientific, religious, or metaphysical? Suppose we focus on the first proposition. Matter, the author says, is made of particles that are "so very hard, as never to wear or break in pieces." Note, in the first place, that attending solely to content of the belief does not get us very far here. On one hand, the author is asserting that matter is made up of "atoms."Claims about atoms, someone might say, are part of science, so the belief should be classified as "scientific" (which is not to say that it is here good science). On the other hand, the passage also, at three points, brings in reference to God: claims about God, someone thus might retort, are religious, so the belief expressed is a religious belief. The clash might be adjudicated by distinguishing different subpropositions, but this does not promise to be very illuminating. But suppose we look not just at what is believed, but also at what motivates and sustains this person in his or her believing. This question might be pursued at various levels. A reasonable start is to attend to the reasons that the author gives, on the presumption (a defeasible one, to be sure) that stated reasons often play a genuine causal role in people believing as they do. We may see such reasons as the author continues, While the particlescontinue entire, they may compose Bodies of one and the same NatureandTexturein all Ages: butshouldthey wearaway,or breakin pieces, the Nature of Things dependingon them, would be changed.Waterand Earth,composed of old wornParticlesandFragmentsof Particles,wouldnot be of the sameNatureandTexture now,withWaterandEarthcomposedof entireParticlesin the Beginning.Andtherefore, thatNaturemaybe lasting,the Changesof corporealthingsareto be placedonly in the variousSeparationsand new Associationsand Motions of these permanentParticles; compoundBodies being aptto break,not in the midstof solid Particles,but wherethese Particlesare laid together,and only touchin a few points. Here, then, the author argues that the claim in question (that matter is made of 'unchippable' atoms) helps us to make sense of the "lasting" character of matter, illustrated by water being of the same texture now as it was in the beginning. The aim is to make sense of a very general feature of matter-one requiring no special observations or experiments. Furthermore, water "in the beginning" is not something the author claims to have actually observed; indeed, the phrasing (that nature "may be lasting") may express not so much an observable fact as a sense of what is appropriate for a created universe-perhaps reflecting particles' being endowed with such properties "as most conduced to the End for which [God] formed them."'16 15 To facilitate the exercise, I postpone giving the authorand source to the last footnote of the subsectionentitled "Science-makingCharacteristics." 16 I am not including, as part of the author'sreason, his claim that "no ordinarypower is able to divide what God himself made one in the firstCreation."As I see it, this does not tell us much about what causes the authorto think matterhas the propertyof indivisibility;instead,it gives an account of how, once one has attributedindivisibilityto basic particles,this indivisibilityis to be theistically

38

STEPHENJ. WYKSTRA

Suppose, now, that the author's belief is, at least in part, generated or sustained by this aim of making sense of stability at this general level. Will this affect whether we classify the belief as scientific, or metaphysical, or religious? For most of us, it probably will, for seeking to make sense of permanence and change at this very general level has long been characteristic of the enterprise of metaphysics. Attention to the how and why of the author's believing thus might incline us to classify it as a metaphysical belief. Science-Making Characteristics I now want to turn to the author's beliefs on a more specific question, the question of how such absolutely hard atoms behave on colliding with each other. Here is what he says: Bodies which are eitherabsolutelyhard,or so soft as to be void of elasticity,will not reboundfrom one another.Impenetrabilitymakes them only stop. If two equal [absolutely hard]bodies meet directlyin vacuo,they will by the Lawsof Motionstop where they meet, and lose all theirMotion,and remainat rest.17 What sort of believing is this? Again, looking just at the content of the beliefabout how bodies move under certain sorts of collisions-might incline us to classify the belief as "scientific." But if we attend to the character and grounds of the believing, this becomes less clear. The issue is how absolutely hard bodies ("atoms" with no movable or deformable parts) behave in collisions. Direct experiments are irrelevant here, because all bodies we can observe do deform in collisions: even the hardest steel balls owe their rebounding power to elastic deformation. What motivates the author is, instead, the difficulty of conceiving of how bodies could rebound when such deformation is impossible-as it must be for "absolutely hard" bodies. What gives rise to the author's believing is thus a conceptual problem. Sometimes the character of a problem becomes clearer when one looks at rival ways of addressing the problem. In the present case, one alternative was to reject the idea of "perfect hardness" altogether-to hold that "absolute hardness" is not even a possible property of a physical body. If absolute hardness were a possible property, then when two such bodies collide head-on with each other, at least one would need to change velocity instantaneously from motion in one direction to either rest or motion in another direction: it would have to go from, say, 10 meters per second to - 10 meters per second, without passing through any intermediate velocities. But this, many thought, is inconceivable. Here is a representative passage: The partisansof Atoms have attributedhardness... to theirelementarycorpuscles,an idea which appearsto be the truthwhen one considersthings only superficially,but which is soon perceivedto containan obvious contradiction,upon deeperprobing.In effect, such a principleof hardnesscould not exist; it is a chimerarepugnantto that generallaw whichnatureobservesconstantlyin all its operations;I speakof this immu"explained."Of course, the availabilityof a theistic explanationmay itself sustainthe author'sconfidence in its plausibility. 17Authorand source given in the last note of the presentsubsection.


39

table and perpetualorderestablishedsince the creationof the universein termsof the LAWOF CONTINUITY,by virtueof which all that takes place does so by infinitely small degrees. It seems that good sense dictatesthat no change can occur by jumps; naturanon operaturper saltum;nothingpasses from one extremeto the otherwithout passingthroughall the degreesin between. If naturecould pass fromone extremeto another,for examplefrom... movementin one directionto movementin a contrarydirectionwithoutpassingthroughall the insensible movementswhich lead from one to the other,it would be necessaryfor the first stateto be destroyedwithouta new statebeing determinedby Nature;indeedfor what reason could she choose one state in preferenceto anotherwithoutour being able to ask why? Since, havingno necessaryliaison betweenthe two states (no passage from motionto rest, from rest to motion),no reasonwould determinethe productionof one thing ratherthananother. Let us concludethen thathardnesstaken in the popularsense, is absolutelyimpossible and cannotsubsistwith the law of continuity.18 This author goes on to urge that we must conceive of "perfect hardness" as a species of perfect elasticity rather than of absolute hardness. Consider a ball being inflated with compressed air. As the internal pressure increases, the ball becomes more and more hard; yet at the same time, it becomes more elastic, able to rebound better through greater efficiency in deforming and restoring shape on collision. By replacing the notion of absolute hardness with this concept of elastic hardness, one brings the laws of collision into conformity with the principle, which "good sense dictates," that no physical change "can occur by jumps," but must instead pass through all intermediate values. So again, the motivating problem seems to have the character of a conceptual problem. Does seeing this bear upon how we categorize the belief? I think it does. Many readers today, encountering considerations like these, would be inclined to see them as rather alien to the scientific enterprise. Certainly, few college physics courses mention them as the sort of thing that play a role in scientific theorizing. Lord Kelvin used to read his classes a passage by Hegel on Newtonian forces and say, "If, gentlemen, these be his physics, think what his metaphysics must be!"19 Many readers today, I suspect, would respond similarly to these passages, showing that they regard a belief's being motivated by conceptual problems as a "metaphysics-making characteristic."' But it is now time to let the cat out of the bag (or to cease feigning ignorance about what we have known all along): the passages with which I began are not from Hegel but from two of the most eminent figures in the history of physics. The defender of atoms with absolute hardness is Isaac Newton, writing in Book III of the Opticks; and the defender of the opposing conception of elastic hardness is Jean Bernoulli.20The debate falls squarely in the history of theoretical physics. So here we begin to see a way that conceptions of science and metaphysics commonly held today may diverge from those of the persons we are studying. 18 For source, see the last footnote of the presentsubsection. 19Kelvin, quoted in Silvanus P. Thompson,The Life of WilliamThomson,Baron Kelvinof Largs 2 vols. (Macmillan, 1910), vol. 2, p. 1124. 20 "Thethree passagesdefendingunbreakableatoms arefromIsaac Newton, Opticks,4th ed. (New York:Dover, 1958), on p. 400, andp. 398, respectively.The rivalpassage is by JeanBernoulli,Opera (Lausanneand Geneva, 1742), vol. 3, pp. 9-10, as given by Wilson L. Scott, The Conflictbetween Atomismand ConservationTheory,1644 to 1850 (New York:Elsevier, 1970), p. 23.

40

STEPHENJ. WYKSTRA

Religion-Making Characteristics In deploying the act-content distinction, I have been focusing mostly on the distinction between metaphysical and scientific believings. I now want to returnto religious believing. Again I shall take a cue from Newton, this time from the final sentences of the Opticks. After noting that he has, in Book III, given "hints" to be improved by further experiments and observations, Newton continues, And if naturalphilosophyin all its parts,by pursuingthis method,shall at length be perfected,the boundsof moralphilosophywill also be enlarged.For so far as we can know by naturalphilosophywhat is the first Cause, what Power he has over us, and whatBenefitswe receivefromhim, so farourDuty towardshim, as well as thattowards one another,will appearto us by the Light of Nature.And no doubt,if the Worshipof false Gods hadnot blindedthe heathen,theirmoralPhilosophywouldhavegone farther of Souls, thanto the four CardinalVirtues;and insteadof teachingthe Transmigration and to worship the Sun and Moon, and dead Heroes, they would have taught us to worshipour trueAuthorand Benefactor,as theirAncestorsdid underthe Government of Noah and his Sons beforethey corruptedthemselves. So here, Newton refers to propositions with a certain content: they specify "what is the first Cause," "what Power he has over us," "what Benefits we receive from him," and "our Duty towards him"-especially our duty to worship him as "our true Author and Benefactor."We may hope, Newton says, that perfecting naturalphilosophy will allow the truth of such propositions to become evident "by the Light of Nature." But implicit in this is a contrast; for Newton thinks their truth can also be known in another way-the way they were known by "Noah and his Sons." There is, I think, a natural suggestion lurking in this passage. Typically, people come to apprehend what they take to be divine reality by what seems like a kind of spiritual perception, a perception deepening in the course of a life lived in relationship to that reality. We may, of course, disagree about whether such religious "perception" is ever genuine: if we are Freudians, we will regard it instead as an illusion-a "projection" rather than genuine or veridical perception. Still, we must grant that many religious beliefs seem, to those who have them, to have a character that is more like perception than like inference. The person of religious faith typically has a strong "sense" that there is a divine reality, a reality perceived through various persons, events, or texts. Moreover, this divine reality is sensed as having a radical existential claim upon us, ratherthan as a matter of speculation or hypothesis that one may choose to adopt or not adopt (depending on one's interests). "You shall love the Lord your God, and Him alone shall you worship." I would suggest that these are "religion-making" features and are part of what distinguishes religious belief from metaphysical belief. A belief is not religious merely because it is about God: metaphysical beliefs may also be about God. But metaphysical beliefs about God are generated or sustained by an inferential activity (the activity we call "metaphysics"), seeking to articulate and refine our categories for thinking about "ultimate reality" so as to solve various explanatory or conceptual problems. Religious beliefs, in contrast, typically get their primary sustenance from within the religious and spiritual life, a life which provides the context for access to God which is perception-like, and thus is available not just to the metaphysically


41

minded Augustine, but also to his devout mother Monica, who may have little interest in solving metaphysical problems.21 In saying this, I do not mean to deny that religious beliefs are ontological, making claims about what exists, about what is ultimately real. I am using "metaphysical" to mark a particular sort of ontological beliefs-ones generated and sustained by a reflective enterprise seeking to solve problems of a certain sort. My point is that religious beliefs are typically not generated in this way: instead, they are a more spontaneous response to an experiential sense of divine reality, of this reality's claim upon one, and of the felt need to be rightly related to this divine reality and transformed by it.22 One last pair of cases will help to illustrate this point. The first comes from D. S. Cardwell's biography (1989) of James Prescott Joule (1818-1889). Cardwell writes that Joule, despite a habit of sleeping through sermons, was a sincere Christian. But, says Cardwell, "there is no evidence of a religious motivation for his researches. The occasional references to the Almighty to be found in his papers and very occasionally in his correspondence are not more than conventional expressions, shorthand for the principle of the uniformity of nature, and therefore acceptable in Britain."23 Cardwell's assessment is that Joule's references to God are metaphysical in character. However, even the correspondence cited by Cardwell shows that Joule's "references to the Almighty" go well beyond this. In the summer of 1854, Joule and his wife Amelia saw the death of their infant son. It was the season of cholera, and soon after losing their child to the terrible disease, Amelia herself was stricken. She had repeated but illusory remissions, and after three months of "alternating hope and despair,"she too died of the illness. In a letter dated 20 August 1854, Joule wrote to William Thomson (later Lord Kelvin) as one whom he knew would "sympathize with me in the occasion of the terrible blow which has fallen upon me." As noted by Cardwell, Joule's letter recounts his wife's illness and death and continues, I have thus lost my dearestearthlyfriend,and no one can fully comprehendthe greatness of the loss who has not had the opportunityI havehad duringour union of seven years,of estimatingher high moral worthand intellectualrefinement.How the loss of such a parentcan be replacedto my dear childrenI cannot tell. I must trust in the Almighty to care for them and to directme in their upbringing.... And it is a great satisfactionto reflectthat deathhad no terrors[,]reposingas she did on the meritsof her Saviouras her title to her heavenlyinheritance.24 And on New Year's Day of the same year, Joule wrote to Thomson and his wife, I most honestlywish Mrs.Thomsonand yourselfa happynew year and praythatGod may crownit with goodnessto us all. The remembranceof 1854 is full of bitternessnot Of course, a believing may be sustainedboth by a devout spirituallife and by a sense that it helps to solve interestingmetaphysicalproblems.Classifyingby religion-makingand metaphysicalmakingcharacteristicsallows us to see the categories as not mutuallyexclusive. 22 A belief may also arisejust by inductioninto a community,with little functionalappropriationby the individual.We might regardsuch beliefs as nominally metaphysical(or religious, or scientific), dependingon what sustainsthem in the relevantcommunity. 23 D. S. Cardwell,James Joule: A Biography(Manchester,U.K.: ManchesterUniv. Press, 1989), p. 271. 24 See ibid., pp. 161ff., for the accountof Joule'sloss. 21

42

STEPHENJ. WYKSTRA only to me but to unusualnumberswho havebeen deprivedby the deathof the dearest and most importantmembersof their families. God grantthat these severe trials may be sanctifiedto the everlastinggood of the survivors.

Cardwell may be correct that English conventions dictated restraint in expressing religious faith. If so, the death of Joule's wife lifted those restraints, for these passages show us a deeply religious heart. It is not to the principle of the uniformity of nature that Joule is trusting for direction in raising his children. It is not to a principle of uniformity that Joule sees his wife as looking for reassurance in her death, in reposing on the merits of her Savior. It is not the principle of the uniformity of nature that Joule prays will sanctify the trials of the survivors to their everlasting good. To the contrary, Joule's words here radiate a deep conviction in the atoning work of Christ and in a sustaining and redeeming God in whom all things work together for good to those who love Him. To discern whether Joule's beliefs about God are metaphysical or religious, it is essential that we attend to the contexts that illuminate the character of the believing, not just the content of the believed. In the present case, we can see Joule's belief in God as having its primary home in the context of struggle with practical existential problems, experiencing what he takes to be the presence of God in these struggles, and finding orientation to a God who has a fundamental claim on his life. These features-having to do, again, with the how and why of the believing, not just with the content of the belief-are clearly religion-making features. It seems to me essential for historians to sensitize themselves to the experiential, existential, and practical functions of religious belief if they are to approach their subject matter with discernment.25

Appropriation of Religious Belief Once we have attended to these features that make a religious belief religious, we can go on to explore with more discernment cases in which a particular thinker presses such beliefs into the service of addressing problems in metaphysics or physics. As a possible illustration, consider an unpublished essay in which Newton proposes an account of the "impenetrability" of material bodies. Newton writes, God, by the sole act of thinkingand willing, can preventa body from penetratingany space definedby certainlimits. If he shouldexercisethis power,and cause some space to be imperviousto bodies and thus to stop and reflectlight and all impingingbodies, it seems impossiblethat we should not considerthis space to be truly body from the evidence of our senses . . . , for it will assume all the properties of a corporeal particle,

exceptthatit will be motionless. If we may imagine furtherthat the impenetrabilityis not always maintainedin the same partof space, but can be transferredhitherand thitheraccordingto certainlaws, . .. therewill be no propertyof body which this does not possess.

25 1 do not, however,wantto deny thatinferentialnormsmay also play an importantrole in arriving at and sustaininga religious construalof the world.See StephenWykstra,"Reasons,Rationality,and Realism: The Axiological Roots of Rationalityin Science and Religion,"in ChristianTheismand the Problemsof Philosophy,ed. Michael D. Beaty (Notre Dame, Ind.: Univ. of Notre Dame Press, 1990), pp. 118-61, and idem, "Towarda Sensible Evidentialism:On the Notion of 'Needing Evidence,'" in Philosophyof Religion: Selected Readings, ed. William Rowe and WilliamWainwright (New York:Harcourt,Brace, Jovanovich,1989), pp. 426-37.


43

The usefulnessof the idea of body that I have describedis broughtout by the fact that it clearly involves the chief truthsof metaphysicsand thoroughlyconfirmsand explains them. For we cannotpostulatebodies of this kind withoutat the same time supposingthatGod exists. If we say thatextensionis body,do we not manifestlyoffer a pathto atheism,becausewe can have an idea of it [body] withoutany relationshipto God. Indeed,howevermuch we cast aboutwe find almostno otherreasonfor atheism than this notion of bodies having, as it were, a complete, absolute,and independent realityin themselves,such as almost all of us, throughnegligence, are accustomedto havein ourmindsfromchildhood(unlessI am mistaken),so thatit is only verballythat we call bodies createdand dependent.26 Here Newton construes the impenetrability of matter as a manifestation of God's activity-God's freezing, as it were, of successive regions of space, so as to create what appears phenomenally as an enduring moving object which exerts forces when in contact with other matter.The proposal is thus about God-but what sort of belief does it express: a religious belief or a metaphysical belief? Attending to the character of the believing would tend to qualify it as a metaphysical belief, for it is generated by a highly inferential endeavor to formulate and refine our categories for understanding the ultimate nature of reality. Of course, Newton was profoundly and devoutly religious: his belief in God has, in other contexts, a deeply religious grounding. So here we have a case in which a thinker uses his religious belief to inform and help work out a theistic metaphysical conception of matter.27 IV. TOWARD AN INTEGRATIONIST VIEW OF SCIENCE

Over the past four decades, Newton scholarship has increasingly illuminated how such theistic metaphysical commitments played a key role in both the development and reception of Newton's ideas.28Historian of science Ernan McMullin, in his Newton on Matter and Activity (1978), thus writes,29 Therecan be no denyingthe importanceof these principlesandotherslike them in the thoughtof Newton and those who followed him. Shouldwe allow the positivistclaim that science would have been betteroff withoutthis excess metaphysics,and that the historyof science has witnessedits gradualand continuingelimination?Can we concede Hertz'sdistinctionbetweena neutralmathematicalformalism,which is the "real" science, and its theoreticalinterpretationin a physical model serving only as an aid to imagination? The story of Newton ought to be enough,of itself, to show the inadequacyof these no longerso fashionableviews. It is easy to "freeze"a theoryat an instant,focus on its "hard"component(usuallyin eithermathematicalor operationalterms),and treatthe remainderas a dispensablecrutchfor the imagination.But this omits the role playedby such physicalnotionsas attraction... in the constructionof the theory. Newton triedin vain to restrictreadersof the Principiato formalconsiderations.But the shape of what was to come cannotbe found in that formalism.... It made all the 26 I. of Fluids,"in UnpublishedScientificPapers of andtheEquilibrium Newton,"OnGravitation Isaac Newton,ed. A. R. Hall and M. B. Hall (Cambridge:CambridgeUniv. Press, 1962), pp. 142-4. 27

andrefinedwitha view Beliefsthatarisein a religiouscontextmaybe developed,articulated,

to makingthem more intellectuallyand logically cogent; this is partof the distinctionbetween religious beliefs and theologicalbeliefs. See also Osler, "MixingMetaphors"(cit. n. 12), p. 92.

28 Foraninteresting see JohnHenry,"OccultQualitiesandtheExperimenandrelevanttreatment,

tal Philosophy:Active Principlesin Pre-NewtonianMatterTheory,"Hist. Sci. 24 (1986):335-81. 29 Eman McMullin,Newtonon MatterandActivity(Notre Dame, Ind.:Univ. of Notre Dame Press, 1978), pp. 125-6.

44

STEPHENJ. WYKSTRA differencein the worldto his heirswhetheror not actionat a distance,for example,was to be regardedas an acceptableexplanation.The entirecourse of theirtheorizingwas quitelikely to be affectedby this option ... Newtonhimself could not havedeveloped his theorieswithoutmetaphysicalprinciplesof some sort.

Metaphysical considerations and debates of this kind have recurred too often in the work of great scientists to be viewed as external to the scientific process. Yet our conceptions of science often fail to find a place for them-except, perhaps, by relegating them to a "context of discovery,"where they have no more to do with the how and why of scientific believing than the swirling snakes in Kekule's dream had to do with his insight into the structure of benzene. Since scientists like Newton and Joule and Kelvin did see them as having cognitive import for science, our conceptions of science are here seriously at odds with the historical record. What adjustment might bring our conception of science more in line with history? My own suggestion is that our conception of science must give a more prominent place to the quest for intelligibility in the cognitive goals of science.30 Our usual conception stresses the goal of finding theories that make the world predictable. But predictability can be achieved by deriving observable regularities from principles stating any functional relationship between theoretical parameters. Historically, scientists have sought to exhibit observable regularities as instances of principles embodying special functional relationships-those embodying central-force laws, or conservation principles, or parity principles, or those explaining change of properties through rearrangements of enduring substances, for example. Such principles embody ideals of intelligibility that we bring to the world, and their articulation and refinement is what gives metaphysical issues an internal and vital role within the process of scientific theorizing itself. McMullin also argues that metaphysical considerations, appearances notwithstanding, play a continuing role in scientific theorizing. He writes, The experienceof severalcenturieshas servedto eliminateprinciplesthatonce influenced the course of science and to give othersthe sanctionof success. One might be temptedto think that regulativeprinciplesof a broadlymetaphysicalkind no longer play a role in the naturalsciences. Yet even a momentof reflectionaboutthe current debatesin elementary-particle theory,in quantum-fieldtheory,in cosmology,ought to warnthatthis is far from the case. True,the principlesat issue might not be as overtly metaphysicalas they often were in Newton'stime, but the distinctionis one of degree, not kind.31 30This is not a new suggestion,of course.A few antecedentsare LeonardK. Nash, The Natureof the Natural Sciences (Boston: Little, Brown, 1963); G. E. D. Buchdahl, "Historyof Science and Criteriaof Choice,"in MinnesotaStudies in the Philosophyof Science, vol. 5: Historicaland Philosophical Perspectives of Science, ed. Roger H. Steuwer (Minneapolis:Univ. of Minnesota Press, 1970), pp. 204-29; LarryLaudan,Science and Values(Berkeley and Los Angeles: Univ. of California Press, 1984); and Peter Raillton, "Explanationand MetaphysicalControversy,"in Minnesota Studies in the Philosophyof Science, vol. 13: ScientificExplanation,ed. Philip Kitcherand Wesley C. Salmon (Minneapolis:Univ. of MinnesotaPress, 1989), pp. 220-52. 3' McMullin,Newton(cit. n. 29), p. 127. In quantummechanics,the role of intelligibilityconsiderationshas againcome to the fore throughBell's theorem.See the essays in JamesCushingandEman McMullin, Philosophical Consequencesof QuantumTheory:Reflectionson Bell s Theorem(Notre Dame, Ind.:Univ. of Notre Dame Press, 1989). I haveexploredthis in Wykstra,"Whathas Copenhagen to do with Zurich?QuantumMechanics, Intelligibility,and Mermin'sExperimentalMetaphysics" (forthcoming).


45

This same adjustment may, perhaps, illuminate how religious beliefs often enter the scientific process. It is often suggested that theistic belief was relevant to modem science primarily through its insistence that God's Creation of the world was an act of utter divine freedom; this voluntarist theology, it is claimed, led theists to think that, in assessing theories, "fitting the observed facts" is the only thing that counts. And no doubt we can find early modem scientists who do profess such a positivist methodology and see a voluntarist theology as sanctioning it. But even voluntarism allows a richer vision of science than this: even if God's creative activity is not dictated by his rationality, God is still free to make us with a deep thirst to make the world around us intelligible, and to make the world such that it provides some satisfaction of this thirst. The theistic vision thus permits a scientist to see science as a process of testing and refining our ideals of intelligibility (via a search for conservation laws, for symmetry, for extremum principles, and so forth), rather than as one which, positivist fashion, rejects such guiding ideals as irrelevant from the outset. And this, rather than the voluntarist-positivist connection, is a more common pattern by which scientists have allowed their religious beliefs (about what lies behind the physical universe) to fruitfully guide their explanatory ideals (about the types of physical interactions we might reasonably hope to find within it).32 McMullin's work lies largely within the "history and philosophy of science" historiographical traditions: while postpositivist in recognizing the roles played by metaphysical and religious beliefs within scientific theorizing, this tradition was still strongly "internalist" in seeing scientific theories as unfolding from the goals and problem situation of science as a cognitive enterprise. In recent decades, this approach has been labeled "intellectualist" by those who want to replace it with a more sociological, "contextualist" approach. The new contextualists, usually dismissive of the internalist-externalist distinction, seek to link scientific theorizing more intimately to the social, economic, and political contexts of the historical agents. Nevertheless, they often see themselves as building upon the findings of intellectualist historians like McMullin, precisely because religious and metaphysical beliefs provide a link to interests in these larger contexts. Historian of science Steven Shapin, discussing how we should treat "the relations between metaphysics and religion on the one hand, and an individual's scientific thought, on the other,"thus writes, [E]venif the 'theories'of post-Koyreanintellectualismarerejected,thereis no reason whateverfor contextualiststo dismissits empiricalfindings.Indeed,demonstratedconnectionsbetweenone set of ideas andanotherarethe necessarystarting-points for historianswho wouldput an additionalset of contextualquestionsto the materials.Contextualists need not acceptthe model of the culturalactorwhich intellectualistsemploy,but they mustbuild upon the intellectualists'empiricalfindings.33 How to extend the older "intellectualist" approach so as properly to incorporate the concerns of the new "contextualists" is a large topic which I do not propose to enter 32I1have given a fuller account in StephenWykstra,"Shouldworldviews shape science? Toward an IntegrationistAccount of ScientificTheorizing,"in Facets of Faith and Science, 4 vols., ed. J. M.

van der Meer, vol. 2: The Role of Beliefs in Mathematics and the Natural Sciences: An Augustinian

Perspective (Lanham,Md.: Pascal Centrefor Advanced Studies in Faith and Science / Univ. Press of America, 1997), pp. 124-71. 33Steven Shapin, "Social Uses of Science," in The Ferment of Knowledge: Studies in the Historiog-

raphy of Eighteenth-CenturyScience, ed. G. S. Rousseau and Roy Porter(CambridgeUniv. Press: 1980), pp. 110-11.

46

STEPHENJ. WYKSTRA

here.34But perhaps there is an underlying imperative upon which both intellectualists and contextualists can agree. To take history of science seriously is to let the historical figures we study surprise us with their unexpected connections. As we see how the enterprise we now call "science" has descended from so many of these unexpected connections, our own initial pigeonholes (including our categories of the "scientific," the "metaphysical," and the "religious") begin to interpenetrate in new ways. And the historian's art lies in letting the subject matter enrich and rearrange our categories. The account I have given is intended to help this process. 34On this, I am inclinedto agreewith Shapin'scontentionthatthe intemalist-externalistdistinction has been prematurelydismissed and still needs to be properlyconsideredand assessed. For his interesting and extensively documentedanalysis,see Steven Shapin,"Disciplineand Bounding:The History and Sociology of Science as Seen Throughthe Eyes of the Extemalism-IntemalismDebate," Hist. Sci. 30 (1992): 333-69.

Freeing Philosophy Astronomy from An Aspect of Islamic Influenceon Science By F. Jamil Ragep*

I. INTRODUCTION

F ONE IS ALLOWED to speakof progressin historicalresearch,one may note with satisfactionthe growingsophisticationwith whichthe relationshipbetween science and religion has been examinedin recent years.The "warfare"model, the ideal have been subjectedto critical "separation"paradigm,and the "partnership" As John Hedley Brooke has of historical evidence. and the scrutiny glaring light so astutely noted, "Seriousscholarshipin the history of science has revealed so rich and complex a relationshipbetween science and religionin the extraordinarily that generaltheses are difficultto sustain."1Unfortunately,this more nuanced past approachhas not been as evidentin studiesof Islam and science. Thoughtherehas been some serious scholarshipon the relationbetween science and religion in Islam,2such workhas madebarelya dentin eitherthe generalaccountsor the general perceptionsof thatrelationship.These lattercontinueto be characterizedby reductionism,essentialism,apologetics,andbarelymaskedagendas.3 * Departmentof the Historyof Science, Universityof Oklahoma,601 Elm St., Room 622, Norman OK 73019 Earlierversionsof this essay were presentedat the "Symposiumon Science andTechnologyin the Turkishand IslamicWorld"(Istanbul,June 1994) and at the October 1994 meeting of the Historyof Science Society in New Orleans.My sincerethanksto those who offeredcommentsand suggestions on both occasions and to two anonymousreviewers, all of whom helped in my own "deliverance from error." John Hedley Brooke, Science and Religion: Some Historical Perspectives (Cambridge:Cambridge Univ. Press, 1991), p. 5. 2 Two works that deserve especial mention are A. I. Sabra, "The Appropriationand Subsequent Naturalizationof Greek Science in Medieval Islam: A Preliminary Statement,"Hist. Sci. 25 (1987):223-43 (reprintedin idem, Optics,Astronomyand Logic: Studiesin Arabic Science and Philosophy [Aldershot,U.K.: Variorum,1994], no. 1, and in Tradition,Transmission,Transformation, ed. F Jamil Ragep and Sally P. Ragep [Leiden: Brill, 1996], pp. 3-27); and A. I. Sabra, "Science and Philosophyin MedievalIslamic Theology,"ZeitschriftfiirGeschichteder Arabisch-Islamischen Wissenschaften9 (1994):1-42. David King and George Salibahave also made valuablecontributions (in works cited laterin the notes). 3 Threefairly recentbooks illustratethe pointnicely.Althoughthey representvastlydifferentviewpoints, Pervez Hoodbhoy (Islam and Science [London:Zed, 1991]), Toby Huff (The Rise of Early ModernScience [Cambridge:CambridgeUniv. Press, 1993]), and S. H. Nasr (Science and Civilization in Islam, 2nd ed. [Cambridge:Islamic Texts Society, 1987]) blithely move from centuryto century and from region to region, applyingtheir own particularvision to whateverhistoricalevent or personagecomes theirway.Hoodbhoy,a contemporaryphysicistwho is confrontingreligiousfanaticism in Pakistan,finds religious fanaticism to be the dominant aspect of science and religion in Islam. Huff, a sociologist intent on demonstratingthat science could have arisen only in the West, ? 2001 by The Historyof Science Society.All rightsreserved.0369-7827/01/1601-0001$2.00 Osiris, 2001, 16:00-00

49

50

E JAMIL RAGEP

But even a cursoryexaminationof sources,manyof which unfortunatelyremain in manuscript,revealsa remarkablediversityof opinionin Islam regardingvarious aspects of the relationshipbetween science and religion, which makes attemptsto generalizean "Islamic"attitudetowardscience especially foolhardy.And the influence of the religionof Islamupon science, andvice versa,took a surprisingnumber of forms, sometimesunexpectedly"progressive"from a modem viewpoint.4 WhenHellenisticastronomyfounda home in Islamin the eighthandninthcenturies A.D., it was adaptedin numerousways to fit into this new domicile. Thereare but here I concentrateon how Islam-undermanyreasonsfor this transformation, stood as both doctrineandritual-affected andinfluencedthe courseof astronomy. I firstgive an overviewof these influencesandthenexaminea specificcase in which one can see how a religiousdiscourseon the compatibilityof theAristoteliannatural worldandGod'somnipotencemadeitself felt withintheoreticalastronomy,pushing it in variousdegreestowardindependencefromnaturalphilosophyandmetaphysics. I suggest that there was no single "Islamic"viewpoint,but ratherdivergentviews arisingfrom a varietyof historical,intellectual,and individualfactors.Thoughit is not the focus of the essay,I occasionallypoint to similaritiesbetween views of Islamic scholarsandtheirEuropeanpeers, similaritiesthatmay not be completelycoincidental. II. OVERVIEWOF THE RELATIONBETWEEN HELLENISTIC ASTRONOMYAND ISLAM

Broadly speaking,one can identify two distinctways in which religious influence manifesteditself in medievalIslamicastronomy.First,therewas the attemptto give religiousvalue to astronomy,whatDavidKing has called "astronomyin the service of Islam."(Onemightalso call this, to appropriateanothercontext,the "handmaiden rationale.")The second generalway in which religiousinfluenceshows up is in the attemptto make astronomyas metaphysicallyneutralas possible, in orderto ensure that it did not directlychallengeIslamic doctrine.As we shall see, some took this to meanthatHellenisticastronomyhad not only to be reconceivedbut also stripped of its philosophicalbaggage. Let us begin by looking briefly at the first type of influence,"astronomyin the service of Islam."Astronomycould and did providethe faithful(at least those who were interested)with extensivetables and techniquesfor determiningprayertimes, attemptsunconvincinglyto show that"therewas an absence [in Islamic civilization]of the rationalist view of man and nature"thateffectively preventedthe breakthroughsthatoccurredin early modem Europe (p. 88). Nasr, who wishes to point the way to a new "Islamicscience" that would avoid the dehumanizingand despiritualizingmistakesof Westernscience, finds whereverhe looks in the past an Islamic science that was spiritualand antisecular,so much so that even though "all that is astronomically new in Copernicuscan be found essentially in the school of al-Tius,"Islamic astronomers were prescientenough not to break with the traditionalPtolemaic cosmology, "becausethat would have meant not only a revolutionin astronomy,but also an upheavalin the religious, philosophical and social domains"(p. 174). Essentialism,endemic in Islamic studieswhetherproducedin the East or West, is pervasivethroughoutthese works.Huff, for whom historicalcontext seems an especially alien concept, does not hesitateto move fromAyatollahKhomeinito medievaljuristsand back again (p. 203), akin to using JerryFalwell to analyzeThomasAquinas. 4 An example is providedby B. F. Musallamin his Sex and Society in Islam (Cambridge:CambridgeUniv.Press, 1983), wherehe documentsthe use of ancientsourcesby numerousIslamicjurists of various stripes to bolster their sanction of contraceptionand abortion;see especially pp. 39-59.

FREEINGASTRONOMYFROM PHILOSOPHY

51

for finding the sacred direction of Mecca, for calculating the beginning of Ramadan (the month of fasting), and so on. Since Muslim ritual could have survived perfectly well without the astronomers (does God really demand that one pray to within a minute or less of arc?), it does not take too great a leap of imagination to realize that this "service to religion" was really religion's service to the astronomers, both Muslim and non-Muslim,5 providing on the one hand a degree of social legitimation and on the other a set of interesting mathematical problems to solve.6 One may also find instances of a different type of "service" that astronomy could provide, namely to reveal the glory of God's creation, a point made by no less a personage than Ibn al-Shatir, the fourteenth-century timekeeper of the Umayyad Mosque in Damascus.7 This type of service was not new with Islam, of course; Ptolemy, Plato, and Aristotle, among others, saw astronomy as a way toward the divine (though in practice, admittedly, this meant something different for each of them).8 But if I were to hazard here a particular "Islamic" influence and difference, I would say that it is in the emphasis on "God's creation" ratherthan on some Platonic, otherworldly reality. Islamic astronomers were thus less disposed toward the twotiered reality that one sees in Neoplatonists such as Proclus (d. A.D. 485) or even in Ptolemy himself.9 If I am right about this difference, it would go a long way toward explaining the surprising ambiguity one finds in Ptolemy about the reality of his planetary models and the much more realist approach taken generally by Islamic 5 An example of a non-Muslim,indeed pagan, astronomerwho worked "in the service of Islam" is Thabit ibn Qurra(d. A.D. 901), who wrote at least two treatiseson crescent visibility; see Regis Morelon, Thabitibn Qurra:(Euvresd'astronomie(Paris:Belles Lettres, 1987), pp. XCIII-XCVI. 6 David King has been in the forefrontof researchdealing with both aspects. For social legitimation, see his essay "On the Role of the Muezzin and the Muwaqqitin Medieval Islamic Society,' in Ragep and Ragep, Tradition,Transmission,Transformation(cit. n. 2), pp. 285-346, where King discusses the history of timekeeping and the role of the Mosque timekeeper (muwaqqit)both in Islamic civilization and in the history of astronomy.For more detailed, technical studies, see his Astronomyin the Service of Islam (Aldershot,U.K.: Variorum,1993). 7 Ibn al-Shatiris today best rememberedfor his treatise on theoreticalastronomyin which he presentedastronomicalmodels that are virtuallyidenticalto ones used by Copernicus.The passage referredto, though, occurs in the introductionto his al-Ztjal-jadid, a book on practicalastronomy; see Sabra, "Science and Philosophy" (cit. n. 2), pp. 39-40. In addition to the scientific contexts where such praise for astronomyoccurs, there is a religious cosmological literaturededicatedto the glorificationof God'screation;see Anton M. Heinen, Islamic Cosmology:A StudyofAs-Suyutt'salHay'a as-santyafi-l-hay'a as-sunniya(Beirut:Steiner, 1982), especially pp. 37-52. 8 Plato discusses the importanceof astronomyfor finding true Reality in Republic 528E-530C, especially 530A, and for understandingthe Divine in Laws 820E-822C; Ptolemyextols the studyof astronomyfor making "its followers lovers of this divine beauty,accustomingthem and reforming their natures, as it were, to a similar spiritualstate" (Ptolemy's Almagest, trans. and annot. G. J. Toomer [New York:Springer,1984], 1.1, p. 37). ThoughAristotle is a bit more mundane,he is not averseto associatinghis studyof the celestial aetherwith the divine (De Caelo, 1.3,especially 270b612) norto recommendingthe use of astronomers'resultsfor ascertainingthe numberof divine beings (Metaphysics,XII.8, 1073b1-17). 9 This manifestsitself with Proclus in his contrastbetween humanbeings, who can only approximate the truth,and the gods, who alone can know it, and in his ambivalenceregardingthe realityof astronomicalmodels such as eccentricsand epicycles. This position was called "instrumentalist" by PierreDuhem in his influentialbut deeply flawed Saving the Phenomena("SOZEINTA OAINO4th MENA: Essai sur la notion de theorie physique de Platon a Galilee,"Ann. Philo. Chr&tienne, ser., 6 (1908):113-39, 277-302, 352-77, 482-514, 561-92; issued in book form [Paris:Hermann, 1908; reprintedParis:Vrin, 1982]; Englished as To Save the Phenomena:An Essay on the Idea of Physical Theoryfrom Plato to Galileo, trans. EdmundDoland and ChaninahMaschler [Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1969]). Duhem'sviews have been carefully analyzed by G. E. R. Lloyd in "Savingthe Appearances,"Cl. Quart.,n. s., 28 (1978):202-22, especially pp. 204-11 (reprintedwith new introductionin idem, Methodsand Problemsin GreekScience [Cambridge:CambridgeUniv.

52

E JAMIL RAGEP

astronomers-an approach,I shouldadd,thatled a largenumberof themto attempt to reformPtolemyby proposingmorephysicallyacceptablemodels.10 So much for astronomyin the service of Islam. Let us now move on to those religiousinfluencesthatled to a more"metaphysicallyneutral"astronomy.The first exampleneed not detainus. Clearlythe mostreligiouslyobjectionablepartof Hellenistic astralscience was astrology,which seemed to give powers to the stars that shouldbe reservedfor God. Attackson astrologyin Islam are not difficultto find, andthey came,predictably,fromreligiousquartersbutalso, moresurprisingly,from some Hellenizedphilosopherssuch as Ibn Sina (= Avicenna[d. A.D. 1037]). It is instructivethatAvicenna,not notedfor conventionalreligiouspiety,did not hesitate to use Qur'anicverses and a traditionfrom the Prophetto bolsterhis case against astrology;this tendsto strengthenthe argumentthateven those scientistscommitted to a Hellenisticoutlook were sensitiveto religious objectionsand willing to forgo partsof theirGreekheritage."A moresubtleinfluencecan be detectedin the separation of astrologyfrom astronomy.In early Islamic astronomicaltexts and in works categorizingthe sciences, astronomyand astrology,following standardHellenistic practice,were usually listed togetherundera rubricsuch as "science of the stars" Greekterm).Startingwith ('ilmal-nujum)or even astronomia(i.e., the transliterated Avicenna,however,astrologycame to be categorizedas a partof naturalphilosophy (or physics), whereasastronomy(which becameknown as 'ilm al-hay'a) was categorized as a strictlymathematicaldiscipline.'2As we shall see, this was just one of severalmoves whose purposeseems to havebeen to free a reconstitutedmathematical astronomy,which, it was claimed,was objectivelytrue,fromthe religiouslyobjectionablepartsof Greekphysics and metaphysics. In additionto thesepredictableobjectionsto astrology,therewerereligiousobjecPress, 1991], pp. 248-77). Lloyd provides a useful corrective to Duhem and argues that Proclus, somewhat surprisingly for a Platonist, had realist attitudes regarding phenomenal astronomy even while claiming that the "true philosopher" should "say goodbye to the senses" (p. 207; reprint, p. 259). Although, unlike Proclus, Ptolemy was a working astronomer and certainly not a Platonist (at least not in any simple sense), he does warn that "it is not appropriate to compare human [constructions] with divine" and, with faint echoes of Plato's insistence in the Timaeus that any account of the phenomenal world is only a "likely story," admits that "one should try, as far as possible, to fit the simpler hypotheses to the heavenly motions, but if this does not succeed, [one should apply hypotheses] which do fit" (Almagest [cit. n. 8], XIII.2, p. 600). But these seemingly instrumentalist remarks should be balanced against his bold confidence, in the introduction to the Almagest, "that only mathematics [including astronomy] can provide sure and unshakeable knowledge to its devotees" and that "this is the best science to help theology along its way" (p. 36), as well as against his later attempt to provide a cosmology in his Planetary Hypotheses. Clearly this aspect of Greek astronomy and cosmology deserves a much more elaborate and serious study than is possible here. 10To connect certain aspects of Islamic religious doctrine with the Islamic tradition of reforming Ptolemaic astronomy, itself part of a seemingly more substantial interest exhibited by Islamic astronomers (compared with their Greek predecessors) in discovering a true phenomenal cosmology, would require a significant historical study that is at best in its preliminary stages. My remarks here are meant simply as a working hypothesis. " For a competent discussion of the objections to astrology by both religious and philosophical writers, see George Saliba, A History of Arabic Astronomy: Planetary Theories during the Golden Age of Islam (New York: New York Univ. Press, 1994), pp. 53-61, 66-72. Cf. Ignaz Goldziher, "The Attitude of Orthodox Islam toward the 'Ancient Sciences,'" in Studies on Islam, ed. and trans. Merlin L. Swartz (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1981), pp. 185-215, especially pp. 195-6 (German original: "Stellung der alten islamischen Orthodoxie zu den antiken Wissenschaften," Abhandlungen der Koniglich Preussischen Akademie der Wissenschaften 8 (Berlin, 1916). 2'For a further elaboration of this point, see F. J. Ragep, Nasfr al-Din al-Tusf's Memoir on Astronomy, 2 vols. (New York: Springer. 1993), vol. 1, pp. 34-5.


53

tions to Hellenistic astronomy as a whole. It is to these and their effects upon Islamic astronomy that we now turn. III. ON SAVING ASTRONOMY FROM THE TAINT OF PHILOSOPHY

Because it was one of the "ancient sciences" (i.e., pre-Islamic), astronomy was sometimes tarred with the same brush that besmirched any knowledge that fell outside the domain of the religious sciences. This taint took several forms. There were certainly those who condemned all the "ancient" or "foreign" sciences.'3 On the one hand, some singled out astronomy because of its presumably close association with astrology and even magic.14 Others saw it as advancing strange and dangerous ideas, such as the notion of regions with a midnight sun, which was a consequence of the astronomers' circular motions and spherical bodies. If true, this would make it virtually impossible under some circumstances for Muslims in extreme northern climes to maintain the daylight fast during Ramadan.'5Al-GhazalT(d. A.D. 1111), certainly a more subtle and profound thinker, accepts that there are parts of astronomy (for example, the theory of solar and lunar eclipses) that are based on apodeictic demonstration and are thus "impossible to deny"; such things are, in and of themselves, unconnected with religious matters. However, these "neutral" and true aspects of mathematics may seduce the unwary student into believing that certainty also exists in the physical and metaphysical theories of the philosophers, some of which stand in contradiction to Islamic religious dogma. Thus the study of these sciences must be limited and constrained, for "few there are who devote themselves to this study without being stripped of religion and having the bridle of godly fear removed from their heads."16 But besides these more general warnings against astronomy as a representative of the "ancient sciences," there was another,more specific objection. Ghazall tells us that [t]he basis of all these objections[to naturalphilosophy]is the recognitionthatnature is in subjectionto God most high, not acting of itself but serving as an instrumentin the hands of its Creator.Sun and moon, stars and elements, are in subjectionto His command.There is none of them whose activity is producedby or proceedsfrom its own essence. 17

This is part of Ghazall's criticism of what we might term Aristotelian natural causation. '3

Goldziher,"TheAttitudeof OrthodoxIslam"(cit. n. 11),providesseveralexamples.

14This is the insinuationmade by Qadi (Judge)Tajal-Din al-Subki(14th c.); see David King, "On

the Role of the Muezzin"(cit. n. 6), pp. 306-7 (p. 329 for the Arabictext). For Subki'shostile attitude towardall of philosophy(with the exceptionof logic), which could well be the underlyingreasonfor his disdainof astronomy,see Goldziher,"TheAttitudeof OrthodoxIslam"(cit. n. 11), p. 207. 15Cf. Goldziher,"TheAttitudeof OrthodoxIslam"(cit. n. 11), p. 197. 16Abi Hamid al-Ghazali,al-Munqidhmin al-dalal, ed. 'Abd al-Karimal-Marraq(Tunis: al-Dar al-Tunisiyyali-'l-Nashr, 1984), pp. 49-52. The translationused here is from W. MontgomeryWatt, The Faith and Practice of al-Ghazalf (London:George Allen & Unwin, 1953), pp. 33-5. Cf. the more recentEnglish translationby RichardJ. McCarthy,Freedomand Fulfillment(Boston:Twayne, 1980), pp. 73-4, which is somewhatless elegantbut rathermorereliable.For an informeddiscussion of Ghazali'sattitudeand its possible implicationsfor the course of Islamic science, see Sabra,"Appropriationand SubsequentNaturalization"(cit. n. 2), pp. 239-41. 17Ghazali, Munqidh,p. 54; translationby Watt,The Faith and Practice of al-Ghazali (both cit. n. 16), p. 37; cf. McCarthy,Freedomand Fulfillment(cit. n. 16), p. 76. This point is closely relatedto the issue of cause and effect and to the occasionalistposition of the Ash'aritemutakallims(theologians).

54

E JAMIL RAGEP

The connectionbetweenwhatis habituallybelievedto be a cause andwhatis habitually believed to be an effect is not necessary,accordingto us. ... Theirconnectionis due to the priordecree of God, who createsthem side by side, not to its being necessaryin itself, incapableof separation.On the contrary,it is within [divine] power to create satietywithouteating,to createdeathwithoutdecapitation,to continuelife afterdecapitation, and so on to all connectedthings. The philosophersdenied the possibility of [this] and claimedit to be impossible.'8 This is the well-known position of the Ash'arite theologians,19 sometimes referred to as Islamic "occasionalism"2" Exactly how this might work for establishing, say, a science of astronomy (something Ghazali is not particularly interested in) is unclear. But there are some intriguing hints. For example, in Ghazali's al-Munqidh min al-dalal (Deliverance from error), written as an intellectual biography in the latter part of his life, he warns against the man, "loyal to Islam but ignorant,"who tries to defend the faith by "the denial of the mathematical sciences." Such a person "even rejects their theory of the eclipse of sun and moon, considering what they say is contrary to the sacred Law." Ghazali perceptively notes that someone who understands the certainty of the mathematical proofs involved might conclude "that Islam is based on ignorance and the denial of apodeictic proof" and that such a person "grows in love for philosophy and hatred for Islam."After quoting the Prophet, Ghazali judges that "there is nothing here obliging us to deny the science of arithmetic which informs us in a specific manner of the paths of sun and moon, and of their conjunction and opposition."21 What Ghazali seems to be proposing is an acceptance of the mathematical aspect of astronomy but not the physical part of that discipline, which might compel one to accept a "natural"motion in the heavens that was somehow independent of God's will. This view has been called "instrumentalist" inasmuch as it would tend to remove astronomers from theoretical considerations regarding the causes of celestial motion and confine them, presumably, to matters of calculation, more likely than not in the service of religion.22 Of course, interpreted another way, "instrumentalism" could also free astronomers to pursue alternative hypotheses regarding celestial motion and the configuration of the heavens, a point to which we shall return later in this essay.23 18Al-GhazalT,The Incoherenceof the Philosophers, ed. and trans. Michael E. Marmura(Provo, Utah:BrighamYoungUniv. Press, 1997), p. 170. 19From the eleventh centuryor so, the Ash'aritesbecame the dominanttheological(kalcim)group amongthe SunnTMuslims, succeedingthe Mu'tazilites.They did, though,continuethe atomisttradition of theirpredecessorsas well as, for the most part,a rationalistapproachto physicalandtheological matters. 20 For a lucid discussion of this see Sabra,"Science and position in the context of Islamic kalndm, Philosophy"(cit. n. 2); he also comparesit with the position of Descartes (pp. 29-32). 21 GhazalT,Munqidh,pp. 51-2. I have somewhatmodifiedWatt'stranslation,The Faith and Practice of al-GhazalT(cit. n. 16), pp. 34-5; cf. McCarthy,Freedomand Fulfillment(cit. n. 16), p. 74. 22 This position has been laid out by Sabra,"TheAppropriationand SubsequentNaturalizationof Greek Science" (cit. n. 2), pp. 238-42. 23It is worthnoting that Ghazali himself proposespossible alternativesto the view (held by both philosophersand astronomerssuch as Ptolemy) that the entire heavenis an animal with a soul that causes its motion. On this latterview, see Ragep, NasTral-DTn(cit. n. 12), vol. 2, pp. 408-10. For GhazalT'salternatives,see The Incoherence(cit. n. 18), pp. 149-51. The possibility,pace Sabra,that Ghazali'sposition could open up theoreticalas well as instrumentalistpossibilities needs a much morecarefuland sustainedstudythanis possible here. (Cf. P. Duhem'scontroversialviews regarding the liberatingeffects of the medievalEuropeancondemnationsof Aristotle.)


55

Ghazali's warnings about being overly zealous in condemning all of ancient science, even the apodeictic parts, indicates that he was trying to establish some "middle position." But what was the extreme theological position, and how might it work for understanding celestial phenomena? We learn from al-Qushji (d. A.D. 1474), a Central Asian scientist associated first with the Samarqand observatory and later with the scientific community of Constantinople (after its conquest by the Ottomans), what these may have been. In his major theological (kaldm) work, a commentary on Nasir al-Din al-Tusi's Tajrld al-'aqd'id, he presents what he sees as some of the absurd implications of the standardAsh'arite denial of naturalcausation: On the assumption{taqdir} of the validity{thubut}of the volitionalOmnipotent,it is conceivablethat the volitionalOmnipotentcould by His will {irdda} darkenthe face of the Moon duringa lunareclipse withoutthe interpositionof the Earthand likewise duringa solar eclipse the face of the Sun [woulddarken]withoutthe interpositionof the Moon;likewise, he could darkenand lightenthe face of the Moon accordingto the observedfull and crescentshapes.24 It is not clear whether he was setting up a straw man or whether Quishji was responding to an actual argument he had encountered. Whichever, it is interesting that Ghazali had, as we have seen, raised just this sort of example in his warning against taking the condemnation of the ancient sciences too far. But in one of the most, if not the most, influential of the late Ash'arite textbooks, the MawdqiffT 'ilm al-kalam by the Persian 'Adud al-Din al-Iji (ca. A.D. 1281-1355), we do not find this extreme viewpoint regarding the explanation of eclipses but, surprisingly, a full and quite well-informed exposition of Ptolemaic astronomy.25 By this time, the Ash'arites had adopted much of the terminology of Greek philosophy, and Iji was no exception; this did not mean, however, that he adopted the doctrines of Greek philosophy.26In particular, he maintained, contra Aristotle, that the universe was atomistic in structure and contingent, depending on God's will to exist from instant to instant. When it came to astronomy, Iji, who was well acquainted with the basic picture of Ptolemaic astronomy, held that the orbs were "imaginary things" (umunrmawhtuma)and more tenuous than a spider's web (bayt al-'ankabut).27But Iji did not draw the conclusion that astronomers' constructions were to be censured or condemned, as implied in the passage from Qushj?'sSharh altajrfd. Rather he insisted, echoing Ghazali, that "[religious] prohibition does not extend to them, being neither an object of belief nor subject to affirmation or negation."28 Viewed from the perspective of the possible range of religious positions on this matter, one would have thought that the astronomers would have been grateful for this seemingly generous solution to their problems; they could use whatever mathematical tools they needed for their craft as long as they did not declare them real. In 24 [Tehran,1890 (?)], p. 186 (line 28) through 'All b. Muhammadal-QushjT,SharhTajrd al-'aqda'id p. 187 (line 2). A translationandArabictext of the largerpassage of which this is a partis contained in the Appendix.Squarebrackets([ ]) are used for editorialadditionsand explanations.Curlybrackets ({ }) are used for originalArabicwords or an English translation. 25 For a brief but informativeexpositionof this section of Iji's text, see Sabra,"ScienceandPhilosophy" (cit. n. 2), pp. 34-8. 26 The adoptionby a numberof Muslim theologians of the terminologybut not necessarily the doctrinesof Greekphilosophyis a fascinatingstory,for which see ibid., pp. 11-23. 27 Ibid., p. 37. 2' Ibid.

56

F. JAMIL RAGEP

essence, they were being given an "instrumentalist" option.But the astronomers,as we shall see, werehardlythrilledwith this solutionto the science-religionproblem, and we will need to explore why they were not. But before that, we need to ask ourselvesanotherquestion:Why did Iji feel the necessity to offer them a solution in the firstplace? After all, he was not an astronomerhimself, and in the main he rejectedmanyof theirmost fundamentalclaims aboutthe natureof the universe. To answer this question, we need to understandsomethingof the context and historicalperiodin which this debatewas occurring.For the most part,the participants were either Persiansor CentralAsians; the period was the aftermathof the Mongol invasionsof the thirteenthcentury,which considerablyreshapedthe political and intellectuallandscapeof the area.Not only the traditionalpoliticalbut also the religious leadershipin the East was eitherdestroyedor considerablyweakened. The Mongols preferredto fill their courts and bureaucracieswith some relatively heterodoxfigures.(Thereasonsfor this arefairlyeasy to grasp.)The most significant of these from an intellectualstandpointwas Nasir al-Din al-Taus(A.D. 1201-1274). Tusi was a crucial figure for a numberof reasons, but especially because he left behinda corpusof writingsthatbecamethe main vehicle not only for studyingbut also for defending Greek science and philosophy,at least in eastern Islam, until modem times. He also wrote on religiousmatters,and in these workshe continued the process of bringingGreek philosophicalterms and ideas into the theological context.Thoughhe was borna mainstreamShi'ite and had dabbledfor a time with Isma'ilism,a muchmoreheterodoxShi'itedoctrine,by the timeTius beganworking for the Mongols in 1256, his intellectualallegiancewas firmlywith the Hellenistic traditionof Islam, which for him was not only a way of unifying the sciences but also a meansof transcendingreligiousdifferencesanddisputes.As suchhe hearkens back to an earlierperiod of Islamic intellectualhistory,to the Kindis, the Farabls, andespeciallyto Avicenna,for whom Greekphilosophybecamea kindof transcendent religion. For this Tius was bitterly reviled by the religious establishmentin MamelukeEgyptandSyria,which hadmostly escapedthe Mongolonslaught.Curiously,though,the Persiantheologians,suchas Iji, seem to havebeen mostlyrespectful towardhim-but not simply respectful.I have no doubtthatIji, who was born less than ten years afterTusi's death,learnedhis astronomy,and perhapseven his Greekphilosophy,fromTusi's writings;in thatcase, he was swept up in Tus?'sdiscourse even while disagreeingwith it. It should thereforenot surpriseus that Iji would try to reassurethe Ash'aritefaithfulthat they had nothingto fear from the surgingtide of Hellenistic science and philosophyin Iranwhile at the same time accommodatingTius andhis manyfollowersby offeringthem a respectableway to be both good astronomersand good Muslims.29 Returningto the astronomers,why would some of themfeel uneasywith Iji's,and for thatmatterGhazali's,compromise?Thatthey wouldrejectthis accommodation tells us somethingabouttheirself-confidenceandthe strengthof theirtraditiondurBut this was not simply a case of disciplinarypride. Some ing these centuries.3?0 29 For a more detailedand documenteddiscussion of

Nasfr al-Dmn(cit. n. 12), vol. 1, pp. 3-20.

the points made in this paragraph,see Ragep,

36 The continuing strengthof the traditionof science in Islam after A.D. 1200 has only recently been recognizedby researchersin the field. The reasonsfor this long neglect have a greatdeal to do with the Eurocentricnatureof most history of science, which has tended to assume, whetherconsciously or not, thatonce the twelfth-centurytranslationmovementfromArabicinto Latinwas com-


57

were led to this rejection by what they saw as the requirements of an astronomy that could provide a correct picture (hay'a) of the universe as well as insight into God's creation (as we have seen). This can be clearly observed in the response of al-Sharif al-Jurjan?(A.D. 1339-1413) to Iji's dismissive remarks regarding the "imaginary" and "tenuous" nature of the astronomers' orbs. In addition to his many other hats, which included being a renowned theologian, Jurjani was an astronomer who wrote a widely read and appreciated commentary to Tuis's astronomical masterpiece, the Tadhkira. With his astronomer's turban firmly in place, he responded to Ijl as follows, by trying to explain that the mathematical objects of the astronomers, though "imagined," do have a correspondence with reality: Even if they do not have an externalreality,yet they arethingsthatarecorrectlyimagined and correspondto what [exists] in actuality{fl nafs al-amr} as attestedby sound instinct{al-fitraal-salrma};they are not false imaginingssuch as ghouls' fangs, ruby mountainsand two-headedmen. By means of these [astronomical]notions,the conditions of [celestial] movementsare regulatedin regardto speed and direction,as perceived [directly]or observedwith [the aid of] instruments.[By means of these notions also] discoveryis made of the characteristics{ahkam} of the celestial orbs and the earth,and of what they reveal of subtle wisdom and wondrouscreation-things that overcomewhoeverapprehendsthem with awe, and facing him with the glory of their Creator,prompthim to say: "OurLord,thou has not createdthis in vain."This then is a valuablelesson thatlies hiddenin those words[of the astronomers]andthatoughtto be cherished,while ignoringwhoeveris drivento disdainthemby mereprejudice.31 It is important to note here that Jurjani's commentary quickly became an integral part of iji's textbook and was studied with it in the school tradition. (It was still being studied in Islamic theological schools, such as Cairo's al-Azhar, into the twentieth century!) Thus Iji's conventionalist/instrumentalist view of astronomical models would have been read with Jurjanl's forceful rejoinder.32 Jurjani, though, while defending astronomy's integrity and its religious value against Iji's dismissive remarks, does not here deal with the issue of astronomy's alleged dependence upon suspect religious doctrines, such as natural causation and the eternity of the world. Most, though not all, Islamic astronomers felt that at least some of these doctrines were indispensable. As Tiusi says in the Tadhkira, "Every science has ... principles, which are either self-evident or else obscure, in which case they are proved in another science and are taken for granted in this science . .. [T]hose of its principles that need proof are demonstrated in three sciences: metaphysics, geometry, and natural philosophy."33Thus in addition to mathematics and observation, Tius is claiming that certain physical and metaphysical principles need to be imported from philosophy. This importation was not taken lightly; indeed, in general one finds among Islamic astronomers a great reluctance to use physical principles from philosophy as a substitute for basing their conclusions on what they pleted, Islamic intellectuals,havingfulfilledtheirhistoricalmission of preservationfor Europe,must have given up their scientific endeavors. 31 al-Iji, Kitab al-Mawdqiffi 'im al-kalam (with the commentaryof al-Jurjani),ed. Muhammad Badral-Din al-Na'sani(Cairo,A.H. 1325/A.D. 1907), pt. vii, p. 108. This is mostly Sabra'stranslation (with minorchanges) from his "Science and Philosophy"(cit. n. 2), p. 39. 32 One hopes that such examples might give pause to those who insist on treatingIslamic religious views as monolithic. 33 Ragep, Nasrral-DTn(cit. n. 12), vol. 1, pp. 90-1.

58

E JAMIL RAGEP

saw as mathematics, which included observation. In this they seem to have followed trends that had already been established in antiquity. In a passage preserved by Simplicius (6th c. A.D.) in his commentary on Aristotle's Physics, he quoted Geminus (ca. 1st c. A.D.), who was, we are told, "inspired by the views of Aristotle," to the effect that a clear demarcation can be made between the role of the physicist and the role of the astronomer.34"The physicist will in many cases reach the cause by looking to creative force; but the astronomer, when he proves facts from external conditions, is not qualified to judge of the cause, as when, for instance, he declares the earth or the stars to be spherical." This is elucidated in an earlier part of the passage: Now in many cases the astronomerand the physicist will proposeto prove the same point, e.g., that the sun is of great size or thatthe Earthis spherical,but they will not proceedby the same road.The physicistwill proveeach fact by considerationsof essence or substance,of force, of its being betterthatthings shouldbe as they are, or of coming into being and change; the astronomerwill prove them by the propertiesof figuresor magnitudes,or by the amountof movementand the time that is appropriate to it.35 Geminus, no doubt "inspired by the views of Aristotle," declares that the astronomer "must go to the physicist for his first principles, namely, that the movements of the stars are simple, uniform and ordered."But this was a view that was not universally held in antiquity. Ptolemy, for example, refers to physics and metaphysics as "guesswork" and proclaims that "only mathematics can provide sure and unshakeable knowledge to its devotees."36One would assume that he would therefore try to avoid physical and metaphysical principles in his astronomy, and, indeed, in the introductory cosmological sections of the Almagest, he generally establishes such things as the sphericity of the heavens and the Earth, the Earth's centrality and its lack of motion, according to observational and mathematical principles, in contrast to the more physical means used by Aristotle in, say, De Caelo.37 Ptolemy's stated position had some major support among Islamic astronomers. The Persian scholar Qutb al-Din al-Shirazi (A.D. 1236-1311), onetime student and associate of Nasir al-Din al-Tius, paraphrases Ptolemy: "Astronomy is the noblest of the sciences .... [I]ts proofs are secure-being of number and geometry-about which there can be no doubt, unlike the proofs in physics and theology."38 But several Islamic astronomers note, often with dismay, that Ptolemy had broken his own rule and had used "physical" principles. In particular, the eminent Central Asian scientist Abf Rayhan al-Biruni (A.D. 973-1048) chides him for using arguments based on physics to prove the sphericity of the heavens in the Almagest (1.3) and insists that "each discipline has a methodology and rules and that which is exter34 This is probablyin referenceto Aristotle,Physics 11.2;cf. Lloyd, "Savingthe Appearances"(cit. n. 9), pp. 212-13. 35 Translationby T. L. Heath in his Aristarchusof Samos (Oxford:Clarendon, 1913), p. 276; reprintedin MorrisR. Cohen and I. E. Drabkin,A SourceBook in GreekScience (Cambridge,Mass.: HarvardUniv. Press, 1948), pp. 90-1. Cf. Lloyd, "Savingthe Appearances"(cit. n. 9), pp. 212-14. 36 Ptolemy'sAlmagest(cit. n. 8), 1.1, p. 36. 37For a discussion of how this is viewed in the Islamic context, see Ragep, Nasrral-Din (cit. n. 12), vol. 1, pp. 38-41; vol. 2, pp. 382-8. 38 Qutb al-Din al-Shirazi,preface to "Nihayatal-idrakfl dirayatal-aflak,"Ahmet III MS 3333 (2), fol. 34b, TopkapiSaray,Istanbul.


59

nal to it cannot be imposed {yastahkimu} upon them; therefore, what [Ptolemy] has set forth that is external to this discipline is persuasive rather than necessary."39 Looking at BirunT'sinsistence upon a clear separation of astronomy from physics (or natural philosophy) and TusT'sintroductory remarks regarding the need of astronomy for principles from natural philosophy and metaphysics, one might well be tempted to conclude that what we have is a continuation of the ancient debate between the mathematicians (such as Ptolemy, who insisted upon an autonomous astronomy) and the philosophers (represented, as we have seen, by Aristotle and Geminus, who placed the astronomers in a dependent role).40 But this would be misleading. Even the more philosophically inclined of the Islamic astronomers seem, for the most part, to be intent not only on demarcating astronomy from natural philosophy but also on making it as independent as possible. We have already seen how Avicenna separated astronomy (as a mathematical discipline) from astrology (considered to be part of natural philosophy). FurthermoreTiisi himself made clear in the Tadhkira that an astronomer should prove most cosmological matters using "proofs of the fact" (that simply establish their existence using observations and mathematics) rather than "proofs of the reasoned fact" (that "convey the necessity of that existence" using physical and/or metaphysical principles); the latter kind of proofs, he tells us, are given by Aristotle in De Caelo.41In other words, the astronomer should avoid dealing with ultimate causes and instead establish the foundations of his discipline by employing the apodeictic tools of mathematics. This attitude is reinforced as well in the physical principles that TusTuses to explain regular motion. He analyzes it in such a way that the source of that motion, whether an Aristotelian "nature"(as in the case of the four elements) or a soul (as in the case of the celestial orbs) becomes irrelevant for astronomy; in both cases, he maintains (departing here from Aristotle) that regular motion is always due to an innate principle (mabda' = oapxY) called a "nature" (tab'), thus sidestepping the problem of ultimate causation.42Muhammad A'la al-TahanawT(18th c. A.D.) nicely summarizes the situation: "In this science [i.e., astronomy], motion is investigated [in terms of] its quantity and direction. The inquiry into the origin (asl) of this motion and its attribution {ithbat} to the orbs is part of Natural Philosophy (al-tab'iyyat [sic])."43 3' Abu Rayhan al-Brtini, Al-Qdanunal-Mas'udi, 3 vols. (Hyderabad:Da'irat al-ma'arif al'Uthmaniyya,1954-1956), vol. 1, p. 27. The criticismis directedat Ptolemy'suse of "certainphysical considerations"regardingthe aetherto provethe sphericityandcircularmotionof the heavens(Ptolemy'sAlmagest [cit. n. 8], 1.3, p. 40). Elsewhere in the Qanun (vol. 2, pp. 634-5), Blruinlstrongly criticizes Ptolemy for using assumptions and ideas from outside of astronomy in his Planetary Hypotheses;see Ragep, NasFral-DTn(cit. n. 12), vol. 1, p. 40, for a translationand discussion of this passage. 4( Thanksto the recentworkof Lloyd and others,we can make such a distinctionwithoutresorting versus "realists";cf. n. 9. to Duhem'sreductionistrhetoricof "instrumentalists" 41Ragep, NasTral-Dfn (cit. n. 12), vol. 1, pp. 106-7. For an examinationof this passage and its relationto the quia-propter quid distinctionmade in Aristotle'sPosterior Analytics, see vol. 1, pp. 38-41, and vol. 2, pp. 382, 386-8. 42 TusTseems to be tryingto accountfor the fact that the ensouled celestial orbs, even thoughthey have volition, "choose"to move uniformly,unlike entities with souls in the sublunarrealm.This was obviously a problemwith a long history from ancient to early moderntimes; see Ragep, Nasfr alDin (cit. n. 12), vol. 1, pp. 44-6; vol. 2, p. 380. Cf. HarryWolfson, "TheProblemof the Souls of the Spheresfromthe ByzantineCommentarieson Aristotlethroughthe Arabsand St. Thomasto Kepler," DumbartonOaksPapers 16 ( 1962):67-93, andRichardC. Dales, "TheDe-Animationof the Heavens in the Middle Ages," J. Hist. Ideas, 41 (1980):531-50. 43 Muhammad A'la b. 'All al-Tahanawi, Kashshdf istildhat al-funan: A Dictionary of the Technical Terms Used in the Sciences (of the Musalmans, edited by Mawlawies Mohammad Wajih, Abd

60

E JAMIL RAGEP

Let us take stock. Islamic scientists inherited an astronomy from the ancients that already had been differentiated to a lesser or greater degree from naturalphilosophy. Islamic astronomers, though, carried this process much farther along, and it does not seem unreasonable to see this, at least in part, as a response to religious objections directed at Hellenistic physics and metaphysics, on the one hand, and to religious neutrality toward mathematics, on the other. An attentive reader,though, might still have questions about these tentative conclusions. Why, for example, did someone like Tisi still insist that astronomy needed physical and metaphysical principles even while he contributed toward making it more independent? Did any Islamic astronomer ever defend an astronomy completely independent of philosophy? And finally, can we make a stronger, more explicit and less circumstantial case for a connection between religion and this freeing of astronomy from philosophy? In the remaining part of the essay, I explore these questions. As we have seen, Biruni implies that the physics one needs for astronomy could be generated within the astronomical context using mathematics and observation; hence one would not need to import "philosophical physics." But was this really feasible? Could one claim that uniform circular motion in the heavens, the straightline motions of the sublunar realm, and, most important of all, the Earth's state of rest were not based upon Aristotelian physics? As mentioned earlier, Tuis certainly did not believe one could go that far. In part, this was due to one particular instance that became a cause celebre of late medieval Islamic astronomy.44In a famous and controversial passage, Tius explicitly says that the Earth's state of rest cannot be observationally determined and explicitly denies Ptolemy's claim that it can be.45In at least this one instance, mathematics and observation fail us, and we therefore need to import from natural philosophy the physical principle that the element earth's natural motion is rectilinear and therefore the Earth cannot rotate naturally.In a more general form, this position was reiterated forcefully and at some length by Tuis's sixteenth-century commentator al-BirjandL.46This, then, was a bottom line that shows us why some astronomers could not abide Ij?'s compromise and why Tlus and others insisted on astronomy's need for natural philosophy. But not every astronomer agreed with Tusi. In fact his own student Qutb al-Din al-Haqq,and Gholam Kadirunderthe superintendenceof A. Sprengerand W. Nassau Lees, 2 vols. (Calcutta:W. N. Lees' Press, 1862), vol. 1, p. 47. 44This question, namely whether the Earth'sstate of rest could be determinedby observational tests, is dealt with in my "Tuisiand Copernicus:The Earth'sMotion in Context,"to appearin Science in Context.It is also discussed,more summarily,in Ragep, Nasir al-Dfn (cit. n. 12), vol. 2, pp. 383-5. 45The passage, which is from the Tadhkira(Ragep, NasTral-DIn [cit. n. 12], vol. 1, pp. 106-7), is as follows: "It is not possible to attributethe primarymotion to the Earth.This is not, however, because of what has been maintained,namely that this would cause an object thrownup in the air not to fall to its original position but instead it would necessarily fall to the west of it, or that this would cause the motion of whateverleaves the [Earth],such as an arrowor a bird, in the direction of the [Earth's]motion to be slower, while in the directionopposite to it to be faster.For the partof the air adjacentto the [Earth]could conceivably conform (yushayi'u)to the Earth'smotion along with whateveris joined to it, just as the aether[(here) = upperlevel of air] conforms(yushdyi'u)to the orb as evidenced by the comets, which move with its motion. Rather,it is on account of the [Earth]having a principleof rectilinearinclinationthatit is precludedfrom moving naturallywith a circularmotion."The similarityto Copernicus,De Revolutionibus(Nuremburg,1543), 6a, lines 1634, is discussed in the referenceslisted in the precedingfootnote. 46 'Abd al-'All al-Blrjandl,"Sharhal-Tadhkira,'HoughtonMS Arabic4285, fol. 39b, HarvardCollege Library,Cambridge,Mass.; for his more generalstatementsdefendingthe use of naturalphilosophy in astronomy,see fols. 7a-7b and 38a.


61

al-Shirazi took issue with his sometime master and claimed that one could establish the Earth's state of rest by an observational test, thus obviating the need for importing a physical principle from philosophy.47This position, of course, goes well with what we have seen of Shirazi's insistence, following Ptolemy, that the mathematical proofs of astronomy were more secure than those of physics and theology; by claiming that observational tests could establish the Earth's state of rest, one could protect astronomy's integrity from the encroachment of natural philosophy and metaphysics. But because this debate was mainly being carried out within the confines of the scientific literature,the religious dimensions are not very explicit. We may feel justified in claiming that BirunTand Shirazi were being influenced by religious considerations in trying to separate astronomy from philosophy, but this is merely a conjecture. In contrast, there can be no doubt as to the religious context of this debate in the already mentioned commentary on Tusi's theological work, the TajrTdal-'aqd'id (Epitome of belief), written by 'All al-Qushji. Qushji was the son of Prince Ulugh Beg's falconer and grew up in or close to the Timurid court in Samarqand in the fifteenth century. Samarqand at the time, with its observatory, large scientific staff, brilliant individuals, and scientifically accomplished patron Ulugh Beg, was without a doubt the major center of science in the world and certainly could rival its thirteenth-century predecessor that had been established by Tuis in Maragha under Mongol patronage.48After the assassination of his patron Ulugh Beg, Quishji traveled through Iran and Anatolia and eventually assumed a chair in astronomy and mathematics at the college (madrasa) of Aya Sofia in the newly Islamic city of Istanbul.49It should be emphasized that the teaching of science in the religious schools, and later the establishment of an observatory in Istanbul, were opposed, sometimes bitterly, by the religious establishment.50QushjT, writing his commentary on Ttus's "Epitome of Belief" after the assassination but before assuming his chair, was no doubt mindful of this religious opposition and sought to answer the objection to astronomy that I have previously quoted from him. Let us summarize some of the key points he makes. (The entire Arabic text, with my translation, is in the Appendix.) Q0shjT is clearly sensitive to the Ash'arite 47 Shirazl'sdiscussion can be found in maqalaII, bab 1, fasl 4 (fols. 46a-47b) of his "Nihayatalidrakft dirayatal-aflak"(cit. n. 38), which was completed in A.D. 1281. A similarpassage is in his "al-Tuhfaal-shahiyyafi al-hay'a,"which appearedin A.D. 1284 (bab II, fasl 4 [Jami'al-Basha MS 287, Mosul (= ArabLeaguefalak musannafghayr mufahrasFilm 346), fols. 15a-18a, and MS Add. 7477, British Museum, London, fols. 9b-lla]). This section of the "Nihaya"was translatedinto Germanby EilhardWiedemannin "Ueberdie Gestalt, Lage und Bewegung der Erde, sowie philosophisch-astronomischeBetrachtungenvon Qutb al-Din al-Schirazi,"Archivfiir die Geschichteder

Naturwissenschaften und der Technik 3 (1912):395-422 (reprinted in E. Wiedemann, Gesammelte Schriften zur arabisch-islamischen Wissenschaftsgeschichte, 3 vols. [Frankfurt am Main: Institut fur

Geschichteder Arabisch-IslamischenWissenschaften,1984], vol. 2, pp. 637-64). 4XOn the Samarqandobservatory,see Aydin Sayili, The Observatoryin Islam (Ankara:Turkish Historical Society, 1960), pp. 259-89. See also E. S. Kennedy,"The Heritage of Ulugh Beg," in idem, Astronomy and Astrology in the Medieval Islamic World (Brookfield, Vt.: Ashgate, 1998),

no. XI. 49 See A. Adnan Adivar,"'All b. Muhammadal-Kfishdji,"Encyclopediaof Islam, 2nd ed. (Leiden: Brill, 1960), vol. 1, p. 393, andidem, La Sciencechez les Turcsottomans(Paris:Maisonneuve,1939), pp. 33-5. 5PAdivar discusses this in his La Science chez les Turcsottomans (cit. n. 49). For the Istanbul observatory,which the religious establishmentforced to be demolished, see Sayili, The Observatory (cit. n. 48), pp. 289-305.

62

F JAMIL RAGEP

position on causality, and he makes the interesting observation that part of their objection to it, at least as regards astronomy, has to do with the astrological contention of a causal link between the positions of the orbs and terrestrialevents (especially "unusual circumstances"). To get around such objections, Qushji insists that astronomy does not need philosophy, since one could build the entire edifice of orbs necessary for the astronomical enterprise using only geometry, reasonable suppositions, appropriatejudgments, and provisional hypotheses. These premises allow astronomers to conceive {takhayyalu}from among the possible approachesthe one by which the circumstancesof the planets with their manifoldirregularitiesmay be put in orderin such a way as to facilitatetheirdeterminationof the positionsandconjunctionsof these planetsfor any time they might wish and so as to conformwith perception{hiss} and sight {'iydn}. What this will allow us to do is make presumptions that best explain "or save" the phenomena. Of course God might, by His will, cause the phenomena directly; Qushji gives the example of God darkening the Moon without the Earth's shadow and causing an eclipse. But just as we go about our everyday lives using what he calls ordinary ('adiyya) and practical (tajribiyya) knowledge, thus should we proceed in science. Here he allows himself a bit of sarcasm, arguing that we could (for example) claim that after we had left our house one day, God turned all the pots and pans into human scholars who took to investigating the sciences of theology and geometry; insofar as we feel confident in assuming that this has not happened, so also should we have confidence that the heavens normally follow a regular pattern that we have the capacity to explain. We do not, however, need to make the further claim that our explanation represents the only possible one; in this way, QfishjTbelieves he has made astronomy independent of philosophy. What makes Qishji's position especially fascinating are some of the repercussions it had for his astronomical work. Since he claims to be no longer tied to the principles of Aristotelian physics, he feels free to explore other possibilities, including the Earth'srotation. Clearly within the tradition of the debate that we outlined earlier, he agrees with TusT,thus countering Ptolemy and ShYrazi,and argues that the question of the Earth'smotion cannot be determined by observation. But unlike Tfisi, he refuses to settle the matter by appealing to Aristotelian natural philosophy. Instead he states that "it is not established that what has a principle of rectilinear inclination is prevented from [having] circular motion."5' He then ends with a startling conclusion: "Thus nothing false (fasid) follows [from the assumption of a rotating Earth]"52 Quishjialso showed that he was true to his principles in his elementary astronomy work, Risalah dar 'ilm-i hay'a; in it, he took the highly unusual step of dispensing with the section on natural philosophy with which almost all other similar treatises began.53 51 Qushji, SharhTajrrd(cit. n. 24), p. 195. The same point is made by Copernicusin De Revolutionibus(cit. n. 45), 1.8. 52 Ibid. Qushjl'sposition, and the possible relationof this Islamic debate to Copernicus,is dealt with more fully in my "TuisIand Copernicus"(cit. n. 44). 53 This work was originally in Persian and, given the evidence of the extant manuscripts,quite popular.It was translatedby Qushji himself into Arabic and dedicated to Mehmet, the Conqueror (Fatih)of Constantinople,whence it was called al-Risala al-Fathiyya.Cf. TofighHeidarzadeh,"The AstronomicalWorksof 'All Qfshjl" (in Turkish),M. A. thesis, (IstanbulUniv., 1997), pp. 24, 30-32,


63

But in freeing himself from Aristotle, did Quishjialso free himself from seeking reality? In other words, instead of being the precursor of Copericus, is he rather the predecessor of Osiander, the Lutheran minister whose anonymous preface to De Revolutionibus proclaimed, "[L]et no one expect anything certain from astronomy"? My tentative answer is that I do not think Qushji's position is instrumentalist in the same sense as Iji's (or Osiander's).54And the reason, in a way, is quite simple. Iji was a theologian, whereas Quishji,in his heart of hearts, was a scientist, whose work was ultimately a way to know and understand God's creation. Qushji makes this clear with his remarks at the end of his discussion of premises. The astronomers' models may be calculating devices that cannot be claimed as unique, but nevertheless they are, he tells us, a source of wonder, because of their correspondence with the observed phenomena. He continues, "Whoever contemplates the situation of shadows on the surfaces of sundials will bear witness that this is due to something wondrous and will praise [the astronomers] with the most laudatory praise." Qiishji here seems to echo the words of Jurjani, cited earlier, in which the latter countered Ij? by insisting that through astronomy we can behold God's subtle wisdom and wondrous creation. Qiishji, though, in rejecting the view that somehow we can know true reality, is attempting to present a rather more sophisticated position: that the correspondence between our human constructions and external reality is itself a source of wonder.55 Ultimately, then, for Jurjani, Qiishji, and many other Islamic scientists, Iji's wellmeant instrumentalist compromise was rejected. As would also occur in Europe, they held that one could glorify God with science; one could not glorify God with conventions. IV. CONCLUSION

In the generation or two following Quishji,science in the Islamic East continued to thrive. Several major astronomical works were produced by two contemporaries of Copernicus, 'Abd al-'AlI al-Blrjandi (d. A.D. 1525 or 1526) and Shams al-Din alKhafri (fl. A.D. 1525). As we have already noted, Birjandl continued the debate regarding the Earth'smotion and strongly defended the need to use both naturalphilosophy and metaphysics in astronomy. In fact, he quotes and directly argues against In developing his position, Birjandl the passage that I have quoted from QuishjL.56 AstronomiLiteratiiriiTarihi,2 vols. (Istanbul:IRCICA,1997), vol. 1, 41; E. Ihsanogluet al., Osmanlih pp. 27-35; and David Pingree, "IndianReception of Muslim Versionsof PtolemaicAstronomy,"in Tradition, Transmission, Transformation (cit. n. 2), p. 474.

54 For a comparisonof Iji and Osiander,see Sabra,"Science and Philosophy"(cit. n. 2), pp. 38-9. It wouldbe quite interestingto comparethe latermanifestationsof IjT'spositionin the Islamicschools with what RobertWestmanhas called the "Wittenberginterpretation"of Copemican theory,which allowed the hypothesisof a Sun-centereduniverseto be studiedin sixteenth-centuryLutherancircles while it condemnedany attemptto embraceit as trueor real. 55 Cf. AlbertEinstein,Ideas and Opinions(New York:Dell, 1973), p. 285: "Thevery fact thatthe totality of our sense experiences is such that by means of thinking (operationswith concepts, and the creation and use of definite functional relations between them, and the coordinationof sense experiencesto these concepts)it can be putin order,this fact is one which leaves us in awe, but which we shall neverunderstand.One may say 'the eternalmysteryof the worldis its comprehensibility.'It is one of the greatrealizationsof ImmanuelKantthatthe postulationof a real externalworldwould be senseless withoutthis comprehensibility." 56 (cit. n. 46), fol. 7a-7b. Curiously,Birjandldoes not mentionQuishji Birjandi,"Sharhal-Tadhkira" by name but simply refers to him as "one of the eminent scholars"(ba'd al-afadil).

64

E JAMIL RAGEP

makesan interestinganalysisof whatmightoccurif the Earthwere rotating(which he himself rejects) and hypothesizes somethingquite close to Galileo'snotion of "circularinertia."57 The point is not to claim thatCopernicus(or Galileo) readBirjandi(thoughthis does not now seem as far-fetchedas it might once have appeared),but ratherto indicatethe remarkableintensityof scholarshipanddiversityof opinionthatcontinued in Islamic lands well into the sixteenthcentury(andin fact even later).This is a time thatuntil recentlywas seen as a periodcharacterizedby the steep decline, or even absenceof scientificwork. Since the vast majorityof texts writtenduringthis late periodin the historyof Islamic science have yet to be studied(much less published), many exciting surprisesmight well be anticipated.But whetheror not this provesto be the case, the presentdiscussionof one small aspect of the situationof science in Islam shouldalertus to the fact that science was still a majorforce well into the early modem period and can shed light not only on Islamic intellectual historybut the historyof Europeanscience as well. And one hopes thatpartof that light will help us to understandthe relationbetweenscience andreligionin boththe Islamicworldand in Christendom. That religion played a role in Islamic science-perhaps even a crucial roleshouldnot surpriseus. What is surprising,especially to a Westernaudiencein the twenty-firstcentury,is thatthatrole was not simply one of oppositionand obstruction but rather,at least sometimes,of constructiveengagement.I hope I will not be misunderstoodas being an apologistfor religionif I makethe historicalobservation thatreligiousattackson aspectsof science andphilosophyin both Islam andChristendomled to a more criticalattitudetowardscientificand philosophicaldoctrines and thatthis often resultedin some interestingand even productiveoutcomes.This has been a point increasinglyacceptedby historiansof Europeanscience, and one thatwould greatlyhelp Islamists,and those who write on Islam, to understandthe complexityof the interactionof secularand religious knowledgein Islamic civilization. 57

Ibid., fol. 37a. See furthermy "Tisi and Copericus" (cit. n. 44).

Appendix Concerningthe SupposedDependence of Astronomyupon Philosophy By 'Alf al-Qushjl [186] It is statedthatthe positing of the orbs in [that]particularway dependsupon false principlestakenfromphilosophy{falsafa}, for example,the denialof the volitional Omnipotentand the lack of possibility of tearingand mendingof the orbs, and that they do not intensify nor weaken in their motions, and that they do not reversedirection,turn,stop, norundergoany changeof statebutratheralwaysmove with a simple motionin the directionin which they are going, as well as otherphysical and theologicalmatters,some of which go againstthe Law {shar'} and some of which arenot establishedinasmuchas theirproofsaredefective{madkhula}.For if it were not basedupon those principles,we could say thatthe volitionalOmnipotent by His will moves those orbs in the observedorder,or we could say that the stars move in the orb as fish do in water,speeding up and slowing down, going backward,stopping and moving forwardwithout need for those many orbs. But by assumingthe validity {thubut} of those principles,what they have statedis an affirmation{ithbdt} of a cause based upon the existence of an effect; but this will not be valid unless one knows the correlation{musdwdt}[noteunderthe line: "i.e., the correlationof the effect to the cause"].But this is not known, since thereis no necessary[connection];nor is therea demonstration{burhdn}of the impossibility thatthe observedirregularitiesare for reasonsotherthanthe ones they have stated. However,there is nothing to the above, since it stems from a lack of study of the problemsand proofs of this discipline.Most of [its principles]are suppositions [{muqaddamdt hadsiyya} = (literally) conjectural premises] that the mind {'aql},

uponobservingthe above-mentionedirregularities,resolvesto posit accordingto an observedorderand a relianceupon geometricalpremisesthatare not open to even a scintillaof doubt.For example:the sightingof the full andcrescentshapes [of the Moon] in the mannerin which they are observedmakes it certainthat the light of the Moon is derivedfrom the Sun and that a lunareclipse occurs because of the interpositionof the Earthbetweenthe Sun andMoon, andthata solareclipse occurs because of the interpositionof the Moon betweenthe Sun and the eye, this despite the assertionof the validityof the volitionalOmnipotentand the denial This appendixis my translationof 'All al-Qushjl'sSharhtajrfdal-'aqa'id (cit. n. 24), p. 186 (line (cit. 11) throughp. 187 (line 29); partof this passage is cited by Blrjandiin his "Sharhal-Tadhkira" n. 46), fol. 7a-7b, and a good partof it is quotedby Tahanawiin his Kashshdfistilahatal-funun(cit. n. 43), vol. 1, pp. 48-9.

66

yc

'd^L^tj~^J^

l

r

iLP iS

oL J4p JHz

oiub

(

>-l

j^s

I^j

J^~ CU^/l j^l

JFi y1 luki

^3^!L

..~

~

~

~

9j

j

l

: Igi^

L;As Jl

C~~~~~~~~~j

r

~~~~j

jP 1^1

,,-jlA Y/9Sjj

lj1 ,+l ^Ju j1 jL? JSL^ 91 9 2?\^j^J1 J ^tj

jS

4Jb J! jH iJXIj

-^JliLK YY +^ cjl JI JL?

J Jq .^JlS

v

j->41Jl

ji

S

jjti jjS A

i^JbJ

J jd?

ij

tw

2

j-A L;l!L^ ti

jJI-

4^;J

^s__

j

b- F K-

I lI L:1,JS

LeJl

-

Ag

-

i

j

I,

lg

J| 31^

4

Uf' sg

^lW

(r4

>l i J

j jp

;clJI

Jl

gol

(JjJ22

j

j Y1

ji

l^21^

jJ-lJ j-LJ

^

,U1g eJJlju^j9l

Cj ;-Jl

sy)i^^L1I

l

L

s g

A

yL

l >L I

jja

-j

Jl^I

j4l

I(1Jj j,U

J^^ cujisPlaa

szg

ziJ

(LJJIYIl

J

j

l ^l

LL

y L.J

u JL

l

L3a

gLLJA s4^jj

( 'L^

J

LLA

i l^15 t;

.

4

dl-A* 4kw

l

jl

L;5A

2J

L>^;?li

70

F JAMIL RAGEP

the convexity of the deferent touches the convexity of the parecliptic at a common point, as is the case with the concavities. They have no other reason {mustanad} [for this] except that it is more proper that there not be any useless part in the heavens. Similarly they say that the Sun's orb is above the orb of Venus and of Mercury, since the best arrangementand order dictate that that which is farther away or having a larger circuit has the slowest motion among the planets; or that in the order and arrangement the Sun is in the middle-in the manner of the tassel of a necklacebetween those that reach the four elongations from it, i.e., the sextiles, quadratures, trines, and oppositions, and those whose elongation is only the least, i.e., the sextile; and (4) other premises that they state are indefinite {'ala sabll al-taraddud}, there being no final determination {al-jazm}. Thus they say that the irregular speed in the Sun's motion is either due to an eccentric or to an epicyclic hypothesis without there being a definitive decision for one or the other. If one were to grant that the establishing of the orbs in the manner in which they have stated was based on those false principles, this would doubtless be due to a claim by the practitioners of this science that there was no possibility other than the approach we have stated. But if their claim was that it was possible for it to be by this approach, even though it was possible that it could be by other approaches, one could not then imagine a dependency. It is more than sufficient for them to conceive {takhayyalu} from among the possible approaches the one by which the circumstances of the planets with their manifold irregularities may be put in order in such a way as to facilitate their determination of the positions and conjunctions of these planets for any time they might wish and so as to conform with perception {hiss} and sight {'iydn}, this in a way that the intellect and the mind find wondrous {tatahayyaru}. Whoever contemplates the situation of shadows on the surfaces of sundials will bear witness that this is due to something wondrous and will praise [the astronomers] with the most laudatory praise.

r)1 r

eJS's w? en eoens 0Odo xandtalt ' -,ft, butweluww ft uykba3ea1butaBeitoaourfetwah , am) nevr *o. dalnotbe(n^w 4 eot eu Ois yurCCd/'minijJ wwtJ^o:Ewvedeno ma , v't.re. Vrtnuary<s tot by anyfence or redoAct the inward sad much le have we ayTSot Subfae whoeraute SutB,Er butwdot Stlne Gym?,rCod G;l.your6 l caot Subfi. Lnhaeoa mansdveid on of the Sufance ofGod:Wek ow nm a/,kefCnmad/ Qy,miyEuma.wUr? el amwedo notn

y ,yyr

io*A ? Jaado(4Aatu

t)t

Zeriea

?andAstteu

a

b withntf'iy. hesnoEWife andEceientS trncture muftual^ ion.CodltfSi of dmng y yjas?out f heei*ulson of SdlsysAlCauflaisb s utveAdmoeaadWc$;p oaios dfraied 3leey Ratitorf.To qlie:mordGod soul f i i5ao aiidirloGt _I oa otGo .The the Oanniprenee ofiodAi. It a6af deni t*iataluIeV aa,8diaee es xau SI;vinfalord,but eveLor ideSiaup e God eilin 1epniuofa SpiritalaintgconmtuteGo 4trse iee,l*ri"Ayddhtc ibut oadyxm. of ^nueco/'i6sire*we dfthig

4ewvdas ai-^ ?J,.^^^4^j

ste#tta /a44jp"%&ftf Z.&1w=s S | _

sriY#r

__^^^_

_

Figure 4. A John Senex astronomical chart from the early 1720s with William Whiston's "Scheme of the Solar System" and part of John Maxwell's translation from the General Scholium (Univ. of London Library, Goldsmith ' Library of Economic Literature, Broadside Collection 37, No. IV Courtesy of the University of London.)

THE THEOLOGYOF NEWTON'S GENERALSCHOLIUM

191

written on one of the last flyleaves of a copy of the second edition of the Principia conclude that the Scholium seems design'dto give Countenanceto Dr.Clarke'sScheme.ThatGentlemanmakesthe WordGod to be only a RelativeTerm.He tells us, it is never intendedto signify the Divine Nature,or the abstractmetaphysicalAttributesof God, but only his Attributes relativeto Us, as his Dominion,Authority&c. It is one of his chief Positions,Thatthe Son is stiledGod,not upontheAccountof his Substanceor Essence,how divinesoever; but becauseof his Authorityover us.86 It is instructive that the author of these observations had no trouble perceiving the implications of Newton and Clarke's analysis for the deity of Christ. Thus, some of Newton's more theologically astute contemporaries saw through the obscure language of the Scholium to identify its intent, providing yet one more way of verifying the antitrinitariannature of the Scholium.87 Some-including both Newton's supporters and enemies-did indeed recognize the covert assault on the Trinity in the General Scholium.8aIn the next section, I focus on one particularly illuminating example. SOCINIANISM IN THE SCHOLIUM

Thus far I have shown that Newton's private manuscripts contain unambiguous antitrinitariantheology and that the same ideas (albeit in more oblique form) made their way into the General Scholium, thus demonstrating that this document contains antitrinitarian argumentation. The evidence behind this syllogism, and the conclusion itself, I take to be overwhelming and incontrovertible. But I believe it is possible to be even more specific. The theology presented in the Scholium is certainly compatible with Arianism-which taught a supreme high God and a lesser, created god, Christ-and we know from his manuscripts that the Christology at which Newton arrived closely resembled this fourth-century doctrinal position. But there is evi86 Annotations at the end of the second edition of the Principia, University of Toronto (SCI 1713 ed., copy 1). In making these points, the annotator refers to page 296 of Clarke's Scripture-Doctrine, a portion of which is quoted at the beginning of the present section (see n. 69). These annotations were first brought to light in 1996 by Larry Stewart, who suggests that the annotator was Trinity College fellow James Paine, who, as a note to the annotations reveals, had in turn taken the comments from a 1720 work by John Cumming (see Stewart, "Seeing through the Scholium" [cit. n. 6], pp. 134-8). 87

Anothernoteworthyexample of this can be found in a clever letterwrittento Henry Pemberton

and published in the 20 May 1731 issue of the Grub-Street Journal. The anonymous author provides an English translation of the most heavily theological section of the General Scholium and entitles it "The NEWTONIAN CREED."In a probing prefatory appeal, the writer asks Pemberton (who, as already mentioned, chose to omit the General Scholium from his View) "to explain by a short comment, the meaning of the following Creed; which, it is imagined, was written by Sir ISAACNEWTON, in imitation of S. ATHANASIUS'S Creed, to convince the world, that his Religion was as much above that of the vulgar, as his Philosophy." The translation given is that of Whiston, likely taken from his Corollaries of 1728 or 1729 (the publication of which by the heretic Whiston may also have provided a pivotal clue to this writer as to the General Scholium's meaning). This example from the GrubStreet Journal, along with Andrew Motte's translation of 1729, brings to ten the number of English translations from the General Scholium published between 1713 and 1731 (six of which were by Whiston). XsIt would be pointless for me to go over in detail ground already handled in a masterful way by Stewart, who was the first to provide conclusive evidence for what I want to argue was a successful (albeit minority) reading of the General Scholium. I therefore refer the reader to his "Seeing through the Scholium" (cit. n. 6) and "Samuel Clarke" (cit. n. 6).

192

STEPHEND. SNOBELEN

dence that Newton appropriated ideas from another non-Trinitariandoctrinal tradition as well. Our first clue comes from the pen of the fiery Calvinist divine John Edwards. In a postscript to a 1714 work against Clarke, Edwards not only accused Newton in print of attacking the Trinity in the General Scholium but also raised the specter of Socinianism.89 Edwards was an old war horse who had long fought the infiltration of Socinian heresy into England, and it is true that he was not coy about throwing out slanderous labels. But Edwards also knew his Socinianism well and added substance to his charge by contending that Newton's linguistic arguments about God in the General Scholium, like those in Clarke's Scripture-Doctrine, had been taken straight from the thirteenth chapter of the Socinian Johann Crell's De Deo et ejus attributis (Concerning God and his attributes).9"No one has yet followed through with the implications of this allegation; I want to argue that we must take it seriously. We have already seen that Newton dissented from the Trinitarian view that the term "God" is absolute and refers to essence, arguing instead that the word is relative and has reference to dominion. Crell makes the very same point in chapter 13 of his De Deo, where he writes, becausethe termGod ... is fond of... additionalclause[s] ... which relationis signifiedto the others,as whenGod is saidto be Godof thisor that... it is easily understood, thatthattermis neitherby natureparticular,nor does it signify God'sessence itself .... Why thereforeis God so frequentlycalled God of these or those?Certainlybecausethe term God is principally a name of power and empire.9'

This is precisely the position Newton articulates in the General Scholium. The characterization of "God" as a relative word is, as Edwards noted, expounded in chapter 13 of Crell's De Deo.92And, as Edwards implied, so is the God of dominion.93He 89The Socinians (or Polish Brethren)were a biblicist, antitrinitarian movementof the sixteenthand seventeenth-centuryRadical Reformation.They were viewed in Newton's time as even more radical than the Arians. See The Polish Brethren,ed. G. H. Williams (Missoula, Mont.: Scholars Press, 1980), and G. H. Williams, TheRadicalReformation,3rd ed. (Kirksville,Mo.: SixteenthCentury Journal, 1992). Here it is also worth noting that Leibniz, too, did not shrink from accusing Newton of Socinianism-even if he did so on an incorrectassumption(A Collectionof Papers [cit. n. 16], p. 31). An earlier and briefer presentationof the case for Socinian content in the General Scholium can be found in Snobelen, "IsaacNewton, Heretic"(cit. n. 46), pp. 406-7. 90John Edwards, Some Brief Critical Remarks on Dr. Clarkes Last Papers (London, 1714), pp. 36-7. Laterin the postscriptEdwardscharges thatNewton'sargumentsin the GeneralScholium mirrornot only those of Clarkebut those of Whistonas well (p. 40). 91Crell, De Deo et ejus attributis(n.p., n. p., 1631), col. 100 (quotationsfrom Crell translatedfrom Latin). Chapter13 is entitled "De nomine 0c6;" (Concerningthe name God). The portioncited by Edwardsis italicized. 92 Crell, De Deo (cit. n. 90), cols. 89-102. 93Ibid., cols. 101-2; see also chap. 23, "De PotestateDei" (Concerningthe power of God), cols. 161-91. Edwardsgoes on to argue against the deficiencies of "dominion"as a definition for the deity,puttingforwardtermssuch as "goodness,""holiness,""mercifulness,"and "benignity"as more appropriateand also contending that "dominion"could not hold for all time, since "God had not Dominion, when therewere none to have Dominionover."He also attemptsto expose anotherpotential weakness in Newton's argumentby claiming that if "Dominionmakes a God,"then the term (with its despotic connotations,in classical usage) was more apt for "the God of this World,"i.e., Satan (Edwards,Some Brief Critical Remarks [cit. n. 89], pp. 39, 40). By this point in his life, however,Newton had come to reject a literaldevil, possibly in partbecause of the logic of his views on God'sdominion(see my "Lust,PrideandAmbition:Isaac Newton on the Devil,"forthcoming).


193

also observes that Newton shares his usage of the epithet "Supreme God" (Deus summus) in the General Scholium not only with the Arians but also with the Socinians, both of which traditions need to employ the qualification summus "to distinguish the Father from the Son, who [sic] they hold to be an Inferior God."94But the parallels with Socinian theology extend even farther than Edwards himself insinuates. Crell discusses the relative nature of God's names and titles by showing, like Newton, how commonly God is called the God of "this or that," stating that "God alone ... is said to be 'powerful one,' because He has empire alone by himself, and indeed over all things, and whoever has power (by himself, that is), has it either by His gift, or at least by His permission."' In language highly reminiscent of Newton, Crell explains that this term "pertains first to loftiness, then to breadth of the same empire, because he is King of kings, Lord of the dominant, Lord of hosts, God of gods, and finally God and head of Christ himself."96Crell's final point here is crucial. Both he and Newton want to show that only the Father is supremely and uniquely God and that He is Himself the God of Christ-the principal antitrinitarianconclusion intended by the argument from the relative nature of God's titles. The additional note that Newton added to the General Scholium in 1726 points out that "Princes are called Gods, Psal. lxxxii. ver. 6. and John x. ver. 35. And Moses is called a God to his brother Aaron, and a God to Pharaoh (Exod. iv. ver. 16. and vii. ver. )."97 This otherwise inexplicable notion that persons other than the supreme God can be called "God" is also another standardSocinian position that is presented in the very chapter of Crell's De Deo identified by Edwards.98Moreover, three of the four proof texts that Newton employed to support the argument are also found in this chapter.99Furthermore, the argument about false gods and idolatry is also virtually identical to what we find in another of Crell's writings.'00 Thus, even after being accused of Socinianism, Newton added to the third edition of the General Scholium further ideas that resemble Socinian teachings. Such close parallels cannot be coincidental.'"l Nor does the fact that Newton does not appear to have possessed a copy of Crell's De Deo argue against this. His close friend and neighbor Samuel Clarke had at least one copy of the Bibliotheca Fratrum Polonorum, which included the 94 Edwards,Some Brief Critical Remarks(cit. n. 90), p. 39. Newton uses the title Deus summus three times in the General Scholium (with the thirdexample in the materialadded in 1726 to the note on space) (Motte,Principles,2:389-90, 390, n. b; Motte-Cajori,Principles,2:544-45, 545 n. *; Cohen-Whitman,Principia, pp. 940, 942, 942. n. j). As Edwardsimplies, it is not only the simple deploymentof this seemingly innocentterm but the intentbehindthe usage that is crucial. 95 Crell, De Deo (cit. n. 91), cols. 173-4. 96 Ibid., col. 174. 97 Motte, Principles,2:389, n. a (with Ex. 7.8 in the 1729 edition once again correctedto Ex. 7.1); Motte-Cajori,Principles,2:544. n. *: Cohen-Whitman,Principia,p. 941, n. g; cf. Newton, Keynes MS 3, p. 45r: BodmerMS 5B, fol. 8r. ,9 Crell, De Deo (cit. n. 91), cols. 94-9. "9'Ibid., cols. 94-6, 99. ""'JohannCrell, The TwoBooks of John CrelliusFrancus,touching One God the Father (Kosmoburg [London], 1665), p. 5. '01Without specifically mentioning the General Scholium, other perceptive theological writers, such as William Stephens,also recognizedthat these arguments,firstpresentedby the Arians in the fourthcentury,had been more recentlyrevivedby the Socinians (Stephens,TheDivine Persons [cit. n. 831,p. 5). In fact, it is muchmore likely thatStephenshadbeen exposed to these teachingsdirectly or indirectlythroughcontemporarySocinian andUnitarianwriters(or theirdetractors)thanby reading the more limitedAriancorpus.

194

STEPHEND. SNOBELEN

work.'02Even without Crell's De Deo, both the theological reasoning and the constellation of biblical texts are all Socinian topoi typical of their hermeneutical profile.103Edwards was right: there is Socinianism in the General Scholium.l04 Other evidence helps to confirm what Edwards suspected. Newton began no later than 1690 an engagement with Socinian theology that was to last for the rest of his life.'05 The Socinians were the leading and most intellectual antitrinitarian movement of the seventeenth century, and it is thus not surprising to find that Newton exhibited an interest in their views. In 1689 Newton began a series of theological exchanges with Locke, whose intense interest in Socinianism is established and whose collection of Sociniana-totaling no less than forty-three works-is remarkable for its size and scope. Newton also had access to the excellent collection of Socinian works held at Trinity College.106 Newton himself owned at least eight Socinian books, along with another three Socinian-influenced titles by Transylvanian Unitarian Gyorgy Enyedi, German Arian Christopher Sand, and English Unitarian John Biddle.107 As late as 1726 Newton both met with and patronized the communicant Polish Brother Samuel Crell. And parallels with Socinian theology abound in Newton's private manuscripts. Newton's interest in Socinianism thus may not have been limited to appropriating attractive antitrinitarianargumentation. Socinianism was a complete doctrinal system, and other distinctive and often unorthodox theological beliefs formed an integral part of the theological rationale, including mortalism, the denial of the eternity of hellfire, believers' baptism, the separation of church and state, irenicism, and the advocacy of religious toleration. All of these elements occur in Newton's thought. Further analogies with Socinianism exist in Newton's view of church history, his antitrinitariantextual criticism, and his scriptural hermeneutics. None of this proves that Newton derived his thoughts on every one of these teachings directly from Socinian texts, as opposed to independent study. What is certain is that no other Christian doctrinal tradition-including ArianismSee Snobelen, "The Library of Samuel Clarke," Enlightenment and Dissent 16 (1997):185-97. E.g., the argumentfor the relativityof the term"God"based on the use of this wordforjudges, kings, and angels, was paradigmaticof Socinian apologetics. (Cf. Williams, The Polish Brethren, [cit. n. 88], pp. 316, 392-3, 398, 560; TheRacovianCatechism,trans.ThomasRees [London,1818], pp. 29, 34, 57, 151, 196; Stanislaw Lubieniecki, History of the Polish Reformation,ed. G. H. Williams [Minneapolis:Fortress, 1995], p. 163; Paul Best, MysteriesDiscovered [London, 1647], pp. 4-6 [Best was an English Socinian convert];JohannCrell, One God the Father [cit. n. 100], pp. 13-22, 190, 214, 222). Likewise, all of the verses that Newton cites in his note on God were standardlydeployed as proof texts by antitrinitarianapologists of the period and were used much more frequentlyby them thanby theirTrinitariancounterparts(cf. Lubieniecki,Historyof the Polish 102

103

Reformation, pp. 161-5; Williams, The Polish Brethren [cit. n. 89], p. 104).

104 This is not to say thatit was Newton'sprimaryintentionto presentSocinianismin the Principia, nor that Newton himself was a Socinian (unlike the Socinians, he held to the premundaneexistence of Christ),only that he used-along with his own innovation-the sophisticatedtools of Socinian exegesis to furtherhis broadergoals for the GeneralScholium. 105Sourcesandfurtherdetail on this can be found in Snobelen."IsaacNewton, Heretic"(cit. n. 45), pp. 383-9. 106 Ibid., p. 385. Throughthe 1660s and perhapsas late as the early 1670s, Newton'srooms in the college were situatedunderthis library(see Lord Adrian,"Newton'sRooms in Trinity,'Notes and

Records of the Royal Society of London 18 [1963]: 17-24, and A Perspective View of ye Great Court

of TrinityCollege in Cambridge[ 1740], which shows the location of the old library). 107Simple ownershipof books does not, of course, necessarilyimply assentto theircontents;many orthodox divines also possessed Socinian works. Newton's status as an antitrinitarian,however, coupled with the parallelsbetween Sociniantheology andhis own, stronglyindicatesthathis attitude towardsuch workswould have been of an entirelydifferentorderfrom thatof the orthodox.


195

more closely matched Newton's belief system in its entirety. Put another way, Newton and the Socinians shared a common theological ethos. I present this additional background detail because I am aware that some may be reticent to accept the claim that Socinian (or, even more generally, antitrinitarian) hermeneutics underpin the General Scholium and that they do so in a deliberate way. It is thus important to examine the alternatives. One option, to argue that Newton was not an antitrinitarianat all, is no longer tenable, now that his private manuscripts are available.108In any case, Newton was an astute theologian and would hardly have dared to present ideas he knew would be taken as antitrinitarianif he had not been thoroughly committed to them. Another possibility is that he was so used to thinking in non-Trinitarianmodes of thought that he was actually not conscious that he had presented unorthodox theology in this public document. There are a number of serious difficulties with this proposal. First, the fastidious Newton, who characteristically wrote out draft after draft of his writings in order to get his wording just right, was not prone to verbal slips. The five surviving drafts of the General Scholium show that he rewrote this document extensively. He was also well aware of the dangers of articulating heresy openly. That much is made clear by his life-long Nicodemite stance. Furthermore, the deliberateness of Newton's writing is underscored by his addition of an antitrinitarian note to the 1726 edition, even after the document's Socinian language had been exposed by Edwards. I take the strongest alternative explanation to be the possibility that there is not a shred of Socinianism (strictly construed) in the Scholium but that the antitrinitarianideas expressed there are informed by Arianism-nothing more, nothing less. While it is certainly true that it is not always easy to distinguish between Arian and Socinian apologetics, there stand against this possibility at least four objections. First, Newton owned and read Socinian books, and was thus familiar with their theology. Second, closer parallels with at least some of the ideas in the Scholium (such as the relativity of the term "God") are to be found in Socinian writings of the seventeenth century than in the Arian treatises of the fourth century. Third, it was possible for a well-informed contemporary theologian such as Edwards to identify Socinian content. Fourth, a leading historian of Arianism, Maurice Wiles, has concluded that Newton's Christology is a mixture of both Arian and Socinian strands.109Finally, one could argue that it is possible that the analogies with Socinianism are purely coincidental and derive losThis has not stopped Thomas J. Pfizenmaierfrom recently attemptingto do this very thing (Pfizenmaier,"WasIsaac Newton an Arian?"J. Hist. Ideas 58 [1997]:57-80). 1()9Maurice Wiles, Archet'pal Heresy: Arianism through the Centuries (Oxford: Oxford Univ.

Press, 1996), pp. 83-4. The fact that analogiesto Socinian thoughtcan also be found in the writings of ClarkeandWhiston, as Edwardscorrectlyobserved,does not militateagainstthe conclusion that Newton was informedby Socinian as well as Arian theology.Although both Clarke and Whiston were known as Arians, neither was so in the classical sense. Moreover,with allowances for some independentthought,both men had gone throughtheirhereticalcatechumenatesat the feet of Newton himself, whose engagementwith Socinianismhad begun long before. In the case of Clarke,the theological contact continuedfor the rest of Newton'slife (Snobelen, "IsaacNewton, Heretic"[cit. n. 45], pp. 383-9, 402-3, and idem, "Caution,Conscience and the Newtonian Reformation:The Public and Private Heresies of Newton, Clarke and Whiston," Enlightenmentand Dissent 16 [ 1997]:151-84). Althoughboth ClarkeandWhistonpublicly attackedSocinianismand,like Newton, were not Socinianin the Christologicalsense, this would not havepreventedthem from appropriating Socinianarguments(consciously or not). Finally,in this regard,it is not incidentalthatClarkealmost certainlyowned the complete worksof the Socinians (see n. 102).

196

STEPHEND. SNOBELEN

exclusively from Newton's own considerable independent theological research. But even if this long shot were true (Newton believed in a vacuum, but did not live in one), what appreciable difference would there be between what is (and what was seen to be) at least functionally Socinian, if not also genetically so? The argumentation, in this case, would occupy a place theologically equivalent to Socinianism; this theology would, in turn, continue to be unequivocally antitrinitarian;and we would still come back to the original conclusion: the General Scholium to Newton's Principia is a heretical document through and through. NATURAL PHILOSOPHY, THEOLOGY, AND THE "FLOW OF INFLUENCE"

It is one thing to discuss the character of the theology of the concluding appendix to Newton's greatest work on natural philosophy, but quite another to demonstrate linkages between this distinctive theology and his naturalphilosophy. Newton scholars in the past have considered a range of possibilities: that Newton kept his natural philosophy and theology separate; that "influence" flowed primarily from his natural philosophy to his theology; that the reverse dynamic was mostly true; that crossfertilization occurred; or that both Newton's theology and natural philosophy were part of a broader, common project."0 Richard Westfall opted for the second scenario and, after stating that he was not convinced that Newton's theology had made any significant impact on his natural philosophy, wrote that "we are more likely to find the flow of influence moving from science, the rising enterprise, toward theology, the old and (as we know from hindsight) fading one.""1Newton, of course, did not enjoy the advantage of this present-centered hindsight. In another place, Westfall reiterates his claim that Newton's theology did not influence his natural philosophy, but, distinguishing between "religion" and "theology,"concedes that "[t]he influence of his religion on his science is, I believe, universally admitted, and I do not challenge that conclusion." But he goes on to say, His theology, by which I mean explicitly his Arianism and the associated interpretation of the prophecies, is another matter. Perhaps we can find echoes of the Arian God in the Pantocrator of the "General Scholium," but this leaves us still on such a high level

""It is reasonableto question whetherit makes sense to speak of influenceat all when considering a period in which naturalphilosophicaland theological concerns so often interpenetratedat a high level (on this, see Cunningham,"Howthe PrincipiaGot Its Name" [cit. n. 14], p. 382). As MargaretJ. Osler has recently shown, the conflict, harmony,and segregationistmetaphorsused in the historiographyof science andreligion tend to presumean essentialistview of naturalphilosophyand theology,as if these two fields were somehow autonomousentities, not proneto change over time, whereas in fact the boundarieswere porous and shifting. Instead,Osler articulatesa more flexible in which "naturalphilosopherssometimes appropriate metaphorof "appropriation-and-translation" ideas developed in religion or theology, translatethem into the languageof naturalphilosophy,and use them to solve problems in the new context."This model stresses "continuityof meaning at a deep level" (Osler, "MixingMetaphors:Science and Religion or NaturalPhilosophy and Theology in EarlyModem Europe,"Hist. Sci. 36 [1998]:91-113, on pp. 101, 102; for generalbackground,see also John H. Brooke, Science and Religion: Some Historical Perspectives [Cambridge:Cambridge model comes close to encapsulatUniv. Press, 1991], pp. 16-51). The appropriation-and-translation ing Newton'sown enterprise,althoughthe harmonymetaphoralso has merit in this case and was, as Osler points out, one with which Newton himself would have been sympathetic(p. 106). 1 Richard S. Westfall, "Newton'sTheological Manuscripts,"in ContemporaryNewtonian Research, ed. Z. Bechler (Dordrecht:Reidel, 1982), pp. 129-43, on p. 140. Force argues(correctly,in my view) againstWestfall'sstatedposition in his "Newton'sGod of Dominion"(cit. n. 5).

THETHEOLOGY OF NEWTON'SGENERALSCHOLIUM

197

of generalitythatit tells us very little. If we wantto descendto the details of Newton's science, as it is foundin the Principiaandthe Opticks,I am unableto traceany line of influencethathas substance.12 It is surprising that a scholar who had such an intimate knowledge of Newton's theological manuscripts could arrive at such an conclusion. With the theology of the Scholium further clarified by Newton's private papers, along with the added evidence of affinities with Socinianism,"' all of which provides a more precise understanding of the theology of the General Scholium, we are prepared to revisit Westfall's conclusion. Taking Westfall's division between "religion" and "theology" to refer to a distinction between the widely held natural philosophical commitments and devotion to the study of nature, on the one hand, and that of dogmatic theology (both generally biblicist and specifically unitarian), on the other, our present concern is mainly with the latter. While it may make less sense to speak of natural theology "impacting" natural philosophy at a time when natural theological presuppositions were already integral to both the concepts and culture of natural philosophy, the farther we depart from naturaltheology in the direction of theology proper (especially when we arrive at highly unconventional theology) the more it becomes justifiable to prioritize the impact of the one field upon the other. The difference here is between internal coexisting dynamics that are (almost always) part of the same mix, and external, variable, and independently existing ideas that have the potential to be used to shape in distinctive ways from the outside. In discussing the ways in which Newton's distinctive theology related to his naturalphilosophy, I want to contend not merely for the weak argument of similarity of style and coincidence of method but also for the strong argument that interpenetration existed at a fundamental level between the cognitive content of the theological and natural philosophical features of Newton's grand study.114That his theology should sometimes inform his natural philosophy should not strike us, a priori, as a surprising dynamic for an age in which studies of God's Word and Works had not yet bifurcated to the extent that they would in later years.115 Newton moves freely between areas of thought we today would label and demarcate as religious, philosophical, and scientific. Still, it is always easier to give assent to the plausibility of interaction than to demonstrate it conclusively with actual cases. In what follows, I begin with examples that support the weak argument and then move on to discuss the evidence for the strong argument. 112 RichardS. in Facets of Faith and Science, vol. 3: TheRole Westfall,"NewtonandChristianity," of Beliefs in the Natural Sciences: The Pascal Centre,ed. J. M. van der Meer (Ancaster,Ontario, Canada:Pascal Centre/ Lanham,Md.: Univ. Press of America, 1996), pp. 63-74, on p. 72. 113Westfall did not seek to explore contact between Newton'sthoughtand contemporaryradical theology,and this remainsone of the chief defects of his workon Newton'stheology. 114 At the same time, I do not wantto drawa sharpdistinctionbetweenmethodandcontent,because it is plain that the formercan help to shape the latter(and hence even data can be "theoryladen"). Thus it is easy to see how Newton'smethodof naturalphilosophycould help determinethe content. If, however,Newton'snaturalphilosophicalstyle was in turninformedby theological practice,this in itself would show an indirectinfluenceof the theologicalon the naturalphilosophicalcontent. 115Although integrationwas still the dominanttheme in relations "between"naturalphilosophy and theology in the early eighteenth century,the fact that Newton finds it necessary to assure his readersin the GeneralScholiumthatdiscoursingof God does belong to the domainof experimental (second edition) or natural(third edition) philosophy (Motte, Principles, 2:391-2; Motte-Cajori, Principles, 2:546; Cohen-Whitman,Principia, p. 943) does neverthelessdemonstrateboth that the assumptionwas already in dispute and that Newton and others were perfectly able to articulatea distinctionbetween these fields of endeavor.

198

STEPHEND. SNOBELEN THE HERMENEUTICS OF SCRIPTURE AND NATURE

Moving through the same layers of increasing specificity found in the General Scholium that range from natural theology to antitrinitarianism, we will examine the question of interaction and impact. As Westfall's comments (just quoted) imply, few today would doubt that Newton's advocacy of the design argument and his belief in God played an active role in his natural philosophy. For this reason, we need not long be detained with this first layer, other than to note that these commitments would have served to provide a powerful motivation for Newton to search out the wonders of creation as a high priest of nature."6 More needs to be said, however, when we come to scriptural interpretation. Recently some scholars have pointed to analogies between Newton's biblical hermeneutics and his natural philosophical methodology.'17 Here Newton's four "Rules of reasoning in philosophy" (from the Principia) are relevant. In rules II and III, Newton argues for the unity of phenomena in nature and asserts that one infers general principles from the observation of specifics.'"8For example, in book III of his Principia, Newton famously demonstrates that lunar motion obeys the inverse-square law and then, applying rules I, II, III, and IV, goes on to extrapolate from this specific case a general principle that applies to all planetary motion-universal gravitation." This procedure is roughly analogous to one of Newton's fundamental principles of scriptural hermeneutics, in which one works outward from passages that are easily understood to induce the meaning of the more ambiguous texts. In a significant prophetic manuscript from the 1670s, Newton lays down several "Rules of Interpretation"intended to determine "when an interpretation is genuine & of two interpretations which is the best."'20Similarly, in his antitrinitarian "Two Notable Corruptions" of 1690, Newton declared that "in disputable places" of Scripture he loved "to take up wth what I can best under121 stand." A desire for simplicity is also found in Newton's reading of nature, and he writes in rules I and III of his "Rules of reasoning in philosophy" that "Nature is pleas'd with simplicity" and "wont to be simple."'22 Now recognized as common motifs in 116 On this role, see H.

Isis 44 (1953):252-65;

Fisch, "TheScientistas Priest:A Note on RobertBoyle's NaturalTheology," Peter Harrison, The Bible, Protestantism and the Rise of Natural Science

(Cambridge:CambridgeUniv. Press, 1998), pp. 198-9, 203. ,17See especially Force, "Newton'sGod of Dominion" (cit. n. 5), pp. 89-90, and M. Mamiani, of theApocalypse," "TheRhetoricof Certainty:Newton'sMethodin Science andin the Interpretation in PersuadingScience, ed. M. PeraandW. R. Shea (Canton,Ohio: Science History,1991), pp. 15772. On the close methodologicaland conceptualrelationshipin the early modernperiodbetween the interpretationof the books of natureand Scripture,see Harrison,The Bible, Protestantismand the Rise of Natural Science (cit. n. 116). 118Motte, Principles, 2:202-5; Motte-Cajori, Principles, 2:398-400; Cohen-Whitman, Principia,

pp. 795-6. 119Motte, Principles, 217-220; Motte-Cajori,Principles, 2:409-10, 413; Cohen-Whitman,Principia, pp. 805-6. Comparethis with the following that David Gregoryrecordedafter a discussion with Newton: "Thebest way of overcominga difficultProblemeis to solve it in some particulareasy cases. This gives much light into the generalsolution.By this way Sir IsaacNewton says he overcame the most difficult things" (W. G. Hiscock, ed. David Gregory, Isaac Newton, and Their Circle [Ox-

ford:Printedfor the Editor,1937], p. 25). I 120 Newton, Yahuda MS 1.1 a, fol. Or. 121Newton, "TwoNotable Corruptions,"in Correspondenceof Newton (cit. n. 8), vol. 3, p. 108; cf. Newton. Keynes MS 5, fols. l r-2r. 122

Motte, Principles, 2:202-3;

Motte-Cajori,

pp. 794-5 (second quotationfrom Motte-Cajori).

Principles, 2:398; Cohen-Whitman,

Principia,


199

the history of science, the desire for simplicity and the principle of parsimony also manifest themselves in Newton's scriptural studies when he contends for these ideals against a backdrop of corrupting and complicating influences from philosophy and metaphysics.'23 Newton wrote that "[t]he human race is prone to mysteries, and holds nothing so holy and perfect as that which cannot be understood.... It is the concern of theologians that the conception [of God] be made as easy and reasonable as possible."'24Like Galileo before him, Newton believed that Scripture is reasonable and composed in the tongue of the vulgar.'25Thus, there is an expectation that the Bible is written in plain and lucid language. Newton's professed desire to avoid introducing hypotheses into natural philosophy aligns with his suspicion about infusing metaphysics into Scripture. Newton sought a certain method of interpretation for the study of biblical prophecy, so that the "ye liberty of wresting it to private imaginations [might] (be) cut of[f]."'26 He also contended that one should "prefer (chose) [sic] those interpretations wch are most according to ye litterall meaning of the scriptures."127Newton would admit no conjectures in theology: "The first Principles of the Christian religion are founded, not on disputable conclusions opinions or conjectures or (on) humane [human] sanctions, but on the express words of Christ & his Apostles."12S Here strict biblicism sounds a lot like strict empiricism. These were, of course, methodological ideals, so the fact that Newton did not always hold to them in no way detracts from what should now be obvious: Newton employed similar strategies in his interpretation of the books of Scripture and nature. Newton was also conscious that such interaction existed in his own work. In outlining a series of principles for the exegesis of biblical prophecy in the 1670s, he offers an implicit affirmation to this effect when comparing the interpretation of Scripture with that of nature. Beginning with a variation on Ockham's razor, he states that it is important [t]o prefer(choose) those intcrprctations(constructions)Wch without strainingreduce things to the greatestsimplicity ... Truthis ever to be found in simplicity,& not in ye multiplicity & confusion of things. As

ye

world, wch to ye naked eye exhibits the greatest

varietyof objects, appearsvery simple in its internallconstitutionwhen surveyedby a philosophicunderstanding,& so much ye simplerby how much the betterit is understood, so it is in these visions. It is yeperfectionof a4 God'sworksthatthey areall done wthyegreatestsimplicity.He is yeGod of order& not confusion.And thereforeas they that would understandye frameof ye worldmust indeavourto reducetheirknowledge to all possible simplicity,so it mustbe in seekingto understandthese visions.'29 In this analogy, God guarantees that both Scripture and nature can be understood by the human mind. What is more, both God's Word and God's Works were given and 123 Thisis not to say thatNewtonhimselfdid not devotetimeto musingon his own versionof of nature J. E. McGuirehasin factpublishedanentirebookon Newton'smetaphysics metaphysics.

(McGuire,Traditionand Innovation[cit. n. 7]).

Newton,CULMSAdd.3965,fol. 546r(trans.fromLatin). doesnotspeak"in Newton,YahudaMS 15.5,fol. 99r.NewtonelsewherewrotethatScripture the languageof Astronomers (as [some]think)butin thatof yecommonpeopleto whomtheywere written"(Newton,CULMSAdd.4005, sec. 7, publishedin Cohen,"IsaacNewton'sPrincipia,the andtheDivineProvidence" [cit.n. 7], p. 544). Scriptures, 126 Newton,YahudaMS 1.1a, fol. IOr. 127 Ibid.,fol. 12r. 128 Newton,KeynesMS 3, p. 13. YahudaMS 1.1a, fol. 14r. 129Newton, 124

125

200

STEPHEN D. SNOBELEN

made in such a way that they are at the fundamental level simple and uncomplicated, and thus both should be approached with the same method. While the pervasiveness of the parsimony principle in the history of science allows for the possibility that what we are seeing here is cross-fertilization or even the impact of natural philosophy on theology, the pivotal link for Newton (in this place, at least) is not some philosophical abstraction of parsimony but the "God of order" Who ensures that these things are so. Over a decade later, in the first edition of the Principia, Newton makes another deliberate association between scriptural hermeneutics and natural philosophical method. In the Scholium to his Definitions at the beginning of his work, Newton distinguishes between absolute and relative time, space, place, and motion. He concludes that "relative quantities, are not the quantities themselves, whose names they bear, but those sensible measures of them." He goes on to say, "[I]f the meaning of words is to be determin'd by their use; then by the names Time, Space, Place and Motion, their [sensible] measures are properly to be understood; and the expression will be unusual, and purely Mathematical, if the measured quantities themselves are meant."13'At this point Newton brings in the analogy of scriptural hermeneutics: Upon which account,they do strainthe SacredWritings[sacrae litterae], who there interpretthose wordsfor the measur'dquantities.Nor do those less defile the purityof Mathematicaland PhilosophicalTruths,who confoundreal quantitiesthemselveswith theirrelationsand vulgarmeasures.131 Thus, as early as 1687 Newton employed arguments about the need to distinguish the relative from the absolute in nature similar to those he was to use twenty-six years later with respect to the term "God" in his General Scholium. And this must not be taken as evidence that his theological analysis eventually caught up with his natural philosophy in 1713, for already in 1687 he is making clear that what applies in natural philosophy also applies in biblical exegesis. For Newton, there was no epistemic wall dividing the study of God from that of His creation. It is possible to identify further analogies. As I demonstrated earlier, Newton was most unhappy with the intrusion of metaphysical concerns into revealed doctrine. He also pointedly denied that "we have any idea of the substance of God," asserting rather that we know Him only through his attributes, acts, and final causes.'32 Newton appears to be using his professed nescience of the ontology of God in part to prepare the way for what he says in the very next paragraph. Responding to the accusation that he had introduced "occult qualities" into his physics by not identifying a cause for gravity, Newton declared; "I frame no hypotheses. For whatever is 13?Motte,

Principles, 1:16-17; Motte-Cajori, Principles, 1:11; Cohen-Whitman, Principia, pp. 413-14. (I have inserted"sensible"in the second quotation,following both the Cajorirevision and the Cohen-Whitmantranslation.) 131 Motte, Principles, 1:17;Motte-Cajori,Principles, 1:11;Cohen-Whitman,Principia,p. 414. As Cohen pointsout, the Cajorirevisionof Motte'stranslationobscuresthis directreferenceto the Bible (Cohen,"IsaacNewton'sPrincipia,the Scriptures,andthe Divine Providence"[cit. n. 7], pp. 524-8). This misleading translationis correctedin the new Cohen-Whitmantranslation(cit. n. 2), which rendersthe passage:"Accordinglythose who thereinterpretthese wordsas referringto the quantities being measureddo violence to the Scriptures.And they no less corruptmathematicsand philosophy who confuse truequalities with theirrelationsand common measures." 132 Motte, Principles, 2:391; Motte-Cajori,Principles, 2:546; Cohen-Whitman,Principia, p. 942.


201

not deduc'd from phanomena, is to be called an hypothesis; and hypotheses, whether metaphysical or physical, whether of occult qualities or mechanical, have no place in experimental philosophy."33 Biblical doctrine, too, was to be derived directly and expressly from the revealed Word.134As already cited, Newton believed that "[t]he first Principles of the Christian religion are founded ...

on the express

words of Christ & his Apostles."'35 "It is not enough to say that an article of faith may be deduced from scripture,"Newton once wrote, "[i]t must be exprest in the (very) form of sound words in wch it was delivered by the Apostles.... ffor men are apt to (vary) dispute, and run into partings about deductions. .... All the old Heresies

lay in deductions," Newton concluded, "the true faith was in the text."'36Inspired text or natural phenomena, Newton claimed that he would no more speculate about the nature of God than he would about the cause of gravity.137 Instead, he was content 133

Motte, Principles, 2:392; Motte-Cajori, Principles, 2:547; Cohen-Whitman, Principia, p. 943.

As BernardCohenhas argued,Newton'sclaim, "hypothesesnon fingo"probablyshouldbe translated "Ifeign no hypotheses."Newton did occasionally use hypotheses-even in his Principia.While it is possible that Newton sacrificedthe virtue of consistency for a rhetoricaland polemical flourish,if, as Cohen suggests, Newton was articulatinga methodologicalpolicy in which "hedoes not inventor contrivefictions (or 'hypotheses')to be offered in place of soundexplanationsbased on phenomena" (Cohen,"TheConcludingGeneralScholium"[cit. n. 7], pp. 275-7), this programmewould certainly align with his ideals in scripturalhermeneutics.Furthersupportfor Cohen'sreadingof fingo can be found elsewhere in the Principiaand in the rhetoricof two of Newton'sdisciples. In his thirdrule of reasoning,Newton states, "We are certainly not to relinquishthe evidence of experimentsfor the sake of dreamsandvain fictionsof our own devising"(Motte, Principles,2:203; Motte-Cajori,Principles, 2:398; Cohen-Whitman, Principia, p. 795). In the preface to his Physico-Mechanical Experi-

ments, Francis Hauksbee, Sr., sets out the Newtonian agenda of experiment in this way: "The LearnedWorld is now almost generally convinc'd, that instead of amusing themselves with Vain Hypotheses,which seem to differ little from Romances,there'sno other way of ImprovingNATURAL PHILOSOPHY,but by Demonstrationsand Conclusions, founded upon Experimentsjudiciously and accurately made" (Hauksbee, Physico-Mechanical

Experiments on Various Subjects

[London, 1709], sig. Alr). Similarly,Whiston speaks disdainfullyof "the fictitious hypotheses"of

the Cartesian philosophy (William Whiston, Memoirs of the Life and Writings of Mr. William Whis-

ton, 2nd ed. [London, 1753], vol. 1, p. 32). 134 At one level, Newton is contendingfor the Hebraicsense againstthe intrusionof Greeksensibilities into biblical theology.Thus he once wrote when dealing with the names of Christthat "we are to haverecourseunto the old Testament& to bewareof vain Philosophy.For Christsent his Apostles, not to teach Metaphysicks& Philosophyto the common people & to their wives & children,but to teach what he had taught them out of Moses & the Prophets& Psalms concerning himself" (Sotheby'sLot 255.8, privatecollection). Cf. Newton, YahudaMS 15.5, fol. 99r. 135Newton, Keynes MS 3, p. 13. 136 Newton, YahudaMS 15.1, fol. 11r. Clarke,who wrote, "I depend not on Authorities"(Clarke, Works[cit. n. 67], vol. 4, p. 267), held similarbiblicist ideals. In a letter to John Jackson,he wrote, "I have all along chosen to insist more largely upon SCRIPTURE, than upon natural Reason; because

the GreatpopularObjectionagainst Men thatThink seriously and carefully about these Things, is, that they are apt to adhereto their own Reason more than to the Scripture"(Clarketo Jackson,23 Oct. 1714, in [Jackson], Three Letters to Dr Clarke, from a Clergyman of the Church of England

[London, 1714], p. 31). Whiston also adheredto the Newtonian dictum that there should be no hypotheses in religion, assertingthat "hypothesis-makersare the great corruptersof true religion." Whiston instead claimed that he turnedonly to the New Testamentand the other early Christian writingshe consideredauthoritativeand attests"to the worldwhat doctrines,worship,and discipline I find thereincontained;and this without any imaginarysupposalswhatsoever"(Whiston,Memoirs [cit. n. 133], vol. 1, p. 307). 137A primarytargetof Newton'sargumentwas the Cartesianhypothesisof planetarymotion,which he had savaged directly in the opening line of the General Scholium (Motte, Principles, 2:387; Motte-Cajori,Principia, 2:543; Cohen-Whitman,Principia,p. 939). It must be stressed,however, thatin his attackson vainhypothesizing,Newton was directinghis animusagainstnot only Descartes but also Leibniz (cf. Cohen and Westfall,Newton [cit. n. 2], p. 163).

202

STEPHEND. SNOBELEN

to deal with the text and the effects; put another way, he wanted to focus on function and phenomenon, not essence and substance.138The unskilled handling of metaphysics and absolutes-especially by the vulgar-Newton knew, led to distortions and disputes. Just as Christianity had become corrupt when theologians unwisely ventured into discussions of substance, so had natural philosophy. This phenomenalist ideal, in turn, provides insight into Newton's motivation for engaging in experimental philosophy: one learned of God from "the appearances of things" and by observing active powers at work, not through the vain hypotheses of Descartes or the dark metaphysics of Leibniz.'39 Herein therefore lies another pervasive feature of Newton's thought: in both theology and natural philosophy, appearance rather than substance was to be the focus of inquiry. NEWTON'S GOD AND HIS NATURAL PHILOSOPHY

With these powerful examples established, we can move beyond striking parallels and unity of method to identify ways in which Newton's distinctive theology may have helped to shape his view of nature. First, Newton's voluntarism and fervent faith in a God of dominion find a prominent place in his natural philosophy. Newton's God is continually active and constantly in control, exercising His will over creation, very much unlike the detached God of the Deists or Leibniz's Intelligentia Supramundana. The conception of God's supreme lordship and dominion underpins Newton's powerful sense of God's unlimited duration and presence, which Newton, in turn, explicitly identifies as coextensive with his own natural philosophical notions of absolute time and space.'4"Also, his expectations of discovering simplicity and order in creation were based on a belief in a God of order Who made things that way. The same God was the Author of both the books of nature and Scripture, and thus not only were they consistent with each other, but this very consistency meant that both could be approached with the same methods and expectations. More than this, Newton's specifically non-Trinitarianfaith in the unity of God ensured for him unity within creation. As Newton had said, the stars (and, by implication, the rest of creation) "must all be subject to the dominion of One."'4' Both God's oneness and His absolute dominion ensured the unity of His Word and Works, and thus guaran'3XThis stance was a consistent featureof the rhetoricof the first generationof Newtonians.E.g., John Keill's publishedNewtonianlectures,Introductioad veramphysicam(Oxford, 1701), not only contains an apologeticedge in its attackson Cartesianmechanicsand its concomitantpropensityto atheism, but also censures Descartes'desire to extend his inquiriesto essences ratherthan limiting himself to majorproperties-the policy of Newton (David Kubrin,"JohnKeill,"Dictionaryof Scientific Biography,;ed. CharlesCoulston Gillispie [New York:Scribners, 1973], vol. 7, p. 276). On Newton'sskepticismaboutessence (which manifesteditself decades before 1713), and his attackon Cartesian views on essence and substance, see McGuire, Traditionand Innovation (cit. n. 7), pp. 24-5; see also pp. 239-61 for a full discussion of the complexities of Newton's doctrine of essential qualities. 139 Newton states this plainly in draftC of the GeneralScholium when he writes, "[T]hedominion or Deity of God is best demonstratednot from abstractideas but from phenomena,by their final causes"(Hall and Hall, UnpublishedPapers [cit. n. 47], p. 363). 14 Motte, Principles, 2:390; Motte-Cajori, Principles, 2:545; Cohen-Whitman, Principia, p. 941-2. 141

Motte, Principles, 2:388-9;

Motte-Cajori,

Principles, 2:544; Cohen-Whitman,

Principia,

p. 940. For an extended discussion of how Newton'santitrinitariantheology may have affected his naturalphilosophy, see Dobbs, Janus Faces of Genius (cit. n. 7), pp. 213-49, 253-55. See also Cunningham,"How the PrincipiaGot Its Name" (cit. n. 14), p. 384.


203

teed that one can infer general principles from specifics-whether scriptural teaching or natural phenomena. In these cases the theological beliefs come first and as presuppositions help to inform and shape the natural philosophy. But there is more. As Manuel has astutely commented, in Newton's view there was in history a direct relationship between idolatrous polytheism (and Newton believed Trinitarianismto be such) and corrupt natural philosophy.'42For Newton, polytheism was opposed to naturalphilosophy precisely "because it accepted the idea of contrary and contradictory causes in nature which it associated with false gods."'43And thus Newton held to his own heterodox variant of the agenda of the "two reformations"-that radical (and related) reform was needed in both theology and natural philosophy.'44In both cases, this reform involved the recovery of the prisca sapientia-the original, primitive religion and the ancient knowledge of natural philosophy and mathematics.'45 All ancient wisdom had become corrupt, and Newton was determined to restore its pristine purity.Without question, Newton's studies of Scripture and nature interacted in ways that were at once rhetorical, methodological, and prescriptive. Here we should note both that Newton's heterodox conception of God came before the first edition of his Principia'46 and that some of the principles of biblical exegesis that align so closely with his natural philosophical methods were in place as early as the 1670s. But surely the most powerful evidence for interaction is the General Scholium itself. Newton's daring attack in this document on corrupt Trinitariantheology exposed-in a covert way-his two goals for the Principia. 147In the Scholium we see the integration of Newton's natural philosophy with his heretical theology operating at a profound level. We also see the anti-Cartesian stance of the Principia's General Scholium (and the revised book II) conjoined with an assault on Newton's other wicked hypothesizers, the Homoousians. The presentation of antitrinitarianismnow further clarified as tinged with Socinian argumentation-in the Scholium, along with the integral role that the creator God of dominion played in Newton's 142 Manuel,Religion of Newton (cit. n. 7), p. 42. Newton inveighs against idolatrynot only in the main text of the GeneralScholium, when he writes thatGod ought not "to be worshippedunderthe representationof any corporealthing,"but also in both the note on God and the materialadded to the final form of the note on space (Motte, Principles, 2:391; Motte-Cajori,Principles, 2:545-6; Cohen-Whitman,Principia,p. 942). The additionalmaterialin the notes dramaticallyincreasedthe amountof rhetoricagainstidolatryin the 1726 edition. 143 Manuel,Religion of Newton (cit. n. 7), p. 43. 144 On the topos of the two reformations,see Harrison,The Bible, Protestantism and the Rise of Natural Science (cit. n. 116), pp. 64-120. 145 On Newton'scommitmentsto the prisca tradition,see J. E. McGuireand P. M. Rattansi,"Newton andthe 'Pipes of Pan,'"Notes and Recordsof the RoyalSociety 21 (1966):108-43; Paolo Casini, "Newton:The Classical Scholia,"Hist. Sci. 22 (1984):1-57; B. J. T Dobbs, TheJanus Faces of Ge-

nius (cit. n. 6); and Niccolo Guicciardini, Reading the Principia: The Debate on Newton's Mathematical Methods for Natural Philosophy from 1687 to 1736 (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1999). 146 Cf. Cunningham,"How the PrincipiaGot Its Name" (cit. n. 147 As demonstrated Newton'sattackon

14), p. 384. earlier, corruptscripturalhermeneuticsand incorrectinterpretationsof natureis alreadya fixtureof the first edition of the Principia.My argumentabout the integrityof the GeneralScholium to the rest of the Principiacan be contrastedwith that of Edward Grant,who, in a fascinatingpublisheddebatewith AndrewCunninghamover the role of theology in naturalphilosophy,contends that the GeneralScholium weighs lightly on the Principia,dismissing it as an almost irrelevantafterthought.Furthermore,Grantclaims that for naturalphilosopherslike Newton, "God may lie in the backgroundas Creator,or perhapssimply as inspiration,but He does not enterinto the contentof theirworks,or affect it, because thatwould haveprovedfutile"(Edward Grant,"Godand NaturalPhilosophy:The Late MiddleAges and Sir Isaac Newton,"Early Sci. Med. 5 [2000]:288-91, on p. 291).

204

STEPHEN D. SNOBELEN

theology, should cause us to question Westfall's conclusion that Newton's heterodox theology did not help to shape his natural philosophy. The testimony we have for sources of some of Newton's more distinctive theological ideas, whose derivation is independent of his natural philosophy, helps to tip the balance in favor of at least some theological priority. The evidence presented in this essay suggests that Newton's theological concerns (both those he shared with his contemporaries and those he did not) made a not insignificant impact on both the methodological and cognitive dimensions of his natural philosophy.148 But we need not speculate about whether Newton himself thought it appropriate to include God in the endeavor of natural philosophy. As he forcefully concludes the theological portion of the General Scholium, "[T]o treat of God from phenomena is certainly a part of natural philosophy."149

One other association between Newton's theology and his natural philosophy remains to be explored. Newton was adamant that in religion and philosophy the more difficult truths were to be handled only by the mature, experienced, and adept. Drawing his basic framework for this from Hebrews 5, Newton made a firm distinction between "milk for babes" and "meat for elders."'50This distinction is similar to the Erasmian division between fundamenta (fundamentals) and adiaphora (indifferent things), but with one salient difference: for Newton the "meat" was by no means indifferent. For Newton the first concerned the minimum doctrine required by all during catechetical instruction before baptism; the latter related to the more profound doctrines that one advanced to through skill and election. Here we see Newton's belief in the existence of a minority, remnant class. In matters of faith, he did not believe that "all that call themselves Christians" would understand but that only "a remnant, a few scattered persons which God hath chosen ... as Daniel hath said that ye wise shall understand, so he hath said also that none of ye wicked shall understand."'5' There is an evident symmetry between Newton's theological belief in the 148 Additional examples of the impact of Newton's theology on his naturaltheology have been offered and are worthexploring.At the level of method,Michael Ben-Chaimhas recently suggested that Newton modeled his 1672 essay about colors on the form and structureof the Puritansermon

(Ben-Chaim, "Doctrine and Use: Newton's 'Gift of Preaching,'" Hist. Sci. 36 [1998]:269-98).

Some

fascinatingpossibilities of interactionare also put forwardby Loup Verlet(Verlet,"'F = MA' and the NewtonianRevolution:An Exit from Religion throughReligion,"Hist. Sci. 34 [1996]:303-46). Anotherpossibilityexists with the cognitivecontentof Newton'smathematics.Force has arguedthat "Newton'smethod of fluxions [calculusl is inevitably connected with his theory of the continuous dominionof God since the creation"("Newton'sGod of Dominion"[cit. n. 5], p. 88). Force'sinsight can be taken even farther,for, as Cohen has pointed out, Newton'sconcept of absolute time (true, astronomicaltime, as opposed to relative,observedtime), in which time progressesat an absolute, uniformspeed, is the same as the uniformlyand continuouslyflowing "mathematicaltime"Newton uses in his calculus (Cohen,"Guideto Newton'sPrincipia"[cit. n. 7], in Cohen-Whitman,Principia, pp. 106, 116). Takingthis a step farther,it is clear that Newton himself made a positive association between absolute,continuouslyflowing time and God (cf. the discussion of absolutesand relatives in the Scholiumto the Definitionsat the beginningof the Principia,with Newton'sstatementsin the General Scholium that God himself constituted"Durationand Space" (Motte, Principles, 1:9-18, 2:390-1; Motte-Cajori,Principles, 1:6-12, 2:545; Cohen-Whitman,Principia,pp. 408-15, 941-2). See also AyvalRamati,"TheHiddenTruthof Creation:Newton'sMethodof Fluxions,"forthcoming. 149 Cohen-Whitman, Principia,p. 943. Emphasismine. Newton'suse of the adverbutique ("certainly")revealsboth his earnestnessand his awarenessthatthe claim was by then in dispute. "5" Newton, Keynes MS 3; Bodmer MS 3, fol. 2r; Rob Iliffe, "'Making a Shew': Apocalyptic Hermeneuticsandthe Sociology of ChristianIdolatryin the Workof IsaacNewton andHenryMore," in Force and Popkin, The Books of Nature and Scripture (cit. n. 64), pp. 55-88, on pp. 79-81; Snobelen, 5"IsaacNewton, Heretic"(cit. n. 46), pp. 389-91. 1 Newton, Yahuda MS 1. Ia, fol. Ir.


205

remnant and his philosophical notion of the adept, for he also intended the higher meanings of his natural philosophy only for the cognoscenti. John Conduitt records the following revealing exchange: Mr Machinsaid to SrI. N when coursesof experimentswere firstin vogue what a pity it was that when people had a demonstrationby Geometrythey should trustto their senses wchmight be deceived,uponwch Sir Isaac said he had firstprovedhis inventions by Geometry& only made use of experimentsto make them intelligible & convince the vulgar.152 While Newton's comment may contain more than a little bravado, he also articulated a similar sentiment when he told William Derham that "to avoid being baited by little Smatterers in Mathematicks ... he designedly made his Principia abstruse; but (yet so as) to be understood by able Mathematicians."53 But it is not only Newton's theological remnant that mirrors the philosophical adept, for it is evident that Newton's distinction between the absolute and the relative also applies to both his theology and natural philosophy. As we have seen, Newton applied the distinction between absolute and relative to the interpretation of Scripture. He discussed these issues in a more revealing manner in a series of definitions that follow his manuscript tract De motu corporum (1685-1686). These comments represent a more explicit version of the views that he expressed about Scripture from the Scholium to the introductory Definitions to the Principia. It is interesting to see Newton move with ease between natural philosophy and theology, intellectual fields he clearly did not view as completely separate spheres: [I]t has been necessaryto distinguishabsoluteand relativequantitiescarefully from each other because all phenomenamay depend on absolutequantities,but ordinary people who do not know how to abstracttheirthoughtsfrom the senses alwaysspeak of relativequantities,to such an extent that it would be absurdfor either scholarsor even Prophetsto speak otherwisein relationto them. Thus both the SacredScripture andthe writingsof Theologiansmustalwaysbe understoodas referringto relativequantities, anda personwouldbe labouringundera crassprejudiceif on this basis he stirred up argumentsaboutabsolute[changedto philosophical]notionsof naturalthings.154 Similarly, Newton believed that the ancients "practised a two-fold philosophy, sacred and vulgar: the Philosophers handed down the sacred to their disciples through types and riddles, while the Orators recorded the vulgar openly and in a popular Conduitt,Keynes MS 130.9, pp. 2r-v. Keynes MS 133, p. 10. On Newton'sattemptsto renderthe Principia obscure, see Rob Iliffe, "CambridgeandLondon:PrivateLiberty,Understandingandthe PublicWorldof the Principiamathematica,"forthcoming.See also Snobelen, "On Reading Isaac Newton'sPrincipiain the 18th CenEndeavour22 (1998): 159-63. tury,' 154The implied synonymyfor Newton between "absolute"and "philosophical"in the emendation is instructive.The translationgiven here is that of Cohen, "Guide"(cit. n. 7), Cohen-Whitman, Principia, p. 36. The word "notions"in the last line could be translatedas "motions,"if the Latin motibus(motus)in this context is takento referto physical,ratherthanmental,motion.The original Latin text can be found in The MathematicalPapers of Isaac Newton, ed. D. T. Whiteside, 8 vols. (Cambridge:CambridgeUniv., 1967-1981), vol. 6, p. 192. The Latin text, along with a less accurate translationthan Cohen's,is also given in John Herivel, The Backgroundto Newton'sPrincipia: A Study of Newton'sDynamical Researches in the Years 1664-84 (Oxford: Clarendon, 1965), pp. 306-7, 312. 152

153

206

STEPHEN D. SNOBELEN

style"'155Absolute qualities, then, are not for the masses. For Newton this includes mathematical truth,the substance of God, and the primary cause of gravity.156It even applies to his religious life, as he only revealed those aspects of his beliefs (natural theology, biblicism, church attendance) associated with "milk" but hid the "meat"

(the higher truths of his heresy) from the prying eyes of the incompetent public.'57 This epistemological dualism between relative and absolute, open and closed, public and private, vulgar and philosophical, experiment and theory, and milk and meat permeates every major area of Newton's thought.'58 Newton's rhetorical strategy for the General Scholium is brilliant. The two positions he wanted everyone to understand (natural theology and antideism) he made absolutely clear. But for the rest, access was restricted. Even an able intimate like 1s5Newton, YahudaMS

16.2, fol. Ir (trans.from Latin).

156Newton'selusive discussion of gravityin the GeneralScholium providesan excellent example

of this, for althoughhe publiclydeclaredhis unwillingnessto hypothesizeaboutthe cause of gravity, in privatehe often spoke more candidly aboutGod being the primarycause. Among those awareof these privatethoughtswere Nicolas Fatio de Duillier,DavidGregory,ChristopherWren,andWilliam Whiston (Correspondenceof Newton [cit. n. 8], vol. 3, pp. 308-9, vol. 4, pp. 266, 267; Hiscock, David Gregor,; [cit. n. 118],p. 30; Whiston,AuthentickRecords [cit. n. 12], vol. 2, pp. 1072-3). For an outline of the scholarlydebateover what exactly Newton may have meantby this attribution,see John Henry, "'Pray do not ascribe that notion to me': God and Newton's Gravity,"in Force and Popkin, The Books of Nature and Scripture (cit. n. 64), pp. 123-47.

157 This is not to say thatNewton alwaysemployedthese distinctionsconsistentlyor that all of his statementson the division of theologicaltruthinto two categoriescan be assimilatedneatly andeasily into the two ordersof absoluteand relative.In one place, e.g., Newton statesthat"[r]eligionis partly essential(fundamental)& immutablepartlycircumstantial& mutable"(Newton, Keynes MS 7, p. 1). Is this statementinformedby Newton'sdivision between absolute and relative?If so, is the "immutable"to be equatedwith the absolute (as the term "immutable"may suggest), or does it standas a synonym for the relative (as the essential "milk"is elsewhere characterizedby Newton)? In fact, Newton is here doing somethingsomewhatdifferent,for as the rest of Keynes MS 7 itself hints, and as two parallelpassages from Sotheby'sLot 255.1 now confirm,Newton is outliningthe distinction between the pure, original Noachic religion, which contains the essential nucleus of religion and moralityfor all people in every age, and the temporary,ceremonialaspects of religion (some, such as the Mosaic Law,being divine institutions;others, such as the worshipof dead men, the idolatrous additionsof humans). 15sBarry H. Downing was the first to bring out this feature of Newton'sthoughtwith force and clarity,and I am takingthe expression"epistemologicaldualism"from him (Downing, "Eschatological Implicationsof the Understandingof Time and Space in the Thoughtof Isaac Newton,"Ph.D. diss., Univ. of Edinburgh,1966, pp. 21Off.).It was while developingmy own ideas on the consonance between Newton'stheologicaldivision between milk and meat and its naturalphilosophicalcorollaries that I firstreadDowning'sbrilliantthesis, and I am indebtedto his work for providingadditional insight. More recently,Jose Faur, with no apparentknowledge of Downing's work, has come to

similar conclusions, with the added surmise that a chief source for Newton's distinction between the

absoluteand relativeis the Jewishphilosopherand rabbinicscholarMoses Maimonides.Faurwrites, "The distinctionbetween two levels of perception-an exoteric one accessible to the masses and an esoteric one reservedfor the intellectualelite-is the cornerstoneof Maimonides'shermeneutics" (Faur, "Newton, Maimonides, and Esoteric Knowledge," Cross Currents: Religion & Intellectual Life-The Journal of the Association Jfr Religion and Intellectual Life 40 [1990]:526-38, on p. 534).

Faur'ssuggestion offers one feasible source for Newton'sepistemologicaldualism, and althoughit is beyond the scope of his study to assess the origin of Newton's stance (which may, in any case, prove elusive), it is worthwhileto mention other possibilities. First, aside from the similaritywith Locke'sprimaryand secondaryqualities,one can certainlysee stronganalogieswith Plato'sdistinction between forms (the real) and imitations(appearances)andtheircognitivecorollariesof episteme (;rritnopB:;knowledgeor understanding)and doxa (66ca; mere opinion or belief), the formerbeing characteristicof philosophersand the latterof the common people. To add to this Platoniccommonplace is the traditionin alchemy of higher truthsrevealed only to the initiate. Finally,there is the theological division between the remnantor elect and the apostateor reprobate,along with the distinctionin biblical theology between milk and meat-except thatin the Book of Hebrewsthe implication is thatall believers should progressfrom milk to meat.


207

Cotes appears to have advanced only as far as the God of dominion. A measure of the success of Newton's policy is seen in that everyone who knew the later editions of the Principia also understood the central place Newton gave God (even, famously, Napoleon), but it has taken years of historical research and literary archaeology for specialist scholars working with previously inaccessible manuscripts to begin to unravel the layered encoding and identify the subtextual elements. This literary archaeology is made necessary by Newton's style of composition, in which he hides his hermeneutical analysis in the General Scholium, just as he hid much of the mathematical analysis in the rest of the Principia (particularly in book III)-which is the main reason why so many contemporaries found the book so hard to read.'59Thus we return to the Russian doll model. Newton begins the theological section of the General Scholium with the generalities of natural theology, an "open" aspect of the document that brought the widest range of concord and support,160 taking in not only all Christians but Deists as well. But after setting out the argument from design Newton draws the reader in to successively narrower creeds, through belief in the God of the Bible, to unitarian conceptions, and on to specialized antitrinitarianpositions held only by a tiny minority in his day. At each new layer, different categories of readers either find themselves out of their depth or withdraw their assent until only a small group of adepts remain-the remnant. It should now be obvious that the General Scholium is itself constructed with exoteric and esoteric strata."6'Confirmation that the division between "milk" and "meat" applied within the General Scholium is found in Newton's "Irenicum,"where he specifically states that discussions of the relations that define names are only fit for "men of riper years."162This additional insight resolves the implied contradiction between Newton's apparent desire to preach and his efforts to limit access to his meaning.'63The genius of the General Scholium is that it can operate on two levels that correspond to the open and closed, the exoteric and esoteric, the relative and absolute. The treatment of natural theology, along with the centrality of the active and willful God of Israel, demonstrated to both opponents and allies alike that the physics of the Principia was consistent with revealed religion. This served Newton's public ends. But the attack on corrupt Trinitarianhermeneutics and wayward natural 159 On Newton'somission of his mathematical analysisin the Principia, see Guicciardini,Reading the Principia(cit. n. 145), especially pp. 90-5, 115-17, 192-4. A furtheranalogybetweenhis natural philosophicalandtheologicalstrategiesis seen in the fact thatwhile Newton obscuredthe mathematical analysis in his public texts, he revealedit to a small groupof acolytes (ibid., pp. 116, 169-94), just as he did with his hereticaltheology (Snobelen,"IsaacNewton, Heretic"[cit. n. 45, pp. 389-91]). 16) E.g., see the apologeticuse of the naturaltheology of the GeneralScholium in JosephAddison, The Evidencesof the ChristianReligion (London, 1730), pp. xx-xxii. 161 For a tacit admissionby Newton thathe did hold back explicit meaningin his Principia(in this case, in his cometography),see Keynes MS 130.11. It is interestingto note that Newton also concluded his Opticks(in versions from 1706) with a vignette of his grandprogramme,but one that, like the GeneralScholium, only hints at what is made plain in his privatepapers (in this analogous example, Newton'sterse public comments on the corruptionof the Noachic religion in the Opticks can be interpretedwith YahudaMSS 16 and 41-Newton's writings on the origin of Gentile theology). 162 Newton, Keynes MS 3, p. 33. 1'3 Newton's desire to preach his antitrinitarian faith is eloquently demonstratedby his original intentionto publish anonymously,throughLocke, his "TwoNotable Corruptions"in 1690-at the controversyof the late 1680s and 1690s. I detail this and other height of the Trinitarian-Unitarian examplesin Snobelen,"IsaacNewton, Heretic"(cit. n. 46), pp. 401-8. On the "TwoNotableCorrupThe CambridgeComtions:' see Scott Mandelbrote,"Newtonand Eighteenth-Century Christianity," panion to Newton,ed. I. B. Cohen and George Smith, forthcoming.

208

STEPHEN D. SNOBELEN

philosophyrevealedthe truefaith to both perceptiveapostatesand fellow members of the remnant.This served Newton'sprivateaims. The deeper meanings of the GeneralScholium were not meant for everyone.'64This, along with the need for circumspectionin mattersof religiousheterodoxy,helps explainthatwhile Newton's intentionsfor this concise yet powerfulmanifestoof his naturalphilosophyandtheology were conscious, deliberateand calculated,it was only in a coded and almost subversivemannerthathe revealedthem to all (who could understand).'65 164 Thus it is difficult to accept the dichotomy Verlethas imposed on Newton's thoughtbetween the public physics of the Principiaand the privatetheology Newton intendedto keep secret (Verlet, "The Newtonian Revolution"[cit. n. 148], p. 333). The division between public and private(to use those terms) existed within,not between,his naturalphilosophy and his theology.Newton revealed of each what he wished and kept the deeper meaningsof both to himself and the adepts. 165 Rudolf De Smet and Karin Verelst's"Newton'sScholium Generale:The Platonic and Stoic Legacy-Philo, JustusLipsius and the CambridgePlatonists,"Hist. Sci. 39 (2001): 1-30, published only days before I received the galley copy of this essay, merits comment as this importantpaper stratain the GeneralScholium. neatly complementsmy own study of the biblical and antitrinitarian Most significantly,De Smet and Verelsthave identifieda numberof verbaland conceptualparallels between the GeneralScholium and the worksof the first-centuryJewish philosopherPhilo Judaeus, who is cited in Newton'snote on space in the GeneralScholium and whose Opera he owned. Especially strikingparallelsexist on the omnipresenceof God, God'soneness andthe associationbetween the unity of God and the unity of His creation.De Smet and Verelstalso point to analogiesbetween ideas present in the General Scholium and the Neostoicism of Justus Lipsius and the Cambridge Platonists Henry More and Ralph Cudworth.In sum, their work demonstrateshighly plausible sources for some of the more philosophically-orientedtheologicalmaterialin the GeneralScholium (this, despite Newton's above-statedconcerns about the corruptinginfluences of philosophy) and adds considerablyto what we know aboutthe compositionof this document.

and

(1780-1915) Four Case Studies InvolvingIdeas of Extraterrestrial Life

Astronomy

Religion

By Michael J. Crowe*

INTRODUCTION

Interactions between astronomy and religion occurred frequently in the period before 1700, those linked to the Copernican revolution being the most famous. It is less widely recognized that interactions between astronomy and religion continued to be extensive in the period after 1700.1 Some recent publications, for example, a number of essays in Gary Femgren's The History of Science and Religion in the Western Tradition:An Encyclopedia2 and Hans Gunther Scheuer's 1997 book on the relationship between cosmology and theology in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries,3 show that such interactions extended beyond 1700. The present essay discusses four examples of such interactions, two from the eighteenth century and two from the nineteenth. All four cases concern the relations between religion and the astronomical claim that intelligent beings exist elsewhere in space. In each of these four cases religious claims influenced astronomy. Cases 3 and 4 share a feature not usually encountered in studies on the interactions of astronomy and religion in that they are instances where not just theistic belief but in fact core doctrines of a specific religion, Christianity, influenced astronomy. I begin by surveying the interactions between religion and the idea of extraterrestrialintelligent life in the early modem period. BACKGROUND SURVEY OF THE INTERACTIONS BETWEEN RELIGION AND IDEAS OF EXTRATERRESTRIAL LIFE BEFORE 1800

Although scholars have shown that interactions between religion and ideas of extraterrestrial life commenced in ancient times and continued through the medieval * Programof LiberalStudies, Universityof Notre Dame, Notre Dame IN 46556 I am very indebtedto MatthewF Dowd, an advancedgraduatestudentat the Universityof Notre Dame, for his many helpful suggestions regardingthis essay. ' One indicationof this lack of awarenessis the fact thata largeandhelpfulbibliographyon science and religion in the Victorianperiod providesonly three referencesto astronomy.See Sydney Eisen and Bernard V. Lightman, Victorian Science and Religion: A Bibliography with Emphasis on Evolution, Belief, and Unbelief, Comprised of Works Published from c. 1900-1975 (Hamden, Conn: Ar-

chon Books, 1984). 2

Gary Fergren, ed., The History of Science and Religion in the Western Tradition: An Encyclope-

dia (New York:Garland,2000). See especially essays 62-8.

3 Hans Giinther Scheuer, Der Glaube derAstronomen und die Gestalt des Universums: Kosmologie und Theologie im 18. und 19. Jahrhundert (Aachen: Shaker Verlag, 1997).

? 2001 by The Historyof Science Society.All rightsreserved.0369-7827/01/1601-0001$2.00 Osiris, 2001, 16:00-00

209

210

MICHAELJ. CROWE

period,4 the nature and intensity of this debate began to change after 1543, when Nicholas Copernicus (1473-1543) shocked his contemporaries by publishing in that year a well-developed set of arguments in support of the heliocentric theory of the universe. Despite the fact that Copernicus never mentioned the idea of extraterrestrial life in his De Revolutionibus, it was this mathematical astronomer who, more than anyone, opened the door through which extraterrestrials entered the modern world. A commonly accepted formulation of how Copernicanism fostered belief in extraterrestrialbeings may be characterized as follows: heliocentrism displaced the earth from the center of the cosmos, transformed the earth into a planet and the planets into earths, and furthermore transformed the stars into suns, which as suns may be orbited by planets. I shall suggest, however, that this formulation requires significant qualification. At the time when Copernicus published his famous book, well-informed authors could bring many arguments-scientific, philosophical, and religious-against its daring thesis. Among the earliest objections was that raised in 1550, only seven years after the appearance of Copernicus's book, by the prominent Lutheran reformer Philipp Melanchthon (1497-1560), who challenged Copernican cosmology by warning that it might foster the idea that Christ's incarnation and redemption could have occurred on other planets: [T]he Son of God is One; our masterJesus Christwas born, died, and resurrectedin this world. Nor does He manifest Himself elsewhere, nor elsewhere has He died or resurrected.Thereforeit must not be imagined that Christdied and was resurrected moreoften,nor mustit be thoughtthatin any otherworldwithoutthe knowledgeof the Son of God, thatmen wouldbe restoredto eternallife.5 Even more significantly, before the end of the sixteenth century one of the earliest Copernicans-and certainly the most daring-Giordano Bruno (1548-1600), associated heliocentrism with the existence of extraterrestriallife. The fact that in 1600 the Roman Catholic Church burned Bruno at the stake made all the more famous the association of heliocentrism with ideas of extraterrestriallife. The tensions suggested by Melanchthon's warning and by Bruno's conflict with Catholicism are two of a number of instances in which the idea of extraterrestriallife created difficulties for the acceptance of the Copernican theory. Although it is difficult to assess the degree to which Christian concerns about the reconcilability of extraterrestrialintelligent life with Christ's incarnation and redemption impeded the Copernican revolution, this much is clear: core Christian doctrines led some intellectuals away from heliocentrism, which ranks as possibly the most important physical theory created in modern times. Advances made in the seventeenth century by such brilliant practitioners of physical science as Johannes Kepler (1571-1630), Galileo Galilei (1564-1642), Rene Descartes (1596-1650), Christiaan Huygens (1629-1695), and Isaac Newton 4Fuller information,evidence, and referencesregardingthis and many other points discussed in this essay can be found in Michael J. Crowe, TheExtraterrestrialLife Debate, 1750-1900: The Idea of a Pluralityof WorldsfromKantto Lowell (Cambridge:CambridgeUniv. Press, 1986), now available as TheExtraterrestrialLifeDebate, 1750-1900 (New York:Dover, 1999). On this specific point, see especially Steven J. Dick, Pluralityof Worlds:The Origins of the ExtraterrestrialLife Debate from Democritusto Kant(Cambridge:CambridgeUniv. Press, 1982). Melanchthon,as translatedand quotedin Dick, Pluralityof Worlds(cit. n. 4), p. 89.

ASTRONOMYAND RELIGION(1780-1915)

211

(1642-1727) had by century's end established the acceptability of the Coperican theory, at least among the leading scientists of that century.The doctrine of a "plurality of worlds" (which implies a place for extraterrestrialintelligent life) won adherents even more gradually than Copernicanism. The attractiveness of this doctrine was significantly enhanced by two engagingly written and widely read books. Bernard le Bovier de Fontenelle's (1657-1757) Entretiens sur la pluralite des mondes (Paris, 1686) and Christiaan Huygens's KouoOewopog, sive de terris coelestis earumque ornatu conjecturae (The Hague, 1698). These volumes made this idea far better known and respected among the reading public, so that by century's end, many intellectuals had adopted it. By 1750, heliocentrism had won essentially full acceptance, which increased the plausibility of the idea of a plurality of inhabited worlds. In the 1740s, for example, the poet Edward Young (1683-1765), in his Night Thoughts, summarized what Copernicanism entailed concerning the nature of stars: "One sun by day, by night ten thousand shine."6 In other words, whereas pre-Copernican astronomers (and even Copernicus himself) viewed stars as sources of light set in the firmament, all at the same distance from the earth, post-Copernicans gradually recognized that stars are nothing less than suns. Moreover, many concluded that as suns, stars are orbited by planets comparable to those in our system. One might assume that this transformation by which late seventeenth- and early eighteenth-century thinkers came first to entertain and in many cases ultimately to accept claims concerning extraterrestriallife constituted an instance of science triumphing over religion, but in fact religious ideas played a significant role in the acceptance of this cosmology. Of course, the scientific contributions of Galileo, Kepler, Descartes, Huygens, and Newton were very influential for this transformation. Nonetheless, these astronomical advances were not by themselves powerful or precise enough in their implications to have produced the situation that prevailed in the middle years of the eighteenth century. By this time it was widely believed that intelligent beings more or less comparable to humans roam the surfaces of the planets orbiting our sun and also the planets of the other stars as well. The historian of ideas Arthur Lovejoy and others have argued that what was also necessary for the acceptance of this new universe was a quasi-metaphysical, quasi-religious principle, the principle of "plenitude."7Lovejoy's formulation of this principle is that "no genuine potentiality of being can remain unfulfilled, that the extent and the abundance of the creation must be as great as the possibility of existence and commensurate with the productive capacity of a 'perfect' and inexhaustible Source, and that the world is better, the more things it contains."8When theists applied the principle of plenitude to the celestial realm, they concluded that God must have placed living 6Edward Young, Night Thoughts,ed. George Gilfillan (Edinburgh:J. Nichol, 1853), Night IX, line 748. 7 In his classic if controversialGreat Chain of Being, Lovejoyarguedthat the featuresthat distinguish the modernfrom the medieval cosmos "owed their introduction,and for the most part,their eventualgeneral acceptance,not to the actual discoveriesor to the technical reasoningsof astrono-

mers, but to those originally Platonic metaphysical preconceptions which . . . had . . . been always

repressedandabortivein medievalthought.... These features[werechiefly] philosophicalandtheological premises.They were, in short,manifestcorollariesof the principleof plenitude."See Arthur Lovejoy, The Great Chain of Being: A Study of the History of an Idea (1936; reprinted New York:

Harper& Brothers,1960), pp. 99, 111. 8Ibid., p. 52.

212

MICHAELJ. CROWE

beings wherever conditions at all comparable to those on earth occurred. Allied to this principle was the belief that planets or stellar systems devoid of life would entail that God's creative energies had in those instances gone to waste, which was an unacceptable notion. Among the many authors who expressed this sentiment, one of the most widely read was James Ferguson (1710-1776), who argued in 1757 for inhabited planets orbiting stars by asserting, It is no waysprobablethattheAlmighty,who alwaysacts with infinitewisdomanddoes nothingin vain, should create so many glorious Suns, fit for so many importantpurposes, and place them at such distancesfrom one another,withoutproperobjectsnear enough to be benefitedby their influences.Whoeverimaginesthey were createdonly to give a faintglimmeringlight to the inhabitantsof this Globe,musthavea very superficial knowledgeof Astronomy,and a meanopinionof the Divine Wisdom.9 Thus toward the end of eighteenth century, the concept of the cosmos embraced by many educated persons involved intelligent life being widespread in the universe.10 Theism and belief in extraterrestriallife had, it seemed, been reconciled. In 1794, Thomas Paine (1737-1809) placed one major aspect of this rapprochement in jeopardy when, in part I of his Age of Reason (1794), he forcefully argued that the central Christian claim that God became incarnate on our planet and died to redeem its sinful inhabitants is irreconcilable with the doctrine of a plurality of worlds, which Paine claimed had been sanctioned by astronomy. Significantly, Paine did not attack theism but reported that after he had confronted Christianity with this astronomical claim, he became a deist, that is, a person accepting a remote, impersonal God but denying Christ's incarnation and redemption. Paine asserted that although the existence of intelligent life only on the earth is not specifically a Christian doctrine, it is nonetheless "so worked up therewith from . . . the story of Eve and the apple, and the counterpart of that story-the death of the Son of God, that to believe otherwise . . . renders the Christian system of faith at once little and ridiculous."11Paine pressed the same point in even stronger language by writing, From whence . . . could arise the . . . strangeconceit that the Almighty . . . should . . . come to die in ourworldbecause,they say,one manandone womanhadeatenan apple! And, on the otherhand, are we to suppose thatevery worldin the boundlesscreation had an Eve, an apple,a serpent,anda redeemer?In this case, the personwho is irreverently called the Son of God, and sometimesGod himself, would have nothingelse to do thanto travelfrom worldto world,in an endless successionof death,with scarcely a momentaryintervalof life.'2 Paine presented a stark alternative: reject belief in extraterrestrial life, or reject Christianity. Paine's Age of Reason attracted an immense readership, both in Britain, where 9 James Ferguson,AstronomyExplained upon Sir Isaac Newton'sPrinciples, 2nd ed. (London: 1757), p. 3. ThatFergusonwas expressingsentimentssharedby his contemporariesis suggestedby the fact thata majorportionof his book, includingthis passage, appearedas the article'Astronomy" in the firstedition (1776) of the EncyclopaediaBritannica. 10The cosmos of the late twentiethcenturycontains far more locales for life, but the percentage of celestial bodies to which life is assigned has droppedgreatly. " Thomas Paine,Age of Reason (1794-5), in Paine, RepresentativeSelections, ed. HarryHayden Clark,rev. ed. (New York:Hill & Wang. 1961), pp. 276-7. 12 Ibid., p. 283.


213

sixty thousand copies were printed, and in America, where a single Philadelphia bookshop sold over fifteen thousand copies. It also generated more than fifty published responses, some explicitly opposing Paine's extraterrestrial life attack on 13 Christianity. I turn now to the four case studies. All of them employ the standard historical method of rational reconstruction. Evidence is supplied that particular actions taken or conclusions reached by a historical figure can best be explained by attributing to the subject certain reasons, motives, or beliefs that he or she may not have made fully explicit or may even have withheld from the public or from publication. In order for such an argument to succeed, the reasons, motives, and/or beliefs attributed to the subject must themselves be plausible or must be such that one can ascribe them to someone acting rationally at that period of time. Because of space limitations, only the essential details and source citations could be included here. (A more comprehensive discussion is available in an earlier publication.)'4 One final note: the first two cases do not involve the issue raised by Paine-his assertion that a plurality of worlds is inconsistent with basic Christian doctrinewhereas for the last two it becomes the critical issue. TWO EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY

CASE STUDIES

Case 1: William Herschel (1738-1822) and the Nebulae Both the first and second cases concern Sir William Herschel, arguably the most important astronomer in the centuries since Newton. The following discussion of Herschel's thought is designed to shed light on two problems of Herschel historiography.The first is associated with what can be labeled his greatest achievement, and the second relates to what can be described as his most bizarre claim. His greatest accomplishment was to use his giant telescopes to discover twenty-five hundred previously unknown nebulae. 15 What is now sometimes seen as the most serious blemish on his career was his theory of the nature and structureof the sun and stars.16 Herschel's remarkable discovery of about twenty-five times more nebulae than the approximately one hundred known by 1780 raises two interrelated questions: (1) Why did Herschel construct the huge reflecting telescopes with which he observed the nebulae? and (2) Why did he alone among his contemporaries become so interested in observing these faint objects?17Materials that I have located in Herschel's unpublished lunar notebooks from the 1770s shed light on the former question.'8 In 1773, Herschel, at that time working as a musician, purchased a copy of James Ferguson's popular Astronomy Explained upon Sir Isaac Newton's Principles."9 He 13For details and references,see Crowe, Debate (cit. n. 4), especially pp. 162-4. 14 Crowe, Debate (cit. n. 4).

15"Nebula"was the termused until the mid-twentiethcenturyfor variousfaint patchesseen in the heavens.These objects are now known to be in most cases either othergalaxies or globularclusters; some, e.g., Orion,are glowing clouds of gas in our Milky Way. 16Steven Kawalerand J. Veverka,"TheHabitableSun:One of William Herschel'sStrangerIdeas," Royal Astronomical Society of Canada Journal 75 (1981): 46-55.

1 On question2, see MariWilliams,"Wastheresuch a thing as stellarastronomyin the eighteenth century?"Hist. Sci. 21 (1983):369-83; for commentaryby M. Hoskin, see pp. 385-8. 18Herschel'slunarnotebooksare preservedat the RoyalAstronomicalSociety. For more information, see Crowe, Debate (cit. n. 4), pp. 61-6. 19Constance Lubbock, The Herschel Chronicle (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1933), p. 60.

214

MICHAELJ. CROWE

found it so interesting that, as his sister Caroline recorded, each night, he took it "to bed with a bason [sic] of milk or a glass of water."20In that volume, Herschel encountered such passages as that which I quoted earlier from Ferguson (in the section entitled "Background Survey of the Interactions between Religion and Ideas of ExtraterrestrialLife in the Period before 1800") in which the author argued that the stars must have inhabited planets orbit near them to shine upon, since otherwise God's effort in creating the stars would have been wasted. Moreover, in the same volume Ferguson noted that telescopes reveal mountains, valleys, and cavities on the moon similar to those on earth, adding that such "similarities leave us no room to doubt, but that all the Planets and Moons in the system are designed as commodious habitations for creatures endued with capacities of knowing and adoring their beneficent Creator."2 Reading such confident assertions might lead a person to attempt to sight evidence of lunar life, which is precisely what Herschel set out to do. His unpublished lunar notebooks record these efforts. In 1776, Herschel observed what he believed to be a forest, and eventually other structures, on the moon.2- The record and analysis he placed in his observation book for 28 May 1776 state in part, "My attention was chiefly directed to Mare humorum, and this I now believe to be a forest; the word being also taken in its proper extended significance as consisting of such large growing substances."23After sketching the forest, he analyzed the reliability of this observation, which he must surely have recognized was, if correct, of substantial significance. Herschel, however, was sensible enough to realize that these observations were less than satisfactory. Hoping to improve their quality, he built better and better telescopes, until he was constructing the most powerful telescopes ever made. He employed these telescopes to make further lunar observations, succeeding in 1778 in making observations that he interpreted as probably showing lunar towns.24The moon was not, of course, the only object Herschel observed. His most spectacular observation during this period was his discovery in 1781 of the planet Uranus, which made him internationally famous and led him to abandon his musical career to become a fulltime astronomer. As Herschel became a part of the professional astronomical community, he recognized that other astronomers viewed observational claims for lunar life as very problematic. This recognition, combined with his frustration at his failure to secure fully satisfactory observational evidence of lunar life, seems to have motivated him to explore other astronomical objects; in particular,he turned his telescopes to the nebulae, which, he came to recognize, merited far more interest than earlier astronomers had given them. Gradually Herschel, aided by the superior telescopes he had constructed, concluded that these nebulous objects not only were observationally varied and interesting, but also that they could be interpreted as nothing less than other universes, comparable to our Milky Way. In other words, he began to conceive of them not simply as giant glowing celestial structures but rather as galaxies, as uni21 Mrs. John Herschel, Memoir and Correspondence of Caroline Herschel (London, 1879), p. 35. 21 Ferguson, 22 For

Astronomy Explained (cit. n. 9), p. 4. details, see Crowe, Debate (cit. n. 4), pp. 62-6.

23For Herschel's report, analysis, and sketch, see William Herschel, Herschel MS W. 3/1-4, pp. 1-2, section labeled "Moon"in reel 17 of the Royal AstronomicalSociety microfilmHerschel Archive. 24 Ibid., pp. 8-10.


215

verses abundantly filled with intelligent life. In a 1785 essay entitled "On the Construction of the Heavens," for example, Herschel remarked that some nebulae "cannot well be less, but are probably much larger than our own system; and, being also extended, the inhabitants of the planets that attend the stars which compose them must likewise perceive the same phenomena."25The spirit of this observing program as well as the excitement it generated are suggested by the fact that after visiting Herschel in 1786, the novelist Fanny Burney exclaimed that Herschel "has discovered fifteen hundred universes! How many more he may find who can conjecture?"26 In short, my claim is that Herschel's belief in extraterrestriallife, motivated by a teleologically based conception of God's or Nature's action in the universe, led him first to construct the finest telescopes made in the eighteenth century, hoping thereby to detect evidence of God's actions on our nearest celestial neighbor. Then, as this quest turned out to be unsuccessful, Herschel, stimulated by his conviction that nebulae must be abodes of abundant life, began observing them with extraordinary diligence and success. Herschel's contributions to telescope technology and his far greater significance as the pioneer of stellar astronomy both came in part from his passion for the notion of a plurality of worlds, a notion based not on direct scientific or observational evidence but at least in part on the religio-metaphysical assumption of plenitude.

Case 2: WilliamHerschel's TerrestrialSun and Stars For many historians of astronomy, the chief blemish on Herschel's career is that he developed a model of the sun and stars that ill accords with more modem models of those objects. For example, Agnes Clerke (1842-1907), a nineteenth-century author of astronomy books, writing in 1885, went so far as to describe Herschel's solar theory as more primitive than that of Anaxagoras.27More recently Steven Kawaler and J. Veverka, in their essay "The Habitable Sun" (1981), not only labeled Herschel's model of the sun one of his "Stranger Ideas," but noted that in a court case eight years before Herschel published his claims for life on the sun a plea of insanity had been made for a man on the grounds that the man had submitted a paper to the Royal Society arguing for life on the sun.28 The following interpretation of the genesis of Herschel's solar theory suggests that it arose jointly from his observations of globular clusters and also from his teleologically grounded belief that if major regions of space were bereft of intelligent life, this would represent a waste of God's efforts. As noted earlier, the Copernican theory has been seen as transforming the earth into a planet, and planets into earths. What Herschel's solar theory entailed was nothing less than the transformation of the sun and stars themselves into earths! In particular, in 1795, Herschel 25 WilliamHerschel,"On The Constructionof the Heavens," in The Scientific Papers of Sir William Herschel,ed. J. L. E. Dreyer,2 vols. (London:RoyalSociety and RoyalAstronomicalSociety, 1912), vol. 1, p. 354. Cited hereafteras Papers. 26 As quotedin Lubbock,Herschel Chronicle (cit. n. 19), p. 170.

27

Agnes Clerke, Popular History of Astronomy during the Nineteenth Century (Edinburgh: A. &

C. Black, 1885), p. 71. A. J. Meadows has claimed that Herschel'stheory of the sun remainedthe preferredtheory until about 1850 (see Meadows, Early Solar Physics [Oxford:Pergamon, 19701, p. 6). If this is correct,it suggests thatmanyotherastronomersduringthis periodwere as enthusiastic as was Herschelabout life existing throughoutthe universe. 28 Kawalerand Veverka,"HabitableSun" (cit. n. 16), pp. 46-8.

216

MICHAELJ. CROWE

published his essay "On the Nature and Construction of the Sun and Fixed Stars" in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London in which he claimed that the sun and stars consist of cool earthlike bodies above which floats a glowing layer that gives the sun and stars their appearance. In support of this claim, Herschel interpreted sunspots as openings in the sun's glowing exterior layer through which one could see the sun's cool interior. Herschel put his striking theory in the following way: The sun ... appearsto be nothing else than a very eminent, large, and lucid planet, evidentlythe first,or in strictnessof speaking,the only primaryone of our system.... Its similaritiesto the otherglobes of the solar system ... leads us to supposethat it is most probablyalso inhabited,like the rest of the planets,by beings whose organsare adaptedto the peculiarcircumstancesof thatvast globe.29 What could have led Herschel to make such a claim? Moreover, why did he insist that his determination to put it forward was "authorized upon astronomical principles" (p. 479)? The proximate source of Herschel's solar model can be located in observations he had made in the 1780s. Although it is true that as early as 1780 Herschel had considered a form of this solar model (p. xcvi), he had between then and 1795 accumulated what he took to be astronomical evidence that, when viewed in the light of his belief in the prevalence of extraterrestrial life, substantially increased the attractiveness of that model. Herschel's researches in this period, especially those on double stars and globular clusters, led him to conclude that stars in such systems are too near each other to permit habitable planets. It is my contention that Herschel relieved the tension this created for his belief that life is widespread in the universe by developing a model of the stars that permitted their habitation. This reconstruction of Herschel's thought receives support from the following statement in his 1795 paper: [T]he idea of suns or starsbeing merely the supportersof systems of planets, is not absolutelyto be admitted.... Among the greatnumberof very compressedclustersof stars. . . , thereare some which open a differentview of the heavensto us. The starsin themareso very close together,that... it will hardlybe possibleto assignanysufficient mutualdistanceto the starscomposingthe cluster,to leave room for crowdingin those planets, for whose supportthose stars have been, or might be, supposedto exist. It would seem, therefore,highly probablethatthey exist for themselves;and are, in fact, only very capitallucid, primaryplanets,connectedtogetherin one greatsystemof mutual support.(pp. 482-3) Thus Herschel had found a way to save these stars from being "mere useless points" (p. 484), or, to put it differently, to rescue his teleologically oriented metaphysics30from a serious difficulty. That Herschel's solar theory was no passing fancy 29Herschel, "On the Natureand Constructionof the Sun and Fixed Stars,"in Papers (cit. n. 25), p. 479. Cited hereafterby page numbersin parenthesisin the text. 30 It should not be assumedfrom the use of the word "metaphysics"in this context that Herschel, whose publicationsalmost without exception appearedas essays in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society,publisheda systematicstatementof his metaphysicsor of his theology.It is true thatone of his early unpublishedessays consisted of a defense of metaphysics;see Herschel,Scientific Papers of Sir WilliamHerschel, vol. 1 (cit. n. 25), pp. lxxxi-lxxxiii. What gives supportto the use of the term "metaphysics"is that Herschel'sstrongbelief in extraterrestrialbeings, to whom he regularlyreferredin his publications,and his descriptionof stars if not inhabitedas "mereuseless points,"cannothave been justified on scientific grounds.Consequently,such beliefs must have been based on metaphysicalor theological views, such as those expressedby Ferguson,whose book Her-


217

in his thought is shown by the fact that he elaborated it further in an 1801 essay in which he referred to the sun as a "most magnificent habitable globe"31 and by his description in 1814 of stars as "so many opaque, habitable, planetary globes."32 Herschel's solar theory did not escape criticism from his contemporaries. For example, the prominent scientist Thomas Young (1773-1829) objected, in his Course of Lectures on Natural Philosophy (1807), that the sun's immense mass would necessitate that human-sized solarians would weigh over two tons and that the solar clouds could not protect them from the sun's great heat.33It is interesting that Young's first objection did not depend on some recent scientific finding. Newton had demonstrated in his Principia Mathematica that the force of gravity on the sun's surface must be at least twenty times more intense than the force of terrestrial gravity.34 In short, it seems correct to maintain that Herschel's solar theory did not enhance his reputation as an astronomical thinker. In contrast to case 1, then, in this case quasi-religious, quasi-metaphysical views pushed Herschel in an apparently unproductive direction. TWO NINETEENTH-CENTURY

CASE STUDIES

In the mid-nineteenth century, the dominant view among astronomers was that all planets are inhabited, but probably not our moon nor the sun and stars. These convictions existed despite the fact that no empirical evidence directly supported belief in intelligent life beyond the earth. Moreover, a major question discussed among astronomers at that time was whether the nebulae are "island universes"-in other words, whether the hundreds of nebulae observed by Herschel and others are vast systems of stars comparable to our Milky Way.Were such to be the case, these systems would provide abundant locales for life on the planets that it was assumed must be near the stars. This island universe theory had been championed by Immanuel Kant (1724-1804), by Herschel for a period, and by others, but some opponents of itfor example, William Whewell and Herbert Spencer (1820-1903)-were coming forward.35 Cases 3 and 4 reveal that religious convictions played a significant role in discrediting the island universe theory (case 3) and in altering the notion that essentially all planets are inhabited (case 4). Two of the more surprising aspects of this part of the story are that (1) whereas it is generally assumed that belief in widespread extraterrestrial life has constantly increased in modern times, evidence indicates that between 1850 and 1910 it declined, and that (2) a major factor in triggering this decline was not some metaphysical doctrine or some abstract theological claim about design in the universe, but rather reflection on the central Christian doctrine of a divine schel had read so carefully.Such views were so widespreadduringthatperiodthat it would be risky to claim that Herschelderivedthem from any single source. 31Herschel, "ObservationsTendingto Investigatethe Nature of the Sun . . "in Papers, vol. 2, p. 147. 32

Idem, "Astronomical Observations Relating to the Sidereal Part of the Heavens . . ." in Papers,

vol. 2, p. 529.

33 Thomas Young, A Course of Lectures on Natural Philosophy (London, 1845), vol. 1, p. 399. 34 Isaac Newton, The Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy, trans. I. Bernard

Principia:

Cohen andAnne Whitman(Berkeley and Los Angeles: Univ. of CaliforniaPress, 1999), p. 813. 35 For informationon the history of the island universe debate, see Michael J. Crowe, Modern Theories of the Universe from Herschel to Hubble (New York: Dover, 1994).

218

MICHAELJ. CROWE

redeemer incarnated on our earth. It is important to note that the claim that will be developed is not that these central Christian doctrines led society or the scientific community to oppose these theories in astronomy, but rather that these religious doctrines stimulated two scientists to rethink the prevailing astronomical views and to formulate a set of astronomical arguments that gradually led to rejection of the island universe theory36and of the notion that essentially all planets are inhabited. Case 3: William Whewell (1794-1866) and the Plurality of Worlds William Whewell was a prominent Cambridge University scientist, historian, philosopher, and Anglican priest. Around 1850, many of Whewell's contemporaries were aware that in 1833, in his Astronomy and General Physics Considered with Reference to Natural Theology, he endorsed belief in extraterrestrials. In the period around 1850, however, Whewell completely changed his mind, and in 1853 he published anonymously a book challenging the notion of a plurality of worlds. An unpublished manuscript that Whewell composed in 1850 provides the key to understanding that transformation; in particular, it indicates that he had by then come to question whether belief in extraterrestriallife is compatible with Christianity. Whewell's thirty-five-page unfinished manuscript entitled "Astronomy and Religion" consists of three dialogues. In the first and second dialogue, one of the interlocutors forcefully lays out one astronomical objection after another to the Christian conception of God and of God's plan for our care and redemption. Moreover, both interlocutors raise difficulties for a claim made by various authors that God may have become incarnate on a number of planets. Regarding this idea, the first interlocutor strongly responds, Ourview of the saviourof manwill not allow us to supposethattherecan be morethan one saviour.And the saviourcomingas a manto men is so essentiala partof the scheme .. thatto endeavourto transferit to otherworlds ... is morerepugnantto our feeling thanto imaginethose otherworldsnot to be providedwith any divine scheme of salvation at all. The one andonly Saviourcame as a manto men andthe humanitywhich he thusassumedis, as we mustconceive,essentialto his being. It seems to me thatit would be an offense againstGod and his scheme of salvationas it has been revealedto us to imagine a like scheme to be carriedinto effect for the inhabitantsof Jupiteror of one of the planetswhich revolveroundSirius.37 After the first interlocutor comments on how distressed he is by these tensions with Christianity, the second interlocutor, who the context suggests should be identified with Whewell, comments, "I know that such thoughts may become very painful and disturbing. I have myself dwelt among such trains of thought."38The third dialogue, which is only a fragment, reveals the strategy that the author favors for combating what can be called the extraterrestrial objection to Christianity. The strategy that Whewell adopted was to launch an attack on claims for extraterrestrial intelligent life; in fact, in that dialogue, Whewell sketched an argument (his so-called geologiThe island universetheory was resurrectedaround 1920 and is now an establishedpartof astronomy. 37WilliamWhewell, 'Astronomyand Religion, DialogueI;' p. 22, MSR. 6. 1325,p. 22, Whewell Collection,WrenLibrary,TrinityCollege, CambridgeUniversity. 38 Ibid., p. 24. 36


219

cal argument39)that would be central in his 1853 publication.40What Whewell had done was to adopt a position that in a sense left him in agreement with Paine's claim that belief in Christianity is very difficult to reconcile with the doctrine of a plurality of worlds but in disagreement with Paine's claim that astronomy warrantedthe latter doctrine. In suggesting that Whewell's Christian convictions were central in this transformation, I do not wish to deny that other factors influenced him.41 Whewell never finished his dialogues entitled "Astronomy and Religion." Instead, he transferredhis efforts to writing a full-scale book on the question of extraterrestrial life, which appeared anonymously in 1853 as Of the Plurality of Worlds: An Essay. In that volume, Whewell shocked his contemporaries by questioning many claims for life elsewhere in the universe. At times, he included passages that revealed that he saw serious tensions between Christianity and belief in extraterrestrials, as, for example, when he stated, The earth ... can not, in the eyes of any one who accepts this Christianfaith, be regardedas being on a level with any otherdomiciles. It is the Stage of the greatDrama of God'sMercy and Man'sSalvation .... This being the characterwhichhas thusbeen conferredupon it, how can we assentto the assertionsof Astronomers,when they tell us thatit is only one among millionsof similarhabitations?42 Nonetheless, Whewell cast his arguments largely in scientific terms. Initially stimulated by the tensions he saw concerning reconcilability with Christianity,he reexamined on scientific grounds the arguments for extraterrestrial life and found them seriously wanting. For example, he presented in his book strong arguments against the planets being habitable, at least by intelligent beings. Whewell stressed that the inner planets would tend to be overly warm for life, whereas the planets more distant from the sun than the earth would be excessively cold.43 Whewell's analysis also extended to the question of island universes, which he challenged in a number of ways, especially on the basis of observations made by John Herschel (1792-1871) that seemed to indicate that the Magellanic Clouds contain stars and nebulae apparently situated near each other and giving out more or less comparable quantities of light. Whewell analyzed Herschel's observation as a basis for concluding that nebulae, rather than being remote and vast clusters of stars comparable to our Milky Way, are nothing more than stars in the process of formation.44 In short, Whewell provided his contemporaries with an array of arguments that challenged the by then traditional portrayal of the universe as teeming with life. 3' Whewell'sgeological argumentrejectedthe claim that vast regions of space revealedby astronomy could not be barrenof intelligentlife because in thatcase God'seffort in creatingthese regions would have been wasted.Whewell counteredthatthroughoutnearlyall the vast periods of past time revealedby geology, the earthitself had lacked intelligentlife. Thatfact, Whewell claimed, suggests thatGod'splan is compatiblewith large regions of apparentlyunvivifiedspace. See [WilliamWhewell], Pluralityof Worlds(1853; reprintedBoston: Gould & Lincoln, 1854), chaps. 5 and 6. 40For a fuller account and analysis of Whewell's manuscript,see Crowe, Debate (cit. n. 4), pp. 277-82. 41A numberof factors are specified in Brooke'sanalysis of Whewell'sbook and the responsesto it. See John Brooke, "NaturalTheology and the Pluralityof Worlds:Observationson the BrewsterWhewell Debate,"Ann. Sci. 34 (1977):221-86, especially pp. 264-8. 42 [Whewell], Pluralityof Worlds(cit. n. 39), pp. 44-5. 43 Ibid.. chap. 9. 44 Ibid.. chaps. 7 and 8.

220

MICHAELJ. CROWE

Although many of Whewell's arguments were reasonable and some deserve to be described as ingenious and/or prophetic, most of his contemporaries disagreed with his conclusion that intelligent life must be rare in the universe. In fact, Whewell, aware that many of his contemporaries had accepted the claim made by numerous proponents of natural theology that extraterrestrials are an illustration of God's beneficence and omnipotence, in effect predicted the hostile reception that awaited his book when in its preface he remarked, "It will be curious ... if it should now be deemed as blamable to doubt the existence of inhabitants of the Planets and Stars, as, three centuries ago, it was held heretical to teach that doctrine."45 By the early 1870s, however, Whewell had won a partial disciple, Richard Proctor (1837-1888), a prolific scientific author who spread Whewell's message that the scientific evidence, rather than supporting claims for life extending widely throughout the universe, called such claims into question. Proctor not only developed and refined Whewell's arguments against planetary life; he also used various arguments, especially Whewell's Magellanic Clouds argument, to deny that island universes exist.46By the end of the nineteenth century, the astronomical community had almost entirely rejected the idea of island universes, although the view was successfully resurrected around 1920.47Whewell and Proctor were by no means the only authors who successfully challenged the cosmology prevalent in 1850, but they were especially influential.48

Case 4: EdwardWalterMaunder(1851-1928) and the Martian Canals During the final three decades of the nineteenth century, a dramatic situation arose regarding claims concerning life in our solar system. Most astronomers had by then concluded that, with one possible exception, life on the other planets of our solar system is improbable. The possible exception was Mars, which was emerging as the last, best hope for those who favored the theory. Hopes for Martian life received a major boost in 1877, when the Italian astronomer Giovanni Schiaparelli (18351910) reported that he had observed canali on Mars. Gradually other astronomers also reported seeing the canals, one of the most notable being Percival Lowell (1855-1916), a Harvard-educatedAmerican millionaire who erected a splendid observatory from which he directed a search for additional evidence of Martian life. Numerous historians have recounted the exciting series of developments that emerged,49although in many cases without full attention to the astronomer who did most to convince the scientific community and eventually the public of the illusory nature of the repeated sightings of Martian canals. This was an Englishman, Edward Walter Maunder of the Royal Greenwich Observatory. 45 Ibid., p. iii. On the response to Whewell's book, see Crowe, Debate (cit. n. 4), especially pp. 300-58, and Brooke, "Brewster-WhewellDebate"(cit. n. 41). 46 For a good statementof Proctor'sviews, see RichardProctor,"A New Theory of Life in Other Worlds"in idem, Our Place among Infinities, 2nd ed. (London: Henry S. King & Co., 1876), pp.4745-70. For an accountof this development,see Crowe, Theoriesof the Universe(cit. n. 35). 48 It shouldalso be noted thatProctor disagreedwith manyof Whewell'sconclusions.E.g., Proctor arguedthat althoughmost planets are barrenof life at present,life had existed there in the remote past or would exist there in the future. 49 See especially William GravesHoyt, Lowell and Mars (Tucson:Univ. of ArizonaPress, 1976), and William Sheehan, The Planet Mars: A History of Obsenration& Discovery (Tucson:Univ. of ArizonaPress, 1996).


221

That Maunder would emerge as the leader of the opposition to the SchiaparellianLowellian Mars is doubly surprising. First, Maunder himself stated, "I had recorded some of the markings now familiar to us as 'canals' and 'oases' even before Schiaparelli had published his results."50Second, Maunder, in 1877, had himself observationally confirmed William Huggins's (1824-1910) report (now also known to be illusory) of the spectroscopic detection of substantial quantities of water vapor in the Martian atmosphere. That report had of course been seen as favorable to the supporters of life on Mars.51Nonetheless, in a series of three essays on Mars that he published in 1882, Maunder for the first time in his career challenged claims for life on Mars. What led Maunder to set aside the evidence mentioned above that would seem to be supportive of claims for life on Mars and instead to argue against it? The origin of his skepticism seems to lie partly in his active membership in a small pentecostal and adventist denomination known as the (Irvingite) Catholic Apostolic Church. This membership as well as sections of his writings indicate his firm belief in Christ's incarnation and redemption. In the concluding paragraph of the final essay in his series of Mars essays, Maunder reminded his readers that his scientific discussion of conditions on Mars compared to those on earth "suggests to us with what exquisite delicacy our own planet is fitted up for our needs."52Maunder then argued, as a mainly noncontroversial aside, that conditions on the other planets and moons of our system are even less supportive of life. The question he was raising was how to explain the discrepancy between conditions so hostile to life on other planets, and conditions so delicately adjusted to life, on our planet. He offered his answer at the end of his essay: [I]t was no mere lucky chance that broughttogetherso many qualifications,each of themessentialto our welfare,in this planetof ours,whilst larger,brighterorbspossess no such fitnessfor our use; and as we look, on the one hand,at the indescribablemagnificenceof the starryheavens, . .. andon the otherat the infinitecare with which this earthhas been fashioned . ., we are compelled ... to unite in the outburstof the Psalmist ... and exclaim "WhenI considerThy Heavens,the worksof Thy fingers, The moon and the stars,which Thou hast ordained, Whatis man,thatThou artmindfulof him, And the son of Man, that Thou visitest him."73

In other words, Maunder's answer seems to be that just as God chose to become incarnate on our planet, so also God bestowed on our planet conditions conducive to intelligent life. The two actions are comparable; for those who accept the Christian claims for divine incarnation and redemption, it should be no surprise that God also bestowed conditions supportive of intelligent life on earth. It is important to note that it would have been viewed as rash, alienating, and highly controversial for Maunder to suggest that the Christian claims regarding atonement clearly B5E. W. Maunder,"The 'Canals' of Mars:A Reply to Mr Story,"Knowledge,n.s. 1 (May 1904): 87-9, on p. 87. 51 Crowe, Debate (cit. n. 4), p. 490. 52 E. W. Maunder, "Is Marshabitable?"SundayMagazine,n.s. 11 (1882):102-4; 170-2, on p. 172. See also Maunder's"The Red Planet,"SundayMagazine,n.s. 11 (1882):30-3. 53Maunder,"Is Marshabitable?"(cit. n. 52), p. 172.

222

MICHAELJ. CROWE

point to intelligent life being confined to our planet, but it seems fully possible that Maunder's strongly held Christian convictions played a significant role in his willingness to take a fresh look at the question of life on Mars. He was not the first to introduce theological considerations into this fundamentally scientific question; it was rather that certain theological conceptions were allowing him to set aside other theological conceptions (plenitude, and the problem of the waste of God's efforts) that had acted so powerfully for over two centuries on many advocates of extraterrestrial intelligent life. Two decades later Maunder was still expressing such views. In 1912, he made a presentation to the Victoria Institute, a society aimed at reconciling reason and religion. In his address, Maunder presented a number of his arguments against life on Mars. He also put forth the view that highly complicated conditions are needed for intelligent life, stressing also that double-star systems, for example, cannot provide such conditions. This pointed to the extremely low probability for life on most celestial objects. In fact, he suggested, the earth must be among the "small portion, at best"' of inhabited planets in the universe.54He then asked his audience what this might indicate about the "purpose and design" of life on earth. He offered the following answer: "The Wisdom of God Who was with Him 'when He prepared the heavens, . . . when He appointed the foundations of the earth,' desired that, as 'the Word made flesh,' He might 'rejoice in the habitable part of His earth, and have His delights with the Sons of men."'55Maunder, in other words, was saying that possibly reason and religion are not so far apart in this instance, that the Christian would not need to be troubled if it were to be found that intelligent life is rare in the universe. Maunder may have been disappointed at the response accorded his carefully worked out analysis of the possibility of life on Mars and other planets. One member of the audience at the Victoria Institute characteristically complained, "I came to this meeting hoping that Mr. Maunder would tell us something about life upon other worlds, and I have been much disappointed .... Surely all the millions of stars ... were not created without some purpose?"56 Further evidence for the claim that Christian convictions influenced Maunder's thought is found in a book he published in 1913 with the title Are the planets inhabited? In that volume, Maunder urged that life beyond the earth must be quite rare; in fact, in his concluding chapter, he wrote, "[I]t is even conceivable that this Earth of ours may be unique."57It is true that elsewhere in the book Maunder stated that religious concerns should have no bearing on the question of extraterrestrial life58 and that throughout his life he nearly always confined his arguments against Martian life to scientific evidence. As already noted, however, religious scientists of the time were aware that emphasis on religion could interfere with acceptance of their views by other scientists. In closing the book, Maunder allowed his religious convictions to emerge clearly. Having suggested that only our earth may possess intelligent life, he noted that 54 E. W. Maunder,"Conditionsof the Habitabilityof a Planet:WithSpecial Referenceto the Planet

Mars," J. Trans. Victoria Inst. 44 (1912):78-94, 55 Ibid., on p. 94. 56 "Discussion"

on p. 94.

[of E. W. Maunder's"Conditionsof the Habitabilityof a Planet:WithSpecial Reference to the PlanetMars"],J. Trans.VictoriaInst. 44 (1912):94-102, on p. 97. 57 E. W. Maunder,Are the planets inhabited?(London:Harperand Brothers,1913), p. 161. 58 Ibid.. p. 5.

AND RELIGION ASTRONOMY (1780-1915)

223

earthly life "is under sentence of death,"59that it appears to have no future. This dilemma, he noted, is one that science cannot resolve. He then concluded his book by proposing a resolution: A voice has been heard,the voice of the Son of God Himself: "I am the Resurrectionand the Life. He thatbelievethon Me, thoughhe were dead, yet shall he live." And acceptingHis word,the Churchin all ages, and amongall nations,peoples, and tongues,has madereply: "I LOOKFORTHE RESURRECTIONOF THE DEAD AND THE LIFEOF THE WORLDTO COME."6" In other words, Maunder seems to have been saying that the Christian message of atonement and resurrection saves the universe from being a senselessly dying and desolate place. Or to put it on a more personal level, Maunder himself could feel comfortable with a universe largely bereft of life, with a Mars very different from the Mars championed by advocates of the canals, because his faith in fundamental Christian doctrines allowed this to be the case. This analysis not only suggests that Maunder's Christian convictions played a role in his opposition to extreme claims for extraterrestriallife, including those made by advocates of the canals of Mars; it also indicates that Maunder recognized that bringing Christian claims into this dispute among astronomers would discredit both him and his message. Thus in the following sketch of his key role in the canals of Mars debate, it is not surprising that there is no mention of Maunder citing Christian doctrines in the debate. Among Maunder's principal attacks on the observations supportive of the claims for canals on Mars was an 1894 essay in which he presented the first full-blown argument for the illusory nature of the canal observations. He not only noted the "great divergency between the descriptions of different observers" of the canals, but also the "greatness and suddenness of the changes remarked in the 'canal' system."61 Moreover, having observed in 1891 that a series of sunspots, individually invisible, were seen as a line-in effect, as a canal62-he suggested that a comparable appearance beset observers of the Martian canals and developed this point by carrying out tests of the limits of visibility in observing fine detail. In 1903, he reported further experiments in which schoolboys, when placed at a distance from drawings of a canal-less Mars and asked to sketch what they saw, drew canals. He summarized his results by asserting that the experiments show that canals "can be seen by perfectly unbiased and keen-sighted observers upon objects where no marking of such a character actually exists."63Maunder carried out his critique of the canal observations in dozens of articles, eventually drawing support from various other astronomers, including Simon Newcomb (1835-1909) and E. M. Antoniadi (1820-1944). By about 1913, these efforts had largely succeeded.64 59Ibid., p. 161.

60

Ibid., p. 162.

Mars,"Knowledge 17 (Nov. 1, 1894):249-52, on p. 250. E. W. Maunder,"The 'Canals'of Mars" Scientia 7 (1910):253-69, on p. 263. 63 J. E. Evans and E. W. Maunder,"Experimentsas to the Actuality of the 'Canals' Observedon Mars,"RoyalAstronomicalSociety MonthlyNotices 63 (June 1903):488-99, on p. 497. 64 For a detailed study of the canals of Mars debate, including Maunder'srole in it, see Crowe, Debate (cit. n. 4), pp. 480-546. 6" E. W. Maunder,"The Canals of 62

224

MICHAELJ. CROWE

It is an irony that in the repeated retellings of the story of the canals of Mars, the astronomers who receive the greatest attention tend to be Schiaparelli, Lowell, and Camille Flammarion (1842-1925), whereas Maunder, who did more than anyone to show the illusory nature of the canal observations, receives scant recognition. The significance of Maunder's contribution should not be underestimated. Not only did he play the key role in freeing Mars from the canal illusion; he also thereby removed the last hope, at that time, of those who wished to argue for intelligent life on any body in our solar system except the earth. And scarcely less significantly, Maunder and those who developed the critique of the credibility of observation that he pioneered contributed significantly to helping astronomers attain a more sophisticated and reliable understanding of the nature and limits of observation. The pattern evident in the case of Whewell reappeared, I have suggested, in the case of Maunder. Belief in Christ's incarnation and redemption and the allied claim that the earth, insignificant as it is in the physical universe, has a special place in the spiritual universe, suggested (or at the least allowed) that widely accepted astronomical claims should be subjected to careful reexamination. This reexamination eventually led to the recognition that conditions on most planets are not similar to those on earth. It also played a major role in the rejection, between about 1870 and 1915, of the island universe theory.65These shifts were not brought about by Whewell and Maunder alone, but their roles were crucial. CONCLUSION

In all four cases that I have reviewed, religious and/or metaphysical ideas regarding extraterrestrials influenced astronomical thought. It seems a surprising and significant historical result that such ideas affected claims about bodies in the astronomical universe or about the universe itself, even though those claims are not obviously connected to the religious or metaphysical ideas. For example, it seems improbable that a person's belief or disbelief in God would influence how the person conceives the sun or nebulae or that someone's view of the Christian notion of atonement would influence whether that person accepted or opposed claims for inhabited planets in the solar system (Whewell) or for Martian canals (Maunder). Nonetheless, evidence has been provided that just such influences acted in the lives of the historical figures discussed. Moreover, the effects were significant. Herschel's discovery of twenty-five hundred nebulae, Whewell's critique of the island universe theory and of the notion of a richly populated solar system, and Maunder's successful efforts to show that Mars is barren of life were all results of major significance in the history of astronomy. Nor was the influence positive in every case. Resistance to the idea of a plurality of worlds retarded acceptance of the heliocentric theory, while Herschel's enthusiasm for extraterrestriallife led him to a theory of the sun that proved retrogressive. I have not claimed that religious convictions directly and logically entailed specific astronomical conclusions. Herschel's strong belief in the existence of extraterrestrials seems to have influenced him in building better telescopes, but it in no sense entailed that he would find thousands of nebulae. His giant telescopes were a 65 Both Agnes Clerke and RichardProctortestified to the effectiveness of Whewell's Magellanic Clouds argument.See Crowe, Debate (cit. n. 4), pp. 286-7.


225

necessary, but not a sufficient, condition for this. His conviction (1) that stellar clusters present serious problems for planetary life, and (2) that stars are in effect quasiplanets, may have followed fairly directly from his religio-metaphysical convictions, but many entirely separate factors (e.g., his observations of sunspots) influenced the specific model he developed for the sun and stars. Similarly, although Whewell's difficulties in reconciling Christianity with the densely populated universe of his contemporaries led him to search for a new view of the solar system and of the stellar realms beyond, the specific view he adopted was heavily influenced by the state of astronomy in the mid-nineteenth century. Moreover, the tension that Maunder felt between his Christianity and the Mars championed by the advocates of the canals did not directly dictate how Maunder set about his assault on the canal observations. What is striking, however, is that although many of Whewell's and of Maunder's contemporaries were more experienced in astronomy than they were, the arguments made by these two scientists rank among the most transforming astronomical insights of the period between 1850 and 1915. If one were to ask what two investigators were chiefly responsible for transforming our solar system from being considered lush with planetary life (as it was widely viewed in 1850) into a near desert (as it had come to be seen by 1915) with but one oasis (earth), then Whewell and Maunder would be leading candidates for that distinction. The four cases presented in this essay indicate the need for historians to look beyond the obvious or the expected, to give careful attention to the commitments regarding religion and metaphysics of an historical figure, and, whenever possible, to seek out and examine the agent's relevant manuscripts as well as publications that may seem peripheral (e.g., Herschel's studies on globular clusters or Maunder's 1882 essay in the Sunday Magazine). The historian also needs to be sensitive to the fact that there are several reasons why scientists at times avoid making their underlying religious or metaphysical convictions explicit or public, even in cases where those convictions may have had a major influence on their thought. They may fear that making their religious convictions explicit might discredit their scientific claims. They may not be fully aware that those convictions have influenced their scientific thought. Finally, the scientific conclusions that they are championing may have been suggested by, but are not necessarily logically entailed by, the religious convictions that led them to initiate their investigation. The historian also needs to be open to recognizing multiple influences. It is rarely the case in history that only one factor influenced or caused a particular result. For example, Herschel's solar theory was certainly influenced by his solar observations and by what earlier authors had claimed concerning the sun. Yet observations do not always (some would claim rarely) demand only one interpretation, which leaves open the possibility of other influences acting on scientists. It would therefore be wrong to maintain that Christian convictions in a nineteenth-century astronomer must lead the astronomer to deny inhabited planets or the canals of Mars. In fact, most Christian astronomers in the period from Whewell to Maunder drew no such conclusions. In the case of these two figures, however, the particular form of their Christian convictions (and/or their apparent resistance to the attempts at reconciliation that various of their contemporaries had worked out) played a role in Whewell and Maunder formulating their opposition to claims of extraterrestriallife. That influence seems to have been, as they themselves would probably stress, indirect: their Christian convictions led them to reexamine the evidence, and in that process they

226

MICHAELJ. CROWE

formulatednew scientificargumentsagainstthe supportersof life on the planetsof oursolarsystem.Cases 3 and4 areunusualin the historyof the interactionsbetween science and religion. In these instances,the tensions at issue were not in regardto belief in God, scripturalinterpretation,the design argument,ethical problems,and othermattersthataretypicallythe focus in historicalstudiesof science andreligion. Ratherwhat was at issue were core doctrinesof one religion, Christianity,or, to be more precise, the interpretationof those doctrines adoptedby Whewell and Maunder. of the CopernicanrevoThis essay also suggeststhatalthoughthe characterization lution presentedearliermay providea useful first sketch,historicalstudy reveals a greaterrichnessof detailthanthis sketchincludes.The previouslyprovidedcharacterizationof the Copernicanrevolutionis that "Heliocentrismdisplacedthe earth from the centerof the cosmos, transformedthe earthinto a planet and the planets into earths,and furthermoretransformedthe starsinto suns, which as suns may be orbitedby planets."As historyshows, the Copernicanrevolutionalso broughtwith it in the long run unsuccessfulefforts to transformstarsinto earths(Herschel)and successfuleffortsto show that,ratherthanall planetsbeing earths,at most a small proportionof planets,andnone in our solarsystem,sharewith ourearththatdistinctive featureknownas intelligentlife. Finally,it wouldseem dangerousto extrapolatefromthese fourcases thatinteractions betweenastronomyandreligionshouldbe encouraged.As is suggestedby the role thatreligious concernshad in (1) delayingacceptanceof heliocentrismand of the idea of island universesand (2) fosteringHerschel'sbelief in his solar model, religiousnotionscan at times hinderthe progressof astronomy.Indeed,althoughin this essay cases have been cited in which religion has influencedastronomy(and, had it been my subject,cases could havebeen cited in which astronomyinfluenced religion), possibly the largest single intellectualachievementattainedin this area has been the recognitionof the boundariesand limits that separateastronomyand religion,both of which havepowerfullyinspiredawe in personsthroughouthistory.

Science

in

Theistic

Contexts

A Case Study of Alfred Russel Wallace on Human Evolution By Martin Fichman* RITING IN 1918, five years after the death of the English scientist Alfred Russel Wallace (1823-1913), the zoologist and geneticist Lancelot T. Hogben noted, correctly, that 7 W

one of the most significanttraitsin Wallace'scharacterwas his courageousfaith in the ultimategoodness underlyingthe purposeof the world.... [W]itheyes fixed beyond the immediatespectacle,he saw to the last the cleargleam of the LightBeautifulin the City of God.And it was ... becausehe was able to cultivateandto retaina sense of the realityof the spiritualvaluesthathe succeededin preservinghis hope andhis humanity throughouthis long life.' Wallace's life and career provide a rich and suggestive historical case study for examining the role of theistic beliefs in shaping the formation or revision of scientific theories. Wallace's independent formulation of the theory of evolution by natural selection marks him as one of the great biological thinkers of the nineteenth century. The joint announcement of his and Charles Darwin's particular enunciations of that theory at the Linnean Society (London) on 1 July 1858 has tended to blur the distinctions between their respective conceptions of the scope of natural selection. At the outset of his career, Wallace-like Darwin-tended toward scientific naturalism as the major metaphysical underpinning of his biological theorization. But whereas Darwin continued, arguably, throughout his life to adhere strictly to the tenets of scientific naturalism, Wallace, during the 1860s, broadened his position to one more fully consonant with a theistic reading of evolution. After 1870, Wallace continued to be an eloquent and formidable defender of the doctrine of natural selection against the numerous critics, both scientific and theological, of that hypothesis. He nonetheless commenced an articulation of evolutionary theory that increasingly incorporated theistic religious beliefs as integral components of his science. It will be demonstrated that Wallace's theism shaped the cognitive content of his mature evolutionary synthesis, which included a theoretical reconceptualization of the scope of natural selection. It was Wallace's conversion to spiritualism, in the decade of the 1860s, thatprovided *

Division of Humanities / Faculty of Arts, Bethune College 313, York University, 4700 Keele St., Toronto. Ontario, Canada M3J 1P3 Lancelot T. Hogben, Alfred Russel Wallace: The Story of a Great Discoverer (London: Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, 1918), pp. 61-2. `C 200)1 by The History of Science Society. All rights reserved. 0369-7827/01/1601-0001$2.00 Osiris, 2001, 16:00-00

227

228

MARTIN FICHMAN

a direct stimulus-but not the original motivating factor-for his enunciation of an explicit evolutionary teleology. I shall argue that Wallace's growing commitment to an ever more encompassing evolutionary teleology during the last three decades of the nineteenth century, and his increasingly outspoken and public elaboration of that teleology in the two decades before his death in 1913 affords compelling historical evidence for the constitutive role of theistic beliefs in biological science. And although Wallace's commitment to theism must be viewed as part of the total nexus of his worldview-which included a profound commitment to socialism and a concomitant critique of Victorian capitalist imperialism that represent additional social and existential dimensions of his deepest convictions-theism can nonetheless be isolated, methodologically and historically, as both explicit presupposition and sanction of his science. This argument is not tautological. Rather, it addresses the fundamental historiographic problem of how we test the plausibility of claims for the role of religious belief in shaping scientific content. It is necessary to go beyond merely asserting the compatibility of scientific and religious interests in the work of an individual theorist. The historian must demonstrate that the religious glosses made by a scientist are not simply nominal gestures to ingratiate particular audiences but are integral, constitutive elements of the theory.' Wallace's theistic convictions, therefore, will be shown to have profoundly affected the specific content of his version of evolutionary biology, particularly as it bore upon certain questions of human evolution, including claims regarding (1) the limitations of natural selection, (2) teleology, (3) intelligent design, and (4) mind-matter interactions. My approach to Wallace necessitates a clarification of certain (familiar) terms employed in this essay. First, and most crucially, I argue that Wallace is a theist, not a pantheist. In contrast to eighteenth- and nineteenth-century pantheists, Wallace's evolutionary theism explicitly maintains that the Divine Being continues to sustain relations to His creation. More significantly, in contrast to pantheists-who view God as identical with the totality of nature or the laws of nature or a world soul immanent in nature and not in any way transcending it-Wallace's deity is a purposeful eternal being, transcending the world but also immanent in it (in specified ways). Second, it has become customary to distinguish theism from deism. The theist-deist historiographic distinction is, however, somewhat misleading and consequently is not employed in this essay.3 To use the language of modem theology, Wallace's evolutionary theism treats Divine action as an alternative/complement to scientific language, not as a competitor with it. As Ian Barbour notes, "The cosmic drama can be interpreted as an expression of the divine purpose. God is understood 2 See John Hedley Brooke'schapterin the presentvolume, "ReligiousBelief and The Contentof the Sciences." 3 See ErnestCampbellMossner,"Deism,"in The Encyclopediaof Philosophy(New York, 1967). Mossnerdemonstratesthat such a distinctiondepends on definingdeism as that doctrine,especially in its late eighteenth-and nineteenth-centuryinterpretations,which is restrictedto a belief in God, or First Cause, who createdthe world and institutedimmutableand universallaws thatprecludeany alterationas well as divine immanence-in short,the concept of an "absenteeGod."But while some deists did adhere to the absentee-landlordstereotype, many self-proclaimeddeists did not. Most deists tendedto become moreandmore criticalof the necessity of any revelation,andof the HebraicChristianrevelation in particular,to sustain belief in the existence of God. Beyond that common ground,however,deists constituteda diversegroupof thinkers,some of whom maintaineda number of beliefs wholly compatible with theism. Wallace'sown belief in God entailed his denial that the Bible affordedany privilegedor supernaturalrevelationsfor that belief. Thus, in labelingWallacea theist, I do not assume that label to imply the customarytheist-deist distinction.

SCIENCE IN THEISTICCONTEXTS

229

to act in and through the structure and movement of nature and history."Although Wallace cannot be termed a "classical theist"-God's transcendence is less emphasized in his evolutionary theism than in traditional Christianity-God's transcendence is still strongly represented. God is distinct from the world, and every entity is radically dependent on God for its existence and the order of possibilities that it can actualize. In certain suggestive respects, Wallace's evolutionary theism may also be seen as a precursor, albeit indirect, of twentieth-century process theology. In the process model, God is a creative participant in the cosmic community, however different from all other participants. Process theology is regarded as consonant with an ecological and evolutionary understanding of nature as a dynamic and open system, characterized by emergent levels of organization, activity, and experience. As such, it avoids the dualisms of mind-body, humanity-nature, and man-woman.4 Wallace's evolutionary teleology foreshadows, moreover, certain twentieth-century notions of "naturalistic theism."5 John Hedley Brooke and Stephen Wykstra, among others, have provided useful and provocative analyses of the terms "religious," "metaphysical," and "scientific" as they bear upon the study of the interaction between theism and cognitive developments in the work of particular scientists. Brooke has asked, pertinently, "What kinds of interactions between science and religion should we be looking for? And what is the shape of a map that most faithfully represents the diversity of historical positions" adopted by specific individuals?6The present essay is, in part, an attempt to provide a detailed and concrete map for Wallace's construction of an evolutionary theism, so as to avoid the pitfalls that have marked so many previous attempts to characterize the interplay of metaphysics, religion, and science in Wallace's mature statement of evolutionary biology as either retrograde, marginalized, or worse. Not unlike his contemporary, the geologist Hugh Miller-whose first acquaintance with fossil forms caused him to become so "lost in admiration and astonishment and, and [his] very imagination [so] paralysed by an assemblage of wonders" that his secular conception of science was transformed by an epiphany which both renewed and sacralized his vision of nature7-Wallace's early secular science was incorporated into a wider theistic conception of nature. The literature on the varieties of theism is, literally, immense.8 I adopt the 4 Ian G. Barbour, Religion and Science: Historical and Contemporary Issues (San Francisco:

Harper,1997), pp. 231-9, 326, 331. On "classicaltheism" see the articleon God by Brian Leftow in the Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy (New York, 1998).

5 For an illuminatingaccountof naturalistictheism and its compatibilitywith evolutionaryscience

at a constitutive level, see David Ray Griffin, God and Religion in the Postmodern World: Essays

in PostmodernTheology(Albany: State Univ. of New YorkPress, 1989), chap. 5: "Evolutionand PostmodernTheism,"pp. 69-82. 6 John Hedley Brooke, "ReligiousBelief and the NaturalSciences: Mappingthe HistoricalLandscape," in Facets of Faith and Science, ed. Jitse M. van der Meer, vol. 1: Historiography and Modes

of Interaction(Lanham,Md.: Univ. Press of America, 1996), pp. 1-26. He furtherarguesthat such a "map"must be at least three-dimensional:(1) it must recognize the differentlevels at which theological languagehas influencedand, sometimes,penetratedscientificdiscourse;(2) it mustrecognize thatscientificdiscourseitself can be subdividedinto manydifferenttypes; and (3) it must also recognize thatstatementslinking natureandGod have fulfilled a plethoraof social, political, andreligious functions, with the corollarythatdifferenttypes of theological discourse must be distinguished. 7 Hugh Miller, quoted in J. H. Brooke and R. Hooykaas, New Interactions between Theology and

Natural Science (Milton Keynes, U.K.: Open Univ. Press, 1974), p. 49. x See, e.g., Philip L. Quinn and CharlesTaliaferro,eds., A Companion to Philosophyof Religion (Oxford:Blackwell, 1997). pp. 197-521.

230

MARTIN FICHMAN

definition provided by Robert Flint, a prolific Scottish scholar, in his Theism-first published in 1876 but reaching its eleventh edition by 1905-which may be taken as generally accepted in late Victorian Britain: "Theism is the doctrine that the universe owes its existence, and continuance in existence, to the reason and will of a self-existent Being, who is infinitely powerful, wise, and good."9 In adopting Flint's definition, however, certain qualifications are obligatory for clarification of Wallace's theism. Wallace believed in a God but wanted to avoid a strict allegiance to any traditional confessional. doctrinal, or institutional position. Moreover, if Wallace never asserted that God's existence is provable, he nonetheless joins the ranks of those who, when taking "account of a sufficiently comprehensive range of datanot only the teleological character of biological evolution but also man's religious, moral, aesthetic, and cognitive experience"-argue that theism is the most probable worldview. " I want also to refrain from labeling Wallace a "spiritualist theist"-a term that might at first appear highly appropriate-for two reasons. First, not all spiritualists in the late Victorian period were theists, and, conversely, certainly not all-indeed, very few-theists were spiritualists. And second, although spiritualism clearly was a major component of Wallace's worldview, he ultimately transcended the conventional Victorian spiritualist teachings. While spiritualist beliefs and experiences influenced Wallace's religious conceptions-in 1874, he deemed spiritualism to be "the only sure foundation for a true philosophy and a pure religion""1his mature evolutionary theism came to include elements of belief that went beyond the teachings of spiritualism. A number of scholars have clearly recognized and analyzed the crucial significance of spiritualism in Wallace's life and writings, but none have adequately examined Wallace's broader religious worldview, his evolutionary theism.'2 Moreover, although spiritualism enjoyed a significant following in both Great Britain and North America, Wallace was acutely aware of the skepticism with which certain segments of the late Victorian scientific community viewed spiritualism and its claims.'I` By developing a theistic framework which moved beyond spiritualism, Wallace was able to redefine certain key concepts, such as nature and evolutionary teleology, and thereby elaborate the ethical implications of evolutionary science. Wallace's statements regarding the scope of natural selection functioned in a way similar, though not identical, to those of contemporaries such as the eminent American botanist Asa Gray (1810-1888)., who sought also to provide a theistic yet scien9 RobertFlint, Theism:Being the BairdLecturefor 1876 (Edinburgh:W. Blackwood, 1877), p. 18. Flint was also the authorof the article"Theism"in the EncyclopaediaBritannica,9th ed. (1888). 10John H. Hick, Philosophy of Religion, 4th ed. (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1990), pp. 26-8. Hick'sdiscussion of theism and probabilityis most germanefor my analysis of Wallace's theism. IIAlfred Russel Wallace, "A Defence of Modern Spiritualism,"pt. 2, FortnightlyReview 15 (1874):785-807. ,2Hick, Philosophy(cit. n. 10), pp. 125-30, offers an insightful treatmentof the differences between theism and spiritualism.For supportof my view thatthis distinctionhas not been adequately recognized previously,see, e.g., John R. Durant,"ScientificNaturalismand Social Reform in the Thoughtof Alfred Russel Wallace:'Brit. J. Hist. Sci. 12 (1979):31-58; Malcolm J. Kottler,"Alfred Russel Wallace,the Originsof Man, and Spiritualism,"Isis 65 (1974):145-92; Roger Smith, "Alfred Russel Wallace:Philosophy of Nature and Man,"Brit. J. Hist. Sci. 6 (1972): 177-99; and Wilma George, Biologist Philosopher:A Studyof the Life and Writingsof Alfred Russel Wallace(London: Abelard-Schuman,1964). i3On the popularityof spiritualismin England,see JanetOppenheim,The OtherWorld:Spiritualisni and Psychical Research in England, 1850-1914 (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press. 1985).


231

tifically rigorous rendering of evolutionary theory.14 Wallace's life and career, moreover, testify eloquently to the tensions inherent in efforts to allow for the cognitive role of theistic beliefs in precisely that historical period when the demarcation between scientific and nonscientific factors in shaping the social construction of knowledge became the subject of profound and at times bitter debate. As Hogben trenchantly noted, "[I]t required a reputation so powerful as that of Wallace to withstand the odium with which orthodox sociologists [and scientists] greeted what they were pleased to regard as a naturalisterring from his proper bent."'5The deployment of theistic concepts by Wallace played a constitutive, as opposed to a merely justificatory, role in formulating cognitive scientific claims.'6 I. THE DEFENSE OF SPIRITUALISM

During his twelve years of travel in South America (1848-1852) and the Malay Archipelago (1854-1862), Wallace had heard of the strange phenomena associated with spiritualism said to be occurring in America and England. Although some of the accounts seemed "too wild and outre to be anything but the ravings of madmen," other reports appeared to be well confirmed. Wallace determined, therefore, to ascertain upon his return to London whether the alleged phenomena were legitimate or merely the result of imposture or delusion. Although disinclined at this period to give credence to either the observances or the doctrines of any orthodox religion, Wallace had had certain experiences in his early life that predisposed him to remain open to claims relating to psychic phenomena. In particular, the year he spent as a teacher at the Collegiate School at Leicester (1844) exposed him to lectures and demonstrations concerning phrenology and mesmerism. These sufficiently impressed the young Wallace so as to relieve him "from that haunting idea of imposture which possesses most people [who witness such demonstrations], and which seems to blind most medical and scientific men to such an extent as to render them unable to investigate" such subjects fairly. Thus, when he attended his first seance in the summer of 1865 at the home of a friend, Wallace was-despite his commitment to scientific naturalism-impressed with the "rapping and tapping sounds and slight movements of a table."'7 During the following years he continued to attend seances regularly and to read voraciously in the spiritualist literature. Satisfied that the tests 14

Asa Gray, Darwiniana: Essays and Reviews Pertaining to Darwinism (New York: D. Appleton,

1876). Like Wallace, Gray agreed that in the case of human evolution, certain forces other than naturalselection had contributedtoward"thetranscendentcharacterof the superadded"mental and moralattributesthatradicallydifferentiatedthe humanspecies from even the higherprimates;these forces were, like Wallace's, divine. See Asa Gray, Natural Science and Religion: Two Lectures Delivered to the Theological School of Yale College (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1880), pp. 44,

99-103. 15Hogben,Wallace(cit. n. 1), p. 58. The fact thatHogben'sbook was publishedby the Society for PromotingChristianKnowledge-which paid great attentionto the work of scientists whose views they felt accordedwith Christiantheism-indicates thatWallace'sevolutionaryteleology had come to be recognizedas theistic by many. 16 Bernard Lightman,ed., Victorian Science in Context (Chicago:Univ. of Chicago Press, 1997); John H. Brooke, Science and Religion: Some Historical Perspectives (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ.

Press, 1991). 17AlfredRussel Wallace,Mv Life: A Record of Events and Opinions, 2 vols. (London:Chapman& Hall, 1905; reprintedWestmead,U.K.: Gregg International,1969), vol. 1, pp. 226-8, 232-6; vol. 2, p. 276. Cited hereafteras My Life.

232

MARTINFICHMAN

which he and others devised and executed excluded the possibility of collusion or deception, Wallace gradually became convinced both of the empirical authenticity of these remarkable phenomena and of the spiritualist interpretation of them. Accordingly, he set out to overcome the skepticism of the majority of his scientific and literary associates and establish spiritualism as a valid "science of human nature which . . . appeals only to facts and experiment [and which] affords the only sure foundation for ... the improvement of society and the permanent elevation of human nature."'8 Wallace had been struck by the mass of testimony accumulated since the advent of modern spiritualism, which he dated from the reception by the daughters of the Fox family of upstate New York in March 1848 of intelligent communications via "mysterious knockings."'9 He composed a succinct account of this evidence, which appeared in a secular journal in 1866 as "The Scientific Aspect of the Supernatural."Wallace prefaced his account by arguing that many events deemed miraculous or supernaturalbecause they appear to run counter to laws of nature are actually natural and can be shown to involve no violation of natural process, broadly defined."' To render these manifestations "intelligible or possible from the point of view of modern science" required, he suggested, "the supposition that intelligent beings may exist, capable of acting on matter,though they themselves are uncognisable directly by our senses." The activities of these disembodied intelligences, moreover, were consonant with "the grandest generalisations of modern science, . . . [according to which] light, heat, electricity, magnetism, and probably vitality and gravitation, are believed to be but 'modes of motion' of a space-filling ether." That spirits-intelligences of an "ethereal nature"-could act upon ponderable bodies and produce the varied physical effects witnessed at seances was, to Wallace, a legitimate and plausible deduction.2"Wallace was not alone in advancing the hypothesis that the [alleged] ether might be the medium linking the material to the spiritual world: William Crookes and Oliver Lodge, among other scientists, maintained similar suppositions.22 Wallace was, not surprisingly, particularly sensitive to the charge that his advocacy of spiritualism was influenced "by clerical . . . prejudice" and detracted from his authority as a student of natural history. He declared that, quite to the contrary, until the time of his first personal acquaintance with the facts of spiritualism he had been a "confirmed philosophical sceptic, rejoicing in the works of Voltaire, [David Friedrich] Strauss, and Carl Vogt." (Strauss's influential and controversial Life of Jesus [1835] was one of the pioneering efforts of that group of nineteenth-century German Hegelians who sought to sift out the so-called historical elements from the mythological language of the New Testament. Vogt was a German materialist philosopher and zoologist.) It was not by any preconceived opinions, Wallace asserted, but only "by the continuous action of fact after fact, which could not be got is Alfred Russel Wallace, Miracles and Modern Spiritualismrev. ed. (London:George Redway, 1896; reprintedNew York:Arno, 1975), pp. 228-9. Cited hereafteras Miracles. (The first edition was publishedin 1875.) 19Miracles, pp. 152-3. Life, vol. 2, p. 280. Miracles, pp. 42-5. 22 Jennifer Trusted, Physics and Metaphysics: Theories of Space and Time (New York: Routledge,

20(My

1991), pp. 158-61.


233

rid of in any other way,"that he was "compelled" to accept spiritualism.23He placed great weight upon the testimony of Augustus De Morgan (the English mathematician), Nassau William Senior (the political economist), William Makepeace Thackeray (the novelist), and other eminent figures, each of whom reported witnessing authentic spirit manifestations as diverse as table moving, communication by raps, clairvoyance, the production of flowers and other objects at seances, and the playing of the "Last Rose of Summer" on an (apparently) unassisted accordion, "but in so wretched a style that the company begged that it might be discontinued."24Wallace's somewhat combative rhetoric in these first "scientific" defenses of spiritualism is fully comprehensible, for he was embarking upon a path that was to lead him away from the narrower definition of scientific naturalism which had characterized his thought and, especially, his writings during the 1850s and early 1860s. Wallace, however, would soon transcend, though never ignore, his initial receptivity to spiritualist concerns. An increasingly theistic conception of science, with its attendant metaphysical and (especially) moral implications, had also begun to permeate his "fabric of thought."As these theistic convictions matured, Wallace would no longer require the defensive posture he adopted in the mid-I 860s. He concluded his exposition with a brief description of the hypothesis that what, "for want of a better name, we shall term 'spirit,' is the essential part of all sensitive beings, whose bodies form but the machinery and instruments by means of which they perceive and act upon other beings and on matter."At death, the spirit quits the body but still retains "its former modes of thought, its former tastes, feelings, and affections." Spirit manifestations were, Wallace argued, incontrovertible empirical evidence of the "reality of another world . .. and of an ever-progressive future state."25 Wallace complained, with justification, that the opponents of spiritualism often refused to investigate the alleged phenomena or, at most, dismissed them as the result of imposture or delusion, after attending only "two or three chance seances."26 He had one hundred copies of "The Scientific Aspect of the Supernatural"printed separately and sent them to those of his colleagues-including Thomas Huxley, the physicist and scientific publicist John Tyndall, and the positivist George Henry Lewes-whom he hoped to persuade to take up the subject seriously. Tyndall read the pamphlet "with deep disappointment" and wrote Wallace that, while he saw "the usual keen powers of your mind displayed in the treatment of this question," he deplored Wallace's willingness to accept data which were "unworthy of [his] attention." Huxley's letter (November 1886), which dismissed the compiled evidence as "disembodied gossip," which interested him as little as did the more mundane variety, particularly rankled Wallace and typified the indifference or derision with which many of his scientific associates regarded his efforts.27 Early in 1874 John Morley, editor of the Fortnightly Review, invited Wallace to contribute an article on spiritualism. General interest in the movement in England 23

Miracles, Miracles, 25 Miracles, 26 Miracles, 24

pp. vi-vii. pp. 82-7, 95-8. pp. 107-10, 124. p. 105.

27 For Huxley's and Tyndall'sletters see My Life, vol. 2, pp. 280-1. In this regard,the case of George JohnRomanesis especially pertinent.Romaneswas one of Darwin'smost devotedfollowers and consistentlyattackedthose who, like Wallace,adducedsupernaturalfactorsto explainthe origin of the higher humanfaculties. See, e.g., George J. Romanes, Mental Evolutionin Man: Origin of Human Faculty (London: Kegan Paul, Trench, 1888). Wallace was particularlybitter toward Ro-

234

MARTIN FICHMAN

had been quickened by the investigations and the report of the Committee of the London Dialectical Society (1871), of which Wallace was a member. He wrote "A Defence of Modern Spiritualism" in a further effort to gain a critical hearing for the experimental claims favoring the reality of the phenomena asserted to be spirit manifestations.28The hostile reception accorded the psychical experiments of the brilliant chemist and physicist William Crookes-who, while aware of frequent fraudulent practices, had become convinced of the genuineness of certain manifestations, notably those associated with the celebrated Scottish-American medium D. D. Home-reinforced Wallace's belief that the British scientific community maintained an a priori antipathy toward the acceptance of positive testimony for spiritualism.29 'A Defence of Modem Spiritualism"-together with "The Scientific Aspect of the Supernatural" and a paper Wallace had read before the Dialectical Society in 1871 to induce skeptics to reconsider the question of the inherent credibility or incredibility of miracles ("Miracles: An Answer to the Arguments of Hume, Lecky, and Others, Against Miracles")-was soon reprinted in a volume entitled On Miracles and Modern Spiritualism (1875). The volume sold well, going into a third edition in 1896, and Wallace regarded it as having persuaded "many persons to investigate the subject and to become convinced of the reality of the phenomena."30 Carl Jung's comment on Wallace in this context is judicious. He asserted that even though the spiritualist interpretation of the observed psychical facts were disputed, Wallace-along with Frederic Myers, Crookes, and the Cambridge philosopher Henry Sidgwick-merited praise for "having thrown the whole of [his] authority on to the side of nonmaterial facts, regardless of ... the cheap derision of [his] contemporaries; even at a time when the intellect of the educated classes was spellbound by the new dogma of materialism, [Wallace] drew public attention to phenomena" which were contrary to accepted convictions.3' It is against this background of rising scientific naturalism in the second half of the nineteenth century that Wallace's deepening commitment to spiritualism is best understood. Wallace was one of a significant group of thinkers for whom both traditional Christianity and the concepts of Victorian science were incapable of providing adequate guidelines for a holistic philosophy of man. More specifically, Wallace's growing disenchantment during the 1860s with the pretensions of the advocates of scientific naturalism to prescribe acceptable codes for human behavior or guarantees of ultimate purpose led him to pursue a path that lay between science and orthodox religion. Spiritualism and related avenues into the realm of the nonmaterial universe, including phrenology and mesmerism, were powerfully attractive to Wallace and other eminent Victorian scientists-such as Crookes, Sidgwick, Edmund Gurney, and Myers-in part because they afforded vehicles for mediating between the oftenmanes,because earlierRomaneshad in fact flirtedbrieflywith spiritualismbut laterkept those forays concealedfrom his fellow naturalists.Thus, when Romanespublicly attackedthe "scientist"Wallace for succumbingto the "spiritualist"Wallace, the latter regardedRomanes' public posture as both cowardlyand duplicitous;see My Life, vol. 2, pp. 309-26, which includes an exchange of letters in 1890 between the two that is furthertestimony to the fluidity of the category "science"in the late Victorianperiod. 2X Ml Life, vol. 2, p. 295. 29 Miracles, pp. 151, 181-2. -3My Life, vol. 2, p. 295. 3HCarl G. Jung, "The PsychologicalFoundationsof Beliefs in Spirits,"Proceedingsof the Societv for Psychical Research31 (1921):75-6.


235

times competing claims of traditional religion and modern science.32The metaphysical and ethical teachings of spiritualism, combined with those of phrenological psychology (whose emphasis upon irreducible mental and moral faculties was consistent with Wallace's views on human evolution), appealed to him because they provided an experimentally based explanation for the past and future development of moral and intellectual nature and subsumed man's total being under a consistent cosmic law. From the 1880s onward, Wallace became less active publicly in spiritualist causes. His increasing involvement in sociopolitical debates, including land nationalization, economic critiques of competitive capitalism, and certain feminist causes, consumed a great deal of energy. With the exception of his membership in the newly formed (1882) Society for Psychical Research and his enthusiastic attendance at seances in Boston, Washington, and San Francisco during a lecture tour in the United States in 1886-1887,33 his interest in spiritualist concerns was confined primarily to private correspondence and contributions to various periodicals. That these convictions, however, had become constitutive in the emerging fabric of his scientific theories is indisputable. Although an explicit Weltanschauung-an evolutionary teleology in which science and theism fully merged-would await the publication of Mans Place in the Universe (1903) and The World of Life (1910), Wallace attempted to utilize the worldview he had embraced by the 1870s to shape and refine certain arguments concerning the range of efficacy of natural selection in the case of human evolution. Far from obfuscating his scientific acumen, Wallace's deployment of his "worldview commitments"34enabled theism to function positively in his evolutionary theorization. In particular,Wallace's reconceptualization of the scope of natural selection is a potent instance of the interaction between worldviews and science, and one that provides historical support for reconsidering the validity of the integrationist conception of science-that is, one that integrates religious [as well as other] outlooks into scientific theorizing.-i II. HUMAN EVOLUTION

Wallace's perceived public position as a foremost proponent of the thesis that human evolutionary history could be reconstructed solely on the basis of natural selection was altered abruptly in April 1869. In a review of two new editions of geological treatises by Sir Charles Lyell, Wallace announced that human intellectual capacities and moral qualities-unique phenomena in the history of life-were not explicable by natural selection. Rather, these, as well as certain physical attributesof the human race, required the intervention at appropriate stages of "an Overruling Intelligence" 32

Frank M. Turner, Between Science and Religion. The Reaction to Scientific Naturalism in Late

VictorianEngland (New Haven: Yale Univ. Press, 1974); Oppenheim, Other World (cit. n. 13), pp. 352-53; PeterMandler,Alex Owen, Seth Kovenet al., "CulturalHistoriesOld andNew: Rereading the Workof JanetOppenheim."VictorianStudies41 (1997):69-105, especially pp. 77-84. 33My Life, vol. 2, pp. 337-49. 34 StephenJ. Wykstra,"HaveWorldviewsShaped Science? A Reply to Brooke" in van der Meer, Facets of Faith and Science (cit. n. 6), vol. 1: Historiography and Modes of Interaction (Lanham,

Md.: Pascal Centre/Univ.Press of America, 1996), pp. 91-111. 35Stephen J. Wykstra,"Should Worldviews Shape Science? Towardan IntegrationistAccount of Scientific Theorizing,"in van der Meer, Facets of Faith and Science (cit. n. 6), vol. 2: The Role of Beliefs In Mathematics and the Natural Sciences (Lanham, Md.: Pascal Centre/Univ. Press of

America, 1997), pp. 123-71.

236

MARTIN FICHMAN

which "guided the action of those laws [of organic development] in definite directions and for special ends." Wallace's response to Lyell's tenth edition of the Principles of Geology (1867-1868) is doubly significant. First, Wallace applauded Lyell's long-awaited public endorsement of evolutionism. Second, Wallace's announcement of his "revised" views on human evolution parallels (though for different reasons) Lyell's expressed extreme reservations concerning natural selection and human evolution. Darwin was, understandably,disappointed with both Wallace and Lyell.36 Ironically, it was Darwin's principle of utility that Wallace invoked to substantiate this claim. In the Origin of Species, (1859) Darwin had argued that natural selection could produce neither a structure harmful to an organism nor a structurethat was of greater perfection than was necessary for an organism at that particular stage of its evolutionary development.37 Citing the culture of the "lowest savages"-and, by implication, human beings at more remote periods in their history-Wallace maintained that the utility principle precluded natural selection as the agent responsible for four characteristic human features: the brain, the organs of speech, the hand, and the external form of the body. The brain of savages, Wallace noted, is of practically the same size and complexity as that of the average European and could, under appropriate cultural conditions, be capable of the outstanding intellectual achievements of civilized people. Yet the mental requirements of the lowest savages are "very little above those of many animals," and the highly developed human brain must be regarded as an organ of greater perfection than necessary for survival. Natural selection, which, by the utility principle, could have provided the savage with an intellect only slightly superior to that of the apes, cannot, therefore, be adduced in explaining the complexity of the brain of modern humans. The hand of the savage is, similarly, an organ of greater refinement than required and could not have been produced by natural selection alone. Furthermore, since the highest human civilized accomplishments-art, science, and technology-were dependent upon "this marvellous instrument,"the savage's perfect hand is evidence of provision by a Higher Intelligence of an organ that would be fully utilized only at a later stage in human development. The erect posture of the savage (and prehistoric humans), "his delicate and yet expressive features, the marvellous beauty and symmetry of his whole external form," are additional examples of modifications Wallace claimed were of no physical use to their possessors-indeed, in the case of the (comparative) nakedness of humans, of possible disadvantage in their early history-and are inexplicable solely by natural selection. Wallace argued, again, for intelligent intervention and provision in the evolutionary process.The 1869 review concluded with the proposition that a "new standpoint [was possible] for those who cannot accept the theory of evolution as expressing the whole truth in regard to the origin of man."Wallace was careful to declare that the Higher Intelligence, whose action he had invoked to explain that which natural selection could not, was consonant with the teachings of science. Using the analogy of domes36 Alfred Russel Wallace, "Geological Climates and the Origin of Species," London Quarterly Review (Americaned.) 126 (1869):205; Michael Bartholomew,"Lyell and Evolution:An Account

of Lyell's Response to the Prospect of an EvolutionaryAncestry for Man," Brit. J. Hist. Sci. 6 (1973):300-3. 37 Charles Darwin, On the Origin of Species (1859; facsimile Cambridge,Mass.: HarvardUniv. Press, 1964), pp. 201-2. 3SWallace,"GeologicalClimates"(cit. n. 36), pp. 202-4.

SCIENCEIN THEISTICCONTEXTS

237

tic variation, the same analogy he had criticized Darwin for using so extensively in the Origin, Wallace stated that just as humans had used the laws of variation and selection to produce fruits, vegetables, and livestock, so also "in the development of the human race, a Higher Intelligence has guided the same laws for nobler ends." In both cases, the "great laws of organic development" had been adhered to, not abrogated, and natural selection had been supplemented by conscious selection. In human evolution, Wallace concluded, "an Overruling Intelligence has watched over the action of those laws so directing variations and so determining their accumulation, as finally to produce an organization sufficiently perfect to admit of, and even to aid in, the indefinite advancement of our mental and moral nature."39 The majority of Wallace scholars have interpretedhis 1869/1870 views on certain aspects of human evolution as representing a volte-face with respect to his previous conceptualization of evolution. This presumed radical shift is, moreover, usually attributedto Wallace's growing involvement with, and ultimate conversion to, spiritualism in the period 1865-1870. If, however, we analyze his thoughts and writings from 1845 to 1870 within the broader framework of Wallace's holistic approach to human evolution-that is, within a context that gives equal weight to his theistic, philosophical, ethical, sociopolitical as well as his biological interests and investigations-a different picture emerges. Wallace's modifications of certain causal explanations of human evolution are seen as developments from, ratherthan repudiations of, his earlier and preliminary hypotheses. Using geological metaphor, Wallace was not an intellectual catastrophist but an intellectual uniformitarian. If it is argued a priori that spiritualism and evolutionary science represent mutually exclusive conceptual schemes, then of course Wallace's acceptance of spiritualism would necessarily be seen as the cause of his rejection of natural selection in explaining the higher human faculties. But once it is recognized that the fundamental principles of Wallace's approach to the study of humans/nature were set in his mind well before he encountered either natural selection or spiritualism-that is, from his youthful experiences as a field naturalist and land surveyor-then his developing evolutionary views in the 1850s and 1860s are seen to contain the seeds of his mature evolutionary theism. Quite simply, Wallace never believed that natural selection was competent to explain the evolution of the higher human faculties, to begin with: he had always envisioned some additional explanatory model to fully resolve the question of human origins, higher faculties, and future evolution.4?His "new" standpoint in the 1869 review, therefore, is novel only in the sense that it marks one of Wallace's first public statements of the limits of the scope of natural selection. His caveats with respect to the explanatory power of natural selection had their roots in Wallace's earliest evolutionary speculations of the 1840s. Thus, spiritualism and natural selection were never viewed by Wallace himself as mutually exclusive explanatory pieces of a larger evolutionary teleology. He certainly appreciated, however, the fact that many of his scientific colleagues-notably Huxley, Darwin, Tyndall, and especially the physiologist William Benjamin Carpenter (one of the most relentless opponents of the spiritualist movement)-would regard them as such. For tactical reasons, then, he chose to emphasize the utilitarian 39Ibid., p. 205. Alfred Russel Wallace, Darwinism: An Exposition of the Theory of Natural Selection with Some of Its Applications (London: Macmillan, 1889). 40

238

MARTIN FICHMAN

objections against the total efficacy of natural selection in the 1869 review. He hoped they would be read as a scientifically more respectable analysis of the limitations of natural selection than an overtly spiritualist critique would have been. In one sense, Wallace's tactic succeeded. A number of biologists, already dubious of the explanatory potential of natural selection as the sole mechanism of evolution, recognized the force of his utility critique. Furthermore, Wallace realized, correctly, that his fellow scientists with few exceptions would be unresponsive to (if not mocking of) arguments drawn from the then controversial data of psychic phenomena, and he worded his review accordingly. For the next twenty years, however, although he publicly held to the position that a utilitarian analysis was a major basis for his critique of natural selection in human evolution, he increasingly adduced theismin addition to conventional spiritualism-to demonstrate the inadequacy of natural selection as the explanation for the unique features of human beings. The increasingly teleological and theistic imprint upon his evolutionary views is substantiated by the fact that Wallace remained throughout the rest of the century the staunchest advocate of the sufficiency of natural selection as the agent of the evolution of animal and plant species-save in the case of human beings. And in his definitive exposition of the theory of natural selection, Darwinisni (1889), when he conceded that natural selection could account for many of the unique physical features of Homo sapiens, he still rigorously exempted human moral and intellectual qualities from its sway.4' His single exemption of this one species from the otherwise full sway of natural selection serves as striking testimony to the power of Wallace's growing commitment to theism (and not merely spiritualism, as Malcolm J. Kottler suggests) upon his thought.42National cultural styles may also have had a role to play in Wallace's emphasis upon his utilitarian, as opposed to his theistic, critiques of the sufficiency of natural selection to explain all aspects of human evolution. In England both the scientific community and portions of the religious community seemed unhappy (for different reasons) with Wallace's theistic evolution. In the United States, in contrast, Wallace, along with other scientists such as James Dwight Dana, was widely recognized as providing scientific evidence that the elements composing human personality were "too numerous and too peculiar to have come in by slow increments" (i.e., by the process of natural selection). Specifically, many American Protestant evolutionists maintained that the "biological solution does not exclude the theological.:' Wallace's emerging conceptual framework in the 1870s and beyond was viewed as buttressing their position that the hypothesis of evolutionary descent, when understood in a "Wallace-like" manner, only served to reinforce the conviction "that humanity bore the image of God." Wallace's (and others') theism thus con41 Malcolm J. Kottler, "AlfredRussel Wallace, The Origin of Man, and Spiritualism"Isis 65 (1974):145-92. 42I am indebtedto CharlesSmith,AlfredRussel Wallaceon Spiritualism,Man, and Evolution.An AnalyticalEssay (Torrington,Conn.: n.p., 1992), pp. 1, 19-20, 43-9, for clarifyingthe significance of Wallace'sexposure to spiritualismfor his evolutionarysynthesis. Smith himself does not adduce theism as a componentof Wallace'sworldview,but his analysis is compatiblewith my overallargument.Most importantly,Smithoffers a majorcorrectiveto scholarswho havecharacterizedWallace's views on humanevolutionin the 1860s as representinga radicalbreakwith his previousframework. Malcom J. Kottler'sarticle "Wallace,the Origin of Man, and Spiritualism"Isis (cit. n. 41), is the most articulateattemptto pinpoint spiritualismas the original and decisive stimulus for Wallace's "new" views on human evolution. Importantas Kottler'srich and detailed article is, however, it exaggeratesthe discontinuityin Wallace'spre- and post-1860s views on humanevolution.


239

firmed the Christian belief in the special relationship between God and human beings predicated upon on certain human attributes-self-consciousness, reason, the moral sense, free will, and religiosity-which were deemed different in kind from those of all other animal species.43 The 1869 review stands, therefore, as a public watershed in Wallace's career. It was, as Darwin noted, an "inimitably good" exposition of natural selection, but one which concluded with those few remarks on human evolution which made him "groan."Wallace, in turn, fully appreciated Darwin's and others' reactions with "regard to my 'unscientific' opinions as to Man, because a few years back I should myself have looked at them as equally wild and uncalled for."44Wallace's depiction of his views as "unscientific" opinions is, I contend, both intentionally ironic and historically significant. For, whether Wallace's theistic emendations to evolutionary theory fall within the category of scientific or unscientific revisions is, of course, related to broader debates within the current historiography of science and religion. Moreover, within the context of the rich and often ambiguous (and contested) Victorian philosophies of nature, a demarcation between the two categories was (and is) difficult, if not impossible, to fix precisely.45 Wallace was, therefore, articulating the personal as well as metaphysical tensions induced by the striking rise of an institutionally professionalized science during the late nineteenth century. In informing Darwin privately that his views on human evolution were "modified solely by the consideration of a series of remarkable phenomena" associated with physical and psychic spirit manifestations, Wallace implied that these "forces and influences [though] not yet recognised by science" would be one day.46That his theistic opinions had become integral, and overt, elements in Wallace's biology became clear the following year with the publication of Contributions to the Theory of Natural Selection (1870). Contributions is a collection of ten essays, only the last of which will concern us here.47"The Limits of Natural Selection as Applied to Man" elaborates upon the arguments sketched in the 1869 review and makes explicit Wallace's commitment to a theistic evolutionary teleology. In rejecting a completely naturalistic version of evolution, Wallace admitted that it will "probably excite some surprise among my readers to find that I do not consider that all nature can be explained on the principles of which I am so ardent an advocate; and that I am now myself going to state objections, and to place limits, to the power of natural selection." Focusing on two phenomena-the origin of consciousness and the development of Homo sapiens from the lower animals-the essay attempts to demonstrate, "strictly within the bounds 43Jon H. Roberts, Darwinism and the Divine in America: Protestant Intellectuals and Organic

Evolution,1859-1900 (Madison:Univ. of WisconsinPress, 1988), pp. 176-7. For the biologists who rejected naturalselection as the sole mechanismof evolution, see Peter J. Bowler, The Eclipse of Darvinism: Anti-Darwinian Theories in the Decades around 1900 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Univ.

Press, 1983), p. 28. 44 JamesMarchant, Alfred Russel Wallace: Letters and Reminiscences (New York:Harper& Brothers, 1916; reprintedNew York:Arno, 1975), pp. 199-206. 45

Martin Fichman, "Biology and Politics: Defining the Boundaries," in Victorian Science, ed.

B. Lightman(cit. n. 16), pp. 94-118. 46 Marchant, Letters 47 Alfred Russel

(cit. n. 42), p. 200. Wallace, Natural Selection and Tropical Nature: Essays on Descriptive and Theo-

retical Biology (1891; reprintedWestmead,U.K.: Gregg International,1969), contains also the re-

print with some modifications of the first edition of Contributions to the Theory of Natural Selection: A Series of Essays (London: Macmillan, 1870).

240

MARTINFICHMAN

of scientific investigation," that there exists a providential force responsible for the development of consciousness and those human characteristics which cannot be explained by natural selection.48 Arguing first from the widely accepted premise that the size of the brain-"universally admitted to be the organ of the mind"-is proportional to mental capacity, Wallace cited evidence from Huxley and the anthropologists Pierre Paul Broca and Sir John Lubbock to show that the brain size of prehistoric humans and many of the lowest savages is wholly comparable to that of modem Europeans. This "apparent anomaly" suggests the idea of "a surplusage of power-of an instrument beyond the needs of its possessor." In a harsher portraitthan he draws elsewhere in his writings, Wallace depicts "the savage" as devoid "of those wide sympathies with all nature, those conceptions of the infinite, of the good, of the sublime and beautiful, which are so largely developed in civilised man. Any considerable development of these would, in fact, be useless or even hurtful to him, since they would to some extent interfere with the supremacy of those perceptive and animal faculties on which his very existence often depends, in the severe struggle he has to carry on against nature and his fellowman." Yet the fact that all the higher intellectual (and moral) faculties do occasionally manifest themselves in the primitive state indicates their latency in the large brain of savages. That this organ is much beyond their actual requirements is empirically confirmed by the fact that certain animals, with far smaller brains, exhibit behavioral traits similar, if not identical, to those of the savage. Wallace included in this category the ingenuity of the jaguar in catching fish, the hunting in packs of wolves and jackals, and the placing of sentinels by antelopes and monkeys. Thus, the evidence of continuity in psychological and behavioral processes from animals to early humans, evidence which provided Darwin with some of the most convincing support for his theory of human evolution by natural causes only, becomes in Wallace's hands testimony that the large brain of the savage was "preparedin advance, only to be fully utilised as he progresses in civilisation." The brain, Wallace concluded, "could never have been solely developed by any of those laws of evolution, whose essence is, that they lead to a degree of organisation exactly proportionate to the wants of each species, never beyond those wants." He was now convinced that such evidence testifies to providential intervention in human evolution: the "whole universe is not merely dependent on, but actually is, the WILL of higher intelligences or of one Supreme Intelligence."49 Wallace's position at this juncture was anomalous. He was at once the most effective advocate of natural selection as the primary mechanism of evolution (save in the case of humans) as well as a formidable opponent of a narrowly defined evolutionary naturalism. No aspect of evolutionary theory was more sensitive to the play of ideological forces than that which dealt with humans, particularly the evolution of his moral and intellectual attributes. The intense public interest and controversy engendered by Darwin's and Wallace's theory of natural selection could hardly have arisen if the question of the descent of humans from the lower animals was not perceived Wallace's own views on human evoluas an inextricable component of that theory.5?1 4SWallace,Natural Selection (cit. n. 45), pp. 186-88. 4 Ibid., pp. 188-212. Alvar Ellegard, Darwin and the General Reader: The Reception of Darwins Theory of Evolution in the British Periodical Press, 1859-1872 (Goteborg, Sweden: Elanders, 1958), p. 332.


241

tion could scarcely be ignored, and "Limits to Natural Selection" drew immediate and heavy criticism. He was chided by both Darwinians, who objected to Wallace's broader theistic framework-although they could not effectively repudiate all of his scientific arguments on the insufficiency of natural selection-and dogmatic opponents of evolutionary naturalism, who-while receptive to Wallace's position on man's origin-felt that he still accorded too great a power to natural selection in the plant and animal kingdoms.5' Yet what I have termed Wallace's anomalous position is such only at a superficial level of analysis. For, by embedding natural selection within the framework of a theistic evolutionary teleology, Wallace had found the solution to the central question-the presence of human higher faculties-which previously had eluded him. By arguing that the "laws of organic development have been occasionally used for a special end, just as man uses them for his special ends," Wallace signaled that natural selection was ultimately subservient to other higher, directed powers in the case of human evolution.52 These "signals" came to permeate, in an increasingly fundamental mode, his later elaboration of an evolutionary theism during the last two decades of his life. Theism functioned more openly in these mature reflections as a response both to the historical context of turn-of-the-century evolutionary biology and to the cognitive possibilities for science of theistic concepts. Wallace remained committed to naturalism, but not to the version which precluded theistic components. Indeed, an underlying theistic belief system came not merely to flow into but to shape Wallace's mature science.53 In the entry on spiritualism written by Wallace for the 1892 edition of Chamber's Encyclopedia, he asserted that the "universal teaching of modern spiritualism is that the world and the whole material universe exists for the purpose of developing spiritual beings-that death is simply a transition from material existence to the first grade of spirit-life."54Spiritualism for Wallace functioned as part of a theistic belief system which, far from contradicting his scientific statements, augmented his concept of evolution itself. He regarded spiritualization as a process of continuing the evolutionary progression of man, culminating, ultimately, "in a higher, entirely spiritual form of existence that lay beyond the individual's biological life-span." Spiritualism is thus a natural complement to organic evolution. In an article written in 1885, Wallace had specifically refuted the charge of those critics who claimed that spiritualism is incompatible with science. Rather, he had countered that such objections stem from a complete misuse of the term "science," which restricts that field only to materialist interpretations. His own reformulation of evolutionary theory enabled Wallace to argue for a constitutive "harmony of spiritualism and science."55 By 1885, then, Wallace's concept of spiritualism had been subsumed 51 Kottler,"Wallace"(cit. 52

n. 40). pp. 157-9.

Wallace, Natural Selection (cit. n. 45), pp. 213-14.

53 The AmericanProtestant theologianJamesMcCosh-a presidentof the College of New Jersey (laterPrincetonUniversity)and prolificauthorof workson the harmonybetween science and Christian faith-was among those who regardedWallaceas providingscientific evidence which argued explicitly for divine interventionin the courseof humanevolution;see JamesMcCosh, TheReligious Aspect of Evolution,rev. ed. (1888; New York:CharlesScribner'sSons, 1890), chap. 6. 54 Alfred Russel Wallace,"Spiritualism"in Chambers'sEncyclopedia,new ed. (London, 1892). 55Alfred Russel Wallace,"ModernSpiritualism:Are Its Phenomenain Harmonywith Science?",

Boston Sunday Herald, 26 Apr. 1885, pp. 9c-d, in Charles H. Smith, ed., Alfred Russel Wallace: An Anthology of His Shorter Writings (New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1991), pp. 100-1; the

phrase"culminatingin a higher,entirely spiritualform of existence that lay beyond the individual's

242

MARTIN FICHMAN

within a more distinctive theistic context, the full implications of which I explore in section III. His arguments concerning spiritualism in the two articles just discussed, together with his theistic convictions, reinforce his increasingly explicit claim that theism constitutes a wholly legitimate, and necessary, component of a valid, and inclusive, system of investigation of nature. Moreover, Wallace's was scarcely a lone voice in the late Victorian scientific community. Important clusters of individuals within the ranks of professional scientists fully endorsed the notion that there was an integral religious dimension to science. They were a diverse group-ranging from the "North British" physicists (including such luminaries as William Thomson, James Clerk Maxwell, and Peter Guthrie Tait)56to the Christian Darwinists,57 and, finally, to those idealist natural philosophers such as T. H. Green, E H. Bradley, and Edward Caird who appropriatedscience and evolutionary theory to construct a theistic metaphysical system.58 While not direct allies of Wallace, members of these groups shared certain of his interests in religious and spiritualist matters and would not have considered it unscientific to do so. When the topography of late Victorian British science is viewed not merely from the perspective of Huxley and the scientific naturalists (who constituted a significant albeit far from dominant community of scientists) but also in terms of the broader intellectual landscape, theistic science is recognizable as a powerful paradigm in Wallace's era. Significantly, Wallace possessed a copy of a booklet by Anna Blackwell entitled Whence and Whither? Or Correlation between Philosophic Convictions and Social Forms (1898). Blackwell's main thesis was that late Victorian society was degenerating, owing to "the rapid spread of theoretic Materialism, which denies the existence of the Spiritual element of the universe as the corollary of its denial of the existence of an Intelligent CREATOR, and in the substitution of selfish appetites and interests, in place of the nobler psychic motives of action, which is the practical consequence of its denial." She maintained that "the Materialistic hypothesis should ... be regarded as only a passing phase of the reaction of modern science" to certain outmoded beliefs and systems. Blackwell asserted that "a rational belief of a Beneficent Creator and Overruler of the universe and a rational acceptance of the all-important moral consequences inseparable from that belief" were the most potent forces capable of dislodging the "erroneous assumptions" of materialist theories. She praised all those who advocated these twin forces as "clearing the ground for the establishment of the Scientific Theism which-as the only certain guarantee of the eternal persistence of the spiritual Principle, the only sound foundation of Physical Science, and the only safe guide to the elucidation of social questions-is the most pressing need of the present day."The concordance between Blackwell's ideas and those of Wallace is obvious. Several passages in Blackwell's treatise which Wallace marked with double vertical lines in the margins

biological life-span"is takenfrom Smith'sintroductionto this section of selected writingsof Wallace on spiritualism,p. 67. 56

Crosbie Smith, The Science of Energy: A Cultural History of Energy Physics in Victorian Britain

(Chicago:Univ. of Chicago Press, 1998).

57 James R. Moore, The Post-Darwinian Controversies: A Study of the Protestant Struggle to Come to Terms with Darwin in Great Britain and America, 1870-1900 (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ.

Press, 1979).

58 Sandra M. Den Otter, British Idealism and Social Explanation: A Study in Late Victorian

Thought(Oxford:Clarendon,1996).


243

of his personal copy confirm his agreement with the thrust of her argument. One passage claimed that "all the evils of our social state result from the substitution of individualism and antagonism in place of co-operation and mutual helpfulness, and can only be successfully dealt with by substituting co-operation for individualism." Blackwell's further assertion that the transformation of society would "eventually be achieved, and in the way implied in the words of Christ, viz., by the application of the principle of cooperative helpfulness to every department of human life" mirrors Wallace's own evolutionary teleology. Wallace found Blackwell's small but clearly articulated booklet (only thirty-two pages long) attractive because it reflected his own quest for a unifying principle for social and scientific thought predicated upon a core vision which incorporated theism as a key constitutive element.59 III. SCIENTIFIC THEIST

The harshjudgments of some of his contemporaries, as well as of several twentiethcentury historians of science, that Wallace's embrace of theism caused his science to suffer, therefore, do not withstand critical analysis.60Although it is true that during the last decades of his life what may be termed his "nonscientific" writings became more abundant, this is no way implies any diminution in his scientific stature or productivity. Indeed, the converse is true. During the period from 1890 to 1913, Wallace contributed a steady stream of influential articles and books on technical subjects ranging from animal mimicry, glacial theory, the geological permanence of the great ocean basins, and biogeography to Mans Place in the Universe: A Study of the Results of Scientific Research in Relation to the Unity or Plurality of Worlds (1903), Is Mars habitable? (1908), and The World of Life: A Manifestation of Creative Power, Directive Mind and Ultimate Purpose (1910). One of these scientific fields, namely biogeography, was not as directly affected by Wallace's growing commitment to theism as were the others, notably his broader evolutionary revisions and his views on chemistry and astronomy. However, neither this sole exception nor Wallace's concurrent involvement (from the 1880s onward) in matters such as public education, land nationalization, socialism, and antivaccination campaigns in any way diminish the centrality of theism in the content of his science or the continued vitality of his scientific activity. In addition, these sociopolitical writings and activities served further to increase public awareness of his scientific work, making 59BernardLightman, "VictorianSciences and Religions: Discordant Harmonies,"address presented at the conference"Religionand Science: Tension,Accommodationand Engagement"at Ohio State Univ. in May 1999. Anna Blackwell, Whence and Whither? Or Correlation between Philo-

sophic Convictionsand Social Forms(London:GeorgeRedway,1898);the passagesWallacemarked are on pp. 27-9. Italics are Blackwell's;Wallace'spersonalcopy is now in the Alfred Russel Wallace Library,Special Collections, EdinburghUniversityLibrary. 6) The twentieth-century critics include Wilma George, Biologist Philosopher: A Study of the Life and Writings of Alfred Russel Wallace (London: Abelard-Schuman, 1964); Joel S. Schwartz, "Dar-

win, Wallace, and The Descent of Man,"J. Hist. Biology 17 (1984):271-89; Michael Shermer,"A Heretic-Scientistamong the Spiritualists:Alfred Russel Wallace and 19th-CenturySpiritualism," pt. 1, Skeptic3(1)( 1994):70-83. Althoughhe providesan accurate,contextualistaccountof Wallace's commitmentto spiritualism-and acknowledgesthe influenceof spiritualistbeliefs upon his evoludrovehim, ultimately,to "pseutionarytheory-Shermer concludesthatWallace's"supernaturalism" doscientific fool-hardiness";more to the point, Shermerargues that such historicalreconstructions as his of Wallace'sviews help to "illuminatehow and why perfectlyreasonableandrationalscientists come to believe in the reality of the paranormaland supernatural"(p. 83). Shermer,particularly, rejectsthe very concept of a "valid"theistic context for science.

244

MARTIN FICHMAN

Wallace one of the best-known figures of natural science among the general public in England and America in the latter decades of the Victorian period.61 Wallace's tour of the United States and Canada during 1886-1887 provides striking testimony to the success of his strategy of integrating religious convictions and science into a broader, theistic evolutionary framework. In well-attended lecture series from Boston to San Francisco, Wallace solidified his public stance as the "greatest living champion" of evolutionary theory. Joseph Le Conte, the eminent professor of geology and zoology at the recently founded University of California, introduced Wallace in precisely those terms "to a large and cultivated audience" at a lecture entitled "The Darwinian Theory, What It Is and How It Is Demonstrated," which Wallace delivered in San Francisco on 25 May 1887. Le Conte was particularly well placed to introduce Wallace. In addition to his scientific credentials, Le Conte had earned a distinctive place in American culture by his many books and articles designed to accommodate Christianity to modern science. Significantly, Le Conte described himself as one of that considerable group of Protestant evolutionists who, by the early 1880s, claimed to be "pioneers" in opposition to "the materialistic and irreligious [interpreters] of the doctrine of evolution." Consequently, Le Conte regarded himself and Wallace as kindred thinkers who sought to place Christian theology securely within the evolutionary context.62To be sure, Wallace never referred to himself as a Christian. There is no doubt, however, that Wallace was expounding an explicitly theistic evolutionism in San Francisco-which provides the bond mentioned by Le Conte. Wallace concluded his survey "The Darwinian Theory" with the assertion that although the human bodily structure is primarily the product of natural selection operating on lower animals, "the changes of his [man's] mental nature do not appear capable of the same explanation.... Holding as I do that mind is more fundamental than matter, and that the spirit or soul is the real man, of which the body is but the temporary manifestation or dwelling-place," it is the spirit, guided by higher agencies, that ultimately will develop "the noble and perfect human form."63Some two weeks later (5 June 1887), Wallace delivered another lecture "before quite a large audience" in which he elaborated on the question of an afterlife, a question "which the ancient scientists considered [an] unsolved problem, and that modern scientists had either left untouched or precisely where they found it." He argued that modern science, "having decided that all force was the result of molecular motion of matter,"had hardened (by the mid-nineteenth century) into a "compact, fortified and nearly impregnable condition" which afforded no credence to spiritual manifestations. However, the growing body of evidence for the existence of spiritual phenomena, Wallace averred, now enabled modern spiritualism to shoot "like a thunderbolt from a clear sky" to spread in a fashion "little less than phenomenal." He claimed, with unwonted hyperbole, that theistic spiritualism had achieved what (traditional) science and religion had been unable to do, namely, provide "a rational account" of the history and destiny of the human species: "[T]he Bible is full of spiritual phenomena, and ... by the belief in spiritualism the handwriting on the wall before Belshazzar's [son of Nebuchadnezzar II and last king of Babylon] 61 62

Smith, Anthology (cit. n. 53), pp. 117-18, 509-29, 533-4.

[JosephLe Conte],Autobiography,ed. William DallamArmes (New York:D. Appleton, 1903),

pp. 335-7.

63 "Manand Monkey: Dr. Wallace Expoundsthe HumanPedigree,"San Francisco Chronicle,26 May 1887, p. 6.


245

hosts was made clear; it was plain to see how the victims of Nebuchadnezzar's wrath escaped the fire, how Christ cast out devils, and changed the water into wine. Spiritualism ... proves that mind may exist without brain, and places a new light upon death [and the afterlife]." Newspaper accounts from Boston, New York, Baltimore, Cincinnati, Washington, D.C., Toronto, Kingston, and Montreal, in addition to those from San Francisco, provide ample documentation of the widespread public appeal, with attendant criticisms, of Wallace's increasingly overt theistic evolutionism.64 The convergence of theism and science in the work of Wallace reached its culmination in one of his last books: The Worldof Life: A Manifestation of Creative Power, Directive Mind and Ultimate Purpose (1910). Intended as a summary of "my halfcentury of thought and work" on the theory of evolution, it served another, more polemical function: "The most prominent feature of my book is that I enter into a popular yet critical examination of those underlying fundamental problems which Darwin purposely excluded from his works as being beyond the scope of his enquiry.65Wallace emphasized that he had come to consider Darwin's Darwinism incomplete. Indeed, the book is pervaded by an interpretation of biological phenomena, including the "nature and causes of Life itself," which renders explicit the theistic framework which had come to inform Wallace's own biological synthesis: the vast evidence drawn from the study of plant and animal life-supplemented by data and concepts from chemistry, physiology, geology, and astronomy-indicates "a prevision and definite preparation of the earth for Man."Wallace averred that the ancient doctrine "that the universe is not a chance product," far from being "exploded" by late Victorian science, is substantiated within "the realm of scientific inquiry."Evolutionary science, in particular,represented for him the clear manifestation of an "Infinite and Eternal Being" who nonetheless requires the "continuous coordinated agency of myriads of [spiritual] intelligences." As Wallace himself stated, simply and completely unambiguously, in one of the last letters he wrote [to his close friend and editor James Marchant], "The completely materialistic mind of my youth and early manhood has been slowly moulded into the socialistic, spiritualistic, and theistic mind I now exhibit."66An interview with Wallace, shortly after the publication of The World of Life, concerning his response to a paper on the origin of life given by the chemist Edward A. Schaefer at the eighty-second annual meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science in Dundee in September 1892, gives further testimony to the constitutive role now played by theism in his 64Wallace'scomments are taken from the newspaperarticle "The Life Hereafter:Future State Considered.InterestingAddress by Dr. Alfred Russel Wallace,"San Francisco Chronicle, 6 June 1887, p. 8. The criticismof Wallace'spublicandexplicit theismis significant,becauseovertlytheistic evolutionistsin the United Stateswere less common in the last two decadesof the nineteenthcentury than they had been in the two decades priorto Wallace'sNorthAmericantour.This does not imply, however,that theistic evolution itself was being rejected.As Ronald L. Numbershas recently suggested, "[T]heisticevolution was undergoingprivatizationmore than elimination."Although references to the divine became less visible in the scientific literaturetowardthe close of the Victorian period,manyAmericanevolutionistsretainedtheirreligiousviews. (RonaldL. Numbers,Darwinism Comes to America [Cambridge,Mass.: HarvardUniv. Press, 1998], p. 40.) Since Wallace himself had never subscribedto any traditionalinstitutionalizedreligion, he saw no reasonto refrainfrom an overtdeclarationof theism in the latterdecades of his life. In this sense, he became more confident in expressingpublicly views that he chose to deemphasize,for professionaland strategicpurposes, in the 1860s and early 1870s. 65 Alfred Russel Wallace, The Worldof Life: A Manifestationof CreativePower, Directive Mind and UltimatePurpose,5th ed. (1910; London,Chapman& Hall, 1910), pp. v-vi, italics Wallace's. 66 Wallace,Worldof Life (cit. n. 63), pp. 394-400; Marchant,Letters(cit. n. 42), p. 413.

246

MARTIN FICHMAN

science. Criticizing the mechanistic assertions made by Schaefer concerning the chemical origins of life, Wallace declared, "I maintain that you cannot explain the smallest portion of dead [chemical] matter without a series of forces which imply mind, which imply direction.... [I]f you assume that the directing power is essentially a spiritual power, then you can understand all this, but without it you cannot understand it." In his refutation of Schaefer's fundamental mechanistic premise that life is a consequence of the organization of chemical elements into compounds and molecules of increasingly complex structures, Wallace's theism had become fundamental to his conception of the nature of matter itself. Clearly, "living matter"the substratum of evolutionary development-requires the intervention of directive, spiritual forces. But now what he terms "dead matter" (the chemical elements) has been shown to be almost as complex as organic beings. Late nineteenth- and very early twentieth-century experimental and theoretical studies on the structure of the atom demonstrated, for Wallace, that atoms themselves are composed of yet smaller constituents which are imbued with force. Mechanistic chemists such as Schaefer failed to deal with the "ultimate cause," the "directing power" that has created the forces which then act upon inert matter to produce both chemical and biological activity. The nature of the relationship between force and matter was (and is), to be sure, a perennial problem in the history of science. That Wallace, in the first decade of the twentieth century, felt compelled to argue vigorously for the explanatory necessity of invoking mind in discussing chemical as well as biological theory is further evidence of the cognitive dimension of theism in his science.67 As noted previously, there are several parallels between Oliver Lodge's writings at the turn of the twentieth century and Wallace's own writings in the 1890s and the first decade of the twentieth century that are instructive for our inquiry. In addition to a conviction that the existence of the ether and the existence of nonmaterial minds-apart from humans-could be accurately inferred from extensive experimental evidence, Lodge regarded progressive evolution as an empirically established scientific theory. Moreover, Lodge felt that Darwin's evolutionary naturalism served, erroneously, to preclude any incorporation of divine and/or spiritual agency Wallacein the course of human evolution. More specifically, Lodge-like believed that "a ministry of benevolences surrounds us-a cloud of witnesses-not witnesses only but helpers, agents like ourselves of the immanent God."68It has been persuasively argued that "in Lodge's system, 'science' was more than an empirical knowledge of nature, and religion was more than a biblical knowledge of God and Christ."69Hence, a critical examination of the role of theistic beliefs in Wallace's theoretical evolutionary schema suggests that, as with the career of Lodge, the very categories "science" and "religion" themselves must be applied with great care in reconstructing case studies of their historical interactions.7" 67 "The Problemof Life," anonymousinterviewwith Wallace,Daily News and Leader(London/ Manchester),7 Sept. 1912, pp. la-b. See also Alfred Russel Wallace,"The Originof Life: A Reply to Dr. Schaefer,"Everyman1 (18 Oct. 1912): 5-6. 68 Oliver J. Lodge, Reason and Belief (New York:Moffat, Yard,1910), pp. 34, 155. 69 David B. Wilson, "On the Importanceof EliminatingScience and Religion from the History of Science andReligion:The Cases of OliverLodge, J. H. JeansandA. S. Eddington,"in van der Meer,

Facets of Faith and Science (cit. n. 34), vol. 1, p. 34. 70 John Brooke and Geoffrey Cantor, Reconstructing Nature: The Engagement of Science and Reli-

gion (Edinburgh:T & T Clark, 1998), pp. 62-4; RachelLaudan,"Historiesof the Sciences andTheir Uses: A Review to 1913$"Hist. Sci. 31 (1993):3, 21.


247

In the fifth edition of Man and the Universe (1909), Lodge proposed a conception of the universe-which he hoped would reconcile science and religion-as "lying open to all manner of spiritual influences, permeated through and through with a Divine spirit, guided and watched by living minds, acting through the medium of law indeed, but with intelligence and love behind the law."71Wallace would have been entirely comfortable with this attempt to define the compatibility of science and religion. Earlier, in a letter to Arabella Buckley Fisher dated 9 April 1897, Wallace noted that he admired Lodge's recent address to the Spiritualists' Association on similar matters. It is worth noting that Wallace's subsumption of spiritualism into a broader theistic framework was in stark contrast to his highly critical views on theosophy and ideas of reincarnation. In that same letter, Wallace admits, "I have tried several Reincarnation and Theosophical books, but cannot read them or take any interest in them. They are so purely imaginative, and do not seem to me rational. Many people are captivated by it-I think most people who like a grand, strange, complex theory of man and nature, given with authority-people who if religious would be Roman Catholics."72Clearly, the precise nature of Wallace's theism resists simplistic classification. Its spiritualist basis is incontestable. Indeed, Wallace argued that spiritualists should take the lead in effecting the moral regeneration of an emerging industrial culture. He felt that many other religious sects-in addition to their formalistic institutional structures and their need to perpetuate their sociopolitical power bases (both antithetical to Wallace's belief in voluntarist social action)-focused too exclusively on alleviating individual cases of want and misery through various terms of charity. "But this method has utterly failed even to diminish the mass of human misery everywhere around us, because it deals with symptoms only and leaves the causes untouched. I would not say a word against even this form of charity, for those who see no higher law."But Wallace then paraphrases the apostle Paul's first letter to the church in Corinth to reinforce his point: "[W]e want more of the true charity of St. Paul-the charity that thinketh no evil, that suffereth long and is kind, that rejoiceth in the truth-not only the lesser and easier charity which feeds the poor out of its superfluity, an action which St. Paul does not allow to be charity at all."73 Wallace's theism, therefore, while drawing upon his adherence to Victorian spiritualism, was continually broadened to include aspects, albeit in quite specific contexts, of certain other more traditional religious teachings, just as it bore the imprint of his vision of a moral reformation of society.74 Wallace's theism does not fall within the category of any of the conventional religions of the late Victorian period. Moreover, as I have argued earlier in this essay, Wallace moved far beyond the teachings of conventional spiritualism: "[W]e are forced to the assumption of an infinite God by the fact that our earth has developed life, and mind, and ourselves.... I can imagine the supreme, the Infinite being, foreseeing and determining the broad outlines of a universe which would, in due 71 Oliver Lodge, Man and the Universe: A Study of the Influence of the Advance in Scientific Knowledge upon Our Understanding of Christianity, 5th ed. (1908; London: Methuen, 1909), pp. 22-3. 72

Marchant,Letters(cit. n. 42), pp. 432-3. Wallace'sitalics. "Spiritualismand Social Duty,"Light (London) 18(913) (9 July 1898): 334-6. 74 For the significanceof the notion that theists emphasize their conviction that belief in God involves a profoundsense of moral obligation to do good-in the more rigorousmannerinvokedby Wallace'sreferenceto Saint Paul-see RichardSwinbume, The Coherenceof Theism,rev. ed. (Oxford: Clarendon,1993), pp. 184-216. 73 Alfred Russel Wallace,

248

MARTINFICHMAN

course, and with efficient guidance, produce the required result. He might, for instance, impress a sufficient number of his highest angels to create by their willpower the primal universe of ether, with those inherent properties and forces necessary for what was to follow," namely, the organization of matter, gravitation, heat, and electricity. "Then we may imagine these hosts of angels, to whom a thousand years are as one day, watching the development of this vast system of suns and planets" until the earth itself, the "life-world" of man, would have been developed. "The vast whole," Wallace concludes, "is therefore a manifestation of his powerperhaps of his very self-but by the agency of his ministering angels through many descending grades of intelligence and power."75As he wrote to his close friend Sir William F Barrett (15 Feb. 1911), whose just published Creative Thought and the Problem of Evil discussed the subject of evolution and the impossibility of explaining the phenomena of life without a supreme directing force, "it is very curious that even the religious reviewers [of Creative Thought] seem horrified and pained at the idea that the Infinite Being does not actually do every detail himself, apparently leaving his angels, and archangels, his seraphs and his messengers, which seem to exist in myriads, according to the Bible, to have no function whatsoever!" Wallace asserted that Barrett'sconcepts concerning the relation between science and religion were among those with which he most concurred.76In a work published several years after Wallace's death, Barrett concludes that what "science has now established, and holds as eternally true, is that the universe is a cosmos, not a chaos, that amidst all the mutability of visible things there is no capriciousness, no disorder."Rather, "the magnificent procession of phenomena in the midst of which we stand; the realms and magnitudes above us, too vast for the mind to grasp; the molecules and movements around us, too minute or too rapid for the eye to see or the mind to conceive, are all marching to the music of a Divine and Eternal order. On this system of the orderly government of the world, our faith in a Supreme Being is rooted; and the progress of modem science has made this faith an integral part of our daily life, whether we regard the Supreme as an impersonal power or as a beneficent Father."77 Like Wallace, Barrett moved beyond conventional spiritualism to an explicitly theistic conception of the universe. Barrett's comments on the distinction between spiritualism and religion accord well with Wallace's insistence that spiritualism can be studied scientifically but has limits which can only be transcended by some type of explicit theism. For Barrett, the "intimacy and immediacy of the union between the soul and God, the Infinite manifesting itself in and through the finite, is the fundamental idea, not only of the mystics, but of the New Testament, and of all great Christian thinkers. The attainment of this profounder consciousness, and therefore of our full personality, is, however, the province of religion, the true theme of which is not the future life but the higher life." This knowledge of God, according to Barrett, "not of the methods of his working, but the consciousness of His presence, is what is meant by religion. From this point of view it is obvious that Spiritualism is not and cannot be a religion, which rests essentially upon those higher instincts of the soul we call faith. ... In 75 Wallace,Worldof Life (cit. n.

63), pp. 393-6. Marchant,Letters(cit. n. 42), p. 439. Barrett'sideas had originally been deliveredas a lecture before the Quest Society in Londonbut were quicklypublishedas CreativeThoughtand the Problem of Evil (London:J. M. Watkins,1911). 77 WilliamF. Barrett,On The Thresholdof the Unseen (New York:E. P. Dutton, 1918), pp. 28-9. 76


249

this sense also Spiritualism cannot even afford to us knowledge of the supernatural, as it is often claimed to do." As did Wallace, Barrett argued that the phenomena of spiritualism could never demonstrate such doctrinal claims as the immortality of the soul, "though it may and does remove the objections raised" against such claims.78 Barrett was embracing, as was Wallace, an enriched theism which had part of its original motivation in spiritualism but then transcended it. Barrett'sdiscussion of the categories of "science" and "religion" is, like Wallace's own philosophical theism, a reexamination of the very notion of such categories and the utility of any sharp demarcation between them. In October 1895, Wallace agreed to write an "Introductory Note" to Stanley de Brath's Psychic Philosophy, a work Wallace deemed to be of "great lucidity, a philosophy of the universe and of human nature in its threefold aspect of body, soul, and spirit." Wallace also wrote a prefatory note to the second edition in 1908, stating that he fully agreed with all of de Brath's changes and additions to that expanded edition. It may be assumed, therefore, that Wallace endorsed de Brath's view that late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century scientific developments-most notably the theory of evolution-afforded potent grounds for a consilience between the findings of modern science and the basic teachings of traditional Christianity: "The new mode of thought recognises fully that the valid test to us of the existence of spiritual force is its material effect, but that all spiritual causation can only be expressed by metaphor, simile, and trope, straining the resources of language to express the higher verity, and not by scientific terms having only one sense. To literalise is to degrade the whole broad and grand treatment of God and human life which characterises the teaching of Jesus, into formula, making it no longer truth to be known but dogma to be assented to." De Brath continues by declaring that if "we know we are spirits veiled in flesh, for whom there is no death; having within ourselves infinite possibilities of health and growth; having faculty to receive strength and guidance from the very Creative Spirit Himself . . . then how differently would the world look to each one of us. We should see it as it is-the garden of God, wherein He brings flowers from corrupt and dead matter; as His undeveloped Kingdom wherein we may be His agencies whereby shall be made the new heaven and the new earth."Wallace's own evolutionary theism is echoed by de Brath's belief that there "is also a future sense to the individual man, when, leaving the body, his true self is manifest by his entrance on spirit-conditions. It is to this aspect that Jesus alludes when He says the the righteous shall shine forth as the sun; shall inherit the Kingdom, prepared indeed from the foundation of the world, for it belongs to conditions where Time has no place."79 In concluding this case study of the content interaction of scientific and theistic factors in the evolutionary theory of Alfred Russel Wallace, I must emphasize that Wallace differs from the exponents of the tradition of natural theology which flourished from the seventeenth until well into the nineteenth century. Writing as he did at the commencement of the twentieth century, Wallace was too astute an observer of the vast sociopolitical, environmental, and metaphysical transformations wrought by the (seeming) triumphs of Victorian science and technology to be able 78

Ibid., pp. 284-5, 287. Stanley De Brath,Psychic Philosophy,3rd ed., with introductorynote by Alfred Russel Wallace (Huddersfield,U.K.: Spiritualists'NationalUnion, 1921), pp. v-vi, 9, 30, 269. 79

250

MARTIN FICHMAN

to countenance the comforting harmonization of science and religion that had characterized much of eighteenth- and nineteenth-century natural theology. Nor could he. The relationships between science and religion have changed over time and are often complex and highly diverse even within a given historical community.80Wallace's mature evolutionary teleology must be viewed as a new response to the challenges posed to questions of human values as science emerged as an increasingly potent and professionalized cultural institution at the start of the twentieth century. Wallace, therefore, considered the "myriads of spiritual intelligences" as critical evolutionary adjuncts whose function was to aid humans in their efforts to find, indeed experience, aspects of the divine in a dawning technoscientific age which posed individual as well as societal challenges of an historically novel kind and scope. It is in this sense, I contend, that Wallace's mature enunciation of evolutionary science was formulated in a reenvisioned theistic context. His career thus provides a significant case study for the current historiography of science and religion, particularly with regard to identifying precisely how theism has affected the content of scientific thought. As has been demonstrated, theism functioned specifically as a constitutive element in the following aspects of Wallace's final evolutionary synthesis: (1) with respect to the scope of the theory of natural selection itself, theism constitutes the explanation, in terms of intelligent design, of those human characteristics (particularly intellectual capacities and moral qualities) that Wallace deemed to be instances of "overcapacity" at various stages in human evolutionary historyand hence, not explicable by natural selection's principle of utility; (2) with respect to evolutionary teleology, Wallace concluded that the laws of organic development have been used (in specific instances) by a Higher Power to direct the process of human evolution; (3) with respect to the concept of nature, Wallace maintained that what he termed "spirit"or "spiritual forms of existence" were not only integral features of the natural world but, in the case of humans, were the endpoint of evolution: that which lay beyond an individual's biological lifespan; and (4) with respect to mind and matter, Wallace held that mind is more fundamental than matter and that, in the case of human evolution, the material body is but the temporary manifestation or dwelling place of the spirit or soul that-guided by Higher Agencies-will ultimately develop "the noble and perfect human form." He described this reenvisioned theistic context, which had changed his views of life, "owing to my becoming convinced of the reality of a spirit world and a future state of existence'" as "'the third chapter of my life'; [just as] Man's Place in the Universe-a totally new subject for me-may well be termed the 'third chapter of my book,' that is, of my literary work."81 8) Brooke and Cantor, Reconstructing Nature (cit. n. 68), pp. 15-69. 81 My 399. vol.

Life,

2, pp. 382,

"The

Sense

of

Sublimity"

Darwin on Nature and Divinity By Phillip R. Sloan*

I. INTRODUCTION

The interplay of religious and theological presuppositions with the content of science can take many different shapes. One paradigmatic example is the naturalphilosophy of Johannes Kepler. His deep religious beliefs formed a clear motivation for his intense work on the problems of mathematical astronomy, supplying both the personal impetus and a set of assumptions about the rationality of nature that animated his ground-breaking work. Metaphysical presumptions concerning the Platonic structure of nature were also crucial for his conception of the world as mathematically describable. Such motivations help us to explain and to understand his realistic interpretationof Copernicanism and his drive to discover order in a cosmos in which circular motion of the planets could no longer be fitted to the best observational data. Darwinian natural selection theory would seem to present a very different situation. Since 1859 it has formed one foundation of modem scientific naturalism and has, for many, represented the triumph of nontheological science. Furthermore, many have seen it in terms of a nonmetaphysical positivism, rather than as a theory deeply imbued with metaphysical commitments of a constitutive character.There is little common assumption that religious motivations or metaphysical issues form a significant backdrop for understanding the content of Darwinian evolution, even if there is much greater sensitivity to the possibility of religious motivation in the genesis of his work.' Programof LiberalStudies/ Programin Historyand Philosophyof Science, Universityof Notre Dame, 215 O'ShaughnessyHall, Notre Dame IN 46556 An early versionof this essay was deliveredat the Pascal CentreConferenceon Science and Religion, "Sciencein TheisticContexts,"in July 1998, at RedeemeerCollege, Ancaster,Ontario,Canada. I wish to acknowledgethe valuablecommentsof Jitse Van Der Meer, David Kohn, John Campbell, MenachemFisch, John Brooke, MargaretOsler,Nicolaas Rupke,Rodney Kilcup, and JonathanTopham on the earlierversionof this essay, and the anonymousreviewersfor instructivecommentson the finishedmanuscript,and the carefulcopy editing of Ms. ChristieLerch. I also thankthe Pascal Centrefor financialsupport.Responsibilityfor all interpretationsis my own. k

' See especially John Durant ed., Darwin and Divinity: Essays on Evolution and Religious Belief

(Oxford: Blackwell, 1985); David Kohn, "Darwin'sAmbiguity: The Secularizationof Biological Meaning,"Brit. J. Hist. Sci. 22 (1989):215-39; WalterF (= Susan Faye) Cannon, "The Bases of Darwin'sAchievement:A Revaluation,"VictorianStud. 5 (1961):109-34; John H. Brooke, "The Relations between Darwin'sScience and His Religion,"in Durant,Darwin and Divinity, pp. 40in The Dar75; James R. Moore, "Darwin of Down: The Evolutionist as Squarson-Naturalist," winian Heritage, ed. D. Kohn (Princeton:Princeton Univ. Press, 1985), pp. 435-81; Robert J. Richards,"TheTheologicalFoundationsof Darwin'sTheoryof Evolution,"in ExperiencingNature. ? 2001 by The Historyof Science Society.All rights reserved.0369-7827/01/1601-0001$2.00 Osiris, 2001, 16:00-00

251

252

PHILLIPR. SLOAN

Darwin's personal biography, as has been noted by several authorsjust cited, manifests internal tensions of a religious character. His early Unitarian piety, encouraged and instilled by his sisters,2 stands against the male family heritage of Scottish deism and religious skepticism embraced by his father and his older brotherErasmus Alvey and reflected in the religious skepticism of Darwin's letters and writings. Between these poles is the broad-Church Anglican tradition of his Cambridge guides in science-Adam Sedgwick, William Whewell, and especially John Stevens Henslowand his lifelong friendship with his cousin W. D. Fox and other Cambridge associates who went on to become Anglican country parsons. To this we can add the friendship in his last years with the local vicar of Downe, Rev. Brodie Innes. These features contextualize Darwin socially within broad-Church Anglicanism. As the fundamental studies of James Moore have demonstrated, we have before us all of the historical complexities of an individual who has functioned as one of the primary architects of moder scientific naturalism yet, in his later life, raised money for parish activities and served as treasurer for the local Sunday school, even loaning his personally rented reading room to Plymouth Brethren evangelist W. C. Fegan to enable him to conduct religious revivals.But the degree to which we can affirm the constitutive nature of religious or metaphysical beliefs in Darwin's science is not fully clear. I argue that this dimension can be penetrated by looking more closely at the role played by the concept of "nature" in the constitution of Darwin's mature scientific thought. Although a full discussion is beyond the range of this essay, a limited focus on the topic illuminates several factors of relevance to Darwin's attitude to religion. I explore three aspects of Darwin's conception of nature. First, I locate his early reflections on nature in the tradition of Alexander von Humboldt (1769-1859), whose writings were directly accessible to Darwin in his formative period up through the Beagle years. Second, I examine the development of Darwin's philosophy of "nature"after the Beagle expedition and its role in forming the complex roots of his notion of "natural" selection, concentrating principally on his reflections up to the publication of the Origin of Species in 1859. I offer a controversial interpretation of the issue. Finally, I address the science-religion issues that follow from my historical analysis. II. HUMBOLDTIAN NATURE

The concept of "nature"found within German Naturphilosophie, developed in different formulations by Friedrich Schelling and his disciples at Jena, and Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and his associates at Weimar, forms a point of deparProceedings of a Conference in Honor of Allen G. Debus, ed. Paul Theerman and Karen Parshall (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1997), pp. 61-79; Neil Gillispie, Charles Darwin and the Problem of Creation

(Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1979); James R. Moore, The Post-DarwinianControversies:A

Study of the Protestant Struggle to Come to Terms with Darwin in Great Britain and America, 18701900 (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1979).

2 See, e.g., CatherineDarwin and Caroline Darwin to Charles Darwin (hereafterC.D.), 11 Apr. 1826, FrederickBurkhardtet al., eds., The Correspondenceof Charles Darwin, 11 vols., vol. 1: 1821-1836 (Cambridge:CambridgeUniv. Press, 1985-1999), pp. 40-2. All referencesto the correspondenceare to this edition, unless otherwisenoted. 3 Moore, "Darwinof Down" (cit. n. 1), pp. 470-73.

DARWIN ON NATUREAND DIVINITY

253

ture.4Through the writings of Alexander von Humboldt, Darwin assimilated critical dimensions of one wing of this German tradition in his early years, and it is against the backdrop provided by this tradition, rather than that of British natural theology, that we are to understandthe early development of Darwin's religious consciousness. At least three issues differentiate the conception of nature developed in these German traditions from other versions of the philosophy of nature in the literatureof the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century.5First is the abolition of the traditional distinction between God and nature and a return to a position close to the rational pantheism of Spinoza. Nature was posited as a "self-existent" (Selbstindig) agency that is both product and productive.6 Second, in Schelling's original formulations of this program, the new conception of nature differed from the static nature-creation relationship of Spinoza in that the duality of "creative nature" (natura naturans) and "created nature" (natura naturata) was reconceived as a dynamic, two-faceted interaction between creative force and the concrete products of nature. This polarity produced the various plants and animals in time through a dialectical relation. Aspects of this account of the creation of the world from the inherent polarity in nature were extensively developed by such successors as Heinrich Steffens, Christian Nees von Esenbeck, and Lorenz Oken.7 As a third feature, the relation of natura naturans and natura naturata also involved a dynamic relationship of knower and known, consciousness and matter, subject and object. Developing from the dual-aspect identity theory of Spinoza, but with the addition of a new dynamism between the conscious and the material, both the conscious and the unconscious were now seen to spring from the same originating source. 4 For recent summariesof this movement,see Michael Heidelberger,"Naturphilosophie," in the

Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy, ed. Edward Craig (New York: Routledge, 1998); and Nicholas Jardine, "Naturphilosophie and the Kingdoms of Nature," in Cultures of Natural History, ed.

Nicholas Jardine,James Secord, and Emma Spary (Cambridge:CambridgeUniv. Press, 1996), pp. 230-45. Although Schelling and Goethe's forms of Naturphilosophieare related, the strongly logical and dialecticalcharacterof Schelling'sversion can be distinguishedfrom the less systematic pantheismof Goethe. As one anonymousreviewer of this paper correctly pointed out, Humboldt drew from both of these traditions,but on my readinghe stands much closer to Goethe'sformulations. I am not suggesting,e.g., thatDarwindisplaysanyclose connectionto the traditionof Schelling such as we find articulatedin a Britishcontextby JosephHenryGreen.For Green'sformulations,see discussion and texts in my Richard Owen's Hunterian Lectures: May-June 1837 (Chicago / London:

Univ. of Chicago Press / British Museum of NaturalHistory Press, 1992). For valuableanalysis of the Germanpantheismcontroversyand the Herder-Goetherelationssee JohnZammito,TheGenesis of Kant'sCritiqueof Judgement(Chicago:Univ. of ChicagoPress, 1992), especially chaps. 8 and 12. ' For samples of alternativediscussions of the concept of naturein this period, see Jean-Baptiste Lamarck, "Nature," in Nouveau dictionnaire d'histoire naturelle, ed. J. J. Virey, 2nd ed., 36 vols., vol. 22 (Paris: Deterville, 1816-1819), as reprinted in Articles d'histoire naturelle: Lamarck, ed.

JacquesRoger and GoulvenLaurent(Paris:Belin, 1991), pp. 293-332; W. S. MacLeay,Horae entomologicae: or Essays on the Annulose Animals, 2 vols. (London: Bagster, 1819-1821), vol. 2, p. 173; and articles on this topic in such reference works as The British Encyclopedia or Dictionary of the Arts and Sciences (1809), ed. William Nicholson, and Cyclopedia, or Universal Dictionary of Arts,

Sciences, and Literature( 1819), ed. AbrahamRees. For insightsinto the social historyof the concept in this period,I am indebtedto my colleague ChristopherHamlin'sunpublishedmanuscript"Towards a Social Historyof Nature." 6

See Friedrich W. Schelling, Einleitung zu seinem Entwurf eines Systems der Naturphilosophie

(1799), in SchellingsWerke,ed. ManfredSchr6ter,6 vols. (Munich:Beck, 1927), vol. 2, pp. 269-326. For convenienceI refer to the only English translation,"Introductionto the Outlinesof a System of NaturalPhilosophy,"trans.ThomasDavidson,Journalof SpeculativePhilosophy 1 (1867):194-220. 7See summaryin Jardine,"Naturphilosophie"(cit. n. 4), pp. 234-40. 8 (cit. n. 6), p. 200. Schelling, "Introduction"

254

PHILLIPR. SLOAN

Within this complex tradition, the developmental, rational pantheism of Schelling can be distinguished from the parallel form of Naturphilosophie developed primarily by Goethe.9 Goethe's complex philosophy of nature, elaborated over several decades, emphasized the pantheistic aspects of nature and formulated this in relation to aesthetics and poetry in ways that inspired important aspects of the Romantic movement. His philosophy of nature also lacked the strongly systematic character of Schelling's. Most significant for my thematic is the link in Goethe's Naturphilosophie between the aesthetic experience of landscape and the vital powers of nature. This renders nature restorative, vivifying, and all-encompassing, known better through aesthetic awareness than by rational cognition."' It is this aesthetic pantheism of Goethe, developed further by Humboldt, that I will explore." Humboldt's conception of nature lacks the deep inner teleology that one finds in that of Schelling and his disciples and that Goethe also emphasized in works such as the Metamorphosis of Plants. For Humboldt, nature is less a teleological system than it is a sustaining ground of being, the source of consciousness, the basis of the universal vitality of life and the interconnections of forms. As Humboldt comments in his early series of philosophical reflections, Ansichten der Natur (1807), When the active spirit of man is directedto the investigationof nature,or when in imaginationhe scans the vast fields [Riume] of organic creation,among the varied emotionsexcited in his mindthereis none moreprofoundor vivid thanthatawakened by the universal profusion of life [allverbreitete Fiille des Lebens]. Everywhere-even

near the ice-boundpoles,-the air resoundswith the song of birds and with the busy hum of insects.Not only the lower strata. . . but also the higherandetherealregionsof the air, teem with animallife .... But if the unassistedeye shows that life is diffused throughoutthe whole atmosphere,the microscoperevealsyet greaterwonders.Wheelanimalcules,brachioni,and a host of microscopicinsects are lifted by the winds from the evaporatingwatersbelow.Motionlessand to all appearancedead, they float on the breeze, until the dew bears them back to the nourishingearth,and burstingthe tissue which incloses [sic] their transparentrotating. . . bodies, instils new life and motion into all theirorgans,probablyby the actionof the vital principle[Lebensstoff]inherent in water .... Thus, wheresoeverthe naturalistturns his eye, life or the germ of life [Lebenoder KeimzumLeben]lies spreadbeforehim.'2 Through an aesthetic experience of this vital nature, the observer and the observed, consciousness and matter, are merged in a "mysterious communion" be9 See n. 4. 10See, e.g., the essay by Goethe'sdisciple George ChristophTobler,"Nature,"trans. in Goethe:

1988),p. 3. Goethelaterconsidered ScientificStudies,ed. DouglasE. Miller(NewYork:Suhrkamp,

Tobler'sstatementto be incomplete because it failed to deal sufficiently with Goethe's notions of polarityand intensification(pp. 6-7). 1On the connections of Goethe's science to that of Humboldt,see Michael Dettelbach,"Global Physics and Aesthetic Empire:Humboldt'sPhysical Portraitof the Tropics,"in Visionsof Empire: Voyages,Botany,and Representationsof Nature,ed. David P. Miller and Peter H. Reill (Cambridge: CambridgeUniv. Press, 1996), pp. 258-92. See also MalcolmNicholson, "Alexandervon Humboldt, HumboldtianScience andthe Originsof the Studyof Vegetation,"Hist. Sci. 25 (1987):167-94; idem, "Alexandervon Humboldtand the Geographyof Vegetation,"in Romanticismand the Sciences, ed. AndrewCunninghamand Nicholas Jardine(Cambridge:CambridgeUniv. Press, 1990), pp. 169-85. 12 Alexandervon Humboldt,"Ideasfor a Physiognomyof Plants,"in Viewsof Nature,or Contemplations on the SublimePhenomenaof Creation,trans. Elise C. Ott6 and Henry G. Bohn, 3rd ed. (London:Bell, 1902), p. 211. Revised againstthe Germanin Ansichtender Natur,3rd ed., vol. 9, in Gesammelte Werkevon Alexander von Humboldt, 12 vols. (Stuttgart:J. G. Cotta, 1889), p. 171, Landmarksof Science microfiche.All referencesto the GesammelteWerkeare to this edition.


255

tween landscape and the "spiritual life of man."'3 Humboldt's comprehensive scientific project-his "global physics," as Michael Dettelbach has termed it-was directed to the study of this encompassing "nature,"within which more specific studies of local issues were to be conducted. Nature is the framework, the source of interconnection, that links individual plants into an interconnected botanical geography. As Humboldt put this most explicitly in his great synthesis, Kosmos (1845), nature, apprehendedin the multiplemeaningsof the word-one as the totalityof beings and becomings,in anotheras the innermovingforce, andin anotheras the mysteriousarchetype [Urbild]of all appearances-reveals itself to the simplesense andfeeling of mankindpreeminentlyas somethingearthly,closely relatedto himself.Firstit is in the lifesurround[Lebenskreisen]of organic formation[organischenBildung] that we know with certitudeour properlocation [Heimat].Whereverthe womb of the earthunfolds its flowers and fruits, whereverit nourishesthe innumerabletribes of animals,there appearsthe portraitof living naturebefore our soul.... If accordinglyit is necessary to form a portraitof naturesolely from the requirementsof sensible intuition,it must begin with the descriptionof the nativehabitat.It firstdescribesthe body of the earth in its size and form, in the density and heat which increaseswith depth,in its overlain solid and fluid strata;it describesthe boundariesof the sea and land, of life that is developedas the cellulartissue of both plantsand animals;of the undulating,currentfilled ocean of air, from whose groundforested mountainchains emerge like crags and abysses.14

The aesthetic experience of nature grounds the "Romantic sublime" that pervades Humboldt's less technical and descriptive works. Describing his view from the volcanic peak of Mount Piton on the island of Tenerife in the Canary Islands, Humboldt seeks to capture the contrasts, drama, even Burkean "terror"in the vision from the top. As he comments in the English version of the Personal Narrative, We not only discover from its top a vast expanse of sea, but we see also the forests of Teneriffe [sic], and the inhabited parts of the coasts, in a proximity fitted to produce the most beautiful contrasts of form and colour. We might say that the volcano crushes with its mass the little isle which serves as its basis, and shoots up from the bosom of the waters to a height three times loftier than the region where the clouds float in the summer.... When seated on the external edge of the crater, we turned our eyes towards the northwest, where the coasts are decked with villages and hamlets. At our feet, masses of vapour, constantly driven by the winds, afforded us the most variable spectacle. A uniform stratum of clouds, the same as we have just described, and which separated us from the lower regions of the island, had been pierced in several places by the effect of the small currents of air, which the earth, heated by the sun, began to send towards us. The port of Orotava, its vessel at anchor, the gardens and the vineyards which encircle the town, exhibited themselves through an opening which seemed to enlarge every instant. From the summit of these solitary regions our eyes hovered over an inhabited world; we enjoyed the striking contrast between the bare sides of the Peak, its steep J3See "The Cataractsof the Orinoco,"in Humboldt,Viewsof Nature (cit. n. 12), p. 154. See also useful remarksin EdmundsV. Bunkse, "Humboldtand an AestheticTraditionin Geography"Geog. Rev.71 (1981):127-46. 14 tome 1 (1845), Alexandervon Humboldt,Kosmos:Entwurfeinerphysisches Weltbeschreibung, as in GesammelteWerke(cit. n. 12), vol. 1, p. 58 (my translation).This essay does not permitexploration of the complex patchworkcomposition of Kosmos and of the unattributedincorporationsof contributionsof a wide networkof correspondents,currentlybeing exploredby Dr. PetraWemerof the Berlin-Brandenburg Academy of Arts and Sciences (personalcommunication).

256

PHILLIPR. SLOAN declivities covered with scoriae, its elevated plains destitute of vegetation, and the smiling aspect of the cultured country beneath.'5

Humboldt's conception of nature is neither deistic nor mechanistic. Nor is it manifestly teleological, in the form found in more systematic traditions of German Naturphilosophie. His nature is a pantheistic ground of being that underpins life, consciousness, and the interconnections of all natural things. Humboldt's reflections on nature in his seminal works of the early nineteenth century, accessible to Darwin in French translations, form the starting point for a penetration into Darwin's own philosophy of nature.'6 Of all the sources and readings which Darwin is known to have assimilated deeply in his early years, the writings of Humboldt serve as the most immediate source where he could first have encountered and appropriated aspects of German Naturphilosophie. Furthermore, this pantheistic, "Humboldtian" nature, rather than the concept of nature that can be extracted from British natural theology, Scottish philosophy, or the political economy of Smith, Malthus, and Ricardo, forms the main source of Darwin's original reflections on this topic, creating a basic groundwork of his thought that can be traced through all of his mature writings and into his last works. The connections of his views of nature with his religious sensibility are discussed in section V. III. NATURE IN THE BEAGLE YEARS (1831-1836)

Since the classic studies of Robert Young, Gillian Beer, John Campbell, Edward Manier and Dov Ospovat, Darwin's use of intentional metaphors in his descriptions of nature has been a subject of considerable commentary. This literature has also drawn linkages between Darwin's metaphors and the theological dimensions of his thought.17 To explore this issue more deeply, it is necessary to question some of the claims about the origins of Darwin's thought that have achieved the level of commonplaces in the literature. With few exceptions,'8 Darwin has been located originally 15Alexander von Humboldt and Aime Bonpland, Personal Narrative of Travels to the Equinoctial Regions of the New Continent During the Years 1799-1804, trans. H. M. Williams, 7 vols. (London:

Longman, Hurstet al., 1814-1829), vol. 1, pp. 179-80, Landmarksof Science microfiche.Darwin had on the Beagle variousvolumes of this translationin the third,second, and firsteditions.The first two volumesof the thirdeditionwerepresentedto him by J. S. Henslowon 21 Sept. 1831. See "Books on Boardthe Beagle,"appendixIV,in Correspondence,vol. 1, p. 561, cit. n. 2. Althoughthe Personal Narrativeis a collaborativework,for the purposesof this essay I will presumethese passages are by Humboldt,on the groundsthatDarwinneverrefersto this workas a collaborativeproduct. 16 For a recent discussion that comes to similar conclusions on several of these points, see RobertJ. Richards,"Darwin'sRomanticBiology: The Foundationof His EvolutionaryEthics,"in Biology and the Foundationof Ethics,ed. JaneMaienscheinandMichaelRuse (Cambridge:CambridgeUniv. Press, 1999), pp. 113-53. 17See RobertM. Young, "Darwin'sMetaphor:Does natureselect?", in Darwin'sMetaphor:Nature'sPlace in VictorianCulture,ed. RobertM. Young (Cambridge:CambridgeUniv. Press, 1985), pp. 79-125, reprintedwith revisions from Monist 55 (1971):442-543; JohnA. Campbell,"Nature, Religion andEmotionalResponse:A Reconsiderationof Darwin'sAffective Decline,"VictorianStud. 18 (1974):159-74;

Edward Manier, The Young Darwin and His Cultural Circle (Dordrecht: Reidel,

1978); Dov Ospovat,"God and NaturalSelection:The DarwinianIdea of Design,"J. Hist. Biol. 13 (1980):169-94; Gillian Beer, "'The Face of Nature':AnthropomorphicElementsin the Languageof The Origin of Species," in Languages of Nature: Critical Essays on Science and Literature, ed. Lud-

milla J. Jordanova(New Brunswick,N.J.: RutgersUniv. Press, 1986), pp. 207-43. 18 Most recently this accepted view has been questionedby Richards,"Darwin'sRomanticBiology" (cit. n. 16). The beginningof this detailedrecognitionof Darwin's"Romantic"dimensionwas EdwardManier'svaluable study of the early years (The YoungDarwin, cit. n. 17), but his analysis


257

within, and later seen as reacting against, the design/contrivance tradition of British natural theology paradigmatically represented by William Paley's Natural Theology and the Bridgewater Treatises.19Darwin indeed emphasized the significance of this tradition for the early formation of his thought in his Autobiography. There he recalled his "thorough" study of Paley's works and his "delight" in Paley's Natural Theology during his Cambridge years.20The image of Darwin as formed by British natural theology, utilitarian ethics, and British political economy has also become standard in the "common-context" historiography developed by Robert Young and others. It is difficult, however, to find compelling documentary evidence from Darwin's early writings that warrantsthis reading. It is also difficult to find evidence from this documentary base that he ever adhered strongly to the "watchmaker-designer" model of a creator-nature relationship integral to the tradition of British natural theology. It is, for example, essential to Paley's utilization of the design argument that "nature"be fundamentally passive, a conclusion that can be traced within British natural theology back to Robert Boyle.21 We find something very different at work in Darwin's writings. does not extend back to the 1831-1836 period I am treating.In Chapter6, Manierdiscusses significant aspects of Darwin'sencounterwith early British romanticismin the 1837-1842 period, after his returnfrom the Beagle expedition, and emphasizesWordsworth'sinfluence but says little about Humboldt.David Kohn has more explicitly tracedthe influence of the "Humboldtiansublime"in the Beagle materialsandlocates Darwinwithinthe middle groundof earlyBritishromanticism,with romanticismsucceeding the Humboldtianperiod, underpinningDarwin'snotion "Wordsworthian" of the "beautiful"(Kohn, "Darwin'sAmbiguity" [cit. n. 1] pp. 234-5). Kohn has also developed significantthemes relatedto the Humboldtianismand the aestheticexperienceof the Beagle yearsin "The Aesthetic Construction of Darwin's Theory," in The Elusive Synthesis: Aesthetics and Science,

ed. Alfred I. Tauber(The Hague: Kluwer,1996), pp. 13-48. 19For example, Cannon,"TheBases";Brooke, "Darwin'sScience";Kohn, "Darwin'sAmbiguity"; Gillispie, Charles Darwin (all cit. n. 1). E.g., Kohn emphasizes the Paleyan impact on Darwin's thoughtat Cambridgeandthen interpretshis largerprojectas partof an "advanced"wing of a reform movementwithin Britishnaturaltheology thateventuallysecularizedit (pp. 218-19). 20

Francis Darwin, ed., The Autobiography of Charles Darwin and Selected Letters (1892; reprinted

New York:Dover, 1958), p. 19 (cited hereafteras Autobiography). 21 The assumptionthatnatureis possessed of vital powers or inherentforces sufficientto createits own order,or even to createlife, was consideredby WilliamPaley to be tantamountto atheism.See William Paley, Natural Theology, or Evidences of the Existence and Attributes of the Deity, 12th ed.

(London, 1809; reprintedCharlottesville,Va:Lincoln-Rembrandt,1997), especially pp. 427-34. Paley explicitly attacksBuffon'snaturalisticaccountof the formationof the solarsystem andthe generation of life from organic molecules as a resurrectionof ancient atheistic atomism.The conception of "nature"as a passive system on which a creator-designerimposes orderwas crucialfor the force of the British design/contrivanceargument.In supportof this, frequentappeal was made to Robert Boyle's mechanical notion of nature (A Free Inquiry Into the Vulgarly Received Notion of Nature

[1686]). Although there are complexities within Boyle's positions that requiremodificationof this claim, as recentlypointedout by MargaretOsler in her essay "How mechanicalwas the mechanical philosophy?" (personal communication),the subsequent tradition nevertheless commonly interpretedBoyle to be arguingfor the passivity of both matterand nature.See, e.g., EphriamChambers' use of Boyle in his discussionof the concept of naturein his Cyclopaedia:Or an UniversalDictionarn of Arts and Sciences [1st ed., 1728]). Via Chambers,this readingof Boyle constitutedthe article "Nature" in Diderot's Encyclopedie ou dictionnaire raisonnee, vol. 2 (Neuchatel, 1765), pp. 40-1.

This reliance on what is interpretedto be Boyle's passive conception of natureforms the basis of the articles in The British Encyclopedia or Dictionary of the Arts and Sciences, ed. William Nicholson (1809); the Cyclopedia, or Universal Dictionary of Arts, Sciences, and Literature, ed. Abraham

Rees (1819), and it underliesthe entries on the topic in the EncyclopediaBritannicafrom the first edition (1771) throughthe fourth (1810), and in alteredform persists in the entry of the seventh edition (1842).

258

PHILLIPR. SLOAN

Darwin's early scientific education, pursued both at Edinburgh and at Cambridge, involved detailed studies of marine invertebrates,entomology, and physiological and descriptive botany and does not strongly display the influence of British natural theology, although that certainly played some role in the catastrophist geology of Robert Jameson and Adam Sedgwick and in the entomology of William Kirby that he encountered. In his most formal and intensive scientific study during the Cambridge years, his attendance at John Stevens Henslow's annual lecture and laboratory course on descriptive and physiological botany-a course which Darwin may have attended each of his years at Cambridge-students encountered the plant world in a framework that was most heavily indebted to the physiological and functional botany of the Swiss naturalistAlphonse De Candolle, with little hint of traditional natural theology in evidence.22 Most conspicuously at Cambridge Darwin encountered the writings of Alexander von Humboldt.23A more detailed encounter with Humboldt's work may also have occurred in Henslow's botany course, which, sometime after 1828, added a section on botanical geography that made use of Humboldt's writings on this subject.24

The enthusiasm of the young Darwin for Humboldt's depictions of the tropics was displayed during the Cambridge years at the time when he was planning a botanical and geological expedition to the island of Teneriffe with three fellow students: All the while I am writingnow my head is runningaboutthe Tropics:in the morningI go and gaze at Palm trees in the hot-houseand come home and read Humboldt:my enthusiasmis so greatthatI cannothardlysit still on my chair... I neverwill be easy till I see the peak of Teneriffe [sic] and the great Dragon tree; sandy, dazzling, plains, and gloomy silent forest are alternately uppermost in my mind._25 22 1 have been unable to locate Henslow's manuscriptlectures for these annual courses, but his printedDescriptiveand Physiological Botany (London:Longmanet al., 1836), issued as a volume in Dionysius Lardner'sCabinetCyclopedia,displays several evidences of a reworkingof class lectures.In this text the languageof, and appealsto, design/contrivancenaturaltheology are very muted at best. Two syllabi for the courses exist in the Henslow Papers in CambridgeUniversity Library (hereaftercited as Henslow Papers).A syllabus for 1828 recommendsthe readingof De Candolle's TheorieElementaire(1819) and Organographie(1827), andJamesE. Smith'sIntroductionto Physiological and SystematicBotany,6th ed. (1827), and English Flora (1828). A second syllabus (for the 1833 series, deliveredafterDarwin'sgraduation)expandsthe readingsto include De Candolle'snew Physiologie vegetale (1832); three works by John Lindley (Introductionto Botany [1832], Natural System[1830], Synopsisof British Flora [1829]); William Macgillivray'sWithering'sBritish Plants, 3rd ed. (London, 1830); and Hooker'sBritishFlora, 2nd ed. (1831). See John S. Henslow,Syllabus of a Courseof BotanicalLectures(Cambridge:Hodson, 1828); idem, Sketchof a Courseof Lectures on Botanyfor 1833 (Privatelyprinted,1833), Henslow Papers).Darwin'sattendanceat the Henslow lectures for 1830, 1831, and possibly 1829 is documentedin "Names of Men Who Attended the BotanicalLectures, 1828,"MS0.xiv.261, Henslow Papers. 23Kohn suggests thatDarwin'smentorin ornithologyduringhis Edinburghyears,WilliamMcGillivray,may have introducedhim to the Romanticnaturephilosophyof Humboldt.See Kohn, "Aesthetic Construction"(cit. n. 18), p. 18. Mention of Humboldtfirst enters Darwin'swritings during the Cambridgeperiod. The first possible allusion to the Personal Narrativeis in a letter to Sarah Owen of 18 Feb. 1828, written shortly after his arrivalin Cambridge.Correspondence(cit. n. 2), vol. l,p. 51. 24 Henslow's 1833 syllabus adds a section on botanicalgeographyat the end that was not present in the 1828 course.This topic is also treatedin a substantialsection of seventeenpages nearthe end of his publishedDescriptiveand PhysiologicalBotany(cit. n. 22), and in this Henslow discusses the variousfactors governinggeographicaldistributionof plants and makes explicit reference(p. 300) model of botanicaldistribution,as presentedin to Humboldtand Bonpland'smountain-stratification the large plates of their Essai sur lageographie des plantes (Paris, 1807). 25 C.D. to CarolineDarwin,28 Apr. 1831, Correspondence,vol. 1, p. 122.


259

But which text or texts of Humboldt was Darwin reading in these enthusiastic moments? Tradition has uniformly assumed that the Personal Narrative was the main text in his formation. But the language of the letter suggests he had been reading the French translation of Humboldt's more philosophical Ansichten der Natur, available to him in the French translations of 1808 and 1828. This text, containing discussions of both plants and animals, reveries on South American scenery, a Goethean reflection entitled "Vital Force, or the Rhodian Genius," and other speculative essays, was intended by Humboldt to illustrate an "aesthetic" approach to natural history that displayed nature in its entirety as a great cooperation of interrelated forces.26 Whatever the sources of his exposure to Humboldt's philosophy of nature, its impact runs deeper in his subsequent thought than British naturaltheology. Darwin's direct modeling of many of his Diary entries during the Beagle years on the Personal Narrative has been noted by several scholars. Humboldt's "aesthetic" naturalhistory is mirrored in the "landscape reveries" that fill Darwin's literary descriptions, displaying his affective responses to the plants and animals, the rain forests, and the dramatic contrasts of scenery. In addition to his famous "chaos of delight" passage in the Diary entry of 28 February 1832,27the impact of Humboldt's integrating nature philosophy seems apparent in many other entries in the Diary,28strongly predominating over that of traditional British natural theology in his writings from this period.29Typical of the Beagle manuscripts is language reflecting communion with, 26 A. von Humboldt,Tableauxde la nature:ou, Considerationssur les deserts, sur la physionomie des vegetaux,sur les cataractesde 'orenoque,sur la structureet I action des volcans dans les differentes regions de la terre, etc., 2 vols., trans.from the Germanby J. B. B. Eyries (Paris:Gide Fils, 1828). The firstFrenchedition was publishedin 1808, with additionsto the second Frenchedition. Darwin displays general proficiencywith French sources in this period. Palms, the "peakof Teneriffe,"andthe baobabor "colossaldragontree"of Orotavaare foundconcisely describedin the essay "Id6es sur la physiognomiedes v6g6taux"that opens volume 2 of the 1828 Tableauxand accords with the commentsmade in Darwin'sletterto Caroline.See Tableaux,pp. 33, 4, 26. The discussion of the baobabin the Personal Narrativeis brief, whereasin the 1828 Tableauxthe tree is discussed both in the text and at greaterlength in an appendix,with accountsof its size, longevity,locale, and otherfeatures(vol. 2, pp. 99-101). Darwin'sknowledge of the Frenchtranslationof the Tableauxis documentedby his request in a letter of July 1832 asking his sister Catherineto have his brother Erasmussend him the Frenchedition (C.D. to CatherineDarwin, 5 July [1832], Correspondence, vol. 1, p. 247). There is, however,no evidence thatthe requestwas honored,and there is no copy of this edition in Darwin'ssurvivinglibrary.His only documentedreadingis of the EnglishAspects in February1852. See "Darwin'sReadingList,"MS DAR 128. On Henslow'spresentationof the Personal Narrativeto Darwinin September1831, see n. 15.

27 See

Darwin. The Diarn of the Voyage of the H. M. S. Beagle, ed. Nora Barlow, vol. 1 in The

Worksof Charles Darwin, ed. Paul Barrettand RichardB. Freeman,29 vols. (London:Pickering, 1986), p. 38. All citationsof this Diary are to this edition. 2X See, e.g., the Diarx entries of 19 Dec. 1832, at Tierradel Fuego (p. 112); 26 May 1832, in Rio de Janiero(p. 59); 9 June 1834, at the Straits of Magellan (p. 270); 17 Aug. 1834, in the Andes (p. 218); and 21 Mar. 1835, in the ChileanAndes (p. 267). Comparealso the Diary entry of 1 May 1836 (pp. 365-66), on Darwin'sascent at Mauritius,of the volcanic mountainLa Pouce, with Humboldt's descriptionof his view from Mount Piton on Tenerife (Humboldtand Bonpland,Personal Narrative,cit. n. 15). On the dialectic between the "sublime"and "beautiful"in this period, see Kohn, "AestheticConstruction"(cit. n. 18). 29 Darwin's principal"Paleyan"reflectionin the Diary is restrictedto one entry of 19 Jan. 1836, occasioned by his comparisonof Australianand Europeanfauna.The occurrenceof similaritiesat such distances apart might suggest to "an unbeliever in everythingbeyond his own reason"that "[s]urelytwo distinctCreatorsmust havebeen at work"in the separatecreationof these faunas.But commentingon the identical characterof the ant-lion traps in both areas, Darwin replies, "Would any two workmenever hit on so beautiful,so simple, & yet so artificiala contrivance?It cannotbe

260

PHILLIPR. SLOAN

and experience of, a vitalistic, dynamic, creative nature that closely resembles that found in Humboldt's parallel reflections. Nor does this Humboldtian imagery decline as the voyage progressed. Returning in August 1836 to the Bahia Brazil rain forests that had first inspired his well-known reveries of 1832, he again responded aesthetically to the "great wild, untidy, luxuriant hot house which nature made for her menagerie" and tried to fix these visions permanently in his mind: In the last walk I took, I stoppedagain & againto gaze on such beauties,& triedto fix for ever in my mind,an impressionwhich at the time I know must sooneror laterfade away . . .; the thousandbeauties, which unite them all into one perfect scene, must perish;yet they will leave, like a tale heardin childhood,a picturefull of indistinct,but most beautifulfigures.3' Pursuing these reflections into Darwin's detailed empirical scientific studies conducted alongside the literary narrative of the voyage, we also see more concrete manifestations of this aesthetic response to nature and of efforts to realize Humboldt's vision of an interconnection of issues. To limit ourselves to Darwin's fundamental explorations of biological problems in this period, these were principally focused on the functional questions revealed by the study of invertebratemarine life, extending the investigations he had begun on invertebrates at Edinburgh under the inspiration of Robert Grant and had continued in the botanical domain with Henslow at Cambridge.31In this work, Darwin was interested in more than descriptions of the unusual organisms he was studying in live condition. He was also seeking to find some means of unifying plant and animal biology, bringing together under one model the plant and animal kingdoms. Frequently encountered in Darwin's descriptions in these researches is the image of an encounter with a dynamic, vital lifeworld that is unified by a common, dynamic granular matter that even contains the rudiments of consciousness.32 For example, an entry in the "Zoology Diary" describes his observations on live colonial invertebrates of the genus Crisia in May 1834 off the coast of Patagonia: I was perfectlyastonished,when I firstsaw,every bristlein one branch,suddenlywith greatrapidity,collapse togetheron ye branch& one afterthe other(apparentlyby their elasticity) regain their places.-Directly other branchescommenced,till the whole Coralline,drivenby these long oars, startedfrom side to side in the objectglass [of the microscope]....

Polypus> protrudesits armsduringthe motion of the bristles.-The above facts are very importantas showing a co-sensation & a co-will over whole Coralline.33 thoughtso. The one handhas surelyworkedthroughoutthe universe"(p. 348). I thankJohnCampbell (personalcommunication)for drawingmy attentionto this passage. 30Entryfor 1-6 Aug. 1836, in Diary, pp. 378-9. 31See my "Darwin'sInvertebrateProgram,1826-1836: Preconditionsfor Transformism," in Kohn, DarwinianHeritage (cit. n. 1), pp. 71-120, especially pp. 87-92, for detailedanalysisof the relative effort devotedto variousanimaland plant groupsduringthese years. 32 See my "Darwin,Vital Matter,and the Transformismof Species,"J. Hist. Biol. 19 (1986):369445, especially pp. 385-96. 33"Zoology Diary,"MS DAR 31.1, fols. 257r-258r. Quoted with permission of the Syndics of CambridgeUniv. Library,publishedas CharlesDarwin'sZoologyNotebooksand SpecimenLists, ed. RichardKeynes (Cambridge:CambridgeUniv. Press, 2000), quote pp. 227-28.


261

By the later phases of the voyage, he was also integrating these biological issues with geological questions.34 The language and imagery of Darwin's Beagle reflections, whether he is describing the minute details of living forms or the scenarios of vast landscapes, is not, however, religious in a traditional sense. His descriptions are, like Humboldt's own, typically devoid of references to "God," "creation," "providence," "design," or the other categories of traditional theology, whether revealed or natural.35Where we might expect religious language, "nature"has assumed the role that the religious traditions of the West have assigned to a transcendent deity. For example, discussing trees on Mount Corcovado in Rio de Janeiro in April and May 1832, he enters as a "General Observation" in the "Zoology Diary": I could not help noticinghow exactly the animals& plantsin each region are adapted to each other.-Every one musthavenoticedhow Lettuces& cabbagessufferfromthe attacksof caterpillars& Snails.-But when transplantedhere in a foreign clime, the leaves remainas entire as if they containedpoison-Nature, when she formed these animals& these plantsknew they must residetogether.-36 The use of such language alongside the landscape reveries and Humboldtian language of the Beagle Diary supports the claim that Darwin's conception of nature, although not explicitly addressed or discussed in a specific treatise during these years, had already by the end of the Beagle voyage taken on a function that carried many associations that he would later in life recall as "intimately connected with a belief in God."37 IV. NATURE AS SELECTOR

Darwin's creative post-Beagle reflections covering the crucial period 1836-1844 can be followed in detail in the early Notebooks and the first syntheses of the Beagle results. These unquestionably display new elements reflecting his active engagement with the changed intellectual, scientific, and social environment he encountered upon his return to England after a five-year absence. At the same time they also show strong lines of continuity with the reflections of the Beagle years. The vital, unifying, and creative nature of the Beagle years does not disappear from Darwin's thought in the post-Beagle period. It is only overlain by several additional elements that considerably complicate Darwin's views and render the resulting product truly novel. 34 1 have developed these points furtherin a forthcomingstudy,"The Making of a Philosophical Naturalist,1809-1836,"to appearin the CambridgeCompanionto Darwin, ed. M. J. S. Hodge and GregoryRadick. 35I1have been unsuccessful in locating a single passage in the unpublished"Zoology Diary" in which Darwin explicitly appeals to design/contrivancenaturaltheology. He puzzles aboutthe phenomena, and concernshimself with the uses of structures,but he never resolves these by appealsto creative will or the action of a designing creatordistinct from nature.The closest is a comment in MS DAR 30.2 when, remarkingon the absence of coprophaganbeatles on Maldonadoin May-June 1833, he sees this absence as "showing a connection in the creation between animals as widely apartas Mammalia& Insects Coleoptera,which, when one of them is removedout of its originalZone can scarcelybe producedby a lengthof time & the most favorablecircumstances.-" MS DAR 30.2, fol. 200 (Keynes [cit. n. 33], p. 175, emendedby MS). 36 "Zoology Diary,"MS DAR 30.1, fol. 65 (Keynes, pp. 58-59). 37 Darwin,Autobiography (cit. n. 20), p. 65.

262

PHILLIPR. SLOAN

In the first transmutation, or "B" Notebook, opened in July 1837 and covering reflections up to about March 1838, Darwin introduced the notion of a "creative power" that acts as a secondary cause in the creation of the naturalworld. This creative power operates in response to the establishment of laws by a creator and explains the origin of different species on such locales as the Galapagos Islands. Creation of species is therefore by means of secondary causation through natural laws: Astronomersmight formerlyhave said thatGod ordered,[sic] each planetto move in its particulardestiny.-In same mannerGod orderseach animalcreatedwith certain formin certaincountry,but how muchmore simple, & sublimepowerlet attractionact accordingto certainlaws such areinevitableconsequen[sic] let animalbe created,then by the fixed laws of generation,such will be theirsuccessors.-38 This deistic language, however, has not replaced the preexisting imagery of the Humboldtian nature philosophy of the Beagle period. Continuity with this earlier tradition immediately returned in the "C" Notebook, begun around March 1838. In speculations evidently generated in May 1838 by his reading of the remarkable 1819 essay "The Kingdoms of Nature, Their Life and Affinity,"by Goethe's disciple Carl Gustav Carus, Darwin developed his philosophy of nature further.39The Carus essay, which had appeared in translation in Richard Taylor's Scientific Memoirs in 1837, expounded a notion of a "universal nature" as the "highest, the most complete, the original organism," from which all organic beings could be derived, and from which consciousness itself arose.40 Entering reflections on this text in his notebook, Darwin spoke of how he could now "see that perfection may be talked of with respect to life generally.-where 'unity constantly develops multiplicity.'"41 Sometime around June he entered the following in the same notebook: There is one living spirit,prevalentover this word [sic, = world], (subjectto certain contingenciesof organicmatter& chiefly heat), which assumesa multitudeof forms > accordingto subordinatelaws.-There is one thinking principle(intimatelyalliedto one kindof organic matter.-brain. & which <prin>thinking principle.seems to be given or assumedaccordingto a more extendedrelationsof the individuals,wherebychoice with memory. 38 Darwin,"B Notebook,"transcribedby DavidKohn, in CharlesDarwin'sNotebooks,1836-1844, ed. Paul H. Barrettet al. (Cambridge/ London:CambridgeUniv. Press/ BritishMuseumof Natural History, 1987), fols. 98-101; p. 195. All referencesto the Notebooks will be to this edition with citation of the folio number and the page numberin the Barrettedition. This shift to secondary "creative-force"language supercedesthe referenceto the direct role of a "creator"earlierin the B Notebook (fol. 45). I have located one reference to a "creativepower" "acting on a point" in the "Zoology Diary"in an entry at the Falklandsin 1833 (MS DAR 30.2, fol. 162), but this is in the sense of Humboldt'screative vital force ratherthan in the naturaltheological sense of a secondary causal law. 39 1 am dating this from Kohn'sconclusion that C Notebook, fol. 100; p. 268, reflects a visit to Henslow at Cambridgeon 10-13 May 1838 and thatthe entries from fols. 100-256 were generally concentratedbetween mid-Mayand mid-June1838. The first referenceto the Cams article appears at fol. 103; p. 269. 40 Carl G. Carus, "The Kingdoms of Nature,Their Life and Affinity,"in ScientificMemoirs,ed. RichardTaylor,4 vols. (London:Taylor,1837); reprintedition, ed. HarryWoolf (New York:Johnson Reprint,1966), vol. 1, pp. 223-54, on p. 226. 41 C Notebook, fol. 103; 269. p.

DARWINON NATUREAND DIVINITY

263

or reason?is necessary. ) which is modifiedinto endless forms,bearinga close relation in degree & kind to the endless formsof the living beings.-We see thus Unity in thinkingand actingprinciplein the variousshadesof separationbetweenthose individualsthus endowed,& the communityof mind,even in the tendencyto delicate emotionsbetweenraces, & recurrenthabitsin animals.-42 These ambitious reflections on the animating spirit of the world immediately precede entries on how "Man & Man . . , polypus & polypus, bud & bud, polypus &

germ, plant & seed," may have some relation together.43They are also encountered only a few months before his reading of the sixth edition (1826) of Thomas Malthus' Essay on Population in the five days between 28 September and 2 October 1838. The changes in Darwin's conception of nature engendered by this historical encounter are deeply significant, but, as we shall see, they are also temporary in duration and do not supplant the earlier themes we have followed. In addition to drawing Darwin's attention to the inherent dynamic power of the principle of population, Malthus also supplied Darwin with a new language with which to speak about nature, and a new set of metaphors for describing it that we do not encounter in Darwin's earlier discourse. The metaphor of the "hundredthousand wedges" being pounded into the "oeconomy of Nature,"certainly disrupts the "sublime" imagery of the Beagle years with a new "mechanical" starkness. Dramatically entering with the Malthus reading was the metaphor of nature as a rigorous "selector" that acts for teleological goals and is able to perfect the human race by unerring punishment of all violations of its law-bound order.44 After October 1838 Malthusian "selective" nature formed a theme that ran alongside, ratherthan replaced, the "Humboldtian"nature that we have been examining.45 Malthusian "nature" itself required a ground, a foundation for its dynamic power that could causally explain the tendency of populations to increase geometrically beyond their natural means of subsistence.46 I highlight these points to indicate the growing complexity of Darwin's conception of nature in this period. As early as 1839, we can detect metaphors drawn from the Malthusian notion of nature as "selector."We also find deistic images of nature as a secondary cause of life with powers to create forms; and in the background are the 42 Ibid., fols. 210e-211; p. 305. Cf. Carus,"Kingdoms"(cit. no. 40), p. 227. Transcriptionconventions are as in the Barrettedition. 43 C Notebook, fol. 211; p. 305. 44 See especially Thomas Malthus,An Essay on the Principle of Population, 2nd ed. (1803), bk. iv, chap. 5, in edition of P. James,2 vols. (Cambridge:CambridgeUniv. Press, 1989), vol. 2, p. 117. The "wedges"passage is from Darwin'sD notebook,fol. 135e, Barretted., p. 375. 45 Selective language remains sparse in the Notebooks, even after the Malthusencounter.Of the 105 occurrencesof the term "nature,"the unequivocal use of "intentional-selecting"language is confinedprincipallyto one passage ("E"Notebook,fol. 63; p. 414). See DonaldWeinshank,Stephan J. Ozminski,Paul Ruhlenet al., A Concordanceto CharlesDarwin'sNotebooks,1836-1844 (Ithaca, N.Y.: CornellUniv. Press, 1990). 46 Malthus resolved this problemby an appeal to an inherentvitalism of organic matter.In the opening chapterof the Essay on Population, in a passage unchangedthroughthe several editions, Malthus speaks of how "Naturehas scatteredthe seeds of life abroadwith the most profuse and liberalhand"and says that such "germsof existence containedin this spot of earth,with ample food, and ample room to expand in, would fill millions of worlds in the course of a few thousandyears. Necessity, that imperiousall-pervadinglaw of nature,restrainsthem within the prescribedbounds" (Malthus,Essay [cit. n. 44], vol. 1, p. 10). Such language could easily have connected with Darwin's own Beagle theory of the "vital atoms."On this see my "Darwin,Vital Matter"(cit. n. 32), pp. 385-96.

264

PHILLIPR. SLOAN

persistent images of nature as a dynamic and vital principle of life, linking all of organic life together and serving as the source from which consciousness itself emerges. Darwin needed all of these notions in his mature doctrine of a universalized theory of population increase that impelled all of life, not only the human population, toward a universal and interconnected struggle for existence that could even produce thought and consciousness from lower states of life. The synthesis of Darwin's complex body of readings and reflections finally took shape in the remarkable first drafts of his transformist theory in 1842 and 1844, the first texts to employ the concept of "natural"selection. In these texts we can also see the beginnings of the interplay of the "Humboldtian"and "Malthusian"conceptions of nature, one as the source of life, vitality, instinct, and consciousness, and the other a "selecting demiurge" working for purposeful ends. In introducing his notion of "natural"selection in the short pencil sketch of the theory in 1842, Darwin located "selection" in an all-seeing being, "infinitely more sagacious than man (not an omniscient creator)," who was able to select variations toward a specific end and "produce causes" that could attain such ends "over thousands and thousands of years."47Only a few pages deeper into the manuscript, however, this sagacious "selector" is transformed into "nature":"Nature lets animal live, till on actual proof it is found less able to do the required work to serve the desired end, man judges solely by his eye, and knows not whether nerves, muscles, arteries, are developed in proportion to the change of external form."48But this selector nature is not itself competent to breathe the vital powers of "growth, assimilation and reproduction" into matter. For this a "creator"was still needed.49 Darwin's metaphors were expanded and deepened in the long 230-page draft of the theory of natural selection that he composed in 1844. Darwin continued to speak in this text of a "Being with penetration sufficient to perceive differences in the outer and innermost organization quite imperceptible to man, and with forethought extending over future centuries to watch with unerring care and select for any object the offspring of an organism produced under the foregoing circumstances."50This masculine-gendered, all-penetrating being is still not identified with nature in this text; it stands outside of nature as its creator. It is this being that selects from the slight variations and inner structures of organisms to bring about the "perfect" adaptations of plants and animals over "whole geological periods." In this sense "natural selection" is a "secondary means in the economy of nature by which the process of selection could go on adapting, nicely and wonderfully, organisms, if in ever so small a degree plastic, to diverse ends."51 It is in the long manuscript of "Natural Selection" of 1856-1858 that we finally encounter the collapsing of the various images of nature-as sustaining vital ground of life, as creator, and as selector-into the notion of a single wise, perceiving "na47 Darwin, "1842 Sketch,"in The Foundationsof the Origin of Species, ed. FrancisDarwin (Cambridge:CambridgeUniv. Press, 1909), p. 6, slightly emended. 48Ibid., pp. 9-10. 49Ibid., p. 52. 5("1844 Draft."I am using the superiorpartialtranscriptionof this document in Thomas Glick and David Kohn, eds., Darwin On Evolution:The Developmentof the Theoryof Natural Selection (Indianapolis:Hackett, 1996), p. 101. 51Ibid., p. 103. Emphasisin original.


265

ture" that has assumed all of these roles.52The language used in 1844 to describe the action of the imaginary demiurge has now shifted to discourse about nature. Furthermore, the selecting agent has changed gender, in accordance with the long tradition of feminine gendering of nature: She cares not for mereexternalappearance;she maybe said to scrutinisewith a severe eye, every nerve, vessel & muscle; every habit, instinct, shade of constitution,-the whole machineryof the organisation.Therewill be here no caprice,no favouring:the good will be preserved& the bad rigidly destroyed.... Natureis prodigalof time & can act on thousandsof thousandsof generations:she is prodigalof the forms of life, if the rightvariationdoes not occur underchangingconditionsso as to be selected & profitany one being, thatform will be utterlyexterminatedas myriadshave been. No complicationsare too great for nature:a contingencyhappeningonce in a thousand generationsmay lead to the exterminationof a variety:she can graduallyselect, either simultaneouslyor successively,slight changes adaptingthe selected varietyto a score of otherbeings, most widely apartin the greatscale of nature. Can we wonderthen, thatnature'sproductionsbearthe stampof a far higherperfection than man'sproductby artificialselection. With naturethe most gradual,steady, unerring,deep-sighted selection,-perfect adaption [sic] to the conditions of existence....53

My purpose in pursuing the concept of nature in Darwin's thought in such detail has been to display its complexity and the varied sources that feed into the final language of the Origin of Species (1859) where we encounter "nature"in numerous senses: a repository of laws, a "polity" an "oeconomy" a producer of variations and of beings, a wise selector, and a "careful gardener" who cultivates seeds.54 Into this constellation of meanings, Darwin had collapsed the traditional role of the creating and sustaining deity of traditional theism.55 The "selector-nature" imagery of the first edition of the Origin of Species, as is 52 In the 1856 draft,Darwinfor the firsttime explicitly defined"nature."In definingit as "thelaws ordainedby God to govern the Universe,"he only importeda common deistic definitionfrom the literature.(CharlesDarwin,"NaturalSelection,"in CharlesDarwin's"NaturalSelection,"ed. Robert Stauffer[Cambridge:CambridgeUniv. Press, 1975], p. 224.) Darwin'sdefinitionis quite similarto that in the opening lines of Buffon's essay on nature from his Natural History, as translatedby Smellie: "Natureis that system of laws establishedby the Creatorfor regulatingthe existence of bodies, and the succession of beings."(George Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon, "Of Nature:First View,"in idem, Natural History,trans.W. Smellie, ed. W. Woods, 20 vols. [London:Cadell, 1812], vol. 3, pp. 447-79, on p. 447). Darwinhad workedthroughthe Smellie translationin the summerof 1840 (MS DAR 119). 53Darwin, "NaturalSelection"(cit. n. 52), pp. 224-5. 54This summaryis based on my review of the 253 occurrencesof the term "nature"in the first edition of the Origin, tabulatedin the computerizedindex of Paul H. Barrett,Donald J. Weinshank,

and Timothy T. Gottleber, A Concordance to Darwin's Origin of Species, First Edition (Ithaca, N.Y.:

Univ. Press, 1981). Cornell 55 The terms "creation"(45 instances),"created"(51), and "creator"(7) are only occasionally encounteredin the firstedition. "Creation"and its relatedcognates areemployedmost often negatively as an inadequatealternativeto Darwin'snaturalselectionist account. Only in the lone referenceto the "laws impressedon matterby the Creator"that stand behind the "productionand extinction of the past andpresentinhabitantsof the world.. . due to secondarycauses"do we haveclearreference to an externalcreator(Darwin,Originof Species [1859], 1st ed., facsimile, ed. E. Mayr[Cambridge, Mass.: HarvardUniv. Press, 1966], p. 488.) Reference to "nature"in some substantiverole as the active selector upon variations,or as the source of order,with intentional-designingpowers similar to thatof humanart,occursin 21 uses, with the majorityconfinedto chapters4 and 14. This excludes the 271 uses of the term "naturalselection"in some variant.

266

PHILLIPR. SLOAN

well known, was a topic of considerable controversy. Following criticism that he had smuggled in an intentional efficient cause by personifying nature in the act of "natural"selection,56 Darwin responded in the third edition (1861) with the following rejoinder, maintained in all subsequent editions: Several writershave misapprehendedor objectedto the termNaturalSelection.... It has been said that I speak of naturalselection as an active power or Deity; but who objectsto an authorspeakingof the attractionof gravityas rulingthe movementof the planets?Every one knows what is meantand is impliedby such metaphoricalexpressions; andthey arealmostnecessaryfor brevity.So againit is difficultto avoidpersonifying the wordNature;but I meanby Nature,only the aggregateactionandproductof manynaturallaws, andby laws the sequenceof events as ascertainedby us. Witha little familiaritysuch superficialobjectionswill be forgotten.57 The issue was not, however, quite so straightforward as he suggests in this passage. If his appeals to an intentional and selecting nature become much more muted, or qualified as merely metaphorical in subsequent drafts of the Origin and the works that followed it, this is not the case with reference to his earlier notion of nature as the pantheistic source and ground of being.58To judge from Darwin's own testimony in the Autobiography, to be sure, he had abandoned his earlier adherence to the conception of nature of his Beagle years. Referring explicitly to this period, he spoke of his loss of the sense of the religious "sublime": The stateof mindwhichgrandscenes formerlyexcitedin me, andwhichwas intimately connectedwith a belief in God, did not essentiallydifferfromthatwhichis often called the sense of sublimity;and howeverdifficultit may be to explain the genesis of this sense, it can hardlybe advancedas an argumentfor the existence of God, any more thanthe powerfulthoughvague and similarfeelings excitedby music.59 As John Campbell has argued convincingly, however, Darwin's earlier "affective" response to nature can nonetheless be traced into his last writings.60The degree to which it can be related to some kind of abiding theistic dimension of Darwin's science can now be examined. V. CONSTITUTIVETHEISM AND DARWINIANEVOLUTION

The question at issue in the present volume-the degree to which theistic beliefs have concretely influenced the content of science-requires an answer that can sat56 This criticismhad been raisedby CharlesLyell in a letterto Darwindated 15 June 1860 (Correspondence, vol. 8, p. 255) and again by William Henry Harvey in a letter of 24 Aug. 1860 (ibid., p. 329). Darwin replied, in response to these and similar criticisms, that "naturalselection" would betterhave been termed"naturalpreservation"(ibid., pp. 371, 389, 397, 403, 416). 57 Charles Darwin, Origin of Species, 3rd ed. (London:Murray,1861), pp. 84-5, Landmarksof Science II microfiche.The substance of this passage was also incorporatedinto the Variationof Animals and Plants Under Domestication(1868; 1875). See second edition (New York:Appleton, 1876), vol. 1, pp. 6-7. 58See Richards,"Darwin'sRomanticBiology" (cit. n. 16) on the relevanceof this concept for his ethical reflectionsin the Descent of Man (1871). 59Autobiography (cit. n. 20), p. 65. 60 Campbell,"Nature,Religion and EmotionalResponse"(cit. n. 17) claims (p. 167) thatDarwin's affective response to naturewas "fromthe first independentof belief in God."I am suggesting that there was a deeper connectionbetween God and naturein Darwin's"sublime"of these early years.


267

isfy certain criteria of definition. John Brooke has set out in his essay ("Religious Belief and the Content of the Sciences") a set of criteria for religious practice by individual scientists that reasonably includes private devotions, evidence for the study of sacred texts, concern with prophecy, and efforts to evangelize. In terms of such criteria, it seems difficult to argue that there is a significant linkage between theistic belief, defined in terms of religious practice, and Darwin's science. The external evidence of religious practice in Darwin's years at Downe seem insufficient, on Brooke's criteria, to distinguish genuine belief from duties of social class and a concern to maintain signs of social respectability.61 Consequently, there still might seem to be little in the evidence presented to challenge Neal Gillespie's picture of a Darwin who moved from "special creationism" to a later agnostic "positivism." Darwin's use of metaphors in the Origin of Species that most strongly suggest traditional theistic views-the notion of a providential "selector nature"working for divinely ordained, if not humanly discernible, endswe have seen to be somewhat ephemeral in his writings, metaphors that almost, if not entirely, disappeared from his writings after 1862.62 If we define "religious" motivations to involve some kind of belief in the transcendent, in an objective foundation of a moral order, and as the source of answers to the main questions of life and death, a constitutive and even religious significance in Darwin's appeal to "nature"is more plausible. However, this would require some distinction of religious beliefs from constituting "metaphysical" beliefs in the sense distinguished by Stephen Wykstra in his chapter of the present volume ("Religious Beliefs, Metaphysical Beliefs, and Historiography of Science"). Even in Darwin's last works, his conception of nature serves the following functions within his thought. First, his belief in some kind of substantive, abiding nature supplies the foundation for the epistemological realism that underlies his science, the justification, for example, for his crucial inferences from anatomical resemblances to the postulation of common historical descent. It sustains the confidence with which he leaps from anatomical homologies to conclusions about mental powers and their continuity in organic life. If his mature conception of nature is neither teleological nor providential in a traditional Greek or Judeo-Christian sense, it is nonetheless a sustaining ground that underpins his naturalistic epistemology and rescues it from a potentially debilitating skepticism, with only occasional glimmerings of the "horriddoubt" that sometimes troubled him as he reflected on the implications of his theory for knowledge itself.63 Second, nature,for Darwin, also grounds the "materialism"of Darwinian theory.As Eman McMullin has argued in a recent essay, the definition of "materialism"has too frequently been assumed to be transparentlyunivocal in philosophical controversies Down" (cit. n. 1). E.g., of the 152 occurrencesof the term "nature"in the Descent of Man, only one suggests the

61 Moore, "Darwinof 62

notion of nature as a selective agent. See Darwin, The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to

Sex, 1st ed. (1871); facsimile, intro. by John T. Bonner and RobertM. May (Princeton:Princeton Univ. Press, 1981), p. 372. All furtherreferences are to this facsimile edition. Word frequencies determinedwith the aid of PaulH. Barrett,DavidWeinshank,PaulRuhlenet al., eds., A Concordance to Darwin's The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell Univ. Press,

1987). Darwingenerally,if not entirely,also deleted the stronglyintentionallanguagefrom the sec-

ond (1877) edition of his Various Contrivances by Which Orchids are Fertilised by Insects. 63 C.D. to William Graham,3 July 1881, The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, ed. Francis

Darwin,2 vols. (New York:Appleton, 1888), vol. 1, p. 285.

268

PHILLIPR. SLOAN

within the life sciences, as if this were not an extremely complex issue involving many levels of meaning.64That is particularlythe case with reference to Darwin's "materialism."Darwin's most abiding conception of nature, I have argued in this essay, is not that of a "selector" but that of a source of vitality, consciousness, and the interconnections of phenomena. Seen within this framework, Darwin's "materialism"means primarily an explanatory reductionism of "higher" functions, such as reflection, to a more general level of organic existence, but it is never a reduction to an inert materialism that presumably explains the higher properties from the inorganic forces of matter. On this reading, Darwin's materialism is more akin to the monism of German Naturphilosophie of Humboldt's variety than it is to the Kraft und Stoff materialism of Ludwig Biichner and the other scientific materialists of his age. Third, the conception of nature as source and ground of life undergirds the pervasive anthropomorphismin his analysis of conscious phenomena, as we see him attribute playfulness to insects65 or constructive foresight and the glimmering of intelligent behavior to earthworms.'6 This language functions as more than literary metaphor. It runs much deeper in Darwin's work, and it represents a long tradition of reflection in his writings that connects his later works to the reflections of the Beagle, when he wondered about the "co-will" that operated in the lowly colonial zoophytes. To the end of his life Darwin stood "in awe before the mystery of life."67If nature could at times present to his view a scenario of suffering, parasitism, predation, and sheer waste of life that conjured up the image of nature presented by Hume's Philo rather than that reflecting the governance of some kind of benevolent creator,68it also continued to manifest for him scenes of wonder and beauty. Unchanged in the revised 1877 edition of the Various Contrivances by Which Orchids are Fertilised by Insects, we find the following claim: The moreI studynature,the more I become impressedwith ever-increasingforce, that the contrivancesandbeautifuladaptationsslowly acquiredthrougheach partoccasionally varyingin a slight degreebut in manyways, with the preservationof those variations which werebeneficialto the organismundercomplexandever-varyingconditions of life, transcendin an incomparablemannerthe contrivancesand adaptationswhich the most fertile imaginationof mancould invent.69 These are not contrivances imposed by an external creator on a passive material nature in the tradition of British natural theology. They are rather properties that emerge from the immanent constructive activities of nature itself. 64 Eman McMullin,

"Biology and the Theology of the Human,"in ControllingOurDestinies: His-

torical, Philosophical and Ethical Perspectives on the Human Genome Project, ed. Phillip R. Sloan

(Notre Dame, Ind.:Univ. of Notre Dame Press, 2000), pp. 367-93, on p. 378. 65 See Descent of Man (cit. n. 62), p. 39. 66, Charles

Darwin, The Formation of Vegetable Mould Through the Action of Worms, With Observa-

tions on Their Habits (1881), in Works(cit. n. 27), vol. 28, especially pp. 11, 15, 29. 67

Charles Darwin, The Effects of Cross and Self-Fertilization in the Vegetable Kingdom, 2nd ed.

(1878) in Works,vol. 25, p. 385. 6S David Hume, Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion, ed. HenryD. Aiken (New York:Hafner, 1948), pt. xi, p. 79. There has been a persistenttendency in the secondaryliteratureto emphasize these harsheraspects of Darwin'sphilosophyof naturewhile ignoringthe sustaining,vitalizing, and even moraldimensionswhich are also present. 69

Darwin, The Various Contrivances by Which Orchids are Fertilised by Insects, 2nd ed., rev.

(London:Murray.1877; reprintedNew York:Appleton, 1895), pp. 285-6.


269

Finally, nature also seems to have served Darwin as a basis for a moral order.7" His son William's recollection shortly after Darwin's death seems to penetrate to the heart of the belief system that surrounds his mature science: A very strongcharacteristicwas his deep respectfor authorityof all kinds and for the laws of Nature.He could not endurethe feeling of breakingany law of the most trivial kind, even the most harmlessform of trespassingmade him uncomfortableand he avoidedit[ .... ] As regardshis respectfor the laws of natureit might be called reverence if not a religious feeling. No man could feel more intenselythe vastness or the inviolabilityof the laws of nature,and especially the helplessnessof mankindExcept [sic] so faras the laws wereobeyed.He hadalmosta terrorof anyinfringementhowever slightof the laws of health,& he wouldlaughat one as being illogical for such a remark as "justone glass of port"can do no harm.Though obeyanceto the laws of naturc and a deep sense of the powerof naturemay be called in his case a religiousfeeling, In onc scnsc he had no religious sentiment.I rememberafterTyndall's Belfast addressmy Fathertold me that he asked Tyndallwhetherhe really did feel the was consciousof the same sentimentstowardsnatureas towardsa divinepower (I forget his exact words)[;]my fathertold me with a smile thatTyndallhummedand hawed& saidsomethingaboutthe gloryof sunsets&c. Therewas a vaguepoeticfeeling in him[.] I rememberhis once saying Either [sic] about the orchis [sic] book or the strugglein naturereferredto at the end of the origin [sic] that he almost felt that he could writepoetryaboutit.7' We still may legitimately ask if Darwin's sense of awe and wonder in the face of the remarkable habits and structures of organisms, or his almost reverent response to nature, even in the writings of the last years, is a religious, as distinct from a metaphysical, belief. On several criteria, it would be difficult to term it more than a substitute for traditional theism. Except to the degree that we can detect a weak but enduring affirmation of a possible larger purposiveness in the universe in his writings,72the "nature"Darwin leaves standing is neither the passive repository of laws ordained by a creator-God, the material order sustained by God's immediate creative action, nor the deistic nature that fulfills divine purposes through the action of natural laws. In his mature writings, it is also not a teleological agency that acts for inherent ends as a "selector" in a form that would logically connect it with classical Greek and natural theological traditions. Yet as his son William's recollection highlights, Darwin's "nature"was something more than a mere metaphysical premise. If William Darwin is correct, it was also a source of moral order for Darwin, not in the sense of a system displaying obvious design and contrivance, but as a lawful system on which one could rely for ethical norms, serving as the source and foundation for life. To this extent, we can affirm that cognitive premises of a quasi-religious nature do indeed play a significant role in Darwin's science. See Richards,"Darwin'sRomanticBiology"(cit.n. 16), pp. 141-8. William Darwin to Francis Darwin, 4 Jan. 1883, MS DAR 112 (ser. 2), 3d verso-3e recto. Quoted with permission of the Syndics of CambridgeUniv. Library.I wish to thankthe archivist, Mr.Adam Perkins,for supplyinga copy of this document. 72 C.D. to William Graham,3 July 1881, Life and Letters (cit. n. 63); see also Autobiography (cit. n. 20), p. 65. These commentsrepeatsimilarremarksin his earlierlettersto Asa Gray,22 May 1860 (Correspondence[cit. n. 2], vol. 8, p. 224); JohnHerschel, 23 May [1861] (vol. 9, p. 135). See also letterto FrancisJuliaWedgwood, 11 July [ 1861] (ibid., p. 200). 70 71

Natural

Selection, Teleology, and the Logos From Darwinto the OxfordNeo-Darwinists, 1859-1909 By Richard England*

T

ODAYDARWINISM is popularly considered atheistic. Its best-selling modem

proponents, Richard Dawkins and Daniel Dennett, claim that it has rendered the deity superfluous, that it is a "universal acid" that has eaten through religious belief and demoted religion's outward forms to cultural curiosities.' Historians have offered little comfort to the orthodox. While they note that Darwinism, like any "ism'"has had many different meanings and manifestations, the tale they tell emphasizes the shift from natural theology to the triumph of "the philosophy of naturalism inherent in the Darwinian approach to nature... ."2The theory of evolution by natural selection is identified with naturalism. The counterexamples presented in this essay reveal that this has not invariably been the case. To begin the discussion I briefly trace the path from the religious sources of some of Darwin's own early theories to the religious reinterpretation of natural selection by some of his late nineteenth-century followers. It is well known that Darwin was influenced by religious sources, especially the natural theology of the late eighteenth century. His attention to adaptation was directed by his reading of a famous book by William Paley (1743-1805), Natural Theology (1802), and his conception of natural law owed a debt to the tradition of liberal natural theology that followed Paley. Darwin chose the words of the philosopher of science William Whewell (1794-1866) as an epigraph for the Origin of Species (1859). God acts, Whewell wrote, "not by insulated interpositions of Divine power ... but by the establishment of general laws." In his approach to adaptation and to natural law, Darwin drew on natural theology. Despite such directly religious sources, however, Darwin's theory developed into a way of explaining natural purpose without reference to a supernaturalcreator.As David Kohn argued in his essay *BellavanceHonorsProgram,SalisburyState University,SalisburyMD 21801 I would like to thankJitse van derMeer,CharlotteEngland,my anonymousreviewers,andChristie Lerchfor theirhelpful commentson draftsof this essay. RichardDawkins, TheBlind Watchmaker(New York:Norton, 1986), pp. 141, 316; Daniel Dennett, Darwins DangerousIdea (New York:Simon & Schuster,1995), pp. 62-3, 511-20. 2 Peter Bowler, The Eclipse of Darwinism (Baltimore:Johns Hopkins Univ. Press, 1983), p. 44. (Naturalismis the idea that everythingthat is belongs to the realm of nature.)

? 2001 by The Historyof Science Society.All rightsreserved.0369-7827/01/1601-0001$2.00 Osiris, 2001. 16:00-00

270

NATURAL SELECTION,TELEOLOGY,AND THE LOGOS

271

"Darwin's Ambiguity: The Secularization of Biological Meaning" (1989), Darwin "secularized" biology.3 Religious elements operated in producing the theory of natural selection, only to be explicitly disowned in the completed theory. Adaptation is a phenomenon that can be described in religious or scientific language. Words used to describe this phenomenon in one of these languages (e.g., "perfect,""universal")can be translated into the other and may survive a further process of retranslation back into the first language. Meanings may, of course, change with the context. Some late Victorian neo-Darwinists in Britain recaptured and reworked Darwin's emphasis on universal adaptation to prove the supremacy of natural selection as an evolutionary mechanism and to demonstrate its compatibility with Christian belief. While they accepted that natural law could be interpreted in a wholly naturalistic light, they drew on the vestigial religious elements that remained in Darwin's theory to reenvision adaptation in a new religious light. In his Post-Darwinian Controversies (1979), the historian James Moore argued that nineteenth-century orthodox Christians who accepted Darwin's theory were able to do so because it was founded on Paleyan teleology and Malthusian theology.4 Darwinism was built on the assumptions of an orthodox theology of nature. James Moore has now moved away from this position, which, he notes, depends on ahistorical categories of "orthodoxy" and a metaphysically neutral "Darwinism."5 Until recently, most other scholars held that religious beliefs interfered with the acceptance of natural selection as an evolutionary mechanism. In this essay I argue that, on the contrary,Darwin's revision of Paley's teleology emphasized aspects of adaptation that were seen by a few Oxford neo-Darwinists to confirm their Christian belief, in effect reinforcing rather than undermining their scientific commitment to the theory of natural selection. Their view of natural selection was partly shaped by the religious ideas that had had a role in Darwin's early theorizing. At Oxford, the entomologists Edward Poulton (1856-1943) and Frederick Dixey (1855-1935) defended natural selection through the long "eclipse of Darwinism" in the decades around 1900. At the same university, Aubrey Moore (1848-1890), a liberal High Church Anglican canon, recognized that Darwin had described the universal, natural laws that produced the phenomenon of universal adaptation observed in living nature. Moore saw this as a "wider teleology," which Christians could use to confirm, though not to prove, their belief that God acted constantly throughout nature. Natural selection, like all natural laws, was evidence of the action of the indwelling Logos, the second person of the Trinity: the facts of nature were the acts of God. Poulton and Dixey were both Anglicans, and they accepted Moore's view of the religious significance of the theory they championed. Of course, in an age when the study of science was becoming a professional discipline, its students self-consciously censored its earlier connections with religion.6 Any scientific expression of 3 David Kohn, "Darwin'sAmbiguity:The Secularizationof Biological Meaning,"Brit. J. Hist. Sci. 22 (1989):215-39. 4 James Moore, The Post-DarwinianControversies(Cambridge:CambridgeUniv. Press, 1979), pp. 332-3, 344-5. JamesMoore is not to be confused with the neo-DarwinistAubreyMoore (18481890), whom I also discuss in this chapter. 5 Personalcommunication,12 Oct. 1999. 6 See Thomas Gieryn, "Boundary-Workand the Demarcation of Science from Non-Science: Strainsand Interestsin the Ideologies of ProfessionalScientists,"Am. Sociol. Rev.48 (1983):781-95.

272

RICHARDENGLAND

the compatibility of natural selection with a Christian view of divine immanence was muted. The claims made were modest and were kept out of scientific papers. However, in addresses and book reviews, the religious ideas Darwin had built upon were brought to the fore in these neo-Darwinists' reading of teleology. RELIGIOUS ELEMENTS IN THE DEVELOPMENT OF DARWIN'S THEORY

In studying the role of Darwin's religious opinions in the development of his science, most commentators have explored the question of how the late eighteenth-century British varieties of natural theology affected his thought.7Phillip R. Sloan, however, in his contribution to the present volume, makes a powerful case for the additional influence of the German naturalist Alexander Humboldt's Romantic, pantheistic conception of nature.8During the early period of his life, Sloan asserts, Darwin's belief in a "creative power" in nature "carriedmany associations that he would later in life recall as 'intimately connected with a belief in God.'" The fact that Darwin located creative force within nature may have helped later neo-Darwinists to reconcile his theory with an immanentist theology. In this section I focus on two common findings in Darwin scholarship that are directly relevant to late Victorian neoDarwinism. The first is that Darwin's early view of the "perfection" of adaptation was shaped by his understanding of William Paley's natural theology; the second is that his view of the efficacy and action of natural selection was framed, in his early work, by the belief that there was a divine source for natural law. In 1838 Darwin sought the source of the "perfect" adaptation of organisms to their environment: the idea of perfection arose from the tradition of natural theology, which saw all creatures as specially created and designed by God. Every structure was supposed to have a function to which it was perfectly adapted. Scholars differ over the importance of this tradition to Darwin. Dov Ospovat, in The Development if Darvins Theory ( 1981), claims that Darwin completely abandoned the conception of "perfect adaptation"for that of adaptation only as perfect as required by an organism's particular situation. John Cornell, in "Newton of the Grassblade: Darwin and the Problem of Organic Teleology" (1986), suggests that the theistic metaphysics of perfection are still present in the Origin of Species.9 As Stephen Jay Gould argues in his essay "On TransmutingBoyle's Law to Darwin's Revolution" (1998), Darwin's theory is an evolutionary subversion of the adaptationist arguments of natural theology. Both natural theology and natural selection focus on the apparent adaptation of structure to function, and both derive their power to convince from their explanation of this phenomenon. Gould draws parallels between Darwin's evolutionary focus on adaptation and Robert Boyle's ( 1627-1691 ) theological focus on the same phenome7 See, e.g., Dov Ospovat, The Development of Darwins Theory (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1981);JohnBrooke, "The Relationsbetween Darwin'sScience and His Religion,"in Darwinism and Divinitv,ed. John Durant(Oxford:Blackwell, 1985), pp. 40-75; John Cornell, "Newtonof the Grassblade?Darwinand the Problemof OrganicTeleology,"Isis 77 (1986):405-21; idem, "God's MagnificentLaw: The Bad influence of Theistic Metaphysics on Darwin'sEstimation of Natural Selection,"J. Hist. Biol. 20 (1987):381-412; Kohn, "Darwin'sAmbiguity"(cit. n. 3); RobertRichards, "The Theological Foundationsof Darwin'sTheory of Evolution,"in Exploring Nature, ed. P. Theermanand K. Parshall(Dordrecht:Kluwer,1997), pp. 61-79. 8 See Sloan'schapter"'The Sense of Sublimity':Darwin on Natureand Divinity." 9 Ospovat, Development (cit. n. 7), pp. 60-86; Cornell, "God's Magnificent Law" (cit. n. 7), pp. 395-403; see also Kohn, "Darwin'sAmbiguity"(cit. n. 3), pp. 230-1.

NATURALSELECTION,TELEOLOGY,AND THE LOGOS

273

non and suggests that the continuity reflects an "anglophonic preference for adaptationism."'? Gould is correct in pointing out that the idea of perfect adaptation is not an inherently religious idea. This is evident from the fact that Georges Cuvier (1769-1832) thought animals perfectly adapted. Jean-Baptiste Lamarck (17441829) also tried to explain adaptations. Darwin, however, encountered the idea of perfect adaptation in the specifically religious context of natural theology, and so continued to emphasize the universality of adaptation. This focus on perfect adaptation made Darwin limit the scope of natural selection in the early versions of the theory of evolution. In 1837 Darwin held that natural selection acted only when changes in the environment necessitated changes in the perfect adaptations that organisms had previously evolved.1' As John Brooke puts it, in "The Relations between Darwin's Science and His Religion" (1985), "Nature was . . . regarded as a harmonious system for the preservation of adaptation."'2Ospovat finds traces of this view in Darwin's writings up to and including his "1844 Draft."After this time, however, Darwin developed a "relative" view of adaptation, which he described in the sixth chapter of the Origin: "Natural Selection tends only to make each organic being as perfect as, or slightly more perfect than, the other inhabitants of the same country with which it has to struggle for existence."'3 In the Origin, then, it seems that perfection is relative to an organism's competitors and environment.'4 However, Darwin did not wholly abandon the emphasis on the perfection of adaptations. He wrote that natural selection could explain "organs of extreme perfection" such as the human eye. In such explanations, every stage of the eye's development could be shown to have conferred some adaptive advantage on its possessor. Throughout the Origin Darwin emphasizes the adaptation of structure to function. To some of his later readers, Darwin appeared to argue for the utility and purpose of almost all organic structures. He would later regret his emphasis on the universality of utility, which he ascribed to his former allegiance to natural theology: I was not able to annulthe influenceof my formerbelief, then almost universal,that each species hadbeen purposelycreated;andthis led to my tacitassumptionthatevery detail of structure,excepting rudiments,was of some special, though unrecognized, service.15 Although Darwin came to believe that adaptations were only more or less perfect relative to an organism's environment, he shared Paley's focus on the marvelous fitness of all structures to particular functions. Darwin's ongoing emphasis on the universality of adaptation is a vestige of the natural theology that informed his idea of perfect adaptation in 1837. In addition, as Ospovat has noted, when Darwin uses "IStephen Jay Gould, "On TransmutingBoyle's Law to Darwin'sRevolution,"in Evolution:Society, Science, and the Universe, ed. A. C. Fabian (Cambridge:CambridgeUniv. Press, 1998), pp. 4-27, on p. 25. 1 Ospovat,Development(cit. n. 7), pp. 44-5. 12JohnBrooke, "TheRelationsbetween Darwin'sScience and His Religion"(cit. n. 7), p. 57. 13CharlesDarwin, On the Origin of Species (London:Murray,1859), p. 201. 14For furtherdiscussion of the context of Darwin'sviews of organicperfectionsee Dov Ospovat, "PerfectAdaptationand TeleologicalExplanation,"Stud.Hist. Biol. 2 (1978):33-56. 15Charles Darwin, The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex (London: Murray, 1871),

p. 153.

274

RICHARD ENGLAND

the word "perfect,"he often uses it to point out the admirableness of some adaptation, without implying that its perfection is in any way absolute.'6 That said, such a use of "perfect" implies a nature worth admiring and marveling at: Darwin shared Paley's humility before nature, and as a result it is no wonder that some passages of the Origin read like the Psalms on the glories of the Creation. Some of Darwin's disciples of the late nineteenth century continued to focus on the marvelous utility of all organic structures: such "perfection" they claimed, could only be explained by natural selection. Just as Paley had emphasized the ubiquity, marvelousness, and perfection of adaptations, so did the neo-Darwinians, who read the same kind of descriptions of adaptation in the Origin. Even though they, like Darwin, abandoned the idea of absolute and unchanging perfection in organisms, some found it possible to admire universal adaptations as the work of the Christian God. Recent studies have also emphasized the religious quality of Darwin's view of natural law. John Cornell locates Darwin in the "Newtonian metaphysical tradition," which saw the natural world as the product of a "divine arrangement of universal laws.""7Similarly, Kohn has noted that although Darwin secularized biological meaning, he still held that "the laws of nature were impressed on matter by a Creator."8 These views were not new, of course, with Darwin: natural theologians had long insisted that God accomplished his purposes through the ordering and arrangement of natural laws. The astronomer John Herschel (1792-1871) had called the law by which the Creator brought new species into being the "mystery of mysteries" and may have encouraged Darwin to seek it out.19It is true that Darwin was also influenced by the positivist philosophy of Auguste Comte (1798-1857); however, as Neal Gillespie has suggested, Darwin's take on positivism only committed him to a naturalistic and lawful science, not to atheism: at this time Darwin could still "deal with the idea of God or ... see him as the Creator of the laws of nature."20While such views about the relationship between the Creator and the Creation were more deistic than theistic, they were, as Kohn has said, still a part of the religious map of early nineteenth-century England. Some liberal Anglican theologians (including the Oxford mathematician Baden Powell [1796-1860]) thought that this conception of natural law was compatible with Christianity. As sources of divine action, natural laws were more than described regularities; they were divinely prescribed universalities: natural law was designed to accomplish divine purpose by its universal and undeviating action.2' Darwin at first considered natural selection to be a natural law, but he came to hold rather different views by the time the Origin was published in 1859. He wrote to his American follower Asa Gray (1810-1888) in 1860, "I cannot think that the 16Dov Ospovat,"God and NaturalSelection: The DarwinianIdea of Design," J. Hist. Biol. 13 (1980):169-94, p. 190, n. 69. Ospovatnotes that this laudatoryuse of the term "perfection"is quite different from Paley's idea of perfection as the absolute result of an omnipotentGod's design. In practice, however, the various senses of the word slip into one another.This also occurs with the word "perfect";even a "relativelyperfect"adaptationcan be admiredas a marvel of natureor of divine creation. 17 Cornell, "Newton of the Grassblade?",p. 421: see also idem, "God'sMagnificentLaw" p. 403 (both cit. n. 7). 18Kohn, "Darwin'sAmbiguity"(cit. n. 3), p. 238. 19

Ibid., pp. 222-3.

Neal C. Gillespie, Charles Darvin and the Problemof Creation (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1979), pp. 53-4, p. 140. 21Cornell,"God'sMagnificentLaw"(cit. n. 7). 2)


275

world, as we see it, is the result of chance; and yet I cannot look at each separate thing as the result of Design."22Darwin wrestled with the idea that natural laws were designed by God, but that the details of particular events and contingencies were simply the working out of those general laws, and so not designed. He recognized that there were inconsistencies in this view (How could an omniscient God be kept out of the details?) and never came to a firm conclusion on this matter. In the last year of his life, Darwin thanked the philosopher William Graham (1839-1911) for his Creed of Science but could not agree with him thatthe existenceof so-callednaturallaws impliespurpose .... Wouldtherebe purpose if the lowest organismsalone, destituteof consciousness,existed on the moon? But I have had no practicein abstractreasoning,and I may be all astray.Neverthelessyou have expressedmy inwardconviction. . . thatthe Universeis not the resultof chance. But then the horriddoubtalwaysarises whetherthe convictionsof man'smind, which has been developedfromthe mindof the lower animals,areof any valueor at all trustworthy.23 Darwin's "horrid doubt" kept him from believing that God could have any role in nature, although he had an "inward conviction" that nature was not the result of chance. Even in his late agnosticism Darwin sometimes felt the power of the argument that natural laws, including those behind natural selection, were ordained by God. In 1885 the duke of Argyll (1823-1900) recalled a conversation with Darwin on this matter. Argyll insisted that adaptations must be the expression of a divine mind. Darwin replied, "Well, that often comes over me with overwhelming force; but at other times ... it seems to go away."24If the agnostic Darwin appreciated this argument to a limited extent, his Christian neo-Darwinist followers were, as we shall see, more enthusiastic. As with the emphasis on perfect adaptation, a natural theological argument survived its translation into a naturalistic evolutionary theory to be resurrected in a religious reading of natural selection at the end of the nineteenth century. Although Darwin had used religious ideas in developing his theory, he had no substantive place for a traditional God in the process of natural selection. Certainly the development of Darwin's own agnosticism owed something to the fact that he came to believe that natural law alone was sufficient to explain all natural phenomena. In Darwin's opinion it was impossible for human beings to know the source of that natural law. However, a few religious neo-Darwinian commentators reintroduced the Christian God to natural selection. TELEOLOGY REVISED

Darwin described adaptation as an entirely natural phenomenon. As James Lennox has noted, before 1859 there had been two alternative views of purpose in nature: a 22 Darwin to Asa Gray, 26 Nov. 1860, The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, ed. F Darwin, 2 vols. (Appleton:New York, 1896), vol. 2, p. 146. Cited hereafteras Darwin,Life and Letters. 23 Darwinto William Graham,3 July 1881, in ibid., vol. 1, p. 285. See also pp. 282-4 for relatedreflections. 24 Darwin,Life and Letters,vol. 1, p. 285. For an excellent discussion of Darwin'schangingviews of naturallaw see Dov Ospovat,"Godand NaturalSelection"(cit. n. 16), pp. 183-94.

276

RICHARDENGLAND

Platonic, external teleology and an Aristotelian, internal one.25An external teleology supposes an agent outside of nature that arranges material within nature for its own purposes. The Demiurge of Plato's Timaeus is an agent of this sort, as is the "Nature" of the Stoics and the God of the British natural theologians.26Those who attempted to introduce a transcendent God who directed evolution also used an external teleology. An internal teleology describes an inherent tendency to achieve a certain goal, without reference to the intentions of an external agent. Aristotle's view of purpose in nature is restricted to organic structures and explains the existence of such structures as due to their contribution to the organism's life. This mode of immanent teleology was continued by nineteenth-century German Naturphilosophen and some of their successors.27 Darwin explains the existence of organic parts and processes neither in terms of God nor in terms of inherent tendencies but as the result of the contingent interaction of organisms and their circumstances. As Lennox puts it, natural selection is teleological "in the sense that a value consequence (Darwin most often uses the term 'advantage') of a trait explains its increase, or presence, in a population."28This might be called a "natural,"or "Darwinian,"teleology. It is, of course, an explanation of the appearance of design without any reference to a Designer. Natural purpose was the result of a naturalprocess, so there could be no external teleology. Darwinian teleology resembles internal teleology more than external teleology (although there remain fundamental differences). Both Darwin and Aristotle seek the source of organic adaptation in nature itself, not in some superintending external agent. Darwin discomfited many who had believed that science and religion could be brought together through a Paleyan natural theology, and he delighted those who had believed that Christianity was false. In 1859 the positivist Harriet Martineau (1802-1876) described the Origin as "overthrowing . . . revealed Religion on the one hand, & Natural (as far as Final Causes & design are concerned) on the other."29 At the opposite end of the religious spectrum, theologians such as the Presbyterian Charles Hodge (1797-1878) recognized that Darwinism did away with the external teleology of the design argument, and so Hodge identified Darwinism with atheism. Religious reactions to Darwinism were as diverse as opinions on many other issues.30 However, many historians assume that those theologians who "accepted" Darwinism were somehow ducking its naturalistic implications. David Kohn, for 25

James Lennox, "Teleology," in Keywords in Evolutionary Biology, ed. Evelyn Fox Keller and

ElisabethLloyd (Cambridge,Mass:HarvardUniv. Press, 1992), pp. 324-33. Kant'sview of teleology as a regulativejudgment that allowed researchersto uncovermechanisticlaws governing organic phenomenasparkeda Germanbiological researchprogramin the nineteenthcenturythatis described in Timothy Lenoir, The Strategy of Life: Teleology and Mechanics in Nineteenth-Century German

Biology (Chicago:Univ. of Chicago Press, 1982), p. 4. 26 Phillip Sloan, "TheQuestionof NaturalPurpose,"in Evolutionand Creation,ed. Eman McMullin (Notre Dame, Ind.: Univ. of Notre Dame Press, 1985), pp. 121-50, on p. 125. 27 See Lenoir, The Strategy of Life (cit. n. 25), pp. 10-12.

28 James Lennox, "Darwinwas a teleologist" Biol. Phil. 9 (1993):409-21, on p. 410. See also Michael Ghiselin, "Darwin'slanguage may seem teleological, but his thinking is anothermatter," Biol. Phil. 9 (1994):489-92; andJamesLennox, "Teleologyby AnotherName:A Reply to Ghiselin,"

Biol. Phil. 9 (1994):493-5. 29Cited in AdrianDesmond and James Moore, Darwin (New York:Warner,1991), p. 486.

31 See, for examples of diverse reactions,James Moore, The Post-DarwinianControversies(cit. n. 4); DavidLivingstone,Darwins ForgottenDefenders(Edinburgh:Eerdmans& ScottishAcademic Press, 1987); and J. Wells, CharlesHodge s Critiqueof Darwinism(Lewiston, N.Y.: Edwin Mellen, 1988).


277

example, in his article "Darwin'sAmbiguity," groups Protestant reactions to Darwin under the title The Varieties of Religious Avoidance.3' Frederick Gregory, surveying the same reactions in "The Impact of Darwinian Evolution on Protestant Theology in the Nineteenth Century" (1986), concludes, "Unquestionably the attempt to reconcile evolution and Christianity depended on a rejection of natural selection as the mechanism of evolution."32James Moore's thesis, in Post-Darwinian Controversies (1979), that "orthodox" Protestants could accept evolution by natural selection is no longer defended. The way seems clear for those who would assert that the Darwinian theory of natural selection, properly understood, is incompatible with religious belief. Darwin indeed translated some religious readings of nature into an entirely secular theory, but some of his followers retranslated natural selection into a revised theology of nature. James Moore called such thinkers "Christian Darwinians" and claimed that they could accept Darwinian evolution. Referring to their work, James Lennox, in his essay "Teleology" (1992), notes that "Darwin's Calvinist followers insisted on interpreting teleology along Platonic, natural theological lines. The idea of a natural teleology of a more Aristotelian variety was not what they had in mind."33Lennox rightly identifies a common flaw in Christian interpretations of Darwinian teleology: these Christians often attempted to maintain an external teleology ratherthan coming to terms with Darwin's fundamental reworking of adaptation as the result of a wholly natural process. Other Christians, like Aubrey Moore and his neo-Darwinist friends in Oxford, did accept a "naturalteleology of a more Aristotelian variety."As Moore put it, "Modern science seems . .. to be moving in the Aristotelian direction, which is so far Christian."34Moore did not try to interpret Darwin in terms of Aristotelian internal tendencies, but he did recognize that a nonexternal view of teleology was necessary. The distinctiveness of this approach is best seen in contrast with one of the better-known attempts by a Christian to reconcile natural selection with an external teleology. The American botanist Asa Gray, Darwin's friend and popularizer, believed that natural selection and naturaltheology were not inconsistent. God's design might still be seen in the nature of individual variations. In the early 1860s Gray claimed that variations might be "directed"along certain beneficial lines. Natural selection would then act as a kind of secondary sifting mechanism in evolution, separating the beneficial from the nonbeneficial variations in nature. While admitting evolutionary change and a role for natural selection, Gray's view ultimately attributes evolution and adaptation to the direction of an external power: God. Darwin, though at first enthusiastic about Gray's views, came to reject this religious recasting of natural selection. His objections are most clearly stated in his famous "stone house argument," which he advanced in 1868. The relationship between natural selection and variation was analogous to that between an architect and the stones found at the bottom of a cliff. Certainly natural laws (of geology, erosion, etc.) determined the shape of the stones that fell from a cliff, but to the architect -1Kohn, "Darwin'sAmbiguity"(cit. n. 3), p. 237n. 32 FrederickGregory,"The Impact of DarwinianEvolution on ProtestantTheology in the Nineteenth Century,"in God and Nature, ed. David Lindbergand Ronald Numbers (Berkeley and Los Angeles: Univ. of CaliforniaPress, 1986), pp. 369-90, on p. 383. 33 Lennox, "Teleology"(cit. n. 25), p. 329. 34 AubreyMoore to William Gladstone, 13 Dec. 1885, BritishLibraryMS Add. 44493, fol. 218.

278

RICHARDENGLAND

selecting stones for the walls of a house, the stones' shapes were essentially random. The source of design was not variations directed by God, but the "architect"natural selection, which necessarily made the best of whatever naturalvariations were available.35Natural selection, granted the phenomenon of "omnifarious,"undirected variation, could explain teleology without reference to a supernatural agent. Gray and Darwin never agreed on this matter.36Indeed, in 1883, a year after Darwin's death, Gray repeated his argument in the pages of Nature. However, Darwin's disciple, George Romanes (1848-1894), defended his master's view of design, citing Darwin's stone house argument at length.37There was no evidence that variations were directed by an external agent. Any claim that God did drive evolutionary change must be supported by proof that variation was driven in beneficial directions. Until that proof was forthcoming, Romanes argued, the scientific position must be to assume that no external agent was involved: variations simply happened, without any reference to the needs of organisms. Romanes' verdict foreshadows a dominant paradigm in our own time, the view that faith and science stand at variance.38 Romanes was a biologist who had lost his faith because Darwinism seemed to make Christian belief logically indefensible.39However, in 1889, six years after his controversy with Gray, he claimed that there was a reasonable way in which theistic belief and Darwinism could be considered compatible. His change of heart sprang from his encounter with a new way of reading Darwin's naturalizing of the origins of teleology. THE WIDER TELEOLOGY: AN ALTERNATIVE TO EXTERNAL TELEOLOGY

Romanes was inspired by the work of Aubrey Moore, honorary canon of Christ Church, Oxford, and a contributor to Lux mundi, a landmark work at Anglican apologetics (1889). Moore was a historian of the Reformation, a tutor at Keble College, a lecturer on Aristotle's Ethics, as well as an accomplished amateur botanist. Moore's place as a reconciler of diverse traditions is symbolized by his friendships with both Romanes, Darwin's disciple, and Henry Parry Liddon (1829-1890), confidant of the Oxford Movement leader Edward Pusey (1800-1882). Moore, as a member of the Anglo-Catholic branch of the Church of England, had no use for Paleyan natural theology: for him the source of religious belief and authority was not to be found in such evidence. He held that the true faith came from the universal, apostolic church, not from arguments from nature. Natural theology had long been viewed by High Church Anglicans as more supportive of deism than of Christian orthodoxy, and therefore as one more argument that was the property of heterodox theists.40 Moore's philosophical position was another factor that made him unsympathetic 3

Charles Darwin. Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication, 2 vols. (London: Murray,

1868), vol. 2, pp. 426-8. 36 KennethW. Herrmann,"The Gulf between Design and Descent: CharlesDarwin'sRejection of

Asa Gray's Apologia," in Facets of Faith and Science, vol. 4: Interpreting God's Action in the World,

ed. J. M. van der Meer (Lanham,Md.: Pascal Centre/ Univ. Press of America, 1996), pp. 155-71. -7 Asa Gray,"NaturalSelection and NaturalTheology,"Nature 28 (1883):78; George Romanes, "NaturalSelection and NaturalTheology,"Nature28 (1883):100-1. ASRomanes, "Natural Selection and Natural Theology" (cit. n. 37); see also Moore, PostDarwinian Controversies (cit. n. 4), pp. 271-80. 3

FrankTurner,BetweenScience and Religionl(New Haven:Yale Univ. Press, 1974), pp. 135-63.

40John Hedley Brooke, Science and Religion (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1991),

pp. 224-5.


279

to Paleyan natural theology. As a student at Oxford of the philosopher Thomas Hill Green (1836-1882), Moore had been inspired by an idealist epistemology. Green argued that John Stuart Mill (1806-1873) and the empiricists implicitly assumed an organizing principle that made possible a connection between human thought and the real world but were unaware of their own assumption. According to Green, nature and human understanding of nature shared in a common organizing, spiritual principle.4' The epistemology he developed allowed him to replace the idea of a transcendent and historically localized God with an "immanent spirit" that bound together all knowledge and all human society. Moore and his fellow Anglo-Catholics seized on Green's criticism of Mill and saw in Green's "immanent spirit" the constant presence and action of the Logos, the second person of the Trinity, in the world. With this kind of immanentist philosophical position, it is little wonder that Moore dismissed any natural theology that removed God from nature and looked more closely at how contemporary scientists were describing natural processes. As an observer of science and an apologist for his faith, Moore knew that Darwinism was commonly associated with unbelief. He thought that a fearless, wholly Christian interpretation of Darwinism was needed to show that evolution by natural selection, like all true scientific theories, could be assimilated into a wider, fundamentally religious vision of nature. Moore undertook this project in a series of essays written in the 1880s in the Guardian, a weekly High Church religious newspaper. He was impressed by an observation by Thomas Henry Huxley (1825-1895), who wrote that although Darwinism had certainly struck down Paley's view of teleology it had revealed "a wider teleology which was not touched by evolution, but which is actually based upon the fundamental proposition of evolution.'42 This "wider teleology" as Aubrey Moore described it, consisted of the facts that natural law ruled everywhere in nature, and that, according to the theory of natural selection, natural purpose, or adaptation, was the invariable result of natural selection in living beings. Moore believed that the strictly natural phenomenon of Darwinian teleology suggested a more Christian theology of nature than had Paley's somewhat deistic claim that nature was designed by an external Creator: Science had pushedthe deist'sGod furtherand furtheraway,and at the momentwhen it seemed as if He wouldbe thrustout altogether,Darwinismappeared,and, underthe guise of a foe, did the workof a friend.It has conferredupon philosophyand religion an inestimablebenefit,by showing us that we must choose between two alternatives. EitherGod is everywherepresentin nature,or He is nowhere.... In natureeverything mustbe his work,or nothing.We mustfranklyreturnto the Christiandoctrineof direct Divine agency,the immanenceof Divine power in naturefrom end to end, the belief in a God in whom not only we, but all things have their being, or we must banish him altogether.43 41 M. Richter,The Politics of Conscience:T. H. Green and His Age (Cambridge,Mass.: Harvard Univ. Press, 1964), pp. 173-80: S. den Otter,BritishIdealismand Social Explanation(Oxford:Oxford Univ. Press, 1996), pp. 55-6. 42 Thomas Huxley,Critiquesand Addresses(London:Murray,1873), p. 305. Furtherdiscussion of Huxley'sremarkcan be found in JohnBeatty,"Teleologyand the RelationshipbetweenBiology and the Physical Sciences in the NineteenthandTwentiethCenturies,"in Some TruerMethod:Reflections on the Heritage of Newton, ed. F Durhamand R. Purrington(New York:Columbia Univ. Press, 1990), pp. 113-44, on pp. 130-2; and Lennox, "Darwinwas a teleologist"(cit. n. 28). 43AubreyMoore, "TheChristianDoctrineof God" in Luxmundi,ed. C. Gore (New York:United States Book Company,1890 [1889]), 5th ed., pp. 47-90, on p. 82.

280

RICHARD ENGLAND

Darwinism banished the near deism of Paleyan natural theology and opened the way to an immanentist theology of nature more compatible with Trinitarian Christian doctrine. Darwin had shown that there were no exceptions to natural law in biology. Many Christian apologists felt that a defense of orthodoxy involved the indications of gaps in the natural order where divine intervention must be invoked. However, Moore felt that this quest for a God of the gaps was deistic rather than Christian. With Saint Athanasius, Moore held that "the facts of nature are the acts of God." Natural law itself could be interpreted as a manifestation of direct divine action. Moore here was treading in the footsteps of the architect of modem science, Isaac Newton (1642-1727), but, unlike Newton, the Anglican Moore translated law-like divine action into a Trinitarianidiom. The uniformity of nature could be seen as the result of the ongoing action and presence of God in His Creation. Darwin, by proving that all organic structures developed by the natural law of natural selection, had in effect, extended human understanding of divine action.44 Moore did not claim that this was the only way of interpreting natural law. He felt that those who already believed in the immanence of God could see the universality of natural law as a confirmation of their preexisting belief.45 In a letter written in 1888 Moore wrote, "We really bring to Nature much that we afterwardsfind verified in Nature, and I don't feel sure that Paley knew this."46Others, who did not share Christian belief, would see only natural law. Agnostics and Christians alike could accept the universality of natural selection. The "wider teleology" of Darwinism was open to both theistic and atheistic readings, unlike the explicitly religious external teleology of natural theology. The idea of a "wider teleology" was drawn from those parts of the theory of natural selection in which the young Darwin himself had been guided by religious sources: adaptations appeared to be universal throughout nature, and God acted by natural law alone. To Moore it did not matter that adaptations were not "absolutely" perfect. As long as natural selection was fitting structures to functions, or organisms to changing circumstances, natural laws were working out natural purposes. Laws of cause and effect were universal throughout nature. Everywhere the neo-Darwinist looked in nature, he could see marvelous adaptations and explain them in terms of a natural process. These points, which seemed to Darwin to justify at most an extreme deism, Moore translated in an immanentist light. It has been suggested that Moore somehow avoided the force of Darwinism by adopting this immanentist argument, but the best evidence that he had appreciated religious ideas inherent in Darwinism comes from the positive reactions of Darwinian scientists of his day and from their subsequent use of these religious ideas in their science.47 Romanes, who, with Darwin, had attacked theistic evolutionists such as Asa Gray, praised Moore during an 1889 Aristotelian Society symposium on the evidence of 44RichardEngland,"Aubrey Moore and the Anglo-catholicAssimilation of Science at Oxford," Ph.D. diss., Universityof Toronto,1997, pp. 198-283. 45 AubreyMoore, "ChristianDoctrine"(cit. n. 43), p. 87. 46 Moore toF A. Dixey, 3 Mar. [1888], British LibraryMS Add. 444091, fol. 238 (emphasis in original). 47 Modem criticisms of Aubrey Moore's position include Don Cupitt, "Darwinismand English Religious Thought"Theology78 (1975):125-31; and PeterAddinall,Philosophyand Biblical Interpretation(Cambridge:CambridgeUniv. Press, 1991), pp. 198-9.

NATURALSELECTION, AND THELOGOS TELEOLOGY,

281

design in nature.48Moore, he said, unlike Gray,had not attempted to read an external teleology into Darwinian evolutionary theory but had shown the theory nonetheless compatible with Christian belief. Romanes rejected two extreme positions: that Paleyan naturaltheology was untouched by Darwin's theory of evolution, and that Darwin's theory had destroyed all evidence of design in nature. He cited Moore's view that "the counterpart of the theological belief in the unity and omnipresence of God is the scientific belief in the unity of nature and the reign of law" and noted with approval that this view could only be held by those who already had faith.49Romanes concluded, Hence the one man [a believer] is as logically justified in seeing the evidence as the otherman [a nonbeliever]is in not seeing it.... The question,"IsthereDesign in Nature?"has been referredfrom the lower courtsof objectivefact to the supremecourts of subjectivepersonality;and thereit standsto be decidedby each man for himself at the tribunalof his own judgement.50 Romanes, who remained a wavering agnostic until the last few weeks of his life, accepted that his interpretation of the religious significance of natural law was as rational as Moore's. Moore's view of teleology recognized the sufficiency of natural selection as an evolutionary mechanism and abandoned natural theology as a source of any independent evidence for religion. The apologetic value of his work lay in the fact that it described a reasonable religious interpretation of natural selection. Its status as a natural process was in no way threatened by the belief that natural laws were the direct result of divine action. Moore died in January 1890, little more than a month after Romanes had so wholeheartedly echoed Moore's view of the "wider teleology" at the Aristotelian Society symposium. Romanes, who had just moved to Oxford, called Moore's early death a "loss to Darwinism on its popular side" and lamented that he himself had not only lost a friend but "one whose rich stores of knowledge and thought had just begun to open such possibilities in the way of adding to my own."5' Romanes returned to a form of theistic belief on his deathbed in 1894, a fact suggestive of Moore's success in bringing out the religious resonances of the theory that had driven Romanes from his childhood faith. RELIGIOUS ELEMENTS IN NEO-DARWINISM, 1890-1910

The zoologist E. Ray Lankester (1847-1929), perhaps the most important turn-ofthe-century neo-Darwinist in Britain, was a Marxist and an atheist, yet he too appreciated Moore's approach. He rejected Christianity for a variety of reasons, but he considered Moore's essays "excellent" and in 1888 commended them in a brief Is thereevidenceof designin andW.S. Gildea,"Symposium: S. Alexander, 4XGeorgeRomanes,

nature?",Proc.AristotelianSoc. 1 (1889-91):49-76.

49 MoorehereagreedwithHuxley,who wrotethat"[t]hetheological equivalentof the scientific in Darwin,LifeandLetters,vol. 1, pp.556-7. conceptionof orderis Providence," 50Romaneset al., "Evidence of Design"(cit.n. 48), p. 76. 51 SociRomanesto SirJamesPaget,18 Jan.1890,RomanesCollection,AmericanPhilosophical ety,Philadelphia.

282

RICHARD ENGLAND

review in Nature.52Moore's religious approach to Darwinian teleology was admired still more by those neo-Darwinian scientists who shared his Anglican faith. Oxford was home to a school of neo-Darwinism during the widespread "eclipse" of Darwinism around the turn of the century. Many scientists supposed natural selection incapable of explaining evolution and promoted alternative mechanisms such as the neo-Lamarckian inheritance of acquired characteristics, or mutations that resulted in large evolutionary leaps from one form to another.53This school viewed natural selection as the only mechanism that could explain adaptation. These neoDarwinists' adherence to natural selection and their rejection of all other evolutionary mechanisms arose from an unwavering focus on adaptation as the natural phenomenon that any evolutionary theory must explain. Mechanisms such as the neoLamarckian theory of the inheritance of acquired characteristics or the mutationist view of radical genetic leaps between generations were unacceptable because they could not explain the nearly perfect adaptations that occurred everywhere in the living world. Given this scientific focus, it is not surprising that two members of this school, Edward Poulton and Frederick Dixey, both Oxford University entomologists, Anglicans, and both friends of Moore, welcomed his religious rereading of Darwinian teleology. Poulton had been a science tutor at Keble College at the same time as Moore (1880-1888) and in 1882 had converted from the Quaker faith of his parents to Anglicanism. He wrote many articles on insect mimicry, fiercely defending natural selection against rival evolutionary mechanisms. A colleague recalled "friendly swordplay" in the common room between Poulton and Moore as they discussed the relationship between science and theology.54Poulton was of a much later generation than the scientific warriors of the X-Club, like Huxley and John Tyndall (18201893), whose fencing with theologians had been more deadly in intent. He never wrote on the relationship between teleology and Darwinism directly, but he did publicly maintain that Moore's view was the right one. He praised Moore on numerous occasions. As late as 1937, as president of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, Poulton praised Moore's work as evidence that the Anglican Church had accepted Darwinian evolution in the 1880s.55 Poulton's friend and fellow entomologist, Dixey, wrote more directly on the relationship between Darwinian science and the Christian faith. Like Poulton, Dixey was an entomologist interested in phenomena of protective coloration: this research subject in itself of course suggested the importance of explaining the marvelous adaptations of nature. However, this scientific view was likely reinforced by the fact that Moore had shown that Darwinism need not be a source of religious difficulties. At a time when neo-Darwinists were in the minority and alternative evolutionary mechanisms were gaining empirical support from an increasing number of laboratory-based studies, this religious factor at least suggested to them that Darwin52 E. Ray Lankester,"Notes" Nature37 (1888):397. Lankestermentionsthathe is going to send a notice to Nature in a letter to Moore dated 16 Feb. [1888], E. M. Moore AutographCollection, AmericanPhilosophicalSociety Library,Philadelphia. 53ErnstMayr,The Growthof Biological Thought(Cambridge,Mass: HarvardUniv. Press, 1982),

p. 535.

54E. S. Talbot,Memoriesof Early Life (London:Murray,1924), pp. 72-3.

55Edward Poulton, "The History of Evolutionary Thought," Rep. Brit. Assoc. Advanc. Sci. (1937):

1-23, on pp. 6-7. See also his Essays on Evolution,1889-1907 (Oxford:Clarendon,1908), pp. 54-6.


283

ism could be held, and defended, by Christians. In The Eclipse of Darwinism (1983) Peter Bowler has drawn attention to survivals of natural theology in neoLamarckism and orthogenesis but has not noted that some neo-Darwinists gave evolution a religious reading.56Dixey followed Moore in thinking Darwin's theory of natural selection more theologically orthodox than deistic creationism. The religious description of adaptation that Darwin had "naturalized"in his mature theory of natural selection was reinterpreted and reconsecrated by a few of his neo-Darwinist followers. Ironically, Darwin's religious sources indirectly contributed to Dixey's fervent advocacy of natural selection. Dixey was the author of numerous neo-Darwinian studies on the evolution of butterflies. He was also a member of the English Church Union (a High Church Anglican layman's organization) and a loyal parishioner and chorister at the AngloCatholic parish of St. Barnabas. From 1901 through 1909 he reviewed for Nature several books that attacked Darwin's theory of natural selection or commented on its religious significance. In these reviews, and in his letters, Dixey declared his belief in the prevalence of adaptation and his belief that God works through the laws of nature. Dixey was mystified by biologists who dispensed "with the Darwinian key to the puzzle of adaptation."57He believed that natural selection, unlike other mechanisms, "actually showed how the adaptation everywhere manifest in nature might have come about."58He noted that there is in living nature a "perfection of adaptation which seems to require 'directed variation' as an explanation, but which is perfectly explicable by natural selection."59Here Dixey used the same kind of emphasis on universal adaptation that Darwin had inherited from Paley's natural theology. The importance Paley attached to marvelous adaptations in nature survived its Darwinian translation to influence early twentieth-century neo-Darwinism. In 1919 Dixey declared before the British Association that his defense of the "Darwinian doctrine of natural selection . .. carried with it a belief in the existence and general prevalence of adaptation."6?This belief in the prevalence and importance of adaptation was not shared by mutationists, and Dixey had to admit that at times Darwinists had gone too far in attempting to find purpose in organic structures: "[T]oo much exuberance may have been shown in the pursuit of what Aubrey Moore called 'the new teleology.'"6' Nonetheless, Dixey believed that the quest to find and explain adaptation was the only way to advance knowledge of evolution. This assumption that adaptation was the fundamental problem to be addressed by evolutionary theorists may have been recommended by the tactical demands of scientific controversy with mutationists, but it also had, for Dixey, a definite religious significance. While directly theological articles were forbidden by the editors of Nature, 56 For a neo-Lamarckian naturaltheology see PeterBowler,The Eclipse of Darwinism (Baltimore: JohnsHopkinsUniv. Press, 1983), pp. 45-6, 85-6. 57 FrederickDixey, "'Mutation'v. Selection,"Nature70 (1904):313-14, on p. 313. Dixey's authorship of this and otherreviews cited is describedin the Dixey Papers,Hope Library,OxfordUniversity Museum. 58 FrederickDixey, "The Place of Lamarckin the Historyof Evolution,"Nature66 (1902):169-70, on p. 169. 59FrederickDixey, "ANeo-Darwinianon Evolution,"Nature63 (1901):341-2, on p. 341. 65 Cited in Frederick Dixey, "Section D-Presidential Address,"Nature 104 (1919):121-6, on p. 126. 61

Ibid.

284

RICHARD ENGLAND

in reviewing religious commentators on evolution Dixey managed to indicate his religious preference for the theory of natural selection and to point out the heterodoxy (scientific and religious) of the alternatives. For instance, the mutationist view could not explain adaptation without going beyond the realm of natural law. If organisms indeed evolved by leaps, Dixey asked, "[H]ow did it happen that they sprang into being in such exact harmony with their surroundings? Would Mr. Lock [a mutationist] have us fall back on the theory of 'directed variation' or, what comes to the same thing, Paley's view of 'contrivance' by special creation?"62Dixey, as a Christian, had no objection to considering God as the Creator, but for both scientific and religious reasons, he could have nothing to do with the external teleology that would have to be reintroduced into evolution to allow mutationists to explain adaptation. Like Moore, Dixey felt that the position of Paley, and all those who supposed God to interfere with the course of evolution, was more deistic than Christian. Dixey reviewed a volume entitled Doubts about Darwinism (1903) whose author claimed to seek natural explanations for all organic structures. However, Dixey complained, [w]heneverhe meets with a problemin evolutionwhich appearsto him inexplicableon the lines of naturalselection ... he resortsat once to the intervention,by a directcreativeact, of a "Beingpossessingintelligence,intention,andpower."This is badscience, and we much doubtwhetherit is good theology.... To fly at once to the hypothesisof direct "intervention" by a "higherintelligence"is as much as to say that a science of life is impossible. It is not our provinceto enter into the theological aspects of the matter:we would only remarkthatthe author'slanguageon this head appearsto us to be a curious instance of survivalfrom a bygone epoch. When, as in the eighteenth or "intervencentury,deistic conceptionsof naturewere rife, the idea of "interference" tion"rose easily enough in the minds of devoutpersons.The only alternativeseemed to be the completebanishmentof the Deity fromhis universe.But in so far as deism is discreditedby evolution,its correlativenotion of "interference"must sharein its discredit;and it is, to say the least of it, somewhatsurprisingto find the idea revived in the supposedinterestsof religion.63 Dixey saw such proposals of an external teleology, with God "interfering" with nature from without, as dangerous to both Darwinian and Christian orthodoxy. With Moore, Dixey felt that Darwinian evolution was an aid to Christianity: "More indeed, is gained under the conception of organic growth than is lost by the sacrifice of the older teleology; for Paley's statement of the case savours of deism, whereas under the more recent view there are distinct indications in the universe of a purpose which may be called moral."64Dixey interpreted natural law as the action of an immanent God. In this way, he could view adaptation in a religious light. Adaptation was the result of the law of natural selection, and as such, the universality of adaptation could be seen as indicative of the universal immanence of God in nature. Dixey's neo-Darwinism, then, was more than a strictly scientific enterprise: in discovering adaptation in nature he uncovered the working of natural selection, which he could interpret as the presence of God. The religious elements in Darwin's theory may have coincided with Dixey's particular theological views to strengthen his personal conviction of the fundamental truth of natural selection. Evolution,"Nature75 (1907):578-9, on p. 579. Dixey, "'Semi-Darwinian'Speculations,"Nature69 (1903):98-9, on pp. 98-9. 64 FrederickDixey, "Intelligenceas the Soul of the Universe" Nature64 (1901):422.

62 FrederickDixey, "The New 63 Frederick


285

In a private letter written in 1908 Dixey said that it was indeed the "wider teleology" that allowed him as a Christian to hold to Darwinism: WhatAubreyMoorecalled "thenew teleology"wantsdrivingintopeople'sheads.Ignoranttalkerslike Vernon,who speakof "theidea of progressiveevolutionembracingthe error(!) of teleology" are hardlyworthpowder and shot. Of course it embracesthat as even Aristotleknew,andit is preciselythe fact thatit does so thatgives it its "error," justificationand ensuresfor it our acceptanceas Christians.65 It seems, then, that the religious descriptions of adaptation that had been translated in Darwin's naturalistic theory could be reinterpretedby some neo-Darwinists at the turn of the century. Religious elements not only acted to help Darwin produce scientific knowledge; they also contributed to the popularity and strength of the neoDarwinist position by interacting with the religious views of later biologists. CONCLUSION

Christianity could be and was reconciled with natural selection, in at least one historical case. Aubrey Moore's identification of natural law and divine action raises theological questions: Is it possible to interpretnatural law as the action of the immanent Logos? What theodicy is available to a Christian who accepts Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection? What place is there for miracles when divine action is manifested as natural law? There were and are many answers to such questions, but the success or failure of Moore's position cannot be judged without reference to its historical context. As far as Romanes, Poulton, and Dixey were concerned, it was a success. Even a neo-Darwinian atheist such as Lankester praised Moore's work. Their treatment of the phenomenon of adaptation shows how Darwin's original natural theological sources could be reworked to inform later neo-Darwinian theory. Moore had little direct influence on the Anglican Church, and his views were not widely accepted by men of science. However, he did show, on the eve of the eclipse of Darwinism, one way in which Darwinism could be read in a Christian light, and he thereby reinforced the neo-Darwinism of some Oxford biologists who shared his faith. In addition to revealing Moore's minor role in the history of evolutionary theory, this case suggests that Darwinism does not invariably require naturalism as its metaphysical framework. Moore and his neo-Darwinist friends show us the porosity of the boundary between religion and science. Darwin did secularize biological meaning, although he continued to focus on the ubiquity and apparentperfection of adaptations. Some of his followers subtly reconsecrated biological meaning by reading divine action in the laws that made adaptation so marvelous and universal. At the same time they recognized that nothing like Paleyan, external teleology was possible or desirable in their science or religion. What does this say about how religious elements work once they are absorbed into a scientific theory? I do not wish to imply that religious influences are limited to explicitly theistic formulations of theories-or to deny that naturalism might function as a source of religious influence in a science. What I have described is the mutual engagement of thoughts about evolution and about God's action in the world in Darwin and some neo-Darwinians. 65 E A. Dixey to C. W. Formby,2 Jan. 1908, Dixey Papers,Hope Library,OxfordUniversityMuseum. Vernonis likely H. M. Vernon,a contemporarywho wrote on reproductivephysiology.

286

RICHARD ENGLAND

The idea of adaptation was at first shaped by adjectives drawn from the religious language of Paley's natural theology. The fact that organic structures were adapted to functions had been attributedto God, and so adaptation had taken on the "perfect" and "universal" qualities that might well be expected of the handiwork of the Creator. The idea of perfect and universal adaptation was assimilated into Darwin's "purely" naturalistic description of adaptation. The mature Darwin did not believe that adaptations were absolutely perfect or universal, but he focused nonetheless, as Paley had, on these qualities of adaptation. Some of Darwin's later readers read this particular view of adaptation in a new kind of religious light. Darwin showed that adaptations, the result of a law-like process, were everywhere in organic nature. This wider or Darwinian teleology could be seen as a confirmation, though not a proof, of a preexisting Christian belief in the immanence of God in nature. Moore's view of divine action pointed up philosophical sympathies between late Victorian Darwinism and an Anglo-Catholic theology tinged with T H. Green's idealism. Moore did not rule out alternative interpretationsof the same phenomena but suggested that natural selection could be interpreted as the result of God's constant presence in the world. It was no surprise, then, to Moore and his fellow neo-Darwinists that adaptations effected by natural selection were universal in living nature. Although the perfection and universality of adaptation were in some sense constant through the process described here, there were significant changes. Darwin described even "perfect" organs as the result of relative adaptation, and so "perfection" too was "relative."Moore dealt with Darwin's fundamental reworking of teleology and recognized that Darwin's theory of natural selection destroyed the evidential power of Paley's natural theology. The universality of adaptation could no longer be considered a proof of God's existence but only a confirmation of a preexisting belief. Darwin radically changed possible structures of teleological arguments for the existence of God. A HISTORIOGRAPHICAL NOTE

The theory of natural selection is not inevitably linked with naturalism. In at least one historical case, religious meaning was read in the implications of Darwinism. Neo-Darwinists such as Poulton and Dixey emphasized the universality of adaptation because it highlighted the strength of natural selection and the weaknesses of alternative mechanisms. Moore's religious interpretationof adaptation may also have reassured them that their controversial scientific commitments were compatible with their religious faith and, indeed, that the non-Darwinian evolutionary theories of their scientific rivals were distinctly heterodox. The scientific and theological circumstances that shaped this little-known synthesis are now history, but the moral remains. The boundary that separates our categories of science and religion is porous. Cultural, intellectual, and contextual chemistry may force phenomena or ideas across that boundary.To speak of "religious elements" affecting science, or "languages" of science and religion, implies that the categories of science and religion are more neatly separable than is justified by the available evidence. Rather than discuss the contribution of theistic sources to scientific theories, I might have drawn on the image of science presented by Robert Young, in his article "Darwinism is social" (1985) and simply described the close correlations between arguments given by


287

actors in religious and scientific texts. The claim that religion informs science risks assuming the present distinction between the two, even as it examines the historical process of their separation.66The words and metaphors we choose are both products of, and productive of, our historiography.67 Whatever the shortcomings of the idea of religious and scientific "elements," the notion does have heuristic value. Ideas come together and drift apart.Their affinities and antipathies are constructed from logical, psychological, and political circumstances, in an arrayof possibilities that seems almost infinitely plastic. It is important to recall this when we think about the popular identification of Darwinism with philosophical naturalism. This view seems to describe a connection that transcends historical circumstance and so can be used to judge the ultimate legitimacy of past connections of ideas. However, any view of the relationship between the phenomenon of adaptation and the belief in a God is built of connections among many historical elements, connections not limited to logical implications of narratives about nature but also involving historically local contingencies of context and circumstance.68 6' See Robert Young, "Darwinism is social," in The Darwinian Heritage, ed. David Kohn (Princeton:PrincetonUniv. Press, 1985). 67 Hist. Sci. 25 (1987):195-213. See, e.g., Michael Shortland,"DarwinianStructures"' E. see, Michael Ruse, FromMonad to Man: The Conceptof Progressin EvolutionaryBiology E.g., (Cambridge,Mass.:HarvardUniv.Press, 1996), andidem, Mysteryof Mysteries:Is evolutiona social construction?(Cambridge,Mass.: HarvardUniv. Press, 1999). For a ratherdifferent approachsee VassilikiBetty Smocovitis, UnifyingBiology: The EvolutionarySynthesisand EvolutionaryBiology (Princeton,N.J.: PrincetonUniv. Press, 1996).

The

Psychology in

Britain

and

of

the

Emotions

America

Nineteenth

in

the

Century

The Role of Religious and AntireligiousCommitments By Thomas Dixon*

INTRODUCTION

In 1884, a piece of verse entitled Our Modern Philosophers: Darwin, Bain and Spencer or The Descent of Man, Mind and Body; A Rhyme with Reasons, Essays, Notes and Quotations was published under the pseudonym "Psychosis." (At this time, the terms "neurosis" and "psychosis" did not refer to mental disorders; "neurosis" simply meant "brain state," and "psychosis" referred to the correlated mental state.) The author started by noting that these three modem philosophers were perceived by "nine-tenths of the Christian world" as enemies of religion: Threemen of genius and free-thought, An intellectualsynod, In conclavesat to bringto naught The worksand governmentof God. Says Darwin:'God did not make man, To demonstrateI'll provethis;' Says Spencer:'Since the worldbegan, God'sgovernmenthas gone amiss;' 'By my hypothesis,'says Bain, 'Man'simmortality'sa myth-his soul'shis brain.' Psychosis himself rejected this idea of a conflict between science and religion. He also denied, at least in the cases of Charles Darwin and Herbert Spencer, that anti* Facultyof Divinity,CambridgeUK CB3 9BS, and ChurchillCollege, CambridgeUK CB3 ODS I am gratefulto the BritishAcademy for their supportin the form of a PostdoctoralFellowship. I am also particularlygrateful to John Brooke, Greg Radick, Christie Lerch, L6on Turner,EmilyClaireHutchinson,FraserWatts,and GermanBerrios for their support,suggestions, criticisms, and advice concerningthis essay and to anonymousOsiris readersfor severalhelpful suggestions. ' Psychosis [pseud.], Our Modern Philosophers: Darwin, Bain and Spencer,or The Descent of Man, Mind and Body; A Rhyme with Reasons, Essays, Notes and Quotations (London: Fisher & Unwin, 1884), p. vii. ? 2001 by The Historyof Science Society.All rightsreserved.0369-7827/01/1601-0001$2.00 Osiris, 2001, 16:00-00

288

PSYCHOLOGYOF THE EMOTIONSIN THE NINETEENTHCENTURY

289

religious sentiments had motivated their scientific views on "man, mind, and body." Indeed, Psychosis saw no necessary link at all between the acceptance of physiological and evolutionary psychologies on the one hand and the denial or acceptance of traditional religious beliefs on the other. More than a century later, historians have made little progress in providing evidence with which to answer Psychosis' question: Were psychological theories of the nineteenth century, or were they not, shaped by their authors' religious views? Indeed, few have even posed the question. Historiography on science-and-religion has focused mainly on physics and biology and much less frequently on psychology, while historians of psychology have tended, in their desire to find precursors to contemporary psychologies, to produce rather narrow histories that overlook the impacts made by religious and antireligious views on past psychologies.2 In this essay I take the historiographical discussion forward by setting out some concrete criteria by which evidence for causal, explanatory links between religious attitudes and psychological theories can be evaluated. Having set out these criteria, I put the historiographical theory into practice in a case study of theories of emotions in Britain and America in the nineteenth century. I examine the evidence, first of all, for the claim that the replacement of the old categories of "passions and affections of the soul" with the new nineteenth-century concept of "emotions" was motivated by hostility to traditional religious beliefs. Here I make a particular study of two Scottish theorists of the mind: the Edinburgh philosopher Thomas Brown (1778-1820), who was responsible for introducing the new concept of emotions, and the psychologist Alexander Bain (1818-1903). Next, I ask whether the content of certain later emotions theories can be explained by an appeal to their authors' prior Christian commitments. The central figures here are two American "preacher-psychologists": James McCosh (1811-1894) and George Trumbull Ladd (1842-1921). (The religious beliefs with which the actors in this story were engaged were predominantly those of one form or another of AngloAmerican Protestant Christianity.) At first glance, the case of the shift from talk of passions and affections to talk of emotions seems to provide strong evidence of a connection between religious and psychological preferences.3 To speak of "passions and affections of the soul" was to embed one's thought in a network of distinctively Christian concepts and categories. In contrast, the category of "emotions" was alien to traditional Christian thought and was part of a newer and more secular network of words and ideas. No one (to my knowledge) ever wrote a work called The Psychology of the Passions nor one called The Emotions of the Soul. This simple observation highlights an important fact about the way that these terms derived their meanings from networks of related concepts. The words "passions" and "affections" belonged to a network of words 2 For exceptions to this generalrule, however,see StephenJacyna,"The Physiology of Mind, the Unity of Nature, and the Moral Orderin VictorianThought,"Brit. J. Hist. Sci. 14 (1981):109-32;

John Milbank, Theology and Social Theory: Beyond Secular Reason (Oxford: Blackwell, 1990); Richard Webster, Why Freud was wrong: Sin, Science and Psychoanalysis (London: Harper Collins, 1995); Edward Reed, From Soul to Mind: The Emergence of Psychology from Erasmus Darwin to

WilliamJames (New Haven:Yale Univ. Press, 1997). 3This shift in terminologyis the focus of my doctoral dissertation,which traces the shift from eighteenth-centuryChristianwritersto the works of William James and his critics at the end of the nineteenthcentury.See Thomas Dixon, "FromPassions and Affections to Emotions:A Case-Study in Christianand Scientific Psychologies, 1714-1903,"Ph.D. diss., CambridgeUniv., 2000.

290

THOMAS DIXON

such as "of the soul" "conscience," "Fall," "sin" "grace" "Spirit" "Satan;' "will" "lower appetite," and "self love." The word "emotions" was, from the outset, part of a different network of terms such as "psychology," "law,""observation,""evolution," "organism,""brain,""nerves,""expression," "behavior" and "viscera." While antireligious, and merely nonreligious psychologists were not the only ones to use the word "emotions," they did so sooner and integrated the category into their psychologies more readily than did their Christian contemporaries. The secular triumviratepicked out by Psychosis of Darwin, Bain, and Spencer were among these early emotions theorists. Christian writers, especially in more conservative environments such as Oxford and Cambridge (and some American colleges) continued to use the terms "will" "passions', "affections," and "sentiments" much more than the term "emotions." There was, then, a correlation between the adoption of the new emotions discourse on the one hand, and lack of traditional Christian belief on the other. There was also a correlation, later in the century, when the transition to emotions talk had become afait accompli, between Christian faith and the adoption of cognitive and antireductionist theories of emotions. RELIGIONAND PSYCHOLOGY:SOME REFLECTIONSON WORLDVIEWS,EXPLANATIONS,AND EVIDENCE

Many obstacles stand in the way of the historian's attempt to take correlations such as those between particularreligious commitments and particular emotions theories and turn them into causal explanations. There are many other possible interpretations of such correlations; the causal explanation that the theories in question were directly shaped by religious attitudes is not the only option. For example, it is possible that, freed from the constraints of an old-fashioned religious typology, psychological thinkers such as Brown and Bain could see that the new category of "emotions" provided a better delineation of mental states such as love, joy, hope, fear, anger, and the like than had the old categories of passions and affections. On this view, their religious attitudes would not be directly linked with the content of their theories. The correlation on its own does not provide sufficient evidence to make the claim that religious or antireligious views played a causal role. Furthermore, as John Brooke and Stephen J. Wykstra both note in their contributions to the present volume, the historian should not too quickly take the defense of certain philosophical or metaphysical positions to be evidence of an author's religious or antireligious views, in the absence of further evidence. (See John Brooke, "Religious Belief and the Content of the Sciences," and Stephen J. Wykstra, "Religious Beliefs, Metaphysical Beliefs, and Historiography of Science.") So, for example, nineteenth-century authors' metaphysical commitments to mind-body dualism on the one hand, or to a reductionist materialism about mind on the other, did not always have a religious or antireligious flavor, although they very often did. We should also distinguish anti-religious beliefs from merely non-religious ("atheological" or "extra-Christian")metaphysical beliefs.4 The absence of a theological perspective from a particulartext by no means entails that its author was an atheist. The 4 1 have written more extensively on the differences between theological, antitheological,and atheological views in Thomas Dixon, "Theology,Anti-Theology,and Atheology: From Christian Passions to SecularEmotions,"ModernTheology 15 (1999):297-330.


291

new emotions discourse of the mid-nineteenth century, for example, could perhaps be seen as a merely nonreligious or atheological psychological categorization rather than as an actively antireligious one. Again taking Brooke's and Wykstra's remarks as starting points, I agree that it is useful to think of individuals' a priori religious or nonreligious metaphysical commitments as comprising their worldviews.5 Three essential components of a worldview are (1) assumptions about the nature of reality (ontological commitments); (2) assumptions about how best to acquire knowledge about reality (epistemological commitments); and (3) commitments to particular textual and metaphorical resources as the best way to articulate knowledge of reality (narrative and explanatory commitments). To take some examples, a Christian worldview might assume that God is the ground and cause of all reality, that revelation and reason are the two principal sources of knowledge about that reality, and that the Bible provides some of the best ways of explaining and narrating human reality. A secular-scientific worldview might assume matter or nature to be the ultimate reality, might privilege experimentation as the way to discover the nature of that reality, and might look to natural history and mathematics for narrativeand explanatory tools. I do not wish to suggest that there is just one Christian worldview, nor that there is just one scientific worldview; these examples are simply illustrative. This use of the idea of a "worldview" is in accord with the "symmetrical" way in which Wykstra has applied the concept: "[W]orldview-sensitive construction of scientific guiding commitments has played an important role over the past three centuries," he argues, for "theistic and nontheistic scientists alike."6 The approach I take here is also a deliberately symmetrical one, in which worldviews, which might be broadly religious, antireligious, or merely metaphysical, can influence theory choice and can shape the content of a theory. In other words, I intend to approach the question of the shaping of cognitive content evenhandedly; I see no prima facie reason to suppose that either religious or antireligious psychological thinkers were more likely to produce theories shaped by their prior metaphysical commitments. The appeal to worldviews raises further issues about evidence and explanation. There is a danger that an appeal to a writer's worldview could be vacuous if "worldview" simply meant whatever assumptions seemed to lie behind the theory in question. It is essential that evidence external to the theory in question is adduced as evidence of its author's worldview. Even then the worldview itself stands in need of explanation: it is not an explanatory terminus (as, indeed, nothing is), although in some circumstances it might be as far as the historian can go down a particular line. It is at this stage that all the rich and complex psychological, social, cultural, political, economic, and geographical facts investigated in any "contextual" history need to be brought to bear. Reasons for inhabiting one worldview ratherthan another may often be complex and deep-seated. These are all reasons for employing caution and rigor when looking for evidence that the content of a theory can be explained with reference to worldview 5 For furtherdiscussionof the worldviewproducedby scientificwritersin the nineteenthandtwentieth centuries,see Dixon, "Atheology"(cit. n. 4), especially pp. 314-25. 6 StephenWykstra,"ShouldWorldviewsShape Science? Towardan IntegrationistAccount of Scientific Theorizing,"in Facets of Faith and Science, ed. Jitse van der Meer, 4 vols., vol. 2: The Role

of Beliefs inI Mathematics and the Natural Sciences: An Augustinian Perspective (Lanham, Md.:

Univ. Press of America, 1996). pp. 123-71, on p. 162.

292

THOMAS DIXON

commitments held by its author that can properly be called "religious" or "antireligious." What sort of evidence might the historian hope to find to substantiate such a claim? Starting with the weakest sort of evidence and ascending toward the strongest, at least five levels can be differentiated: Level 1. Prima facie compatibility between the content of the theory and the religious or antireligious view in question. Level 2. Level 1 plus evidence external to the theory of its author'scommitment to the religious or antireligious view in question. Level 3. Level 2 plus an explicit statement by the author (stronger evidence) or by his or her associates or contemporaries (weaker evidence) of the compatibility between the theory and the religious or antireligious view in question. Level 4. Level 3, where the statement is to the effect that the religious or antireligious view actually influenced the way in which the author constructed the theory (as opposed to the relation being merely coincidental). Level 5. Level 4, corroborated by several different sources (i.e., the statement that the author's religious or antireligious views shaped his or her theory is made several times in different texts and/or by several different people, including the author). This incomplete list of possible levels of evidence relates to claims that the content of a theory has been shaped by its author's religious or antireligious commitments, which is a separate issue from whether the theory was subsequently taken up by other authors as part of a pro- or antireligious campaign. I am concerned in this essay only with the first sort of claim. I should also add an apology at the outset that virtually none of the evidence that I present concerning the content of theories of emotions reaches beyond level 3. It will still be of value to have levels 4 and 5 in mind as higher levels of evidence to which to aspire. One of my goals in presenting this list of increasingly demanding levels of evidence is to draw attention to the amount that is lacking from an account that rests content primarily with level 1 primafacie compatibility. Elsewhere, I have criticized this tendency in accounts of the influence of theological thought on psychological and social theory offered by John Milbank, Richard Webster, and Edward Reed.7 Evidence of mere prima facie compatibility of prior worldview commitments with the content of psychological texts can be strengthened, even in the absence of further external evidence, by seeking broad trends rather than concentrating on isolated examples; that is, by looking for correlations between types of religious and antireligious commitments and types of theory, rather than a clearly articulated chain of cause and effect in each individual case. This may be the best way to proceed when one finds oneself lacking conclusive biographical or autobiographical evidence. In 7 Dixon, 'Atheology" (cit. n. 4),

especially pp. 312-20.


293

what follows I produce evidence of broad trends in the case of theories of emotions. I also present detailed biographical information about the proponents of psychological theories that constitutes evidence from levels 2, 3, and, occasionally, 4. One final approach is geographical.8 Each of the psychological thinkers discussed here was conditioned by local social, academic, institutional, and intellectual circumstances. For example, the term "emotions" was taken up earlier by Scottish writers familiar with Brown's lectures (e.g., Thomas Chalmers, James Mackintosh) than it was by most English writers. In particular, English writers in Oxford and Cambridge were slow to make the transition and persisted with their use of the language of "passions" and "affections" into the second half of the century. Within Britain, it was London-based writers such as Spencer and Bain who did most to transform the concept of emotions from a mentalistic to a physicalist one. London, rather than Scotland, Oxford, or Cambridge, was the center of the most radical British thought, including physiological psychological thought, in the middle of the nineteenth century.9 Finally, it was perhaps due to local factors in New England that James McCosh, George T. Ladd, and others were able to combine professional Christian ministry with professional psychology in a way that was not found in Britain. These local geographical factors are clearly significant, and I will make a few more observations about them in the course of the narrativebelow. FROM PASSIONS AND AFFECTIONS TO EMOTIONS: A CASE STUDY

The distinction between the soul's unruly passions and its enlightened affections had been a commonplace of medieval theological psychology and continued to be used by theologians and philosophers up until the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. This distinction was adopted, for example, in the Essay on the Nature and Conduct of the Passions and Affections (1728) by the Scottish neo-Scholastic philosopher Francis Hutcheson (1694-1746), and in the Treatise Concerning the Religious Affections (1746) by the New England minister and philosopher Jonathan Edwards (1703-1758).10 Even in the nineteenth century the Scottish evangelical Thomas Chalmers (1780-1847), the Cambridge Anglican polymath William Whewell (1794-1866), and Oxford conservatives such as William Sewell (1804-1874) and John Henry Newman (1801-1890) all showed a familiarity with the traditional distinction between the "passions" (or, sometimes, "desires") and the "affections."1 8 David Livingstone'scomparativestudy of the receptionof Darwinianscience in Belfast, Ireland, and Princeton,New Jersey,in the United States, in the 1870s and 1880s, has illustratedthe value of the geographicalapproachparticularlywell. He concludes, "By thus takingthe historyand the geographyof science and religion seriously,we may begin to escape the temptationto prefercomfortable idealizationsand simplificationsto the messy contingenciesof history."David Livingstone,"Darwinism and Calvinism:The Belfast-PrincetonConnection,"Isis 83 (1992):408-28, on p. 428. 9 For furthercommentson some of these geographicalissues, see Dixon, "PassionsandAffections to Emotions"(cit. n. 3), especially chaps. 4 and 5. t0For more on eighteenth-centuryChristianpsychologies of the passions and affections, see my essays "Passions and Affections to Emotions" (cit. n. 3), chap. 2, and "Atheology"(cit. n. 4),

pp. 301-5. " Thomas Chalmers, On the Power, Wisdom and Goodness of God as Manifested in the Adaptation of External Nature to the Moral and Intellectual Constitution of Man (1833; London: Bohn, 1853),

pp. 346-7, William Whewell, preface and notes to JamesMackintosh,Dissertationon the Progress of Ethical Philosophy,3rd ed. (Edinburgh:Black, 1862), pp. xlv n, 79n; William Sewell, Christian Morals (London:James Burns, 1840), pp. 308, 345-52; John H. Newman, An Essay in Aid of a Grammarof Assent (London:Burns.Oates, & Co., 1870), pp. 10, 27, 79, 80, 86, 117.

294

THOMAS DIXON

Whewell's preface and comments on the Dissertation on the Progress of Ethical Philosophy (1836) by the Scottish moral philosopher Sir James Mackintosh (17651832) serve as good illustrations here. In his Dissertation Mackintosh had recommended referring to the "emotive" part of human nature and to "the emotions." These terminological innovations were not welcomed by Whewell, who felt that the phrases "passions and affections" or "desires and affections" were perfectly adequate to refer to that part of human nature, and that they did not stand in need of replacement by neologisms.12 So, while some Scottish mental scientists and their followers were increasingly using Thomas Brown's new category of emotions, conservative English thinkers were still committed to more traditional and Christian language.13A brief step back to the medieval works of Augustine and Aquinas reveals the origins of the critical distinction between the soul's passions and its affections to which Whewell and others continued to appeal. The will and the intellect were the two great faculties of the classical Christian soul as described in the psychologies of Saint Augustine of Hippo and Saint Thomas Aquinas. The will was further divided into two parts: the higher, intellectual will (the will proper), whose movements were the affections; and the lower, nonrational, animal, or sensory will, whose movements were the appetites, desires, and passions. The appetites were hunger, thirst, and sexual desire. The passions included love, hate, hope, fear, and anger. Appetites and passions were both seen as instances of the lower animal soul and the body being unruly and disobedient toward the higher rational soul. They were thus interpretedas signs of and punishments for the original sinful disobedience of Adam and Eve toward God; they were signs of the Fall. (The term "passion" was also used, as it still is, to refer to the suffering and death of Christ.) The higher affections of love, sympathy, and joy were understood by Augustine and Aquinas to be signs of the divine side, rather than the fallen side, of human nature. These affections, like reason itself, showed that human beings still contained vestiges of the image of God in which they had been created, and that they could finally be saved and reunited with God. The affections were also interpreted as signs of the order or direction of the will. A carnal will was affected by worldly objects and, ultimately, by love of self; a holy will's affections were for goodness, truth and, ultimately, God.14 Prior to the emergence of the category of emotions, the language of passions and affections was used by both religious and nonreligious writers on human mental life. Secular moralists and literary writers, as well as more explicitly theological and religious writers on the faculties of the soul, used these terms. Nevertheless, this distinction and these concepts did derive historically from theological psychologies and were well suited to a Christian understanding of the human person. Additionally, 12See Whewell'sfootnotes to Mackintosh,Dissertation(cit. n. 11), pp. xlv, 79.

'1 Mackintosh'sDissertation was initially partof the introductoryvolume to the eighth edition of the EncyclopaediaBritannica.For an interestingbiographyof Mackintoshsee JamesMcCosh, The

Scottish Philosophy from Hutcheson to Hamilton (London: Macmillan, 1875), chap. 46. McCosh

scathinglyconcludedthatMackintoshhad largely wastedhis philosophicaltalentsand had "attained the highest eminence only as a talkerin the best social circles of London"P. 359. 14See Saint Augustine, The City of God, XIV.9; St. Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae Ia.82, 5,

ad 1; Ia.2ae.22. 3; and Ia.2ae.24. 2.


295

after the emergence of the category of emotions and an alternative psychological vocabulary, use of the language of "soul" "will" "passions," and "affections" served, better than it had before, as a mark of allegiance to older ways of thinking about human mental life. It is, then, a difficult task to distinguish between writings that should be interpretedsimply as examples of "traditional"or "old-fashioned" thought about mental life, and those that should be described as distinctively "religious" or "Christian."This is where, again, we must look for evidence external to the theory itself of the religious or antireligious commitments of the author. The "Thin Theist": Thomas Brown (1778-1820) Thomas Brown's Lectures on the Philosophy of the Human Mind (1820) was the single most important work in introducing the term "emotions" as a major psychological category to the academic and literary worlds during the first half of the nineteenth century. Brown was a pivotal figure in the history of English-language affective psychologies (Figure 1). A doctor of medicine and professor of moral philosophy in the University of Edinburgh, his Lectures were very broadly within the same tradition as the Common Sense school of Thomas Reid (1710-1796) and Dugald Stewart (1753-1828). However, unlike his intuitionist and realist predecessors, Brown was sympathetic to the empiricist associationism of David Hume (17111776) and David Hartley (1705-1757) (although-ever the terminological innovator-Brown preferred the term "suggestion" to "association").l5 His philosophy tended much more toward skepticism and relativism than did that of Reid and Stewart. Brown's Lectures was one of the most successful philosophy books of the period, going through twenty editions between 1820 and 1860.16 James McCosh and the historian of philosophy and psychologist J. D. Morell (1816-1891) (who attended Brown's Edinburgh lectures himself) both paint vivid pictures, in their histories of philosophy, of Brown's charisma as well as of the enormous influence of his lectures in Britain and America between 1820 and 1850.17 15Thomas Brown, Lectureson the Philosophyof the HumanMind, 19th ed., 4 vols. (Edinburgh: JamesBallantyne& Co., 1851), vol. 2, especially pp. 203-9, 405-12. I cite fromthis editionthroughout. For an analysis of the middle position that Brown took between the traditionalScottish school and the more radicalassociationistssuch as Hume and Hartley,see H. C. Warren,A History of the Association Psychology (London: Constable, 1921), pp. 70-80, 157-63. See also [John S. Mill], "Bain'sPsychology,"EdinburghReview 110 (1859):287-321, on pp. 287-8; McCosh, ScottishPhilosophy (cit. n. 13), pp. 328-30. 16On the extent of Brown'sinfluenceon nineteenth-centurypsychologicalthoughtsee Leslie Stephen, The English Utilitarians,3 vols., vol. 2: James Mill (London:Duckworth,1900), pp. 271-87; F. H. Page, "WilliamLyallin his Setting,"Dalhousie Review60 (1980):49-66, on pp. 60-1; Graham Richards,Mental Machinery:The Origins and Consequencesof Psychological Ideas, pt. 1: 16001850 (London:Athlone, 1992), pp. 332-9; Reed, Soul to Mind (cit. n. 2), pp. 68-76. Stephen,Richards,and Page all say thatthe Lecturesranto nineteeneditions. However,they ranto at least twenty. The CambridgeUniversityLibraryholds an 1860 twentiethedition, to which both Welsh'smemoir of Brown and Chalmers'preface to the ethical sections are appended.Thomas Brown, Lectureson the Philosophyof the HumanMind,20th ed. (London:WilliamTegg & Co., 1860). 17 McCosh, ScottishPhilosophy(cit. n. 13), pp. 322, 324; J. D. Morell,An Historical and Critical Viewof the SpeculativePhilosophyof Europe in the NineteenthCentury,2 vols. (London:William Pickering, 1846), vol. 1, pp. vi-vii.

296

THOMAS DIXON

.'-, -

'

*/

.' -*

f.,, ,/

I

//Z,/

Figure 1. Thomas Brown, M.D. (1778-1820). Engraving done in 1806. (From Thomas Brown, Lectures on the Philosophy of the Human Mind, 20th ed. [London: William Tegg & Co., 1860]. Reproduced by permission of the Syndics of Cambridge University Library.) From Passions and Affections to Emotions

Brown was the first writer systematically to replace passions and affections with emotions in his work. Reid, writing in 1788, and his pupil James Beattie (17351803), writing in 1790, while making occasional ill-defined references to "emotion" had relied almost exclusively on the traditional categories of "passions" (desires and aversions connected with bodily commotion) and milder "affections," as derived particularly from Aquinas via the reformed Scholasticism of Scottish Enlightenment figures such as Hutcheson.8I Dugald Stewart, Brown's predecessor in the Edinburgh l For an accountof the traditionalcategories as exposed by Aquinas, see the SummaTheologiae Ia.82, 5 and Ia.2ae.22-7; FrancisHutcheson,An Essay on the Nature and Conductof the Passions and Affections,3rd ed. (1742; reprintedGainesville, Fla.: Scholars'Facsimiles and Reprints,1969), p. 28; JamesBeattie, Elementsof Moral Science (1790; Delmar,Del.: Scholars'Facsimiles and Reprints, 1976), pp. 235-55. On Beattie. see McCosh. ScottishPhilosophyi(cit. n. 13), chap. 29.


297

chair of moral philosophy and a follower of Joseph Butler (1692-1752) and Reid, divided the active powers into "appetites," "desires," and "affections"; he used "emotion" as a rough synonym for "feeling" but not as a significant psychological category.19 Brown made the terminological transition from the "active powers"-"appetites," "passions," "desires," and "affections"-to the "emotions." The fact that several early writers on "emotions" from the 1820s onward made explicit reference to Brown's definition and classification of the emotions is further evidence of the importance of Brown's innovation.2"Intellect, the Emotions and the Moral Nature (1855) by the Edinburgh-educated William Lyall (1811-1890) was one of the first books by a North American teacher to have the term "emotions" in its title. Significantly, Lyall's philosophy was summarized by an obituarist as "a modification of Brown's."21 Views on Religion and Natural Science The internal textual evidence of Brown's Lectures suggests a very thin and superficial sort of religious commitment. His references to God or the soul were few, and his use of terms such as "divine Being'" "Preserver of Nature'""Authorof Nature," "Eternal One," and "divine Author" were indicative of his preference for natural over revealed religion; his text had no theological depth and relied exclusively on metaphysics in preference to Scripture and tradition.22Six of the one hundred lectures were devoted to Brown's natural religion. In these the Deity was described, in a Unitarian and Deistic way, as single, good, and omniscient, "the one designing Power"23whose existence was known by inference from the natural world. There were no references to Scripture, to the Fall, to Christ, to the Holy Spirit, to grace, to sin, to salvation; in short, there was no Christianity. We can also seek evidence of Brown's religious commitments in sources other than his own Lectures. We know from his biographer, Rev. David Welsh, and from other sources, that Brown was opposed to religious tests for holders of academic posts. He was particularly hostile to the practice, in Scotland, of electing only clergymen of the Presbyterian Church to chairs. He even published a pamphlet on the question, in support of the layman John Leslie's candidature for the chair in natural philosophy in opposition to the candidate of the moderate party of the Church. The incident serves as a useful reminder of how complicated the relationships between "science" and "religion" can be: an unlikely alliance emerged between Brown, a 19Dugald Stewart, The Philosophy of the Active and Moral Powers of Man, 2 vols. (Edinburgh:

Black, 1828), vol. 1, pp. 15, 22-3, 75, 231-92.

20 E.g., George Payne, Elements of Mental and Moral Science (London: Holdsworth, 1828), p. vi and chap. 6; George Ramsay, Analysis and Theory of the Emotions (London: Longman, Brown, Green, & Longmans, 1848), pp. 1-3; William Cooke A Commentarv on Medical and Moral Life; or Mind and the Emotions Considered in Relation to Health, Disease and Religion (London: Longman Brown, 1852), chaps. 4 and 8; William Lyall, Intellect, the Emotions, and the Moral Nature (Edin-

burgh:Thomas Constable & Co., 1855), pp. 287-9; AlexanderBain, The Emotionsand The Will, 2nd ed. (London:Longmans,Green, & Co., 1865), p. 606; JamesMcCosh, The Emotions(London: Macmillan, 1880). 21 Quotedin Page, "WilliamLyall"(cit. n. 16), p. 59. 22 Brown, Lectures(cit. n. 15), vol. 1, pp. 118, 179, 196, 397, 401; vol. 2, p. 26; vol. 4, p. 345. Cited hereafteras Lectures. 23 Ibid., vol. 4, p. 345.

298

THOMAS DIXON

Deistic believer accused of atheism himself, and Leslie, the candidate supported by the evangelical wing of the Church. Brown's pamphlet defended Leslie against the charge that Hume's theory of causation led to atheism; so Deist and evangelical were united by their desire to see a Humean, and a layman, elected to the chair of natural philosophy.24These intricacies aside, the practice of favoring clergymen in competitions for academic posts, in fact, proved a significant obstacle to Brown's own eventual appointment as the professor of moral philosophy in Edinburgh in 1810, since he was a mere doctor of medicine rather than of divinity and was not a cleric.25The only explicit reference Welsh's memoir made to Brown's views on religion was to describe his attitude as "[t]he most perfect toleration of all religious opinions."26 We can discover some evidence of the sort described as level (3) above by looking at the testimony of contemporaries or near-contemporaries of Brown. In works written between the 1820s and 1900 Brown is repeatedly accused of having allegiances with "materialist" and "atheist" beliefs, especially French sensationalism, phrenology, the denial of efficient causation, necessitarianism, and positivism.27 Thomas Chalmers, although following Brown's view of emotions to a large extent, felt that Brown, as well as failing to treat of revelation, had "very low and inadequate views of the character of God."28I am not suggesting that such opinions as these are infallible, but in this case there is a good deal of evidence that contemporaries and nearcontemporaries of Brown believed that he had been committed to views inimical to Christian faith, and that these views had shaped his mental science (whereas no one suggested that his mental science was shaped by Christian religious commitments). Brown's personal and professional alienation from the Christian religion and the Christian establishment in Scotland led to his search for alternative authorities and methods in his philosophical work. It was in the language and ideology of the natural 24 David Welsh, "Memoirof Dr Brown,"in ibid., vol. 1, pp. 1-84, especially pp. 14-16; McCosh, ScottishPhilosophy(cit. n. 13), pp. 284, 320. On the Leslie affair,see also Stephen,Utilitarians(cit. n. 16), pp. 270-1; J. B. Morrell, "The Leslie Affair: Careers, Kirk, and Politics in Edinburghin 1905,"Scot. Hist. Rev.54 (1975):63-82; StewartJ. Brown, ThomasChalmersand the Godly Commonwealthin Scotland(Oxford:OxfordUniv. Press, 1982), pp. 24-7; AnandC. Chitnis,TheScottish Enlightenmentand Early VictorianEnglish Society (London:Croom Helm, 1986), pp. 25, 30, 73, 96; Boyd Hilton, The Age of Atonement:The Influenceof Evangelicalismon Social and Economic Thought,1795-1865 (Oxford:Clarendon,1988), pp. 24-5. 25 Welsh, "Dr Brown"(cit. n. 25), pp. 14-26. 26 Ibid., p. 55. 27JohnBallantyne,An Examinationof the HumanMind(Edinburgh:Blackwood, 1828), pp. 27-8; Morell, SpeculativePhilosophy(cit. n. 17), vol. 2, pp. 27, 33; RobertBlakey,Historyof the Philosophy of Mind, 4 vols. (London: Saunders, 1848), vol. 4, pp. 28, 39-46; James McCosh, "Scottish Metaphysicians,"NorthBrit. Rev.27 (1857):404-9; McCosh, ScottishPhilosophy(cit. n. 13), p. 10; Stephen, Utilitarians(cit. n. 16), p. 273. For Brown'sattemptto distance himself from Etienne de Condillac'ssystem see Lectures,vol. 2, pp. 186, 191-203. On the similarityof Brown'sand Condillac's system, despite Brown'sclaims to the contrary,see Stephen, Utilitarians(cit. n. 16), pp. 282-4. For George Combe'spraise of Brown'ssystem, and Brown'slack of enthusiasmfor phrenology,see David Welsh, Account of the Life and Writingsof Thomas Brown M.D. (Edinburgh:Tait, 1825), pp. 520-1. On the materialistand atheistic associationsof phrenology,see Roger Cooter, The Cultural Meaning of Popular Science: Phrenologyand the Organisationof Consent in NineteenthCenturyBritain (Cambridge:CambridgeUniv. Press, 1984), pp. 39-50; Robert M. Young, "The Role of Psychology in the Nineteenth-CenturyEvolutionaryDebate,"in Historical Conceptionsof Psychology, ed. Mary Henle, Julian Jaynes, and John J. Sullivan (New York: Springer, 1973), pp. 180-204, on pp. 187-8. On Brown'spositivism, see CharlesD. Cashdollar,The Transformation of Theology, 1830-1900: Positivism and Protestant Thoughtin Britain and America (Princeton: PrincetonUniv. Press, 1989), pp. 54-5, 157. 2xQuotedin Hilton,Age of Atonement(cit. n. 24), p. 179.


299

sciences that Brown found alternative and potentially inclusive ways of describing human mental life. In 1797 he, along with a handful of like-minded fellow students in Edinburgh such as Henry Brougham (1778-1868), Francis Horner (1778-1817), and Francis Jeffrey (1773-1850) (all of whom were later involved in founding the Edinburgh Review) had formed a philosophical club called the Academy of Physics.29Its purpose, according to Brougham, was to apply "the Newtonian philosophy" to "every subject to which induction and reasoning can be applied."3"One of the subjects for investigation laid down in the minutes of the academy's first meeting was "The physics of mind, or the philosophy of mind, excluding religious controversies and party politics."3' This is valuable evidence of Brown's prior commitment to the construction of a de-Christianized psychology modeled on the physics of matter; this commitment was a major component of what could be called his "worldview," which shaped his mental science and can partially explain the form and content of his theory of emotions. Browns Psychological System Returning to Brown's lectures, we find evidence of how his commitment to the methods of natural science shaped his psychology. Brown termed his mental philosophy variously "physiology of the mind," "mental chemistry,""mental science" "intellectual physics," and even "the physical investigation of the mind"32However, Brown's "mental science," like that of moderates such as Reid and Stewart as well as that of the associationists Hume, David Hartley (1705-1757) and James Mill (1773-1836), was a purely mentalistic and introspective discipline.33 It was a science, like chemistry or physiology, in that it analyzed the whole into parts, classified those parts, and described the dynamics of their interaction. But it was not a physical science: it simply analyzed and classified mental phenomena qua mental phenomena. Leslie Stephen (1832-1904) provided the following summary, in his 1900 History of English Utilitarians: "We may then say briefly that Brown carries out in his own fashion the conception of psychology which makes it an inductive science parallel to the physical sciences, and to be pursued by the same methods. We have to do with 'feelings' instead of atoms, and with mental instead of 'material' chemistry."34 Brown's mental science sought to discover the "natural laws of thought and emotion."35Sensations, thoughts, and emotions connected in chains of cause and effect 29

Welsh, Account (cit. n. 27), pp. 498-506; Susan A. Grave, The Scottish Philosophy of Common

Sense (Oxford:Clarendon,1960), pp. 2-3; GeoffreyCantor,"TheAcademyof Physics at Edinburgh, 1797-1800," Soc. Stud. Sci. 5 (1975):109-34;

Chitnis, Scottish Enlightenment (cit. n. 24), pp. 62-6.

McCosh, Scottish Philosophy (cit. n. 13), p. 319, erroneouslycalls the club the "Academyof Sciences."For more on Jeffrey'scircle andthe foundingof the EdinburghReview,see McCosh, Scottish Philosophy(cit. n. 13), pp. 337-45; Cantor,'Academy of Physics,"pp. 131-4. 30Quoted in Richard Olson, Scottish Philosophy and British Physics, 1750-1880: A Study in the Foundations of the Victorian Scientific Style (Princeton: Princeton Univ. Press, 1975), pp. 11-12.

3tQuotedin Welsh,Account (cit. n. 27), p. 499.

32 Lectures, vol. 1, pp. 91, 157, 172, 271-85, 388. See also Richards, Mental Machinery (cit. n. 16),

pp. 336-8. 33 James

Mill, Analysis of the Phenomena of the Human Mind (London: Baldwin and Craddock,

1829). On Hume, Mill, and Hartleysee also TheodoreMischel, "'Emotion'and 'Motivation'in the Development of English Psychology: D. Hartley, James Mill, A. Bain," J. Hist. Behav. Sci. 3 (1966): 123-144. 34Stephen, Utilitarians(cit. n. 16), p. 284. 35Lectures, vol. 1, p. 131.

300

THOMAS DIXON

modeled on Newtonian physics and subjected to analysis on the model of the new natural science of chemistry replaced the passions and affections of a classical Christian soul. This brings us to Brown's classification of mental states. It is significant that it was a classification of mental states (or "feelings" or "affections" of the mind, as he also called them) rather than of powers or faculties of the soul. Brown was iconoclastic in his approach to previous classificatory schemes. He gave short shrift to the classical division endorsed by Christian theologians between the understanding and the will-"a division which is very ancient, but though sanctioned by the approbation of many ages, very illogical"-and argued that Reid's division between the intellectual powers and the active powers of the mind was really just the same system "under a change of name."36Brown was a self-confessed and enthusiastic innovator, seeing new classificatory schemes and terminologies as sources of enlightenment in themselves: [T]hereis alwayssome advantagegained,by viewing objectsaccordingto new circumstancesof agreementor analogy.We see, in this case, what had long passed before us unobserved,while we were accustomedonly to the orderandnomenclatureof a former method.... I am convincedthat no one has ever read over the mere terms of a new divisionin a science,howeverfamiliarthe science mayhavebeen to him, withoutlearning morethanthis new division itself, withoutbeing struckwith some propertyor relation, the importanceof which he now perceives most clearly,and which he is quite astonishedthathe shouldhaveoverlookedso long before.37 Although a new terminology in mental science could thus have a powerful effect on one's view of mental reality, Brown went on to warn that it should not be read as an invention of new powers, faculties, or substances but merely as a new way of classifying the modifications of the mind. He continued, "A difference of words is, in this case, more than a mere verbal difference. Though it be not the expression of a difference of doctrine, it very speedily becomes so."38This observation about the potential effects of introducing new terminology applies particularly well to Brown's own introduction of the new psychological term "emotions." This difference in words very speedily, as a result of its association with Brown's commitments to a protopositivist philosophy of science and to a "mental science" methodology, became not just a verbal difference but a difference of doctrine. Immediately after giving this analysis of the possible effects of introducing new terminology, in Lecture 16, Brown introduced his new classification of mental phenomena into sensations, thoughts, and emotions (summarized in Table 1). The states of mind were first reduced by Brown to two classes, "according as the causes, or immediate antecedents, of our feelings are themselves mental or material."39The causes of "external affections" (sensations) were material objects acting on the sensory organs; the causes of "internal affections" were mental feelings (either sensations or other internal affections). Brown introduced one of his "new generalizations of the phenomena of each class" by dividing the internal affections into 36

Lectures, Lectures, 3XLectures, 39 Lectures,

37

vol. 1, pp. 391-2. vol. 1, pp. 395-6.

vol. 1, p. 398. vol. 1, p. 403.

PSYCHOLOGY OF THEEMOTIONS IN THENINETEENTH CENTURY

301

Table 1. Thomas Brown's model of the human mind. States,Feelings, or Affectionsof the Mind ExternalAffectionsof the Mind Sensations II

InternalAffectionsof the Mind IntellectualStates or Thoughts

Emotions

Smell Taste Hearing Touch Vision Muscle Simple Relative Retro- Immediate Prosense suggestion suggestion spective spective

Source: Thomas Brown, Lectures on the Philosophy of' the Human Mind, 19th ed., 4 vols. (Edinburgh: James Ballantyne and Co., 1851), vol. 1, pp. 255, 272, 278, 295, 305, 387-415; vol. 2, pp. 203-9; vol. 3, pp. 24-33.

intellectual states of mind (or, in some places, "thoughts") and emotions.40 He was particularly at pains to justify the introduction of the term "emotions" in place of what Reid and others had called the "active powers" of the mind. J. D. Morell was strongly opposed to this replacement of the language of powers and faculties with the language of intellectual states and emotions: The tendencyof thisexchangeis most evidentlyof a sensationalcharacter;it diminishes the intensityof ournotionof self, as an independentsourceof power,andcontemplates the mind ratheras a passive existence, mouldedinto its differentstates either by the force of circumstanceson the one hand,or by its own inevitableand unalterablelaws on the other.4' This criticism was essentially sound: talking only of mental states rather than of the mind and importing epistemological and ontological assumptions from the physical sciences did give rise to a passive and necessitarian psychology. Brown himself gave three reasons for his change of terminology from "active powers" to "emotions": first, that he found the term "active powers" awkward and ambiguous; second, that intellectual states were the really active states of mind; and third, that he wished to include in his category of emotions many states that were not active-such as grief or astonishment-and some also that had traditionally but wrongly been considered intellectual powers, such as the feelings of beauty and sublimity.42 Interpretation of the Evidence Brown himself offered no religious or antireligious rationale for the change in language, which is why we must rely on a mixture of prima facie textual evidence and external evidence of Brown's commitment to nonreligious mental science, and on 40 Lectures, vol. 1, p. 403. 41 42

Morell, Speculative Philosophy (cit. n. 17), vol. 2, p. 27. Lectures, vol. 1, p. 404.

302

THOMAS DIXON

the testimony of his biographer and other historians, when it comes to speculating about the significance of the introduction of Brownian "emotions." My interpretation of the evidence is that social and personal circumstances, including Brown's membership in the Academy of Physics and his resentment of Church interference in academic appointments led to his alienation from traditional religious beliefs. In the place of religious metaphysics in Brown's "mental science," we find a firm commitment to ontological and epistemological beliefs derived from physics and chemistry. Brown had a marked preference for descriptions and explanations of mental states that used the language and concepts of these sciences rather than of Christianity. He was relying on the language of the natural sciences to create an alternative to the neo-Scholastic Christian psychology of Reid and Stewart. The result was that the active powers of the soul disappeared from his ontology and were replaced with emotions, which were not movements of the will or intellect but were ontologically basic atoms of feeling. Thus the change of terminology from Reid's and Stewart's active powers to Brown's emotions was more than a mere verbal difference. In later texts on mental science and psychology, Brown's influence was evident in the adoption of five of his teachings in particular: 1. Adoption of "mental science" methodology. This methodology was divided into two tasks: first, analyzing mental states into their components ("mental chemistry"), and second, discovering the laws of succession of mental states ("mental physics"). 2. The division of mental phenomena into "sensations," "thoughts,"and "emotions." 3. The statement that "emotions" could not be given a precise definition but were distinguished by a peculiar vividness of feeling. 4. The distinction between "sensations," which are feelings with external bodily causes, and "emotions," which are feelings with internal mental causes. 5. Classification of the emotions as "retrospective,""immediate,"and "prospective." The later nineteenth-century writers who most showed their indebtedness to Brown by adopting some or all of these positions were the Congregationalist divine George Payne (1781-1848), the associationist psychologist James Mill and his son John Stuart Mill (1806-1873), the evangelicals Thomas Chalmers and Thomas Upham (1799-1872), the Scottish aristocrat and philosophical writer Sir George Ramsay ( 1800-1871 ), the Scottish-Canadian minister William Lyall, Herbert Spencer (18201903),Alexander Bain, and James McCosh.43To the extent that these thinkers adopted 43 Payne, Elements (cit. n. 20); Mill, Analysis (cit. n. 33); Chalmers,Power, Wisdom, and Goodness (cit. n. 11); Thomas Upham, Principles of the Interior or Hidden Life: Designed Particularly for the Consideratio n of those who are Seeking Assurance of Faith and Perfect Love, "new edition" (London:

SampsonLow, Son, & Co., 1856); John S. Mill, A Systemof Logic, 2 vols. (London:Parker,1843); Ramsay, Analysis (cit. n. 20); idem, An Introduction to Mental Philosophy (Edinburgh: Black, 1853);


303

Brown's language and psychological system they were, sometimes inadvertently, adopting a de-Christianized psychology. The "Infidel": Alexander Bain (1818-1903) It was certainly the view of Psychosis that the Scottish philosopher and psychologist Alexander Bain played a crucial role in the world of Victorian scientific atheism. Bain, more than either Darwin or Spencer (both of whom had shown at least some degree of sympathy with certain "religious" beliefs), was associated by the author of Our Modern Philosophers with materialism and religious dissent. I hope to demonstrate here, focusing on Bain in particular,that the endorsement of physiological and evolutionary approaches to mind was indeed, in part, anti-Christian. Bain's widely used textbooks, The Senses and the Intellect (1855) and The Emotions and the Will (1859) (along with Darwin's The Expression of the Emotions [1872], the relevant sections of the expanded second edition of Spencer's The Principles of Psychology [ 1870-1872], and the latter'sessays on Bain and on the physiology of laughter) were particularly significant vehicles of the physiological-evolutionary approach to mind in general and to the emotions in particular (Figure 2).44 Bain's theory of the emotions was effectively a correlation of Brown's extremely broad new category with neurophysiological processes. During 1837, Bain had perused Brown's Lectures.45He would, however, have become familiar with Brown's term "emotion" through his much more extensive studies of Chalmers' work, especially his Bridgewater Treatise, which Bain had used as a textbook for some of his early teaching.46The beginning of the first chapter of the first edition of Bain's Emotions (1859) is as good an indication as any of the very wide range of the category of "emotions," which he had adopted from Brown via Chalmers: "Emotion is the name here used to comprehend all that is understood by feelings, states of feeling, pleasures, pains, passions, sentiments, affections."47Thus Bain and the other "infidel" psychologists sought to physicalize a whole array of human mental powers, many of which had previously been considered distinctively human powers of the soul that were not shared with animals and were not determined by the body. The question is to what extent the content of the new physicalist emotions theories can be explained with reference to their authors' religious or antireligious worldview commitments. I will start with some of the fundamental commitments of the "infidel" psychologists of emotions and examine how they may have shaped their idem, Principlesof Psychology(London:Waltonand Maberly,1857);WilliamLyall,Sermons(Edinburgh:Johnstone,1848); idem, Intellect(cit. n. 20); HerbertSpencer,Principlesof Psychology,2nd ed., 2 vols. (London:Williams and Norgate, 1870-1872); Alexander Bain, The Emotions and the Will(London:Parker,1859); McCosh, Emotions(cit. n. 20). 44Herbert Spencer, "The Physiology of Laughter," in idem, Essays: Scientific, Political and Specu-

lative, 2nd series (London:Williams & Norgate, 1863), pp. 105-19; idem, "Bain on the Emotions and the Will" in idem, Essays, pp. 120-42. 45AlexanderBain,Autobiography(London:Longmans,Green,& Co., 1904), p. 46. Citedhereafter as Autobiography.For a very useful recent account of Bain's background,life, and psychological works, see Rick Rylance, Victorian Psychology and British Culture, 1850-1880

Univ. Press, 2000), chap. 5. 46

Autobiography, p. 58.

47 Bain, Emotions(1859)

(cit. n. 43), p. 3.

(Oxford: Oxford

304

THOMAS DIXON

Figure 2. Alexander Bain (1818-1903). Drawing done in 1876. (From Alexander Bain, Autobiography [London: Longmans, Green & Co., 1904]. Reproduced by permission of the Syndics of Cambridge University Library.)

theories. The most important of these commitments were to monism, man-animal continuism, and to the rejection of design theology. Monism Bain, Spencer, and Darwin all opposed mind-body dualism. Bain explicitly attacked the view (espoused by most Christians and theists) that the mind used the body as its "instrument."48However, most of the physiological school equally denied that mind could be reduced to the operations of matter or was nothing more than matter. Instead they adopted an ontology of dual-aspect monism (or Spinozism). This meant that there was an unknown reality that underlay both physical and mental phenomena. Bain talked of giving an account of the physical "side" as well as the mental 4X Alexander Bain. Mind and Body: The Theories of Their Relation (London: King, 1873), pp. 132-3.


305

"side" of each emotion: the bodily symptoms of an emotion were the physical side of the mental fact.49 So, dual-aspect monism involved, in theory, making a commitment to a symmetrical and nonreductionist ontology; the dual-aspect monist did not reduce mental phenomena either to mere brain activity, in the manner of the materialist, nor to the properties of an autonomous mind, in the manner of the idealist or spiritualist. However, Bain, along with Spencer and Darwin, implied by his methodology and language that the real business of emotions went on at the physiological and neurological level. The implication was that emotions were the mental "side" of what was really and objectively an activity of the central nervous system. For example, Bain, in Body and Mind (1873), described fear as follows: "When a shock of fear paralyses the digestion, it is not the emotion of fear, in the abstract, or as a pure mental existence, that does the harm; it is the emotion in company with a peculiarly excited condition of the brain and nervous system; and it is this condition of the brain that deranges the stomach."50While the "emotion" was the mentalfeeling ratherthan the bodily conditions, which were the physical "side" of the emotion, the tenor of the piece was physicalist. The "shock of fear' which disturbed the digestion, was ultimately not the abstract "pure mental existence" but the "condition of the brain." Theodore Mischel has also noticed the lopsidedness of Bain's professed monism: Bain made psychological explanations parasitic upon physiological ones in terms of "nervous influences."51 Among the causes of this lopsidedness were Bain's particular epistemological commitments. He favored an observational methodology that made objective knowledge of outward signs paramount in psychology: But for ourpurposes,andfor all purposes,two statesof feeling mustbe held as identical when an identity exists between all the appearances,actions, and consequencesthat flow from, or accompanythem. If there be any peculiarshade, tone, or colouringof emotion thathas no outwardsign or efficacy,such peculiarityis inscrutableto the inquirer.It is enough for us to lay hold of the outwardmanifestations,and to recognise all the distinctionsthatthey bringto light.52 Bain's ideal psychological investigator would categorize emotions only by their objectively observable outward signs. This epistemological commitment was an inversion of most traditional Christian approaches. Jonathan Edwards, for example, in his Treatise Concerning Religious Affections (1746), had taught that true knowledge of another's soul cannot be had by observing mere outward appearances: "[T]he Scripture plainly intimates that this way of judging what is in men by outward appearances, is at best uncertain and liable to deceit; 'The Lord seeth not as man seeth; for man looketh on the outward appearance, but the Lord looketh on the heart' (1 Samuel 16:7)."53In contrast to this scriptural view, the scientific epistemology adopted by Bain and others gave priority to external observable correlates of 49Bain, Emotions(1865) (cit. n. 20), p. 3. See also Mischel, "'Emotion' and 'Motivation"'(cit. n. 33), p. 137. 50)Bain, Mind and Body (cit. n. 48), p. 132.

s1Mischel, "'Emotion'and 'Motivation'"(cit. n. 33), pp. 142-3.

52Bain, Emotions (1865) (cit. n. 20), pp. 28-9. 53 Jonathan Edwards, A Treatise Concerning Religious Affections, ed. J. Smith (1746; reprinted

New Haven:Yale Univ. Press, 1959), p. 181.

306

THOMAS DIXON

emotions and considered knowledge based on outward appearances much more reliable than that gained by introspection alone. Another feature of this new approach to the body as part of the study of the mind was the view that the body was active, rather than the passive vehicle or instrument of an active soul (the most common view among Christian writers). So in the case of emotions it was the spontaneous activity of the central nervous system that caused passive mental feelings. Bain, for example, in accounting for emotions, referred to the "action of the viscera" and "the action of the cerebrum upon involuntary muscles."54If monism had been strictly adhered to, the activity of the central nervous system would have been assumed to have a mental side too, and so mind would be just as active as body. However professions of monism were often mixed up with opposition to Christian dualism and its associated spiritualist psychology, so that the monist claim that there were two sides to each emotion could get transformed into the more physicalist claim that it was really the body rather than the mind that was active in emotions. This point about the reactive nature of British physiological psychologists' monism is also made by Stephen Jacyna in his essay "The Physiology of Mind, The Unity of Nature, and The Moral Order in Victorian Thought": "This monism was developed in opposition to a contrary world view which insisted on both the autonomy of the soul and on the transcendence and power of God."55 Man-Animal Continuism Bain, Spencer, and Darwin were all alienated from the Christian religion in general for a complex mixture of personal, intellectual, professional, and social reasons. When it came to their treatments of the emotions, in particular,they shared an opposition to the design theology methodology of the Scottish natural theologian and anatomist Sir Charles Bell (1774-1842). Bell had become famous for his discovery of the distinction between afferent (sensory) and efferent (motor) nerves and had produced a Bridgewater Treatise on the wonderful contrivance of the human hand. Bell's book on expression was the single most influential book on the physiological and expressive side of the passions and emotions prior to the 1850s. Bain, Spencer, and Darwin all read the 1844 third edition of Bell's Anatomy and Philosophy of Expression, which contained detailed descriptions of the nerves and muscles involved in the expression of passions and emotions, with a particular focus on the respiratory system.56Bain and Darwin both also incorporated examples from Bell's book in their own work. However, they, along with Spencer, placed these facts about the nervous system within a new psychological framework where physiological and evolutionary explanations were sought in preference to Bell's natural theological ones. The physiological and evolutionary schools shared an ontological commitment to the continuity of human beings with the rest of the animal kingdom, which was the 54 Bain, Emotions

(1865) (cit. n. 20), p. 10. 55See, e.g., Bain, Mind and Body (cit. n. 48), chaps. 4 and 6; Jacyna,"Physiologyof Mind"(cit. n.2),p. 119.

56 Autobiography, p. 229; Spencer, Principles (cit. n. 43), vol. 2, p. 557; Charles Darwin, The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals (London: Murray, 1872), pp. 2-3, 9-11, and The Auto-

biographyof CharlesDarwin, ed. N. Barlow (London:Collins, 1958), p. 132.


307

opposite of the traditional religious view. The division between man and the "brute creation" had always been central to Christian psychology. This division is set out at the beginning of the Bible and is at the root of Christian thought about passions (shared to some degree with lower animals) and affections and sentiments (along with reason, hallmarks of human uniqueness).57 Its rejection was a prime example of how opposition to a Christian ontology could shape psychological theorizing. This commitment to sameness of ontology (humans and other animals are the same sort of being) was expressed also in the commitment to sameness of epistemology, whether approaching humans or animals. While Bell had sought to illuminate all that was distinctive about human physiology and physiognomy and all that elevated spiritual human beings above the level of mere animal passion, Spencer and Darwin, to support the evolutionary hypothesis, sought evidence that pointed to the close relation of Homo sapiens to other animals. They both compared laughter in humans and monkeys to argue for a common progenitor.58This was particularly significant, since laughter had been one of the forms of expression, along with weeping, picked out by Bell as being "peculiarly human, arising from sentiments not participated by the brutes."5' Spencer and Darwin both explicitly presented their evolutionary accounts of emotional behaviors as superior alternatives to the natural theological account favored by Bell (that these expressions were divinely designed communicative mechanisms). Darwin in particular had attacked Bell for his appeal to the belief that each species had been separately and independently created: "By this doctrine, anything and everything can be equally well explained; and it has proved as pernicious with respect to Expression as to every other branch of natural history."6'6Alan Fridlund has argued that Darwin's Expression is surprisingly un-Darwinian: in it Darwin relied exclusively on explanations in terms of inheritance of acquired characteristics (in this case, habits) rather than on explanations in terms of natural selection: in particular, Darwin did not argue that most emotional expressions had been inherited because they were useful. The reason for this was, indirectly, Darwin's opposition to natural theology. Bell had argued that the communicative functions of our expressions were divinely contrived; God had made special arrangements of nerves and muscles to allow human beings to communicate their feelings to one another.6'One of the principal ways in which Darwin attacked this natural theological theory was to deny that expressions had an expressive function, or indeed any useful function. Instead he largely sought to explain them as habits that were originally useful but that, in successive generations, as environmental conditions changed, had ceased to be useful. If expressions of emotions did not have a useful function, then they could not survive preferentially as a result of natural selection. All that was left, then, was a useinheritance account of the evolution of expressive behaviors. Thus opposition to 57See, e.g., Gen. 1.26; Saint Augustine, Confessions XIII.32, De trinitate XII. 13; Robert J. O'Connell, The Origin of the Soul in St. Augustine's Later Works (New York: Fordham Univ. Press, 1987),

p. 249.

58 Darwin, Expression (cit. n. 56), p. 12; Spencer, "Laughter" (cit. n. 44).

59

Charles Bell, The Anatomy and Philosophy of Expression, as Connected with the Fine Arts, 3rd

ed. (London:Murray,1844), p. 145. 60 Darwin,Expression (cit. n. 56), p. 12. 61Bell, Expression(cit. n. 59), pp. 98, 119-21, 131.

308

THOMAS DIXON

design theology shaped Darwin's theorizing when he was seeking to develop an evolutionary account of emotional expression.62 In addition to this shaping of theory, it could be argued that the a priori commitments of the evolutionary and physiological schools were revealed in their choice of methodology and examples. This was precisely what Thomas Baynes (18231887), an advocate of Bell's natural theology, argued in his 1873 Edinburgh Review article on Darwin's Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals. In a letter to Bain, Darwin called the review "magnificently contemptuous."63In particularit criticized Darwin for artificially decreasing the distinction between animals and humans by reading emotion into the slightest of animal movements-"[T]he extent to which Mr Darwin persistently reads his own theory into the ambiguous muscular twitches and spasms of monkeys and other animals is often amusing in a high degree"; indeed Darwin had described the expressions and attitudes of affectionate cats, humble dogs, impatient horses, irritated bulls, enraged deer, and grieving, jealous, or depressed monkeys.64Figure 3 reproduces two illustrations from Darwin's Expression, complete with their rather anthropomorphic captions. Baynes further criticized Darwin for concentrating only on man's lower passions and animal desires-"The manner in which he continually degrades and vulgarises human emotion is equally striking."65In short, "There is an obvious effort from the first to bring vividly into view not what is most distinctive in the expression of human emotion, but what is common to men and animals."66It was true that Darwin assumed, for example, that observations of animals were the "safest basis for generalisations on the causes, or origin, of the various movements of expression."67Consequently he tended to present the generalizations that could be made about behaviors shared by human and nonhuman animals as the only generalizations that could be made about the expression of emotions in humans. Baynes put it like this: "[F]rom the sources to which Mr Darwin exclusively refers for his facts, it is impossible to obtain illustrations of the higher and more characteristic human emotions."68 Darwin had also stated that he considered the most useful indication of a good mode of explanation to be that it could be "applied with satisfactory results, both to man and to the lower animals."69His deliberate neglect of explanations that could not equally be applied to human and to nonhuman animals rendered his conclusionthat the expression of the emotions is very similar in human beings and in other animals-rather a foregone and circular one. This is evidence of how one sort of evolutionary worldview could include a commitment to the basic ontological sameness of human and nonhuman animals, which 62 See Alan Fridlund,"Darwin'sAnti-Darwinismin The Expressionof the Emotionsin Man and Animals,"in InternationalReviewof Studieson Emotion,2 vols., ed. KennethT. Strongman(Chichester, U.K.: Wiley, 1992), vol. 2, pp. 117-37; Sue Campbell,"Emotionas an ExplanatoryPrinciple in Early EvolutionaryTheory,"Stud. Hist. Phil. Sci. 28 (1997):453-73, on pp. 454, 459-63; Paul Ekman, preface and commentaryto CharlesDarwin, The Expressionof the Emotionsin Man and Animals,3rd ed. (London:HarperCollins, 1998).

63 Autobiography, p. 321.

Darwin, Expression(cit. n. 56), pp. 50-5, 120-2, 130-2, 136-7. [ThomasS. Baynes], "TheExpressionof the Emotionsin Man andAnimalsby CharlesDarwin," EdinburghReview 137 (1873):492-528, on p. 512. 66Ibid., pp. 511-12. 67 Darwin,Expression(cit. n. 56), p. 17. 68 [Baynes],"Darwin"(cit. n. 65), p. 513. 69 Ibid., p. 518. 64

65

Fig. 10. Catin an affectionateframeof mind, by ir. Wood.

Fig. 18. Chimpn

disappointl andsulky.

l)awn frnm liie by Mr. Waxd.

Figure 3. Two of the more anthropoimorphicall (calltionledilllu.strationsfronmDarwin's 1872 book on the expression of the eimotions. (FroIll Cllrles Darwlin,The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals [Londonl: Murray, 1S721. Reproduced by permission of the Syndics of Cambridge UnixversityLibrary.)

310

THOMAS DIXON

commitment, in turn, determined that the methodology of the evolutionary psychologist should be the same for human beings and animals. This methodology determined the examples used and the results obtained, which results confirmed the original premise that, in Darwin's own words, "[T]here is no fundamental difference between man and the higher animals in their mental faculties."7"A priori metaphysical commitments could play a role in shaping theory for the nonreligious as much as for the religious psychologist. Personal and Social Factors Having examined some prima fiacie evidence of the consonance between a worldview comprising certain anti-Christian (as well as some nonreligious) commitments on the one hand, and physiological and evolutionary theories of emotions on the other, we can now turn to a different sort of evidence. Biographical information about Bain's relationship with Christianity and the churches will serve here as a particularly useful example of how personal and social factors can influence a person's worldview, which in turn can determine the lexical and conceptual resources and methods applied in an inquiry into the human mind. In the case of Bain, his autobiography is a good source of relevant evidence external to his psychological theories of his religious and metaphysical commitments. Bain was born and raised in Aberdeenshire, the son of a harsh Calvinistic father. From an early age, he recalled in his Autobiography, he would peruse his father's collection of books, almost all of which were tracts of popular Calvinist theology. One book that interested him was The Hieroglyphic Bible, which consisted of biblical narratives in which some of the words were replaced by pictures. "Of these last, the most notable was a figure of God as a naked old man in sitting posture-I suppose suggested by some design of a pagan deity, or, more likely by the 'Ancient of Days' of Daniel. This figure has haunted me ever since when the name of God is pronounced, if I do not forcibly exclude it from consciousness."7' Along with this troubling and anthropomorphic image of God, Bain was subjected throughout his childhood to grisly sermons from his father at the Sunday breakfast table on the theme of hell and damnation, to which he and his family, he was told, were irredeemnably destined.72 During his adolescence he never experienced the conversion moment that was crucial to the Calvinist Presbyterianism of his father and so never joined Church communion.73Once at Marischal College in Aberdeen, Bain began, with a group of friends, to read Auguste Comte's Cours de philosopllie positive (published in instalments between 1830 and 1842), which John Stuart Mill had recommended to him as, despite certain errors, "very nearly the grandest work of this age."74He attributed the final demise of his precarious religious beliefs to these studies of Comte and the acceptance of the threefold scheme of history in which theological modes of thought were displaced first by metaphysical and finally by 7(

Charles Darwin, The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex, 2nd ed. (London: Murray,

1882), p. 66.

71Autobiography p. 9. 72Autobiography, pp. 9-10, 33-4. 73 Autobiography, pp. 38-9.

74Mill, quotedin ibid., p. 112.


311

scientific (or "positive") knowledge.75 Much later in his life, finally alienated from religion altogether, Bain expressed the wish that there should be no religious service at his funeral.76 Moving from personal history to social context, we note that Bain found himself, in the early 1840s, in an academic world in Scotland not entirely dissimilar to that encountered by Brown three decades previously. Bain, like Brown, was neither a minister of the church nor even religiously orthodox. As a result, there was often resistance to his applications for academic posts. Time and again he lost out to orthodox Christian rivals in competitions for academic positions, because he was "obnoxious to the Church party."77In the 1840s and 1850s Bain applied unsuccessfully for the chair of natural philosophy at Aberdeen, the chair of moral philosophy at Aberdeen, and the chair of philosophy at Queen's College, Belfast.78This last post went to the Free Church minister James McCosh, whose work on emotions is considered later in this essay. McCosh was again Bain's rival when he applied for the chair of logic in Aberdeen in 1860. Bain recounted the incident in his Autobiography: "No sooner was my application generally known, than a powerful agitation was commenced in favour of my chief rival, Professor McCosh of Belfast. He had the whole support of the Free Church of Scotland, and the sympathies of the greater number of the Established Church members as well."79Those professors at Aberdeen University who opposed Bain's appointment urged their colleagues not to "tamely sit and see an infidel appointed to a Chair."It was only through the intervention of the Home Secretary (whose friend George Grote was also a friend of Bain's) that Bain was appointed to the chair. It is hardly surprising to learn that, after these decades of struggling to gain academic posts in the face of church opposition, Bain was prone, in private conversation at least, to launch the occasional "antiChristian onslaught," as his friend, the positivist writer G. H. Lewes ( 1817-1878) described it on one occasion in 1866.80 Here again geographical factors played a role. It is notable that Bain was the "London" candidate for the Aberdeen chair. His allegiance to positivism and physiological psychology arose from his extended visits to London from 1841 onward and his residence there from 1856 to 1859 (while he was writing the first edition of the Emotions).8' In the English-speaking world, London, ratherthan Scotland or Oxford or Cambridge, was the center for the rise of physiological psychology and of positivism in the 1840s and 1850s.82 The physicalist appropriation of the Brownian 75

Autobiography,pp. 153-9. For a summaryof Comte'sphilosophy,see Cashdollar,TranJsorrma-

tion (cit. n. 27), pp. 9-12; or L. L6vy-Bruhl, The Philosophy of Auguste Cornte, trans. K. de

Beaumont-Klein,intro.FredericHarrison(London:Swan Sonnenschein,1903). 76

John M. Robertson, A History of Freethought in the Nineteenth Century (London: Watts, 1929),

p. 221.

77Autobiography, p. 231. 78 Autobiography, pp. 169, 179, 230-1. 79

Autobiography,p. 264.

80Autobiography, pp. 264-7; Rylance, Victorian Psychology (cit. n. 45), p. 164. 81 Autobiography, pp. 242-52.

82 On the radicalartisans,atheists, medical men, and budding scientists who constituteda politically and scientificallyprogressivecoterie in Londonin this period,the perceivedatheismof the new University of London, and the contrastbetween London and Oxbridge, see AdrianDesmond, The Politics of Evolution (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1989). See also Kurt Danziger, "MidNineteenthCenturyBritishPsycho-Physiology:A Neglected Chapterin the Historyof Psychology,"

312

THOMAS DIXON

category of "emotions' was an English development, specifically a development rooted in London. Bain's Scottish education (especially the influence of Brown via Chalmers), when combined with his association with John Stuart Mill, the positivists, and the physiological psychologists of London, produced in his work a theory of emotions that was Scottish by birth but that owed much to the intellectual environment of London for its later development.83 In two instances (Belfast in 1851 and Aberdeen in 1860) Bain's rival and opponent was James McCosh. McCosh, like Bain, wrote on the emotions: McCosh's approach to the emotions was a mixture of Calvinist theology, common sense philosophy, and scientific psychology. His insistence on an active and cognitive view will be examined shortly. For the present it should be noticed that there was a conflict between Bain and McCosh at the level of psychological theory, which was correlated with personal, social, and professional oppositions between the two derived from Church membership or nonmembership. My suggested interpretationof this evidence is that these social and professional factors were responsible for influencing the worldview inhabited by each, and thus the lexical and conceptual resources consequently favored in the construction of their inquiries into the human mind. The "Darwinian Sect" One way of interpreting the adoption by thinkers such as Brown and Bain of worldview commitments derived from science would be to say that science had become, for them, an alternative religion. This is just the interpretation that was offered by Thomas Baynes. In his review of Darwin, discussed earlier, Baynes extended the accusation of a priorism that he leveled initially at Darwin also to Bain, Thomas Huxley, and the psychiatrist Henry Maudsley; all of these were considered to be members of the "Darwinian sect."84Baynes saw these thinkers as sharing with other religious sects an element of "strong but unenlightened" belief. The external evidence of the evolution of humans from monkeys was notoriously deficient, he said, but "The cavils of the sceptics are of no avail with the true evolutionist believer, because he has an unfaltering trust in his own sacred books and inspired writers.... His [Huxley's] whole temper and spirit is essentially dogmatic of the Presbyterian or Independent type, and he might fairly be described as a Roundhead who had lost his faith."85Baynes' judgment could be rephrased as the claim that the approach to psychology of the physiologists and evolutionists was not determined only by facts and evidence but also by their prior metaphysical commitments, which determined what could be assumed to exist, what was a valid way to investigate it, and how it in Metaphors in the History of Psychology, ed. David Leary (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press,

1982), especially pp. 139-4 1. 83 On the developmentsin neurophysiologyand physiologicalpsychology in Englandin the 1840s and 1850s, associated with figures such as Charles Bell, Marshall Hall, Thomas Laycock, W. B. Carpenter,and BenjaminBrodie, see ThomasLaycock, The ScientificPlace and Principlesof Medical Psychology: An Introductory Address (Edinburgh: Murray & Gibb, 1861); Leonard Carmi-

chael, "Sir CharlesBell: A Contributionto the History of PhysiologicalPsychology,"Psychol. Rev. 33 (1926): 188-217; Leslie Hearnshaw, A Short History of British Psychology, 1840-1940, (London:

Methuen, 1964), pp. 20-5; Roger Smith, "The Backgroundof PhysiologicalPsychology in Natural Philosophy,"Hist. Sci. 11 (1973):75-123; Jacyna,"Physiologyof Mind"(cit. n. 2); Danziger,"British Psycho-Physiology"(cit. n. 82); Richards,"MentalMachinery"(cit. n. 16), chap. 8. s4[Baynes],"Darwin"(cit. n. 65), p. 502. 85 Ibid., pp. 504-6.


313

could legitimately be explained. Such worldview commitments were the results of personal, social, and professional factors more than empirical ones. It is particularly interesting that Baynes suggested that these scientificevolutionary commitments were quasi-religious in their function.86It was true that scientific practice and theory could provide thinkers such as Bain, Spencer, and Darwin with ontological, epistemological, and narrativeresources that could usurp roles previously fulfilled, for them and others, by religious commitments. In addition, the fact that these thinkers, in their psychological texts, explicitly disavowed soul-body dualism, the separation between humans and animals, and design theology is evidence in favor of the claim that their worldview contained certain antireligious assumptions as well as more purely metaphysical ones. The Preacher-Psychologists: James McCosh (1811-1894) and George T. Ladd (1842-1921) Traveling across the Atlantic to New England, we find that psychological theorizing could be based on yet another set of religious and scientific commitments. In America there was still room in the nascent profession of psychology for thinkers who could be described as "naturaltheologians" or "preacher-psychologists": individuals engaged with both religious and nonreligious psychological resources. These Christian writers maintained commitments to soul-body dualism, the priority of the mental in emotions, and consequently to the introspective method in psychology. The resulting theories of emotions tended to be cognitive and antireductionist. Two figures will serve as examples here: James McCosh and George TrumbullLadd. James McCosh's 1880 book, The Emotions, was one of the most substantial, as well as one of the last books of psychology that was both significantly informed by Christian belief and also written as a contribution to the new academic psychology. McCosh, the historian of the Scottish philosophy, made his name as one of the group (led by Chalmers) that left the established Church there and set up the Free Church of Scotland in 1843. His first book, The Method of Divine Government, Physical and Moral (1850), established him as a major theologian and philosopher. It sold well in Britain and America to academic and nonacademic readers alike. As a result of this success, he was appointed to the chair of logic and metaphysics at Queen's College, Belfast (in preference to the infidel Bain). In 1868 he traveled across the Atlantic to take up his position as the new president of the College of New Jersey in Princeton. While at Princeton in the 1870s he was one of the only Christian ministers to speak in favor of the doctrine of evolution and its compatibility with belief in God (Figure 4).7 George T Ladd was a leading figure in the foundation of the new psychological For more on the quasi-theologicalroles of science, see Dixon, "Atheology" (cit. n. 4), especially pp. 320-5. s6

87 On

the life and thought of McCosh, see A. A. Roback, History of American Psychology, rev. ed.

(London:Collier Macmillan, 1964), pp. 109-13; James R. Moore, The Post-DarwinianControver-

sies: A Study of the Protestant Struggle to Come to Terms with Darwin in Great Britain and America,

1870-1900 (Cambridge:CambridgeUniv. Press, 1979), pp. 245-250; Livingstone,"Darwinismand

Calvinism" (cit. n. 8); David J. Hoeveler, James McCosh and the Scottish Intellectual Tradition:

FromGlasgow to Princeton(Princeton:PrincetonUniv. Press, 1981), pp. 99-107, 180-211; Hilton,

Age of Atonement (cit. n. 24), pp. 362-4; John H. Brooke, Science and Religion: Some Historical

Perspectives(Cambridge:CambridgeUniv. Press, 1991), pp. 310-17.

314

THOMAS DIXON

//

// 2}I 7~~~~~~~~~~01

Figure 4. James McCosh (1811-1894). Etching done ftrom a photograph taken in 1888.

(FromW.M. Sloane, ed., The Life of JamesMcCosh:A RecordChieflyAutobiographical

[Edinburgh: T. and T. Clark, 1896/. Reproduced hb!permission of the Syndics of Cambridge University Library.)

profession in America in the 1880s and 1890s, despite being a trenchant critic of what he perceived to be the materialism and determinism of William James's "cerebral science." He held the chair in philosophy at Yale from 1881 to 1905, founded the psychological laboratory there in 1892, and was the second president of the American Psychological Association."8 His Elements of Pswchology (1887) was a x8A. A. Roback, Historyof Psycrhologyand Psychiatrv(London:Vision Press, 1962), p. 174.


315

major textbook for two decades."9 Ladd's treatment of emotions and sentiments comes in his second major text, Psychology, Descriptive and Explanatory (1894). The historian of psychology A. A. Roback has characterized Ladd and McCosh as "the last of the Church Mohicans." He calls Ladd a "pre-scientific ... preacherpsychologist." It is true that Ladd had been a Christian minister and preacher for ten years before turning to academic philosophy and thence psychology. He published a book entitled The Doctrine of'Sacred Scripture (1883) and, later, The Philosophy of Religion (1905). Roback gives the following dismissive summary of Ladd's work: "To Ladd, psychology was not a natural science. Ladd was still the soul psychologist, or if we wish to be gracious, we might say he was a personalist."9? Mind-Bodv Dualism Almost all the treatments of passions, affections, and emotions produced by nineteenth-century Christian writers were explicitly opposed to "materialism" and were predicated on mind-body dualism. For example, Bell, in dealing with weeping and laughter, described them, not only as arising from sentiments not shared by the brutes but also as arising from "mental conditions, independent of physical causes.'" The mind or soul was conceived as a substance inhabiting or using a body. professor in the medical department of the UniverMartyn Paine (1794-1877)-a sity of New York, and a devout Episcopalian-taught that the soul was a self-acting substance, "subserved" by the brain and the nervous system.'9 The body was often described as the "tenement" or "instrument"of the soul.93 William Lyall expressed this central commitment in a typical way: "The most essential part of our nature is unquestionably the living soul within us-the spiritual substance of which we are possessed, or which is clothed in a material body, united to a material organization."'4 The American theistic philosopher and psychologist Laurens Hickok (17981888) taught that "[t]he psychology we attain must recognize through all its facts, the existence of a rational spirit, which dwells in a tabernacle of flesh and blood."95 As a result of this mind-body dualism it was clear for the Christian and theistic psychologists-while it was increasingly unclear in the works of monist psychologists-that the "emotion in the mind" and the "exertion of the bodily frame"96were different things, the former causing the latter. As McCosh put it, in opposing the monist school associated with Bain and Spencer, "There is no propriety in calling the nervous affection a correlate of the emotion, or representing the two, after the fashion of the school, as the sides of one thing. They are two things, each with its own ' For a further summary of Ladd's achievements. see Eugene S. Mills, George Trumbull Ladd: Pioneer American Psychologist (Cleveland. Ohio: Case Western Reserve Univ. Press, 1969), pp. 1-10. ' Roback, Psychology and Psychiatry (cit. n. 88), p. 174. '' Bell. Expression (cit. n. 59). p. 158. '2 Roback, American Psychology (cit. n. 87), pp. 98-100; Martyn Paine, Physiology of the Soul iiandI istinct as Distinguishedfiro-0 Materialism, with Supplementary Demonstrations of the Divine Communication of the Narratives olf Creation and the Flood (New York: Harper. 1872), p. 27. ) E.g., Cooke. Mind and the Emotions (cit. n. 20), p. xi. "4 Lyall, Intellect (cit. n. 20), p. 10. See also p. 14, where Lyall states that the only true philosophy is one that allows a real existence to both mental and material substances. ,5 Laurens Hickok, Empirical Psychiology: or the HumtanMind as Given in Consciousness, 2nd ed. (New York: Ivison & Phinney, 1859), p. 27. (' Bell. E.xpression (cit. n. 59). p. 176.

THOMASDIXON

316

properties, but acting and reacting on each other, and both should have a place in a full account of the phenomenon""97For McCosh it was essential, in order to avoid determinism, that the mind be an independent "self-acting" substance with a free will: he achieved this through his belief in the dualism of active spirit and inert matter.98 On top of this commitment to the independence of mind and body, there was also a commitment to the priority of the former over the latter. This became particularly clear in theories of emotions. McCosh, for example. insisted that all emotions were "psychical acts," which produced only secondarily "physiological concomitants and effects."99The bodily element was, on McCosh's view, temporally last and also last in importance in the process of any emotional experience: "Emotion is not what has often been presented by physiologists, a mere nervous reaction from a bodily stimulus, like a kick which the frog gives when it is pricked. It begins with a mental act, and throughout is essentially an operation of the mind."')' He opposed reductionist forms of physiological psychology, criticizing "the tendency on the part of the prevailing physiological psychology of the day to resolve all feeling, and our very emotions, into nervous action, and thus gain an importantprovince of our nature to materialism."'l" There was an evident continuity between McCosh's writing and the Calvinist teaching of Jonathan Edwards on the religious affections a century and a half before. Edwards had insisted, like McCosh, that As 'tis the soul only that has ideas, so 'tis the soul only that is pleased or displeased with its ideas. As 'tis the soul only that thinks, so 'tis the soul only loves or hates, rejoices or is grievedat what it thinksof. Nor are these motionsof the animalspirits, and fluids of the body. anythingproperlybelonging to the natureof the affections; though they always accompany them, in the present state; but are only effects or con-

comitantsof the affections,thatareentirelydistinctfromthe affectionsthemselves,and no way essential to thenm:so that an unbodiedspirit may be as capable of love and hatred.joy or sorrow.hope or fear,or otheraffections,as one thatis unitedto a body.'02 The tendency to give priority to the mental (and especially the cognitive) over the physiological was as characteristic of Christian writers on emotions in the nineteenth century as it had been of Christian writers on affections in the eighteenth. Cognitive Theories ot Emotion

The cognitive Christian approach to emotions differed from the "infidel" psychologists' views in two ways. First, on the cognitive view, passions, affections, or emotions were seen as acts of the soul rather than passive products of an active body. Second, they were seen as intimately connected with the rational soul (products of intellectual activity) rather than feelings to be contrasted with intellectual states of mind (as was the case for Brown and Bain). Of the "psychical" elements of emotion, to which McCosh gave priority in his p. 108. Hoeveler,McCosh (cit. n. 87). pp. 102-3. McCosh, Emotions(cit. n. 20). p. iv. ""'Ibid., p. 4.

97 McCosh, Emotions(cit. n. 20), 9 t

""Ibid..p. iv.

102

Edwards, Religious Aftjections (cit. n. 54). p. 98.


317

theory, the cognitive was primary: "Let a man stop himself at the time when passion is rolling like a river, he will find that the idea is the channel in which it flows."103 Martyn Paine was another Christian writer who produced a cognitive theory of emotions. His Physiology of the Soul and Instinct as Distinguished from Materialism (1872) provided facts about the ways that nerves, viscera, and muscles were involved in expressing passions and emotions, while demoting these organs to secondary status as the instruments upon which the immaterial soul acted.104He, like McCosh, was influenced by eighteenth-century Christian thought and displayed the same commitment to the priority of the mental and cognitive: When speakingof the passions and mentalemotions as elements of the mind, and as producinginvoluntaryeffects, I desireto be criticallyunderstoodthatit is not intended to be implied that they are not more or less associatedwith acts of intellection,and perhapsalways, broughtinto operationby some act of the mind properlyso called [i.e., reason].1'5 Paine, writing in 1872, spoke primarily the Christian language of the "Will" and its "passions." 106He used the term "emotion" relatively sparingly and secondarily.

107

It

is particularly striking that Paine, in his Physiology of the Soul, revealed his indebtedness to eighteenth-century Christianthought on the passions and affections by quoting from Isaac Watts (1674-1748)108 and by using the analogy of watch and watchmaker-used by Joseph Butler and William Paley (1743-1805), among many others-in his discussion of the contrivance by the Creator of the mechanism of the human mind. 09 These authorities and images were not current among non-Christian emotions theorists. Ladd's theory of emotions also had all the hallmarks of the theories of a Christian writer: it concentrated on the intellectual elements in emotion-"the dependence of the higher emotions and sentiments on the intellectual processes of memory, imagination and thinking is obvious and immediate"'l1; it also distinguished between higher, "ideal" "sentiments" and lower "emotions and passions." Ladd's psychological terminology was a hybrid between traditional Christian and more recent "scientific" systems; he tended to use "emotions" where the traditional term would have been "passions," and "sentiments" where Edwards and others would have used "affections": In general,greatintensityand consequentstrong'bodilyresonance'are characteristics of the emotions and passions.A much lower intensity,and a far largeradmixtureof influencefromideal considerations,arecharacteristicof the sentiments.... In applying the word'ideal'to the sentimentswe shouldunderstandthatthese affectivephenomena arethe farthestpossible distantfrom such relativelysimple andcontent-lessfeelings as '3 McCosh, Emotions (cit. n. 20), p. 42. 104

Paine, Physiology(cit. n. 92), especially pp. 33-43. p. 57. Ibid., pp. 28, 30, 33, 40-1, 43, 55, 58, 60, 62.

)5 Ibid., 1116

"7E.g., ibid., pp. 43, 54, 63. )sIbid., pp. 60, 66. )9Ibid., 83. p.

0 George T. Ladd, Psychology Descriptive and Explanatory: A Treatise of the Phenomena, Laws, and Development of Human Mental Life (London: Longmans, Green, & Co., 1894), pp. 534-7.

318

THOMASDIXON man has in common with the lower animals .... But by calling the sentiments 'spiritual'

forms of feeling, we mean to emphasise in a positive way the very thing which we emphasisenegativelywhen we say thatthey are not, like the emotions,obviouslybuilt upona basis of somaticreactions.They are, of all ouraffectivephenomena,most obviously ascribedpurelyto a highly generalisedand abstractconceptionof the Ego, consideredas freedfrom all dependenceon the bodily organism.'11 Ladd appears not to have been familiar with the traditional distinction between passions and affections and seems, rather, to have reinvented it in his distinction between "emotions and passions" and "sentiments."His "sentiments,"like Augustine's and Edwards' "affections," were full of ideas and reason and hence marked human beings out as superior to the lower animals and as "spiritual"creatures. Compound and Component Approaches It also tended to be the Christian psychologists who favored compound or component (as opposed to aggregate) views of emotions, such as McCosh's, in which the emotion was an irreducible and qualitatively novel mental experience (rather than just an aggregate of sensations, as it was for Bain and Spencer) resulting from the combination of several elements. On McCosh's theory, emotions had four elements: the "appetence," or basic inclination to avoid pain and seek pleasure; the idea, or "phantasm"; the conscious feeling of excitement; and finally the organic (bodily) affection. As we have seen, he was quite clear that the idea was essential, and that the bodily affection was only a secondary element.112Ladd also viewed emotions as compounds with various components or, as he called them, "variables."Ladd's four variables were "primitive feeling," "bodily resonance," "ideation and thought" and fourth, in the more complex emotions, primary emotions.13 In the cases of these preacher-psychologists, who were teaching in American universities in the 1870s and 1880s, we have ample evidence both internal and external to their psychological texts of their religious commitments, the most notable being, in the cases of McCosh and Ladd, their publication of theological treatises and ordination into the Christian church. There is also no doubt that they were, even by their own account, seeking to write scientific psychology. This makes them particularly revealing cases. They frequently contrasted their own approaches with "materialism," which, as we have noted, was almost a synonym for atheism in the literature of the period, thus deliberately directing their readers' minds toward moral and religious concerns. Their construction of psychological theories that preserved distinctions between human beings and animals, between soul and body, which gave priority to the former, which privileged introspection, and which chose examples that favored a cognitive and antireductionist view of emotions and sentiments are all further evidence of how their psychological theories were harmonized and correlated with their religious worldview commitments. II Ibid., pp. 543, 561. 112 McCosh, Emotions(cit. n. 20), pp. 2-4. 11 Ladd,Psychology(cit. n. 110), pp. 534-7.


319

CONCLUSION

From the outset I have emphasized the need for caution and skepticism when handling evidence of links between psychological theories and their authors' religious or nonreligious worldview. The evidence I have marshaled here, in the case of nineteenth-century emotions theories, is no exception. It certainly does not reach the highest possible evidential level, at which many sources, including the writings of the author in question, would explicitly affirm the theory-shaping role that religious or antireligious beliefs had played (though even this might not constitute conclusive evidence). Where, then, can we position the evidence produced here, on the hierarchy of evidential levels I set up at the outset? In the central cases of Brown, Bain, McCosh, and Ladd, the evidence certainly goes beyond mere prima facie compatibility between prior worldview commitments and psychological theories (level 1). The religious or antireligious views that these authors actually held were established using evidence external to their psychological texts (level 2). Additional evidence was then found in statements made by the authors and their contemporaries about the links between their religious or antireligious views and their psychological theory (level 3). Most of this evidence took the form of statements simply noting compatibilities between religious and psychological views ratherthan suggesting causal connections. Finally, a small number of statements by psychologists and their contemporaries went further and suggested that religious views had played a causal role in shaping psychological theories (level 4). The claims made by some of Brown's and Bain's critics that their psychological systems were shaped by atheistic presuppositions is an example of weaker evidence of this sort, while the connection made by both Darwin and Spencer between their disbelief in a designing God and their choice of theoretical account of the emotions is an example of stronger evidence of this sort. Although this evidence is admittedly partial and imperfect, certain general trends in theories of passions and emotions can still be discerned that seem to have been correlated with the religious, nonreligious, or antireligious views of their authors. In theories of emotions produced by writers committed to an atheological worldview, theological agents such as the will, the soul, God, the Holy Spirit, the passions, and the affections were displaced. The ontology of the psychology of emotions developed by Bain, Spencer, and Darwin in the 1850s-1 870s was one in which there were only two real psychical agencies: the evolutionary past and the body (especially the nerves). Introspection on one's own soul was replaced by observation of others' bodies and behaviors as the favored epistemology. Moral theological and salvationhistorical stories about people as God's creatures who had sinned and fallen but could be saved were replaced with natural historical ones about human organisms as evolved animals whose emotions were products of their ancestors' environments. For Christians and theists, in contrast, agency was still ascribed to God and the immaterial soul, especially the will, whose freedom and agency the "infidel" psychologists denied; introspection was still favored as an essential epistemological tool; and theories maintaining the distinction between soul and body and in which emotions were irreducible cognitive acts of the former were favored over accounts that privileged evolutionary and physiological considerations. Thus rejections or en-

320

THOMAS DIXON

dorsements of Christian beliefs seem to have been strongly correlated with alternative approaches to theorizing about the "emotions" in the nineteenth century. However, we should remember that these correlations can be interpretedin a number of different ways. It could be suggested that religious or antireligious commitments had directly shaped theory construction, but alternatively it might be claimed that these commitments simply played the selective role of helping thinkers choose between existing theories, or that religious attitudes were only secondary byproducts of or glosses on psychological theorizing, or even that they were largely independent of it. As was noted at the outset, the causal explanatory story is not the only one that can be told about such correlations. To return, finally, to Psychosis in 1884: his judgment was that "nine-tenths of the Christian world" perceived connections between psychology and religious beliefs. And, indeed, a considerable amount of evidence can be found of such connectionsboth in general correlations between worldviews and theories and, here and there, in more direct links. However, it is difficult to go much farther.The complexity and contingency of the past realities and of the historical evidence virtually guarantee the failure of any attempt to establish more generalizable causal connections between a rejection or endorsement of certain religious beliefs on the one hand and the detailed content of psychological theories of emotions on the other.

Quaker

Responses

to

Darwin

By Geoffrey Cantor*

IN HIS SEMINAL WORK

Darwin and the General Reader (1958), Alvar Ellegard surveyed the British periodical press over the period 1859 to 1872 in order to discover how Darwin's theory had been received in a hundred publications reflecting a wide range of social, religious, and political opinion. He paid attention both to the amount of space devoted to Darwinian topics and also to each periodical's stance with respect to such issues as the theory of natural selection and the naturalistic account of the formation of humankind. In each case he summarized his findings using a numerical scale. Among the journals he examined were two Quaker periodicals-the Friend and the Friends' Quarterly Examiner-from which he concluded that Quakers paid little attention to Darwin's theory and that the few references that appeared were generally antagonistic to the new theory. The quotations Ellegard selected confirmed this judgment; for example, in characterizing the Friend as antiDarwinian he cited an 1861 entry in which a reviewer regretted the large number of converts to Darwinism, exclaiming, "Alas, their name is legion." Despite the somewhat higher scores achieved by the Friends' Quarterly Examiner, Ellegard did not adequately distinguish between these two periodicals, which reflected significantly different sections within the British Quaker community. Rather surprisingly, he also lumped Quakers with Congregationalists, Baptists, and certain other dissenting groups that appear to have responded similarly to Darwin's theory but shared little of religious significance with Quakers. In contrast to these denominations, Unitarians scored higher but Methodists were lower still on Ellegard's scale.1 However impressive his analysis, Ellegard's conclusions conflict with the recollections of two scientists who portrayed initial Quaker responses in very different terms. Writing in 1872, the eminent lawyer and amateur botanist Edward Fry reflected on how, as a Quaker, he had responded to the publication of Darwin's book thirteen years earlier. It had, he recounted, *Division of HistoryandPhilosophyof Science, School of Philosophy,Universityof Leeds, Leeds LS2 9JT,UK Acknowledgments:For their help in revising this essay I am indebtedto John Brooke, Jonathan Hodge, Michael Ruse, JonathanTopham,Jitse van der Meer,andtwo anonymousreferees.My thinking on this subjecthas been stimulatedby theircommentsand also those offeredwhen early versions of this essay were presentedat Leeds University,at the Cabinetof NaturalHistory (Universityof Cambridge),and at the conference"Science in Theistic Contexts,"PascalCentrefor AdvancedStudies in Faith and Science, RedeemerCollege, Ancaster,Ontario,Canada. I Alvar Ellegard,Darwin and the GeneralReader: TheReceptionof Darwin' Theoryof Evolution in the British Periodical Press, 1859-1872 (Gothenburg,Sweden: Univ. of Gothenburg,1958; rev. ed., Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1990). The quoted passage, which appearson p. 57, is taken from a review of the Originin the Friend,n.s. 1 (1861):212. In the originalthe quotation-"and alas theirname is legion!"-is somewhatless dramatic. ? 2001 by The Historyof Science Society.All rights reserved.0369-7827/01/1601-0001$2.00 Osiris, 2001, 16:00-00

321

322

GEOFFREY CANTOR causedgreatuneasinessin the mindsof manygood people, who felt ... Darwin'steaching, and still more the suggestionswhich arose from his teaching,to be inconsistent with the teachingsof the Bible and their hopes of immortalityfor the humanrace. I gave a good deal of attention,as every one did, to those new views ... ; but I did not, like so manygood people, feel distressedat the influenceof Darwin'stheoryupon my religiousbeliefs.2

Henry Marriage Wallis, a corn, seed, and coal merchant from Reading who wrote and lectured extensively on natural history, provides us with a second dissenting voice. Writing in the Friends' Quarterly Examiner in 1890, he praised Friends for not having taken up arms against the theory of evolution; instead, Quakers had "stood by the counsel of Gamaliel [who advocated caution] and [now] had little to regret."3 In contrast to Fry's patent enthusiasm for the new theory and Wallis's recollection of a judicious reaction, the reviewers cited by Ellegard seem to have dismissed Darwin's theory and refused to pay it much attention. Moreover, while Fry considered that no major point of religious principle was at stake, the authors cited by Ellegard apparently endorsed the view that science and religion were in conflict. It therefore appears that Ellegard's thesis does not account for the reactions of those British Quakers whose views are recorded in print. Indeed, we must be careful not to accept the reviewer(s) cited by Ellegard or the comments of Fry or of Wallis or of any other writer as speaking on behalf of the whole Quaker community. Not surprisingly, there was no consensus on this issue, nor did any mechanism exist for imposing any specific position. Indeed, like most other aspects of science, the theory of evolution was never explicitly discussed at the Yearly Meetings that deliberated on matters of principle and practice. Thus, in contrast to, say, the Quaker position on slavery or the role of the clerk in Monthly Meetings, attitudes to Darwin's theory were not controlled centrally. Nevertheless, reactions to Darwin can be mapped onto the broader canvas of Quaker history. Before proceeding we must note two further difficulties with Ellegard's thesis. First, he examined only those reviews published before 1872, whereas the Quaker engagement with evolutionary ideas should be considered over a much longer time scale-including Wallis's comments from 1890. Perhaps there was no final terminus to the topic. However, some of the most important moves were made after 1872, and later in this discussion I shall note two significant contributions to the 1895 Manchester Conference, which Quaker historians have generally taken to be a milestone in their movement's history. Second, it would be incorrect to portray Quakerism as socially and doctrinally stagnant during the period under discussion. Instead we must pay close attention to the changes that occurred in the British Quaker community. Most importantly from the 1830s to the mid-1880s the movement was dominated by evangelicals, although a minority resisted this trend. Some opponents of evangelicalism were disowned or resigned their membership, while others remained dissatisfied, sometimes arguing for a more liberal conception of Quakerism. Evolutionary ideas were to play a significant role in the development and ultimate domi2 Edward Fry,quotedin Agnes Fry,A Memoirof the RightHonourableSir EdwardFrv,1827-1918 (London:OxfordUniv. Press, 1921), p. 63. See also Fry'sarticlesin the Spectator45 (1872):1137-8, 1168-70, and 1201. 3Henry MarriageWallis, "Darwinism,"Friends'QuarterlyExaminer(hereaftercited as FQE) 24 (1890):246-57, on p. 250.

QUAKER RESPONSESTO DARWIN

323

nance of liberal Quakerism in Britain during the last four decades of the nineteenth century.4 The Origin of Species was published at a critical moment in British Quaker history. During the late 1850s it was widely recognized that the movement was in danger of terminal decay, since membership was on the decline, as was the power and influence of the Quaker community. Radical steps were required if Quakerism were to be rescued. One concerned member proposed a prize competition for the best essays to engage this pressing problem. That approximately one hundred and fifty essays were received is indicative of the widespread concern about the movement's fate. The judges -three eminent non-Quakers-announced their decision in August 1859, and the two successful essays (both authors receiving ?150) were soon published and avidly discussed. In his winning entry John Stephenson Rowntree provided a long-term statistical analysis of membership and identified several ways in which Quakerism had failed its original promise. He identified problems with both the belief system and the movement's structural organization and was particularly critical of the current emphasis on the "indwelling spirit," which, he claimed, had led to such problems as the neglect of prayer and the lack of instruction of the young. Likewise, he believed that the rigidity of the Society's organization had resulted in many being forced out owing to infringements of its rules, especially regarding marriage to non-Quakers. He therefore suggested that new rules be adopted on intermarriage and on certain other topics.5 Although many of Rowntree's proposals were accepted, the prescription offered by the other prizewinner is also relevant. Thomas Hancock, an Edinburgh-trained physician, argued that Quakerism in Britain had run its natural course and should merge with mainstream Anglicanism, which, he argued, had retained its evangelical zeal and vitality.6Hence, just when the first readers were opening their copies of the Origin, Quakers were contemplating the sick patient and discussing in somber tones the possible treatments. This was not the best time to take a calm, measured view of a scientific text causing uproar in the outside world but rather a time to turn inward and contemplate the changes necessary to revitalize the Quaker community, or even to abandon the project started by George Fox and other Friends two centuries earlier.7 These preoccupations among the Quaker community go some way to explain the lack of immediate response to Darwin's theory in both the Friend and the British Friend. These monthlies had both been founded in 1843 but differed significantly in their coverage of scientific subjects. The British Friend was more reactionary and opposed the reforms within the Society enacted in the late 1850s and early 1860s. 4 See Elizabeth Isichei, VictorianQuakers (Oxford: Oxford Univ. Press, 1970); E. B. Bronner, "Moderatesin LondonYearlyMeeting, 1857-1873: Precursorsof QuakerLiberals,"ChurchHistory 59 (1990):356-71. I have followed Bronnerin using the term "moderates"to describethose Friends who sought reformwithin the Quakermovement.

5 John Stevenson Rowntree, Quakerism, Past and Present: being an Inquiry into the Causes of its Declille in Great Britain and Ireland (Philadelphia: Longstreth, 1860). 6 Thomas Hancock, The Peculium; an Endeavour to throw Light on some of the Causes of the Decline of the Society of Friends, especially in regard to its Original Claim of being the Peculiar

People of God (London:Smith, 1859). 7 Althoughbiological analogies come to mind, it is unclearwhetherthey occurredto any Quakers as they contemplatedthe possible imminentdemise of British Quakerism.Hancock did, however, note that all humangroupsare subjectto the law of decay and thatQuakerismwas not exempt from this process. Ibid., pp. 1-3.

324

GEOFFREYCANTOR

Moreover, the British Friend rarely reviewed books that did not focus on Quaker concerns, and the few scientific contributions were mostly derived from other publications.8

By contrast, from its inception the Friend devoted considerable space to science, especially to astronomy and natural history, while scientific books were frequently reviewed. Although initially edited by Charles Gilpin, in 1858 Alfred Bennett took over as both proprietor and editor, a position he held for the next nine years. An accomplished botanist (and subsequently lecturer in botany at St Thomas's Hospital and Bedford College in London), he initiated the "Science" and "Natural History" columns as separate and regular features, the latter conducted by Edward Newman, a naturalist and prolific publisher who was somewhat critical of Darwin's theory. While Ellegard was correct to portray the Friend as offering little support for Darwin's theory, this appears to have been due primarily to Newman's influence, since Newman was Bennett's mentor in scientific matters. Moreover, after the mid-1860s science was accorded far less attention, the "Science" and "Natural History" columns no longer being regular features, although meteorological records continued to be published. This apparent loss of interest in science coincides with F Bowyer Kitto taking over as editor from Bennett at the beginning of 1867. The influence exerted by the editor and particularly by Newman over what was published should caution us against attributing to the whole Quaker community the somewhat antiDarwinian views expressed in the Friend. The third relevant periodical was the Friends' Quarterly Examiner; a Religious, Social & Miscellaneous Review, Conducted by Members of the Society of Friends, which commenced publication only in 1867 and was devoted to substantial signed articles ratherthan to short news items. Its editor, William Colson Westlake, a Southampton corn merchant, welcomed contributions from all sections of the Quaker community. However, in creating this new forum Westlake insisted that, in order to remain healthy, Quakerism must judiciously cast off "that which . .. has lost its life and greenness." Instead, Quakers should adopt "those means which each generation requires for its peculiar condition. The body that can thus reform itself from within, is neither lifeless nor decaying."9 This call for reform from within was echoed by many of the contributors, who viewed the new journal as an appropriate vehicle for presenting and discussing innovative ideas. Although the Friends' Quarterly Examiner postdates the Origin by several years, during its first three decades it contained a significant number of articles on science in general and Darwinism in particular, many of which offered positive assessments of the theory of evolution. My analysis, which draws principally on the three Quaker periodicals just mentioned, locates Quaker responses to Darwin within the context of the struggle between evangelicals and their "moderate"critics, who sought reform within the Society of Friends by repairing the balance between the Bible and the "Inner Light"the doctrine that each person possesses a divine spark. Yet it must be stressed that these Quakerjournals were written by Quakers for Quakers. A very different perception of Quaker responses to the theory of evolution would be apparent if we were to 8E.g., the Dec. 1858 issue containeda quotationfrom the geologist Hugh Miller underthe title "CreationProgressive"in which Miller arguedthatthe physicalaspectsof humans,along with minerals, plants, and animals,form partof the ongoing work of creation,whereashumankindalone possesses a higherfaculty.BritishFriend 16 (1858):314. 9 [WilliamColson Westlake],"The Past Year,"FQE 3 (1869):8.


325

examine the participation of Quakers in the scientific community-if, for example, we were to look at the research they pursued in such areas as botany and entomology; their correspondence with other scientists; their participation in scientific societies; and their contributions to scientific journals and textbooks. These topics, which will be discussed elsewhere, fall outside the scope of the present essay. 0 Not surprisingly, Quakers were more willing to explore issues of science and religion when writing for other Friends than when addressing the scientific community at large. Thus in assessing Quaker responses to Darwin's theory, my focus is on the Quaker periodical press. Another significant issue must be introduced. As Peter Bowler and other historians of biology have stressed, Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection needs to be distinguished clearly from another type of evolutionary theory that was formally different from Darwin's. Although Darwin himself often employed Lamarckian notions, especially when discussing inheritance, the key innovation in the Origin was his argument that evolution was accomplished by the mechanism of natural selection. Any theory of organic development that does not specify natural selection cannot legitimately be called "Darwinian" in this strong sense. However, in the decades following the first publication of Darwin's book many authors advanced neoLamarckian theories of evolution that portrayed species as developing in an orderly manner along preordained paths. This alternative theory was usually linked with the notion of progress, entailing the view that, with the passage of time, an evolving species becomes increasingly complex. Often, the development of a species was conceived as analogous to the development of an individual. Thus, just as an adult develops from a child, humans developed from monkeys. These are both teleological explanations; just as the child possesses the potential for adulthood, so the monkey represents an early stage in human development. The theory of evolution by natural selection, which implied that species do not progress along a specific path, stands opposed to this teleological view. Instead, species develop randomly, in the sense that they are shaped by local selective pressures, such as the availability of food and the presence of predators. Darwin did not envisage evolution as a straight line indicating biological progress but rather as a tree that produces branches at irregularintervals. Although we need to separate these two theories-one Darwinian, the other anti-Darwinian-they were often confused. As Bowler has written, some of Darwin's "most vocal supporters had little real enthusiasm for natural selection, and positively anti-Darwinian theories flourished in the later decades of the [nineteenth] century." As we shall see, many of the Friends discussed here championed as "Darwinian" a view of biological progress that Darwin repudiated and attributed the notion of progressive evolution to Darwin. I. EVANGELICALS

Although many earlier Quakers had encompassed evangelicalism, the Beacon controversy of the mid-1830s did much to move British Quakers toward a rather unyielding form of evangelicalism. Partly in response to the rampant Unitarianism "'I discuss them in a book tentativelyentitled Quakersin BritishScience, forthcoming.

" Peter Bowler, The Non-Darwinian Revolution: Reinterpreting a Historical Myth (Baltimore:

JohnsHopkinsUniv. Press, 1988), p. 47.

326

GEOFFREYCANTOR

which he saw being disseminated by some Friends in America, Isaac Crewdson, an eminent Manchester Quaker and wealthy manufacturer, published in 1835 a work entitled A Beacon to the Society of Friends in which he argued the need for Quakers to downplay the doctrine of the "Inner Light" and instead to make the Bible the primary source for their Christianity.Although this publication led to the departure of Crewdson and about three hundred other "Beaconites," it was also the immediate impetus that forced many other Quakers to declare their evangelical convictions. With their emphasis on faith and on the doctrine of atonement, such Quakers were participating in the broader evangelical revival that Boyd Hilton has shown to have been such a powerful movement in early Victorian Britain.2 Moreover, these Quakers tended to see themselves as more closely aligned with evangelicals in other churches-even Anglicans-than with Quakers of a quietist disposition, whom they increasingly viewed as theologically unsound reactionaries.13One indication of this realignment is that when Joseph John Gurey, an affluent Norwich banker, visited Edinburgh in 1830 he found himself in considerable agreement with Thomas Chalmers, the eminent Scottish evangelical. Quakers of a quietist orientation were perceived by many evangelicals as having turned inward and lost contact with the vivifying force of the Bible. During the 1830s and 1840s Gurney helped move the Friends into a mode that was more spiritually satisfying and outward looking by reinvigorating the Society with evangelical zeal. Without rejecting the doctrine of the Inner Light, he nevertheless envisaged that Quakerism should be reoriented toward biblical Christianity. Gurney, who was well read in the scientific literature, particularly commended the study of nature because it displayed God's handiwork. Moreover, he believed that science and technology were crucial to the progress of the human race, as measured both in terms of intellectual progress and humankind's ability to control the natural world.14Gurney's most public pronouncement on science was his address to members of the Manchester Mechanics' Institute in 1832. While enthusing about the pursuit of science and its value for improving the human condition, he repeatedly emphasized the religious implications of scientific endeavor. Using arguments for design, he sought to impress on his audience the need to appreciate God as the author of nature. The preeminent use of science, he urged his listeners, "is to confirm our belief in the Creator and Supreme Ruler of the universe-to establish and enlarge our acquaintance with God." Yet, clearly concerned that contemporaries in the scientific community might encourage materialism among his working-class audience, he stressed that materialist theories of mind were inadequate and that the mind possesses a spiritual nature, "a spark of divine intelligence, breathed into man by his Creator."5 Gurney also engaged the contemporary controversies in geology by reminding his Manchester audience that the "beginning, which took place about six thousand years 12 Boyd Hilton, The Age of Atonement: The Influence of Evangelicalism on Society and Economic Thought, 1785-1865 (Oxford: Clarendon, 1988). 13Isichei, Victorian Quakers (cit. n. 4), pp. 45-53. 14 David E. Swift, Joseph John Gurnev: Banker, Reformer, and Quaker (Middletown,Conn.: Wes-

leyan Univ. Press, 1962), pp. 145-61.

15Joseph John Gumey, Substance of an Address on the Right Use & Application of Knowledge, lately Delivered to the Mechanics of Manchester, at their Institution, in that Town (Norwich, U.K.:

Fletcher,1833), pp. 8, 7, and 13.


327

ago, is plainly recorded in Scripture."'6However, two years earlier he had adopted a ratherdifferent position, agreeing with Chalmers that the opening chapters of Genesis were "literally true." When faced with geological evidence such as the fossil record, which indicated a period well in excess of six thousand years, Gurey and Chalmers argued that the biblical narrative made no specific pronouncement about the date of the original Creation. Hence the Creation could be allowed to predate the First Day by an epoch of unspecified duration. In this way geology and Genesis could be reconciled. As Chalmers commented, "[T]he geologist may apply his systems, and expatiate as he pleases. He shall inflict no injury on the Christian'sfaith."17 Like many other evangelicals, Gurney and Chalmers were also concerned to ensure that science did not challenge the position allotted to humankind in the biblical narrative. The evangelicalism that had enlivened and split the Society in the 1830s subsequently became the orthodoxy. While Gurney possessed the intellectual breadth to engage many issues (scientific ones included), from an evangelical standpoint few mid-Victorian Quakers could emulate his achievement. In some respects the Society was strengthened by the reforms of the early 1860s, especially the new tolerance that no longer required the disownment of anyone who "married out." During the ensuing decades the number of members, which had been declining alarmingly, began to rise. Although the reforms appeared to be working, a minority of Quakers still sensed a malaise in the Society and believed that the widely accepted evangelicalism was having a deleterious effect. This dominant evangelicalism influenced Quaker views of science. Although initially conceived as freeing Quakerism from inward-looking quietism, the evangelical turn resulted in an increasing rigidity and led to an anti-intellectualism that discouraged many Quakers from engaging with the major intellectual trends affecting Victorian society at large. Moreover, although Quakers continued to be deeply involved in social issues such as pacifism, the abolition of the slave trade, and racial equality, writers in both the Friend and the British Friend evinced little interest in such conceptual issues as the naturalistic perspective endorsed by leading Darwinians and the challenge to biblical scholarship thrown down by the authors of Essays and Reviews (1860). In their limited forays in that direction, most Quaker authors perceived areas of potential conflict with their understanding of God's word. They often promoted a "monster-barring" strategy by simply refusing to acknowledge this challenge to their beliefs. Evangelicalism, initially seen as breaking the hold of conservative quietists, now bred its own form of insularity. Such insularity is reflected in the treatment allotted to Darwin's Origin of Species. Although the book was published late in 1859, the Friend first noticed it in its January 1861 issue, while the British Friend ignored it entirely. In his "LiteraryNotes" in the Friend, William Tallack singled out the book primarily for its impact.18 Tallack, who later became prominent in the penal reform movement, had previously 16 Ibid. 17Chalmersquotedin JosephJohn Gurney,Reminiscences of Chalmers, Simeon, Wilberforce, &c. (n.p.. n.d.), p. 37. On Chalmers'attitudeto science see D. Cairns,"ThomasChalmers'sAstronomical Discourses: A Study in NaturalTheology,"Scottish J. Theology9 (1956):410-21; Crosbie Smith, "From Design to Dissolution: Thomas Chalmers' Debt to John Robison,"Brit. J. Hist. Sci. 12

(1979):59-70. 18 Friend 1 (1861): 10. On Tallack see Annual Monitor (1909): 142-7, and F. A. Knight, A History of Sidcot School: A Hundred Years of West Country Quaker Education, 1808-1918 (London: Dent,

1908). pp. 115-16.

328

GEOFFREYCANTOR

taught in two of the leading Quaker schools. Although he had emphasized natural history in his teaching, he appears not have pursued science intensively. Having resigned his teaching post, he turned his hand to a wide range of literary projects in the early 1860s and was a frequent contributor to the Friend. In his January 1861 review he noted that Darwin's views "have not been endorsed by the majority of naturalists and comparative anatomists, and have occasioned alarm to some, as having a tendency to weaken the authority of Scripture,"adding, "but this is particularly denied by the author."In support of the latter claim he cited a passage near the end of the Origin in which Darwin had alluded rather circumspectly to God's role as creator of life. In presenting Darwin as simultaneously threatening scriptural authority and evoking God as Creator, Tallack neither endorsed nor entirely rejected the new theory. The August 1861 issue of the Friend contained a far more extensive critique of the Origin, with the by-line "I. K." However, this contributor did not review the book directly but instead engaged Darwin's views through the recently published review of the third edition by Edward Newman in the Zoologist, which Newman edited. Newman thought highly of Darwin as a naturalist, but in his ambivalent review he particularly noted that Darwin had not honestly confronted the incompatibility between his theory and the biblical account of the Creation.'9I. K., taking his cue from Newman, pointed out that Darwin's argument about the descent of species implied that "the history of creation so beautifully recorded in the Book of Genesis is altogether a fable." However, somewhat meekly the author distanced himself from any theological critique of the theory of evolution, arguing that for naturalists the theory must be assessed on its scientific credentials, not in terms of any religious implications. The review in the Zoologist served I. K.'s purpose, since it contained arguments that allegedly refuted the theory. For example, Newman argued that Darwin's theory purported to explain both instances where many similar species exist and also where, as in the unique case of the giraffe, there is no evidence of previous forms. The fact that the theory could not explain the evolution of the giraffe revealed its ad hoc nature. A further argument was that Darwin had failed to apply his theory to minerals, which I. K. (like Newman) considered to be so closely analogous to organic forms as to require an identical explanation. Only toward the end of the article, after I. K. had disposed of Darwin's theory on "scientific" grounds, did he advise his readers to become fully acquainted with these technical arguments countering evolution so as to defend themselves against its vocal proponents. He was particularly concerned that the "timid and wavering mind" should not be seduced by Darwin's theory and be led to question the "perfect harmony" between science"true science"-and revealed religion.2?Even though this commentary in the Friend was not written by Newman, the Friend columnist, his views dominated. Newman's "Natural History" column in the Friend often carried extracts from articles published elsewhere, in addition to letters from readers. In this way subscribers became acquainted with each other's scientific interests and with the ongoing researches within the wider natural history community. The subjects discussed in the second number for 1861 may not be atypical: the sagacity of birds, hedgehog 19EdwardNewman,review of thirdedition of The Originof Species and threeotherworks,Zoologist 19 (1861):7577-7611. 20 I. K., "The Originof Species-(Zoologist, No. 231)" Friend,n.s. 1 (1861):210-12.


329

behavior, the habits of moorhens, and a report about snails eating fish. Rarely did Newman or his correspondents deal with conceptually demanding aspects of natural history but rather confined their articles mainly to observations. An editorial intervention of early 1862, when Newman dismissed a report which suggested that species could be transformed artificially, represents his closest engagement with Darwinism.2' Throughout the 1860s and 1870s concern about the implications of science became increasingly focused on the apparent clash between the account of the creation of humankind given in Genesis and the various naturalistic explanations that were receiving increasing attention from the scientific community. Thus Charles Lyell's Antiquity of Man (1863) was summarily dismissed in the February 1863 number of the Friend, because it "will be employed by sceptics to impugn the early chapters of Genesis."2 Eight years later Darwin's Descent of Man (1871) was likewise rejected, because "we could not accept its conclusion."23 However, one related issue did not evince total unanimity. Reviewers in the Friend, like many of their contemporaries, were disturbed by the antireligious writings of John Tyndall. His 1867 article attacking miracles provoked a strong response from a reviewer who used the occasion to applaud the author of a short work defending miracles as evidence that Christ was the Son of God. Likewise when Tyndall's Fragments of Science (1871) was reviewed in the Friend, the reviewer commended it as a clear exposition of science but criticized Tyndall for offering an inadequate view of miracles.24By contrast, in reviewing another of Tyndall's books, one reviewer sided with him and clearly approved his "want of charity ... towards those who are unable to reconcile the teachings of science with those of revelation." This is particularly interesting comment, since the (anonymous) reviewer appears to deprecate any attempt to use Scripture to criticize science.25 The only considered response to the theory of evolution in the Friend came from the aging Edward Ash, who had been a fervent Gurneyite and whose evangelical leanings had led him to leave the Quakers in the 1850s in order to join the Congregationalists, although he subsequently returned to the fold. In a letter dated 1873 he delivered eight propositions explaining why Quakers should not be worried by Darwin's or any other theory of organic development. Interestingly, Ash acknowledged evolution in general by conceding that animals, even humans, may have changed over time. (As we shall see, Quakers frequently stressed the themes of progress and development.) Moreover, he insisted that the Bible should not be used to judge scientific theories, which must be assessed on their own terms. However, he asserted that no current scientific theory was able to offer a (scientifically) satisfactory account of the development of species. This being so, argued Ash, rationality and prudence dictated that believers in the authority of Scripture should not be "disturbed or shaken" by recent developments in science, including Darwin's theory.26 What Ash appeared to be offering was a position that enabled evangelical Quakers to protect their beliefs from the incursion of science by keeping it at bay. It is not 2 22

Friend, n.s. 2 (1862):13. Friend, n.s. 3 (1863):65-6.

11 (1871):178. Friend,n.s. 8 (1868):66, and n.s. 11 (1871):248.

23 Friend,n.s. 24

25

6

Friend, n.s. 13 (1873):42.

Ibid., p. 197.

330

GEOFFREYCANTOR

known whether Ash's formulation was generally accepted by readers of the Friend, but the failure of his article to evoke any published correspondence may indicate that his position was widely endorsed. In the period 1870-1876 four contributors to the Friends' Quarterly Examiner likewise drew a sharp distinction between the facts and genuine inferences of science and those speculations that carry the scientist far beyond the firmly based and truly knowable. In applying this strategy they-like Ash-sought to defuse any apparent conflict between science and religion, while at the same time ensuring that their somewhat literal understanding of the Bible was not threatened.27These authors clearly viewed science as a potentially dangerous force that must be kept in its proper place. This attitude appears to have been widely shared among evangelical Quakers during the second half of the nineteenth century. However, this defensive strategy was not employed by writers in the Friends' Quarterly Examiner after 1876, perhaps because, with the increasing number of scientists publishing in support of evolution, it became increasingly difficult to dismiss the theory as a mere hypothesis. Moreover, evangelicalism was beginning to wane. Almost no attention was paid to Darwinism in the Friend throughout most of the 1870s and 1880s. Indeed, the space devoted to science was minimal. It might appear that the majority of the British Quaker community, while continuing to maintain a high profile on humanitarian issues (including antivivisection), paid little attention to science. A few natural history books were reviewed briefly, together with some excursions into biblical chronology. Only when the Friend became a weekly in the early 1890s, under a new editor, did "Scientific Notes" become a regular feature. However, the author of these "Notes" confined himself to factual reports of recent developments in science and technology and did not stray into the disputed territory of science and religion. This evidence derived principally from the Friend indicates that a large section of the Quaker community evinced little interest in the challenging ideas of evolution during the closing decades of the nineteenth century. The Society of Friends had become rather inward-looking, and the Friend carried few scientific articles, compared with its enthusiastic coverage of science during its early years. Almost all book reviews were directed to religious matters, mainly works written by Friends. Certainly humanitarianand philanthropic issues were evident and sometimes related to science: opposition to vivisection is an example. On the changes sweeping through Victorian intellectual life the Friend was largely silent. II. MODERATES

This section examines the response of the moderates within the Quaker movement to Darwin's theory. Not surprisingly, many supported evolution in the Quaker periodical press. Indeed, in the long term the theory was intimately connected with a major transition in the nature of Quakerism, since not only did moderate Quakers perceive the need to engage Darwin's theory but Quakerism incorporated the notion of human 27 William Tallack, "ChristianPositivism; or True Science versus False Philosophy,"FQE 8 (1874):556-64, on p. 560; J. H. Midgley, "Religion and Science,"FQE 10 (1876):199-205; Francis E. Fox, "Scienceand Religion,"FQE 4 (1870):342-56, on p. 349; FrederickBurgess, "Causesof the Conflict between Science and Theology,"FQE 9 (1875):243-51. See also CharlotteM. James, "Of Books and Reading,"FQE 9 (1875):558-63, on pp. 560-1.


331

progress, which was widely accepted as closely allied to progress and development in the organic realm. By the end of the nineteenth century these changes resulted in the dominance in Britain of a liberal form of Quakerism. The late 1860s and early 1870s saw the slow emergence of this moderate mode of Quakerism. Although a rigid evangelicalism successfully dominated the conservative quietists, it also provoked other reactions. In particular,those with Unitarian leanings found themselves bitterly opposed to the evangelical majority. In the late 1860s discipline broke down, and a deep schism occurred within the Manchester Monthly Meeting. It is interesting to note that the epicenter of this schism was the Manchester Friends' Institute, a new cultural organization, where contentious topics were openly discussed, such as the views propounded in Essays and Reviews and (possibly) Darwinism. Some felt that the institute was in danger of undermining the essence of Quakerism and that its proceedings must be brought in line. During the ensuing months the schism widened. Two of the leading dissidents, David Duncan and Joseph B. Forster, evoked the spirit of Fox and other early Quakers, who, they claimed, had placed liberty and freedom of conscience far above strict adherence to the letter of Scripture. "The worship of anything short of God, is idolatry"'wrote Duncan, "whether it be a golden calf or a modern Bible." After various machinations involving local, Quarterly and Yearly meetings, this group of rationalists and Unitarian seceded in the early 1870s and formed its own church. In another highly conspicuous case Edward Bennett (brother of Alfred, the botanist and editor of the Friend from 1858 to 1867), was disowned in 1873 for espousing Unitarian views.28 Those who dissented from the dominant and ratherrigid evangelicalism were not all sympathetic to Unitarianism. Others considered that the reigning evangelicalism had become far too creedal and had diverted the Society into anti-intellectual paths. This was the main complaint of George Stewardson Brady, a doctor who practiced in Sunderland and was appointed to the chair of Natural History at Armstrong College, Newcastle. In a short anonymous essay entitled Lumen siccum [Arid Light]: An Essay on the Exercise of the Intellect in Matters of Religious Belief (1868) he criticized Quakers who had failed to recognize those "current[s]of modern thought in science and literature" that threatened long-cherished beliefs and traditions. The Society should not stubbornly ignore these developments but should confront the difficulties they raised. Quakerism, he felt, had become far too enmeshed in its own dogmas, particularly in "the mischievous dogma of one unerring and infallible Book." Evoking what he saw as the rich tradition that encouraged freedom of conscience, he urged his fellow Quakers to make full use of their reasoning faculties and to encompass science, which he declared was God's special gift to humankind.29 Turning to the periodicals of the day, we find that while the British Friend and the Friend tended to reflect a fairly rigid evangelical line, the Friends' Quarterly Examiner (founded 1867) was much more receptive to diverse opinions and became the main vehicle for voices of moderation.30Over the next three decades a number of 28 Frederick Cooper, The Crisis in Manchester Meeting. With a Review of the Pamphlets of David Duncan and Joseph B. Forster (Manchester, U.K.: William Irwin, 1869); Isichei, Victorian Quakers

(cit. n. 4), pp. 27 and 61-5.

29 [George Stewardson Brady], Lumen siccum: An Essay on the Exercise of the Intellect in Matters of Religious Belief. Addressed to Members of the Society of Friends (London: F Bowyer Kitto, 1868).

This work does not appearto havebeen reviewed in either the Friendor the British Friend. 3oBronner,"Moderates"(cit. n. 4).

332

GEOFFREY CANTOR

articles appeared in the latter periodical dealing with science and religion, considerable attention being paid to both Darwinism and Tyndall's widely discussed 1874 "Belfast Address."'3As noted earlier, the Friends' Quarterly Examiner carried four articles between 1870 and 1876 that would have appealed to those evangelicals who wished to preserve the integrity of Scripture by limiting the domain of science to its nonthreatening factual basis. However, in contrast to these attempts to demarcate a boundary between science and religion, several other writers adopted a more moderate religious line, welcoming science in general and Darwinism in particular.Thus in an article entitled "The Harmony of Christianity and Science" (1870), Richard Westlake deplored the recent attack on science by a leading Anglican, offering instead an irenic message that he considered more appropriate for Quakers. Far from castigating scientists and seeking to limit their researches, he even urged the extension of science to the discovery of laws governing the moral and spiritual domains. Although Westlake's conciliatory approach did not engage the force of Darwin's argument, he was appalled by the controversies generated by Darwin's book and by Tyndall's "Belfast Address."3 In articles, mostly published in the Friends' Quarterly Examiner an increasing number of Quakers argued that Friends must not interpret the Bible in a literal and inflexible manner but that greater weight should be given to the doctrine of the Inner Light. For example, the very first issue of the Friends' Quarterly Examiner carried a dialogue written by the historian Thomas Hodgkin in which the protagonists reflected on William Grove's presidential address delivered before the 1866 meeting of the British Association. Grove's theme had been "Continuity,"which was taken to include the relation between humankind and the rest of organic creation. Hodgkin used his interlocutors to express opposing positions, especially those concerning the implications of Darwin's theory for religion. One of the characters, Hugh, is greatly impressed by the intellectual brilliance and explanatory power of Darwin's theory. Even if the theory is applied to humankind, he asserts, it carries no atheistic implications. Indeed, claims Hugh, I can truly say for myself, personally,that though my feelings as to my Makerhave undergonea change since I embracedthe Darwiniantheory,thatchangeis not one that I can regret.I used to look upon his creativework as long since ended, and to feel myself as separatedfrom Him accordinglyby long aeons of time. Now I can see that He has neverceased to create,thatHe is still creating.... The resultis, not thatI for a momentfeel the Creatorof the Universemadeless distinct,but thatI feel its Upholder broughtimmeasurablynearerto me. The other character, Arthur, is, by contrast, disturbed by Grove's address and expresses his concern that Grove and other Darwinians are peddling implicit atheism. Hugh proceeds to show that Arthur's worries are groundless. However, it should be noted that Arthur does not exploit any potential conflict between Genesis and 31 Tyndallwould have been widely known in the Quakercommunity,because he had previously taught at Queenwood College, Hampshire,which was run by a Quaker,George Edmundson.Although not a Quakerschool, many Quakershad supportedthe liberal educationalaims of Queenwood, which was sometimes advertisedin the Friend.See WilliamH. Brock, "QueenwoodCollege Revisited,"a chapterin Brock, Sciencefor All (Aldershot:Variorum,1996). 32 RichardWestlake,"The Harmonyof Christianityand Science,"FQE 4 (1870):5-12.


333

Darwin's account. Instead (like Hodgkin) he interprets the Bible historically, claiming that it "is really God's own story of creation, but told through an unscientific messenger to a half-barbarouspeople." Understood in this way, the Genesis narrative and modern theories in geology and biology need to be kept entirely separate. Only toward the end of the dialogue do the two interlocutors converge on the issue that worried Hodgkin. In pursuing science it is all too easy for the scientist to forget God and drift involuntarily into atheism. Such a stance was especially likely to mislead the lower classes. The dialogue concludes with Hugh reading aloud a passage from Francis Bacon's essay on atheism, which contains the famous line: "[A] little philosophy inclineth man's mind to atheism, but depth in science bringeth men's minds about to religion." However successful modern science may prove, Hodgkin clearly believed that, properly understood, it does not undermine religion and that we can counteract any tendency toward involuntary atheism by actively pursuing our spiritual lives.33Hodgkin's use of the dialogue form provides an interesting way of working through the religious issues raised by evolution and of showing that, in his opinion, Quakers need not fear the theory of evolution, provided they hold firm to their religious principles. Other writers soon followed Hodgkin's lead. In 1871 the botanist Alfred Bennett launched a far more trenchant defense of science in the pages of the Friends' Quarterly Examiner His strategy was twofold: first he separated science and theology, and then he argued that this division benefited both parties. Although he noted that theologians were not yet prepared to admit a limitation to the scope of the Bible, Bennett asserted that "the Bible was not intended to teach us scientific truthsrespecting the Origin of Life." Scriptural passages, he insisted, should not be recruited in opposition to Darwin's theory: "[T]he doctrine of Evolution must rest on the same grounds as any other scientific theory, and be judged [solely] by the light of experience and knowledge." In his view, however, the question of the origin of life stood outside scientific analysis. Moreover, if certain scriptural passages appeared to be contradicted by science, then those passages must "be understood in a metaphorical or oriental, rather than in a literal or occidental, sense."34 Alfred Bennett proceeded to argue that his strategy recommended itself because the cause of true religion would suffer if the Bible were used either to support or to undermine any scientific theory, particularly if biblical interpretationconflicted with established science. Such an inappropriate deployment could only detract from the precious spiritual message contained in Scripture. Moreover, the study of the natural world opens "one of the richest sources of communion with God." The student of science will recognize those biblical passages in which nature is evoked as indicating God's governance of nature through laws. But Bennett was also clearly disturbed by Quakers who argued that the human intellect had to be subordinated in order to preserve religious faith. Instead, he insisted, the mind is "the crown and glory of man himself" and, as a divinely ordained gift, must be used in the study of the natural world. Like other Quaker writers he believed that there could be no conflict 33 Thomas Hodgkin, "ConcerningGrove'sInauguralAddress to the British Association,"FQE 1 (1867):33-59. Emphasisaddedto the quotationfrom Hugh. 34 This phrasedrew fire from an anonymousauthorin the highly evangelical BritishFriend,who chargedBennettwith pervertingScriptureandentertainingatheisticscientifictheories:BritishFriend 29 (1871):281-3 and 30 (1872): 1-2. For Bennett'sreply see British Friend30 (1872):46-7.

334

GEOFFREYCANTOR

between science and religion, provided that theology is confined to its proper sphere and scientific theories are adequately tested by the scientific method.35 A powerful new voice first joined the fray in 1875. Educated at Bootham (where he currently taught) and possessing the degrees of B.A. and B.Sc. from London University, Silvanus Phillips Thompson adopted a much more sophisticated line when he argued in the Friends' Quarterly Examiner that science was not a closed system of knowledge but rather that with each new discovery a new set of queries emerged. Science is therefore, in the apposite words of the modem philosopher Karl Popper, an "unended quest." Thompson even contended that Darwin's theory, which had been so hotly contested, had led scientists into new fields of enquiry, such as mimicry, the geographical distribution of plants and animals, and the history of human societies. In reviewing the history of science Thompson saw a close and symbiotic relationship between knowledge and mystery. With every gain in our knowledge of the natural world, new mysteries confronted the researcher, and the engagement with the mysteries of nature was the great spur to increasing knowledge. Although he did not offer any simplistic bromide for resolving the question of divine design, Thompson saw in our ability to wonder "a quality of mind bestowed upon man wisely and well." It was this ability to transcend our knowledge and to wonder about the structureof the world that distinguishes humans from beasts; this quality "seems inseparable from the phenomena of consciousness.... and shares both their emotional and their intellectual aspect." Here, then, we see Thompson portraying science not as a finished product but as an ongoing process in which the creative mind plays a major role. He did not pause to ask whether Tyndall's views about matter or Darwin's theory-or any other theory-was or was not compatible with religion. Instead, what concerned him was the way in which individuals expanded their consciousness through the pursuit of science. For a Quaker, this was the Inner Light in operation.36 Thompson's biographers recalled that he "gradually began to feel-and his opinions were shared by others-that the Society of Friends during the seventies and eighties was drifting more and more into Methodism . .., while forgetting its ancient call to a mystical and inner religion."37Thompson kept faith with Quakerism, deriving strength from traditions that were being ignored by most of his contemporaries. Likewise, the young Lawrence Richardson felt this deadening hand of conformity while growing up in Newcastle. He later recounted that although there was considerable discussion of the place of the Bible in Quakerism, "the more vocal portion (but certainly not all) were laying great stress on the need for belief in Bible and creed; and for evident conversion-'[Y]ou must be born again."' Finding this creed untenable, Richardson revolted in his late teens and all but resigned his membership.38 35Alfred W. Bennett, "Religionand Science,"FQE 5 (1871):583-97. See also Friend 14 (1874): 284-5 and 313, for Bennett'scommentson Tyndall's"BelfastAddress." 36 SilvanusPhillips Thompson,"The Mysteriesof Nature,"FQE 9 (1875):405-22. Thompsonhad previouslypublishedan essay entitled"ReligionandScience"thataddressessome of the same issues, in a non-Quakerjournal(Bachelor'sPapers 1 [1875]:274-82). An interestingparallelcan be drawn between Thompson'sviews and one strandin talmudic Judaism-see Menachem Fisch, Rational Rabbis: Science and Talmudic Culture (Bloomington: Indiana Univ. Press, 1997). His Life and Let37 Jane Smeal Thompson and Helen G. Thompson, Silvanus Phillips Thompson:

ters (London:T. Fisher Unwin, 1920), p. 320. 3SLawrenceRichardson,"Newcastle-upon-TyneFriendsand ScientificThought:Reminiscences,"

J. Friends Hist. Soc. 45 (1953):40-4.


335

Yet the winds of change were beginning to blow, albeit rather gently. By the mid1880s we see the rise of a liberal form of Quakerism that was, during the next few years, to have a profound effect on British Friends. The first widely read liberal publications were the anonymous A Reasonable Faith (1884) and Edward Worsdell's The Gospel of Divine Help (1886). The authors of the former work sought a "reasonable and scriptural" response not only to the rising tide of atheism but also to the overly dogmatic and creedal understanding of Quakerism propounded by contemporary evangelicals. Emphasizing the importance of holiness and the various sources of light, they criticized those who interpreted the Bible literally and dogmatically. Instead, they insisted that the Bible should be interpreted historically and as a progressive revelation. Clearly affected by recent currents in biblical scholarship, they sought to escape from the impasse that evangelical Quakerism had created. While the spiritual truths of the Bible should be savored, "neither its science nor its history, nor even its language should be regarded as specifically inspired."39These authors were also responding to developments in science, especially Darwinism. As Worsdell noted in The Gospel of Divine Help, "[A]n evolutionary interpretation of outward nature may be true, and ... in the records contained in the Old Testament there may be an admixture of the legendary, and the survivals from a previous heathendom."40 These reformers sought to diminish the role of the Bible and to reemphasize the notion of the Inner Light that had been such a prominent aspect of quietist thought. Their works formed the basis of the liberalizing movement that was to sweep through the Society of Friends during the next few years and weaken the hold of evangelicalism. From 1886 onward articles began to appear in the Friends' Quarterly Examiner accepting evolutionary theory as an unproblematic truth. In that year George Stewardson Brady, who, as we noted, eighteen years earlier had chastised his fellow Quakers for ignoring recent scientific developments, contributed an article entitled "The Modern Spirit in the Study of Nature," in which he surveyed the immense changes that Darwin's book had initiated. In a clear, straightforwardmanner he explained to his fellow Quakers how botany, zoology, psychology, and anthropology had all been revolutionized and enriched by the insights gleaned from evolutionary theory. Each organism was no longer to be understood as a static structure designed by God but as possessing a history. "[W]hatever may be the final object of the Creator, He works always according to law, and . . . whatever is beautiful has been made so, not capriciously, but by a process of development." Science had provided a new understanding of the world that "may be regarded as God's special revelation to this age."41 Reneging on the theory or questioning whether it was true was no longer possible; it had to be firmly grasped by Quakers. Brady found immediate support from John E. Littleboy, a corn merchant, who reviewed A History of British Birds, by Henry Seebohm, in the same volume. Compared with Brady's uncompromising espousal of Darwinism, Littleboy found Seebohm reticent and criticized him for not enthusiastically accepting the theory.42Four years later, in 1890, Henry Wallis reviewed Alfred Russel Wallace's book Darwinism 39 [FrancisFrith,WilliamPollard,andWilliamEdwardTurner],A ReasonableFaith: ShortEssays for40the Times,2nd ed. (London:Macmillan, 1885), p. 98. EdwardWorsdell,The Gospel of Divine Help (London:Harris,1886), p. 8. 41 George StewardsonBrady,"The ModernSpirit in the Study of Nature,"FQE 20 (1886):63-84. 42 JohnE. Littleboy,"AHistoryof Birds,"FQE 20 (1886):423-39. See also pp. 417-18.

336

GEOFFREY CANTOR

in highly complimentary terms. While he was critical of those churchmen who had in the past sought to impede science, he was pleased to note that the bishop of Carlisle had now publicly supported the theory.43The timing is significant, because the articles by Brady, Littleboy, and Wallis formed part of a liberalizing wave that was sweeping through the British Quaker community during the closing years of the century. A far greater sense of toleration and freedom prevailed. Moreover, the liberals viewed themselves as closer to the dissenting spirit of the early Quakers, whereas the evangelicals aligned themselves more with fellow evangelicals in the established churches and among such groups as Methodists. A milestone in this new liberalizing movement was the 1895 Manchester Conference, where "some very straight speaking" occurred.44One session was devoted specifically to "[t]he attitude of the Society of Friends towards modern thought," which provided a forum for engaging various contemporary themes in philosophy, politics, and science that some felt had been insufficiently addressed by Quakers. The session was chaired by the historian Thomas Hodgkin, who took the opportunity to criticize the majority of theologians both for impeding any scientific research that might challenge their understanding of the Bible and for distorting their interpretations in order to reach accord with modern science. Such moves, he considered, were of no service to religion and inevitably resulted in its disrepute. The problem arose from imposing an inappropriatenotion of truthon the Bible. The Quaker tradition sanctioned a very different approach, one that was both intellectually honest and preserved the integrity of Christianity. Hodgkin reminded his audience that, although George Fox revered its teachings, he did not conceive the Bible as the infallible word of God that must be taken as literally true. Christ's vital message to humankind did not depend on those passages that were "spoken unscientifically in the childhood of the world by the unscientific Hebrew sage." Thus, when properly understood the Bible could not be incompatible with the pursuit of science.45 The other principal speaker in that session was the physicist Silvanus Phillips Thompson, who had discussed science in the Friends' QuarterlyvExaminer in 1875. Now principal of Finsbury Technical College, he entitled his talk "Can a scientific man be a sincere Friend?" In this highly optimistic lecture he argued that modern science had brought new and valuable insights into the world-for example, the theory of evolution-that contemporary Quakers must fully engage. The scientific method, he considered, was a critical and very effective means for determining what was true and what was false. Not swayed by doctrines and opinions that could not be subjected to scientific test, the scientist, as portrayedby Thompson, was an ethically superior being who used his intellect to gain knowledge that possessed real and lasting value. Doubtless responding to those in the Quaker movement-principally evangelicals-who sought to downplay the intellect, he stressed the need to use the power of reason fully and effectively. Since God had endowed humans with this faculty, it was sacrilege to ignore it. Yet, like religion, science has its limits: "Each 43Henry Marriage Wallis, "Darwinism," FQE 24 (1890):246-57. 44 Richardson, "Newcastle-upon-Tyne Friends" (cit. n. 38). 45Thomas Hodgkin, "The Relation of Quakerism to Modern Thought," Report of the Proceedings of the Conference of Members of the Society of Friends, held, by direction of the Yearly Meeting, in Manchester from eleventh to the fifteenth of eleventh Month, 1895 (London: Hedley Brothers, 1896), pp. 199-209, on pp. 207-9. (Hereafter cited as Report of the Proceedings.) See also Louise Creighton, Life and Letters of ThomlasHodgkin (London: Longman, 1917), pp. 149-50, 325, 337, 341, and 361.


337

process has its own sphere, each discovers its own kind of truth."Although admitting a number of points of contact, he argued that problems arise when one "process" invades the proper domain of the other. Discussing the limitations of religion, Thompson criticized dogmas, such as those concerning the Eucharist and baptism, that afflicted most other Christian churches. Science had shown them to be untenable, and he welcomed the way in which recent scientific developments had helped to sift the pearls from the dross. "But that which is divine truth," he added, "modern thought will leave wholly untouched, or will touch only to confirm." Quakerism, as he saw it, was not weighed down with indefensible beliefs. Instead, with its emphasis on the spiritual light, it found its natural ally in science. Both could progress and flourish together; indeed, "[A]ll that is true, all that is real, all that is vital, will remain, will prosper, will grow; and our growth in the truth will be all the more sure, because modern thought shall have cleared away so much that choked and hindered the clear in-shining of the Divine light of Christ in the soul." Thus, in answer to the question he posed at the outset, he asserted that science and Quakerism are naturally compatible.4b III. THE NEW ACCORD WITH EVOLUTION

By the closing years of the nineteenth century many leading Friends viewed both science in general and evolution in particular as natural allies of Quakerism. This alliance was mutual; not only did these Quakers accept evolution as a legitimate scientific theory that was commensurate with their religious beliefs, but evolution (in its broader sense, rather than natural selection) was seen as justifying the liberal sensibility, with its dual emphasis on progressive revelation and the progress of both the individual and the Quaker movement. Late in 1907 the Woodbrooke Extension Committee in Birmingham founded the annual series of Swarthmore Lectures to be delivered "on some subject relating to the message and work of the Society of Friends."Hodgkin was invited to deliver the fourth of these high-profile lectures, and in his 1911 lecture entitled "Human Progress and the Inward Light" he took the opportunity to reflect on modern views about species, noting that in contrast to the doctrine of fixed species, which had been prevalent during his childhood, the theory of evolution was now generally accepted. Two important points followed from this understanding of nature. First, the relation between God and his Creation had to be redefined. It was no longer true to claim that "God made the world"; instead, "God is making the world." Rather than diminish our reverence for God, Hodgkin insisted that evolution had "rather immeasurably increased [it] by our conviction that He has been for ever working through the ages elaborating his great and wonderful designs." Nature, humans included, was not static but constantly evolving through progressive creation under God's dominion. Indeed, "every step gained by man in his upward progress from the brute must have been gained with the help of the Almighty."47 Hodgkin's second point concerns the historical processes affecting humankind. Whereas our physical being has been shaped by the survival of the fittest, he insisted 46

SilvanusPhillipsThompson."Cana scientificman be a sincereFriend?",Reportof the Proceed-

ings (cit. n. 45), pp. 227-39. 47 Thomas Hodgkin, Human Progress and the Inward Light (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1911), pp. 11 and 42. Emphasis added in latter quotation.

338

GEOFFREYCANTOR

that as human beings we also live on a spiritual plane: God's purpose is to raise us to this higher spiritual power. He fully accepted natural selection but limited its domain of operation to the physical world, humankind included.48Hodgkin's solution is interesting but not entirely satisfactory, because his first argument contained the neo-Larmarckian (but non-Darwinian) assumption that there is "upward progress" in the organic world, while in the second he encompassed natural selection, which, as noted earlier, according to Darwin results in random, not progressive, changes. However, Hodgkin's resolution of the problem of interrelating Quakerism and evolution can usefully be compared with that offered some years earlier by the surgeon Jonathan Hutchinson, for whom evolution, progress, and Christianity merged into a single optimistic Weltanschauung. Hutchinson, who first read the Origin soon after it was published, fully accepted the proposition that human beings have evolved from lower animals over an extended period of time. Moreover, he is said to have immediately recognized that its implications extended well beyond biology. As his son and biographer wrote, he "realized the tremendous liberation of mind that evolution effected-liberation for the service of mankind-and he openly taught it with all its implications; only trying to base the convictions of his hearers on a broad foundation of scientific fact; yet by no means overemphasizing the facts at the expense of their lesson."49The "lesson" he derived from evolution was that an intimate connection exists between biological and spiritual progress. The physical and spiritual aspects of humankind had evolved together. Although many other Quakers would have accepted this view, Hutchinson developed it in an unusually forceful manner. For Hutchinson the theory of evolution was neither atheistic nor pessimistic. Instead, he believed that it offered a new theistic key to the universe, especially to the place of humankind in it. In particular,he equated evolution with a concept he called "Heredity"-the process of historical accumulation within the human species through which the species progresses and achieves immortality. The individual will die, but each life contributes to the immortality of our species. As he wrote to his wife in 1881, My mind is so embued with it [the idea of permanence],that, when I am free from headache,I have scarcelythe perceptionof such a thing as death,in any gloomy sense. The thingsthathavebeen arethe thingsthatwill be, thereis no loss, but a steadygradual gain, a permanenceof life, thoughnot of individuals.The worldgets itself new clothes, the same spiritbut a new coveringfor it. Darwinismcomes in, with its happyproof of gain, and demonstrationof the laws underwhich progressandbetteradaptationto our worldare mattersof necessity:so I am thankfulfor my life, and thankfulon the partof those who will follow me.5? This optimistic creed posited an evolutionary process by which friendship, love, and affection would conquer all negative feelings. Hutchinson raised moral improvement-so important to Quakers-into a long-term historical force affecting the development of Homo sapiens. As his son noted, this view of evolution "enhanced [for Ibid., p. 14. 49HerbertHutchinson, Jonathan Hutchinson:Life and Letters (London: Heinemann Medical, 1946), p. 175. 5oJ. Hutchinsonto J. P. Hutchinson,1881, in ibid., p. 151. 48


339

Hutchinson] the Christian conception of the Divine fatherhood; it sanctified all human relationships; it gave new dignity to human life; it conquered death; [and] it scattered superstition to the wind."5' In acknowledging the role of natural selection in the organic realm it is clear that Hodgkin had read Darwin's book more closely than Hutchinson. Yet, as noted earlier, both writers, together with many other scientifically literate late nineteenth-century Quakers, retained the essentially Larmarckian notion of organic progress. Although writers from other confessional traditions used not dissimilar strategies, I suggest that optimism and progress mattered particularly to these Quakers. Indeed, progress, optimism, and evolution were intimately connected and provided a common vocabulary linking science and religion. IV. ARE COGNITIVE ISSUES SUFFICIENT?

In this concluding section I consider the larger question of whether we should confine discussion to cognitive issues when studying science-religion interrelations. Writers who analyze the cognitive usually focus on examples of "cognitive connection," where a concept derived from religion enters the content of science, or vice versa. However, although the present case study includes some examples of cognitive connectivity-such as Hutchinson's use of evolutionary terminology when discussing moral and spiritual development-it also leads me to question the adequacy of a purely cognitive analysis. In the following subsections I identify three significant weaknesses in this approach. Can science and religion be separated? In the pre-Darwinian synthesis of science and religion, as articulated by such naturalists as Edward Newman, we encounter many examples of ideas that we regard as religious entering into scientific theorizing. For Newman all species of plants and animals were designed by the Creator, each fulfilling its appropriatefunction within the ecology, and each possessing characteristics that ensure its survival over ensuing generations. The notion of providential design was deeply embedded in Newman's natural history, including the implication that any man-made species, such as hybrids, that deviated from His perfect plan would be weak and thus not able to survive long in natural environments. In an obvious sense Newman's religion was the source of his commitment to providential design in nature, which, in turn, informed every page of his voluminous scientific writings. However, in offering this reconstruction of Newman's position I am in danger of imposing an all too simple causal model on the case, one that utilizes the notion of cognitive connection and presupposes an inevitable and essentialist separation between "science" and "religion." Yet no such separation is apparent in Newman's writings on design in nature, since he conceived no clear distinction between science and religion. As a naturalist he saw all of nature as God's creation, and his writings on natural history are so interwoven with theological significance that the historian cannot simply separate out the "scientific" content without doing '5 Herbert Hutchinson, Life and Letters, p. 219. See also Jonathan Hutchinson, Wisdom and Knowledge: An Address Delivered at the Stoke Newington Mutual Instruction Society, October 1883 (Lon-

don: n.p., 1884).

340

GEOFFREYCANTOR

violence to Newman's Weltanschauung. His writings can best be described as "natural theological"-a term that is meant to frustrate the separation of his thought between its scientific and its religious components. But this argument can be usefully extended. Quakerism can best be viewed as a way of life, and viewed in that light, Quakerism necessarily encompasses the science pursued by Quakers. Hence it can be argued that throughout Newman's long career as a naturalist, empirical evidence and providentialist theology were mutually reinforcing. In seeking cognitive connections between "science" and "religion," are we not in danger of perpetuating the assumption that science and religion constituted two separate and separable domains? Isn't this assumption at the heart of the "conflict thesis"?52While I do not deny that religiously based propositions can be constitutive of scientific theorizing, the underlying assumptions are certainly open to question.5 But there is another, larger problem. Cognitive connections do not occur in vacuo, as it were, but need to be understood within broaderhistorical contexts. One extreme strategy is to make the cognitive subservient to the social and political. This approach was most impressively deployed by Adrian Desmond in The Politics of Evolution (1989), where he brilliantly located attitudes to organic transformation in the political divisions of 1830s London.54 I have adopted a different tack and have sought to locate Quaker views on science within a broader account of Quaker history. (As indicated earlier, another essay would be needed to analyze Quaker contributions to discussions of evolution in the scientific literature.) An Irenic Approach to Darwinism A second (and interestingly different) form of connective is provided by the theme of irenicism. By contrast with the Quaker emphasis on pacifism, many Victorian scientists, theologians, and reviewers in the popular press deployed militaristic terminology when characterizing religious responses to evolution. Of the various evocations of militarism the most famous is doubtless J. W. Draper's war-horse History of the Conflict between Religion and Science (1874). But warfare manifested itself in other ways: thus one of Darwin's most violent critics was a Quaker convert to Anglicanism, William Henry Harvey, who held the chair of botany at Trinity College, Dublin. Harvey made clear his profound opposition to the mechanism of natural selection, claiming in 1869, "I cannot as yet (and probably never shall) receive the theory of Natural Selection as a satisfactory explanation of the Origin of 5:Much contemporarydiscussion of science and religion is predicatedon highly questionableassumptionsabout the natureand separationof science and religion. See Geoffrey Cantorand Chris Kenny, "Barbour'sFour-FoldWay: Problems with His Taxonomy of Science-Religion Relationships,"forthcoming. 53 On some related issues see Geoffrey Cantor,"InterpretingMichael Faradayas the 'Christian Philosopher':Some ProblemsRegardingMetaphysics,"in Facets of Faith and Science, ed. Jitse M. van der Meer, vol. 1: Historiographv and Modes of Interaction (Lanham, Md: Univ. Press of America,

1996), pp. 49-62.

54Adrian Desmond, The Politics of Evolution: Morphology, Medicine, and Reform in Radical Lon-

don (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1989). Unfortunatelymost of the "Quakers"discussed by Desmond were not membersof the Society of Friends,and thereforehis characterizationof Quaker attitudesto science is mistaken.For example, John Epps, who styled himself a Quaker,was kept at arm'slength by the Quakercommunity.


341

species." He also dismissed Darwin's theory as "an ingenious dream."55Whatever Harvey's specific objections, he was viewed by the Darwinians as irritable, violent, intolerant, and incapable of giving his opponents a fair hearing. Thus Darwin wrote to Alfred Russel Wallace that "[s]o far is bigotry carried, ... I can name 3 Botanists [Harvey, J. H. Balfour, and Neil Amott] who will not even read Hooker's Essay!!" In any case, Darwin thought that Harvey did not possess the intellectual ability to appreciate the theory of evolution.56 By contrast, practicing Quakers, being pacifists, were appalled by the widespread evocation of pugilistic and military language in discussions of science and religion and avoided making such attacks. Thus, when the Quaker Alfred Bennett read a paper criticizing specific aspects of Darwin's theory at the 1870 British Association meeting, T. H. Huxley "paid a high compliment to the author of this paper, which he said was the first that he could recollect having heard in Section D [the Natural History section], which taking up the side against Mr. Darwin, still did so in a proper and philosophic manner."57Other Quakers, whether writing for or against the theory, were generally moderate in their use of language. Even evangelicals like Ash, who advocated limitations on the scope of science, were often impelled by a sense that peace could be maintained by dividing the territory.But, as we have seen, moderates went further and sought constructive ways of engaging science while opposing the dogmatic positions defended by rigid evangelicals. Likewise, one contributor to the Friends' Quarterly Examiner in 1875 regretted the polarization that had occurred, especially in response to Tyndall's 1874 "Belfast Address" to the British Association. This contributor parodied the situation thus: "The warfare is an open one. . . . [A]rmed with the weapons" that theology "has wielded for centuries," certain arroganttheologians were "striving to protect her sacred domain from the invasion of the iconoclastic hordes that would overrun it." He also criticized, though less severely, those immoderate scientists who claimed too much for science. The author then advised protagonists to retreat from their barricades and instead seek "some elements of possible concord.:'58 Moreover, Quakers-especially those in the moderate camp-insisted that appreciation of God is gained through personal experience. Understanding of God is always partial and ongoing and cannot be reduced to a set of theological propositions. Thus Quakers were highly critical of those Christians who sought to create a systematic theology in order to form the basis of an inflexible religious creed. This antidogmatic and skeptical attitude permeated not only Quaker attitudes to religion but also their way of engaging science, and it thus constitutes an additional noncognitive theme in our understanding of the science-religion issue. The Quakers we have been considering moderated their responses to evolution in 55Memoir of W. H. Harvey, M.D., ER.S. (London: Bell and Daldy, 1869), pp. 337-38; idem, An Inquiry into the Probable Origin of the Human Animal, on the Principles of Mr. Darwin's Theory of Natural Selection, and in Opposition to the Lamarckian Notion of a Monkey Parentage (Dublin: n.p.,

1860). See also E Burkhardt,S. Smith et al., eds., The Correspondenceof Charles Darwin (Cambridge:CambridgeUniv. Press, 1985-), vol. 8, pp. 322-35 and 415-21. (Cited hereafteras Correspondence. ) 56 C. Darwin to A. R. Wallace, 18 May 1860, Correspondence,vol. 8, pp. 219-23; C. Darwin to

J. D. Hooker, 3 Mar. 1860, Correspondence,vol. 8, pp. 115-16. The cited "essay"of Hooker'sis

J. D. Hooker, On the Flora of Australia (London: Reeve, 1859). 57 Nature 3 (1870-1 ):38.

58J. Gumey Pinkham,"Religionand Science,":FQE 9 (1875):333-53.

342

GEOFFREYCANTOR

conformity with their pacifist ideals and their antidogmatic hermeneutics. Although they tended to perceive beauty and design in nature, some Quaker writers readily accepted that nature was "red in tooth and claw." However, they refused to believe that violence in nature legitimated conflict among humans, who, possessing higher powers, should be able to transcend brutality.59Thus, while irenicism was not constitutive of any scientific theory, it provides a religiously based theme, but one that also applied to their deportment in the scientific community. In this sense it functioned as a connector, but not a cognitive connector in the sense previously defined. The Need for Contextualization The confluence, by the late nineteenth century, of evolutionary and progressivist views seems to offer a good example of a link between science and religion at the cognitive level. This was not a case of science borrowing ideas from religion, or vice versa, but rather the recognition by Hodgkin and others that the progressivist ethic-a crucial theme in early Quakerism that had subsequently been downplayed-resonated with the Lamarckian progressivism found in modern biology. Yet in acknowledging this cognitive connection the historian's work has hardly begun. My purpose has been to set this convergence within Quaker history and locate its deployment by the emerging moderates. This cognitive connection between "evolutionism" and progressivism in religion was forged by moderates like Hodgkin and Thompson as part of their attempt to swing the pendulum away from the Bible and toward the Inner Light, in order to revivify an ailing religious tradition. In other words, it formed part of the dialectic within nineteenth-century Quakerism and therefore needs to be read within that historical context. The foregoing case study suggests that the simple causal model of cognitive connection between science and religion is of limited use and applicability and needs to be supplemented by a more sophisticated understanding of conceptual interrelations. Thus, the search for cognitive connection offers a very partial method for understanding the science-religion domain, but one that can gain more significance through historical contextualization.6? E.g., HannahMariaWigham,"Is man a fightinganimal?",FQE 14 (1880):404-18 and 461-72. For furtherdiscussion of some alternativeapproachessee John Brooke and Geoffrey Cantor, ReconstructingNature: The Engagementof Science and Religion. The 1995-6 GiffordLecturesat Glasgow (Edinburgh:T & T Clark, 1998, New York:OxfordUniv. Press, 2000). 59 60

Victorian

Sciences

and

Religions

DiscordantHarmonies By Bernard Lightman* HEHEN IN SEARCH of a provocative quotation from one of the many acrimonious controversies of the Victorian period, scholars have often relied on the scintillating pen of the biologist Thomas Henry Huxley (1825-1895). "Extinguished theologians," he declared in 1860, "lie about the cradle of every science as the strangled snakes beside that of Hercules; and history records that whenever science and orthodoxy have been fairly opposed, the latter has been forced to retire from the lists, bleeding and crushed if not annihilated; scotched, if not slain."' One of Darwin's staunchest defenders, Huxley had a knack for baiting Christian theologians and laymen. Among those who took up the challenge by engaging Huxley in public debate were two prime ministers, William E. Gladstone and Arthur Balfour, and two Anglican bishops, Henry Wace and, of course, Samuel Wilberforce. The Oxford debate between Huxley and Bishop Wilberforce in 1860 is often seen as one of the pivotal moments in the historical relationship between science and religion and is placed beside other key episodes, such as the trial of Galileo in 1633 or the Scopes trial in 1925.2 It seems to encapsulate the importance of the entire Victorian period for our understanding of science-and-religion issues. While Galileo is portrayed as a scientist who single-handedly defended scientific truth against a dogmatic Roman Catholic Church, Huxley is seen as one of a powerful group of scientists who, during the Victorian era, aggressively attacked the Christian church, and with some success. The introduction of Darwin's theory of evolution in 1859, a new factor in the science-religion relationship, has been viewed as a critical turning point. Darwin, so to speak, threw a monkey wrench into the previously harmonious relationship between science and religion typified by natural theology. Evolutionary theory provided a standardaround which irreligious scientists could rally. The whole

W

* Division of Humanities,Facultyof Arts, YorkUniversity,309 Bethune.4700 Keele St., Toronto ON M3J 1P3, Canada This essay is a revised version of an addresspresentedat the conference "Religion and Science: Tension,Accommodationand Engagement,"held at Ohio State Univ. in Columbus,Ohio, on May 2-4, 1999. I am indebtedto Suzanne Sheffield, Leslie Howsam, Sydney Eisen, and Crosbie Smith for readingthis essay and sharingwith me theirhelpful suggestionsand comments.JamesR. Moore, RonaldNumbers,and Jon Robertsgave me some good ideas for appropriatequotationsby Christian defenders of the "two-spheres"position, and David Wilson and Bruce Hunt kindly recommended sources on Britishphysicists and religion. T. H. Huxley, "The Origin of Species," in idem, Darwiniana (New York:D. Appleton & Com1896), p. 52. pany, 2 For a recenttreatmentof the Huxley-Wilberforcedebatewith referencesto the literatureon this topic, see John Brooke and Geoffrey Cantor, Reconstructing Nature: The Engagement of Science

and Religion (Edinburgh:Clark, 1998), p. 36.

? 2001 by The Historyof Science Society.All rightsreserved.0369-7827/01/1601-0001$2.00 Osiris, 2001. 16:00-00

343

344

BERNARD LIGHTMAN

point of the Oxford debate, at least in this narrative, is that science went on the offensive-Huxley did not meekly turn the other cheek-he struck back. The nineteenth century has been characterized by Owen Chadwick as a period when the "secularization" of the European mind took place.3 Scholars have not been slow to extend the workings of a secularization process to Victorian society as well. The Anglican Church, central to British society in the early nineteenth century, was subjected to intense criticism and stripped of much of its power by the end of the century. It was common for thoughtful individuals during this time to experience a devastating loss of faith in traditional religious institutions and ideas. A new term, "agnosticism," had to be invented by Huxley to describe the unusual position some intellectuals found themselves in after this crisis had run its course. If there is any period in the post-Newtonian age that deserves to be seen as an arena of warfare between science and religion, surely the Victorian period is a strong candidate. But in Reconstructing Nature: The Engagement of Science and Religion (1998), John Brooke and Geoffrey Cantor warn against the adoption of any "master narrative," that is, any "definitive historical account of how science and religion have been (and are) interrelated."4They reject the various theses that have in the past been put forward as canonical-the theses of conflict, harmony, independence, dialogue, and integration-because these theses are selective in their use of evidence, assume an ahistorical essentialist definition of both science and religion, and "gloss over the diversity and the complexity of positions taken in the past."5Though we may accept Brooke and Cantor's embargo on master narratives that impose one story on the entire history of Western science and religion, perhaps the conflict thesis can be applied with validity to the Victorian period alone? But scholars studying Victorian science and religion in Britain began to question the conflict thesis back in the 1970s.6 Since then, scholars have attempted to build a richer, more nuanced picture of the science-and-religion scene in Victorian Britain, one that is not structured around a narrative of conflict and that does not center on Huxley and his allies. An overview and synthesis of this extensive body of scholarship will throw into sharp relief the ironies of the Victorian era, in particular during the post-Darwinian period, ironies that elude the standard models in the traditional historiography of science and religion and that raise questions about the secularization thesis underlying the conflict model. If a conflict took place, it was not just between scientists on the one side and defenders of the Christian faith on the other. The debate also took place between opposing groups of scientists, who put forward different conceptions of how science and religion could peacefully coexist, and who disagreed on whether or not the cognitive content of scientific theory should be shaped by religious belief. Men such as Huxley became passionately involved because a series of broader issues were at stake, including the nature of science, who had the authority 3 Owen Chadwick, The Secularization of the European Mind in the Nineteenth Century (Cam-

bridge:CambridgeUniv. Press, 1997). 4 Brooke and Cantor,ReconstructingNature(cit. n. 2), p. xi. 5 Ibid., pp. 21, 66. 6 In a review of recently publishedworks on science and religion in 1977, David Wilson argued thatthese new works demonstratedhow historicaldistortionarose from the assumptionthat science and religion were in a single relationshipof conflict duringthe Victorianera. See David B. Wilson, "VictorianScience and Religion,"Hist. Sci. 15 (1977):52-67, on p. 66.

VICTORIANSCIENCESAND RELIGIONS

345

to speak on behalf of science, and even who should be considered the cultural elite of a modem, industrialized British society. I. NEVER THE TWAIN SHALL MEET: HUXLEY, SCIENTIFIC NATURALISM, AND THE TWO SPHERES

In 1864 a British journal called The Reader published an anonymous article entitled "Science and 'Church Policy.'" Distinguishing between religion and theology, the author argued that although there was indeed a potential conflict between theology and science, there was no potential conflict between religion and science: Religion has her unshakeablethronein those deeps of man'snaturewhich lie around and below the intellect,but not in it. But Theology is a simple branchof Science or it is nought;andthe "ChurchPolicy"which sets it up againstScience is aboutas reasonable as would be the advocacyof the claims of the rule of three to superiorauthority over arithmeticin general.7 The anonymous author of the Reader article locates "unshakeable" religion in the depths of human nature, as opposed to science and theology, which are placed in the intellect. Since theology is but a subdivision within science, it is foolish for any part to challenge the whole. Compare this quotation to one from a liberal Christian of the twentieth century, Daniel S. Robinson, professor of philosophy at Miami University, writing in 1926:8 Religion, rooted as it is in man'sinner sentiments,aspirations,and intimations,is in realitydistinctfromnaturalscience whose only concernis with the explanationof perceptualreality or with the orderingof sense data.A conflict between these two great complementaryaspectsof humancultureneverdevelops untilthe intellectualinterpretation of innerreligious experience,known as theology,meets scientific views of the world.9

Similar thoughts have been presented in the twentieth century by neo-orthodox Protestants such as Langdon Gilkey (1919-), who viewed science and religion as two totally independent and autonomous enterprises. Even contemporary scientists who are not believers but respect religion are willing to accept the notion that conflict between science and religion is avoidable. In his recently published Rocks of Ages (1999), Stephen Jay Gould has proposed the principle of "respectful noninterference" by "enunciating the Principle of NOMA, or Non-Overlapping Magisteria."1 From this perspective, science and religion are presented as complementary forces, each answering a different set of human needs and using different methods and languages. Divided into two separate spheres, science and religion cannot come into [T. H. Huxley], "Science and 'ChurchPolicy,"' Reader4 (31 Dec. 1864):821. Robinson'sadherenceto the positionthatscience andreligioncould be separatedinto two autonomous spheres was not at all typical of liberal Christianityduring this period. My thanks to Ron Numbersfor pointingthis out to me. 9 7

Daniel S. Robinson, The God of the Liberal Christian: A Study of Social Theology and the New Theism as Conflicting Schools of Progressive Religious Thought (New York: D. Appleton, 1926),

p. 1. I am indebtedto ProfessorJon Robertsfor drawingmy attentionto this quotation.

"0Stephen Jay Gould, Rocks of Ages: Science and Religion in the Fullness of Life (New York:

Ballantine, 1999), p. 5.

346

BERNARD LIGHTMAN

conflict unless clergymen try to pronounce upon the workings of nature or scientists attempt to apply scientific theory beyond the natural world." But the anonymous article was published in 1864. Who was the author? One possible candidate would be Baden Powell, the liberal Anglican and contributor to the infamous Essays and Reviews (1860), which raised such a storm of controversy. The essayists welcomed evolutionary theory and biblical criticism into their vision of a modernized Christian church. In his "Study of the Evidences of Christianity" Powell argued that the domains of faith and reason had to be kept separate in order to accommodate the rising power of science. Alleged miracles could be regarded in only one of two ways: as physical events to be "investigated by reason and physical evidence and referred to physical causes," or as "connected with religious doctrine, regarded in a sacred light, asserted on the authority of inspiration."In the latter case, miracles ceased to be "capable of investigation by reason" and were accepted on "religious grounds, and can appeal only to the principle and influence of faith." 2 In the end Powell did not believe that a case for miracles could be made on the basis of physical evidence, and he turned to faith as justification. But one small detail rules him out as the author of the 1864 article: he had died earlier in 1860. However, Powell is a good example of how a Christian thinker, even at that time, could accept the division of science and religion into spheres of influence as a strategy for defending religion. Again, who was the author of the anonymous article? It was none other than Huxley himself. How can we square Huxley's attitude toward science and religion in 1864 with his penchant for baiting defenders of Christianity and his devotion to what has been called "scientific naturalism"? Scientific naturalism was the English version of the cult of science in vogue throughout Europe during the second half of the nineteenth century. Since science was perceived during that period as providing the most legitimate path to certain truth, those who could lay claim to speak on behalf of science could present themselves as authoritative leaders who knew how to interpret the larger significance of modem science. Scientific naturalists put forward new interpretations of humankind, nature, and society derived from theories, methods, and categories of empirical science. This cluster of ideas and attitudes was "naturalistic"in the sense that it would permit no recourse to causes not empirically observable in nature, and scientific because it drew on three major mid-nineteenthcentury theories: (1) the atomic theory of matter; (2) the theory of the conservation of energy; and (3) the theory of evolution.13 In Britain, throughout the nineteenth century the older, established intellectual elite, who defended the interests of the aristocracy and the Anglican Church, fought to preserve their social and intellectual positions. Within science the Anglican establishment had been represented by such figures as William Whewell (1794-1866) 11Ian Barbour,Religion in an Age of Science (San Francisco:Harper,1990), vol. 1, pp. 12-13; John Brooke, Science and Religion: Some Historical Perspectives (Cambridge:CambridgeUniv. Press, 1991), p. 4. 12 Baden Powell, "Studyof the Evidences of Christianity"in Essays and Reviews (London:John W. Parkerand Son, 1860), p. 142. See also Pietro Corsi, Science and Religion: Baden Powell and the Anglican Debate, 1800-1860 (Cambridge:CambridgeUniv. Press, 1988). 13The scientific naturalistswere not entirely consistent in their adherenceto naturalism.Atoms and the evolutionaryprocess were not empirically observable.For more on the inconsistencies of scientific naturalismsee BernardLightman,The Originsof Agnosticism:VictorianUnbeliefand the Limitsof Knowledge(Baltimore:JohnsHopkinsUniv. Press, 1987), pp. 146-76.


347

and Adam Sedgwick (1785-1873), members of the clerical, gentlemanly, donnish culture of Anglican Cambridge, imbued with the spirit of natural theology. Scientific naturalists, largely based in London, depicted them as outmoded relics of preprofessional science. Scientific naturalism served the interests of sections of the new professional middle class and provided a rationale for their leaders to wrest cultural and social control from the clergy. Scientific naturalists often presented themselves as the cultural elite best equipped to guide Britain as it was transformed into a modern, industrialized nation. Besides Huxley, the leaders of scientific naturalism included scientists such as John Tyndall (1820-1893), William Kingdon Clifford (18451879), E. Ray Lankester (1847-1929), and Henry Maudsley (1835-1918), as well as the positivist Frederic Harrison (1831-1923), anthropologist Edward Tylor (18321917), philosophers G. H. Lewes (1817-1878) and Herbert Spencer (1820-1903), banker and popularizer of science John Lubbock (1834-1913), and literary critic and editor Leslie Stephen (1832-1904).'4 There is no doubt that Huxley's two-spheres position, which he shared with many of his scientific naturalist allies, established the independence of science and aided him in his program to professionalize science by obtaining from industry, government, and education the resources needed for salaries and research facilities not under the control of the aristocratic/Anglican establishment. Huxley and his allies argued that "good science" was based solely on rigorous empirical research. "Bad science," as in the case of objections to Darwin's theory of natural selection on theological grounds, allowed religious belief to shape the cognitive content of scientific theory. The attempt to professionalize science was partly motivated by a desire for social and occupational, as well as intellectual, independence: scientific naturalists argued for an empirically based discipline that need not take into account the Bible, the doctrines of the Anglican Church, or the opinions of the clergy. 5 This brought Huxley and his colleagues into conflict both with those amateurs and parson naturalists within the sphere of science who did not share their aims and with those outside the profession who resisted science's claims of self-definition. Though Huxley was one of the leaders of scientific naturalism, he nevertheless perceived himself as having a deeply religious sensibility. When the eugenicist Francis Galton (1822-1911) asked for information on his character in 1873, Huxley admitted to a "profound religious tendency capable of fanaticism, but tempered by no less profound theological scepticism." 16 Huxley enjoyed casting himself in the role of a religious reformer like Luther. He asserted that the revolution effected in the modern mind by the beneficial impact of science represented the final climax of the Protestant Reformation, and in the preface to his Science and Christian Tradition (1894) he referred to this revolution as the "New Reformation."'7 Even his coining of the term "agnosticism" in 1869 was intended to underline the orthodox quality of his religious position, though it was also meant as a taunt to his Christian foes. The term "agnostic" had come into his head "as suggestively 14 Frank M. Turner, Between Science and Religion: The Reaction to Scientific Naturalism in Late Victorian England (New Haven: Yale Univ. Press, 1974), p. 9; idem, Contesting Cultural Authority: Essays in Victorian Intellectual Life (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ. Press, 1993). 15Turner, Contesting Cultural Authority (cit. n. 14), chap. 7. 16 Quoted in Cyril Bibby, T H. Huxley: Scientist, Humanist and Educator (New York: Horizon,

1960), p. xxii. 17

Lightman, Origins of Agnosticism (cit. n. 13), p. 124.

348

BERNARD LIGHTMAN

antithetic to the 'gnostic' of Church history, who professed to know so much about the very thing of which I was ignorant."'8The Gnostics were a sect existing both within and outside Christianity and Judaism in the first three centuries A.D. Claiming to possess superior knowledge derived from secret revelations, the Gnostics were eventually driven out of the Christian church. In calling himself an "a-gnostic" Huxley was siding with the early church's designation of gnosticism as heretical. If Victorian Christians were unwilling to accept his agnostic principle that transcendental entities were beyond the limits of human knowledge, then, Huxley was cleverly implying, perhaps nineteenth-century Anglicanism was a new Gnostic sect dogmatically claiming possession of higher knowledge. Huxley, then, was sincere when he declared in his Reader article of 1864 that religion satisfied a deep human need, his hostility to the institutionalized religion of his day notwithstanding. For Huxley, and other scientific naturalists such as Stephen, Tyndall, and Spencer, religion, like poetry and art, belonged to the realm of feeling and ethics, while science was part of the realm of intellect.'9 No doubt Huxley and his colleagues circumscribed the religious sphere far more tightly than Baden Powell, who believed that the innate idea of God combined with the direct perception of the moral superiority of revelation guaranteed faith in the whole corpus of Christian doctrine.2' Huxley tended to emphasize ethics and religious emotion as the basis of his religious domain. But he maintained that science and religion, rightly conceived, were complementary and could never come into conflict, because each realm, or world, was separate and without authority outside its proper sphere of interest. However, theology, distinct from religion and operating in the world of the intellect because of its claim to embody feelings in concrete facts, was potentially in conflict with science, since its propositions could be tested empirically, like any proposition in the world of intellect. In Huxley's opinion, theological propositions had often been disproven in the past and had been relinquished by theologians, just as scientists had abandoned erroneous scientific theories. Science and religion were at odds only if religion were wrongly identified with theology. "The antagonism between science and religion," Huxley announced in 1885, "about which we hear so much, appears to me to be purely factitious-fabricated, on the one hand, by shortsighted religious people who confound a certain branch of science, theology, with religion; and, on the other, by equally short-sighted scientific people who forget that science takes for its province only that which is susceptible of clear intellectual comprehension."2' Huxley found the distinction between religious feeling and theological dogma in the works of Thomas Carlyle (1795-1881) and in German thinkers such as Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832). "Sartor Resartus led me to know," Huxley wrote privately to Charles Kingsley (1819-1875) in 1860, "that a deep sense of religion was compatible with the entire absence of theology."22 ls T. H. Huxley,Science and ChristianTradition(London:Macmillan, 1909), p. 239. 19

21) 21

Lightman, The Origins of Agnosticism (cit. n. 13), pp. 82, 131-4. Corsi, Science and Religion (cit. n. 12), p. 219. T. H. Huxley,Science and Hebrew Tradition (New York:D. Appleton& Co., 1898), pp. 160-1.

Ruth Barton was the first scholar to explore Huxley's complex idea of the relationshipbetween science, religion, and theology. See Ruth Barton,"Evolution:The WhitworthGun in Huxley'sWar for the Liberation of Science from Theology," in The Wider Domain for Evolutionary Thought, ed.

D. Oldroydand I. Langham(Dordrecht:Reidel, 1983), pp. 261-87. 22

Leonard Huxley, ed., Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley, 2 vols. (New York: D. Apple-

ton & Co., 1900). vol. 1. p. 237. If many prominentnineteenth-centuryEuropeanthinkerslocated


349

Picturing the originator of agnosticism, the pugnacious adversary of Bishop Wilberforce, as someone sympathetic to religion who promoted harmony between the separate worlds of science and religion may still be too much to swallow: it could be seen as analogous to wringing a deathbed conversion from Darwin's bulldog. But vicious attacks on the Anglican establishment by devoutly religious individuals were not at all unusual during the Victorian period. As Frank Turner reminded us in his essay on the fragile line between the secular and the religious ("The Religious and The Secular in Victorian Britain"), English Nonconformists experienced the Church of England "as a genuinely repressive institution in areas such as free expression, taxation, education, and burial privileges. The Nonconformist drive for political and civic equality constituted an effort to achieve fundamental religious liberty and equality through secular means,' which often involved "removing the disputed issue from the authority of the Anglican Church and investing it in the secular state."The drive for the disestablishment of the Anglican Church in England, Ireland, and Wales, to take one example, cannot be interpreted solely as a sign of the increasing secularization of British society. Nonconformists conceived of secular solutions "as a device to realize distinctly religious goals."23 Thanks to Adrian Desmond's recent biography, Huxley: From Devil's Disciple to Evolution's High Priest (1997), which reconstructs Huxley's involvement in the world of radical dissent as a young medical student in London in the early 1840s, we can now place him alongside those Nonconformists who fought to bring down the Anglican establishment.24For Huxley was deeply affected by the poverty of the East London slums, instructed by angry teachers engaged in a dirty war with the elite surgeons, and exposed to shrieking denunciations of Anglican privilege. No wonder he sought in the profession of science the salvation that the monopolistic Anglican Church had failed to provide for English society. No wonder Huxley could still see himself as a deeply religious soul, committed to harmonizing science and religion. But if both Huxley and his enemies agreed that science and religion were, at some level, not in conflict, then what was the crux of the argument? I1. WHEN WORLDS COLLIDE: BALFOUR, THE PHYSICISTS, AND THE BLURRY LINE BETWEEN SCIENCE AND RELIGION

During the winter and spring of 1895 Huxley was fighting losing battles on two fronts. Struck down by influenza, he raced to complete his review of The Foundations of Belief (1895), by Arthur Balfour (1848-1930). When Huxley's heart gave out on June 29, he had only managed to complete the first part of his review for the the essence of religion in feeling and divorced it from science, as MauriceMandelbaummaintains, then Huxley'sposition can be viewed as quite conventional.Mandelbaumarguesthat "[i]n spite of the many conservativetheologians, and the conservativerevivals of the French Romanticreaction andthe OxfordMovement,in spite also of the persistingtraditionof metaphysicalidealism,the most influential strandin nineteenth-centurythought was that which attemptedto divorce science and See MauriceMandelbaum,History,Man and Reason:A religion, and maintainthe value of each.":' Study in Nineteenth-Century Thought (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Univ. Press, 1971), p. 37.

2a Turner."The Religious and the Secular in VictorianBritain,"chap. I in Contesting Cultural Authority(cit. n. 14), pp. 3-37. on pp. 31 and 32. 24Adrian Desmond, Huxley: FroomDevil's Disciple to Evolutions High Priest (Reading, Mass.: Addison-Wesley.1997).

350

BERNARD LIGHTMAN

journal Nineteenth Century. Balfour-a Tory aristocrat, Cambridge-educated intellectual, leading political figure, and future Tory prime minister-had published a book that, in his view, laid bare the incoherence of the scientific naturalist's theory of knowledge.25Availing himself of arguments reminiscent of David Hume's skepticism, Balfour asserted that the primary presuppositions of science, such as the notion of cause and effect, cannot be justified if we are bound by the naturalist'sinsistence that only empirical methods are valid. But Balfour made it clear that his critique of scientific naturalism was not intended to destroy science. To Balfour, naturalism was "nothing more than the assertion that empirical methods are valid, and that no others are so."26Whereas the leaders of naturalism illegitimately tried to "associate naturalism and science in a kind of joint supremacy over the thoughts and consciences of mankind,"Balfour carefully disengaged naturalism from science itself (p. 136). Balfour asserted that naturalism was but a "poor relation" of science that had forced itself into the "retinue of science" and now claimed to "represent her authority and to speak with her voice" (p. 135). Balfour's insistence on referring to "scientific naturalism" as "naturalism"throughout Foundaltions of Belief encapsulated his underlying plan of denying to scientific naturalism any intrinsic connection to science. By distinguishing naturalism from science Balfour could claim that advocates of naturalism, such as Huxley, did not speak with the authority of science behind them. He could also challenge Huxley's notion of the separate spheres of authority for science and religion. Balfour objected that the "two spheres" approach fragmented our world and left us with no recourse for judging between science and religion when boundary disputes arose. "Andthe two regions of knowledge lie side by side," Balfour observed, "contiguous but not connected, like empires of different race and language, which own no common jurisdiction nor hold any intercourse with each other, except along a disputed and wavering frontier where no superior power exists to settle their quarrels or to determine their respective limits." Balfour labeled this approach to the issue a "patchwork scheme of belief" (p. 194). Huxley's resolution, which depicted science and religion in peaceful harmony, where no disputes arise and no superior power is needed when border skirmishes take place, seemed naive in light of Balfour's analysis. Like Huxley, Balfour believed that science and religion were not in conflict. True science has no quarrel with religion, Balfour declared, for all science says is that matters such as the existence of God are beyond its jurisdiction and must be tried "in other courts, and before judges administering different laws" (p. 301). But unlike Huxley, Balfour was unwilling to settle for an uneasy truce between science and religion by carving up the universe into two separate realms. He argued that scientific, ethical, and theological beliefs could be brought into a more coherent whole "if we consider them in a Theistic setting, than if we consider them in a Naturalistic one" (p. 344). Not only did the skeptical bent of scientific naturalism undermine the 25 Bernard Lightman, "'Fighting Even with Death': Balfour, Scientific Naturalism, and Thomas Henry Huxley's Final Battle," in Thomas Henry Huxley's Place in Science and Letters: Centenary Essays, ed. Alan Barr (Athens: Univ. of Georgia Press, 1997), pp. 323-50. 26 Arthur James Balfour, The Foundations of Belief: Being Notes Introductory to the Study of Thein ology (London: Longmans, Green, 1895). p. 134. Cited hereafter by page number in parentheses the text.

VICTORIAN SCIENCES AND RELIGIONS

351

presuppositions of science; it also made it impossible to conceive of a form of science that could be placed in a broader religious context. In his Foundations of Belief Balfour had put his finger on the main issues at stake in the many debates during the Victorian period. It was not so much whether or not science and religion could be reconciled-for both Balfour and Huxley agreed that they could; it was the nature of the reconciliation that lay at the center of the controversy. Should religious belief continue to play a guiding role in science? Of course this was fundamentally a question about the nature of science itself, a matter having to do with the demarcation between authentic and inauthentic knowledge. The answer to the question determined who could speak in the name of science and who could participate in the making of scientific knowledge. These were still open questions during the Victorian period. Despite the claims of scientific naturalists such as Huxley to be the sole spokesmen for science by right of their professional expertise, their authority was challenged by other professional scientists who did not identify with scientific naturalism and by intellectuals like Balfour who rejected a rigid separation of science and religion. A rather quick overview of the topography of the intellectual landscape will confirm that many prominent intellectuals and scientists fought to retain a place for religious belief in Victorian science in the face of the growing power of scientific naturalism. Of course individuals to the left of Huxley, such as secularists and radical, working-class atheists, would have pushed religion even more into the background. But the Bradlaughs, Holyoakes, and Footes were few and far between.27 However, a number of important groups of Victorian intellectuals were by no means convinced that a rigorous exclusion of religious ideas from science was a positive thing. In his BetwveenScience and Religion: The Reaction to Scientific Naturalism in Late Victorian England (1974), Frank Turner deals with such figures as the codiscoverer of natural selection, A. R. Wallace (1823-1913), the Cambridge philosopher Henry Sidgwick (1838-1900), the biologist G. J. Romanes (1845-1894), and the philosopher and psychologist James Ward (1843-1925), men who did not adhere to the Anglican Church but who were equally uncomfortable with scientific naturalism.2SSome of them were intensely interested in spiritualism and saw no contradiction in the scientific study of the supernatural. Sandra Den Otter has argued, in her British Idealism and Social Explanation (1996), that the philosophers T. H. Green (1836-1882), F. H. Bradley (1846-1924), Edward Caird (1835-1908), Henry Jones (1852-1922), William Wallace (1844-1897), J. D. Mackenzie (1860-1935), David George Ritchie (1853-1903), and Bernard Bosanquet (1848-1923) formed an idealist school that dominated British philosophy in the last three decades of the nineteenth century.29Drawing on evolutionary theory to construct a distinctive social philosophy, British idealists nevertheless embedded it in a quasi-Christian metaphysical system. To the right of both the idealists and those between science and religion were individuals formally connected with Christianity. In his classic study of the Protestant reaction to Darwin, The Post-Darwinian Controversies (1979), 27 CharlesBradlaugh(1833-1891), George Holyoake (1817-1906), and G. W. Foote (1850-1915) were the leading Secularistsof the nineteenthcentury.

2:

29

Turner, Between Science and Religion (cit. n. 14). Sandra M. Den Otter, British Idealism and Social Explanation: A Study in Late Victorian

Thought(Oxford:Clarendon,1996), p. 14.

352

BERNARD LIGHTMAN

James R. Moore convincingly demonstrated that Christian thinkers were far more receptive to evolutionary theory than was formerly recognized.3' Both liberal and conservative Christians found ways to offer a religious interpretation of the evolutionary process. An important group within the ranks of professional scientists maintained that there was a religious dimension to science. Thanks to the scholarly efforts of P. M. Heimann, Paul Theerman, Norton Wise, David Wilson, and Crosbie Smith, we now know a great deal about Victorian physicists whose science was structured by religious ideas. Bearing the impress of Scottish presbyterianism and linked to the industrialists of northern Britain, energy physics was founded by a "North British" group composed of Glasgow professor of natural philosophy William Thomson (18241907), Scottish natural philosophers James Clerk Maxwell (1831-1879) and Peter Guthrie Tait (1831-1901), and the engineers Fleeming Jenkin (1833-1885) and Macquorn Rankine (1820-1872). Between 1850 and 1880, these scientific reformers succeeded in establishing the national, even international, credibility of the science of energy formulated in local contexts in Manchester, Glasgow, and Edinburgh, thereby redrawing the disciplinary map of physics.-' The North British physicists competed directly with the scientific naturalists, but since they posed no threat to traditional conceptions of the harmony between science and religion their program of reform appealed to conservative Cambridge dons such as the physicist and Lucasian Professor of Mathematics, George Gabriel Stokes (1819-1903).32 Seeing in London-based scientific naturalism a form of anti-Christian materialism, and believing that the core doctrine of materialism was the notion of reversibility (the notion that in a purely mechanical system there is no difference between running forward or backward), the North British physicists embedded a doctrine of irreversibility in their science of energy. In their hands the idea that the visible creation was characterized by the divinely ordained directionality of energy flow (whether expressed as "progression" or "dissipation" in the material world) became a weapon to use against Huxley and his allies.iAnimosity between scientific naturalists and North British physicists bubbled to the surface in several celebrated controversies, ostensibly about purely scientific issues but in reality involving the role of religious ideas in science. In his debate 30 James R. Moore, The Post-Darwinian Controversies: A Study of the Protestant Struggle to Come to Terms with Darwin in Great Britain and America, 1870-1900 (Cambridge: Cambridge Univ.

Press, 1979). 3' I am heavily indebtedto Crosbie Smith in this section for the idea of placing these scientists togetheras a distinct group labeled the "NorthBritish physicists."See Crosbie Smith, The Science of Energy.: A Cultural History of Energy Physics in Victorian Britain (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago

Press, 1998). 32 Though not a core memberof the NorthBritish group, Stokes is a good example of a physicist who rejectedthe separationof science and religion. David B. Wilson assertsthat Stokes was one of the three or four leading physicists of his generation.LucasianProfessorof Mathematicsat Cambridge from 1849 to his death in 1903, Stokes conducted researchin hydrodynamicsand optics. Raised an evangelical, Stokes saw no conflict between science and religion. Scripture,science, and moralitycombinedto disclose a God who intervenedin the course of naturein variousways. Stokes believed that the notion of science and religion as occupying separaterealms was far too simplistic. Humans had to deal with different, incomplete, but divinely sanctioned sources of knowledgemoral,biblical, and scientific-and ambiguitywas unavoidable.See David B. Wilson, "APhysicist's Alternativeto Materialism:The Religious Thought of George Gabriel Stokes." VictorianStud. 28 (1984):69-96. 33Smith, Science of Energy(cit. n. 31), pp. 311-12.


353

with Huxley on the age of the earth in the late 1860s, William Thomson attempted to show that the laws of thermodynamics raised questions about geological uniformity and its demands for unlimited time.34But behind Thomson's opposition to uniformitarianism lay his rejection of Darwin's random evolutionary mechanism and his commitment to a process that was ordered, law-like, and subject to divine guidance and control.3' Regarding humanity's mental powers as having been designed by God for the purpose of understanding nature, a theological view of mind and knowledge that he had learned as a student at Glasgow and Cambridge during the 1830s and 1840s, Thomson saw scientific and theological considerations as mutually relevant.36 James Clerk Maxwell's dispute in the 1870's about the nature of molecules with the scientific naturalist W. K. Clifford, professor in applied mathematics at University College, London, was in part about the human ability to attain precision in science and exact knowledge of nature.37But Maxwell's deeply held evangelical religious beliefs (he was raised as both Anglican and Presbyterian) led him to argue in his lecture "Molecules," delivered to the British Association in 1873, that the unalterable mass of individual molecules and the identical properties of molecules of the same kind could not have come about "by any of the processes we call natural." Resembling a manufactured article, their "ineffaceable characters" could only have been impressed on them by a divine creator.38Maxwell did not consider his argument about molecules to be in the tradition of natural theology; indeed, he thought that to import scientific ideas into theology was potentially dangerous, because scientific concepts were evolving so rapidly. He nevertheless believed that scientific conclusions could suggest religious ideas and that Scripture could take on new interpretations in the light of scientific work.39 However, the attempt by John Tyndall to place energy conservation alongside evolution as one of the key doctrines of scientific naturalism was perhaps the greatest threat to the authority of the North British physicists. Tyndall was the only eminent physicist among the scientific naturalists, but as successor to Michael Faraday's (1791-1867) professorship at the Royal Institution in London he was a man to be reckoned with. To appropriateenergy physics, Tyndall relegated James Joule (18181889), the Manchester physicist who the North British physicists had claimed was the pioneer of energy theory, to the role of experimental demonstrator of the relation between heat and work. Tyndall promoted the German physician Julius Robert 34 Joe D.

Burchfield,Lord Kelvin and the Age of the Earth (London:Macmillan, 1975), p. 81. 35Crosbie Smith and M. Norton Wise, Energy and Empire: A Biographical Study of Lord Kelvin

(Cambridge:CambridgeUniv. Press, 1989), pp. 524, 637-45. 36 David B. Wilson, "Kelvin'sScientific Realism:The TheologicalContext,"Phil. J. 11 (1974):4160, especially pp. 50-1. 37Simon Schaffer,"Metrology,Metrication,andVictorianValues,"in VictorianScience in Context, ed. BernardLightman(Chicago:Univ. of Chicago Press, 1997), pp. 465-66. 3AJames Clerk Maxwell, "Molecules," in The Scientific Papers of James Clerk Maxwell, ed. W. D.

Niven, 2 vols. (Cambridge:CambridgeUniv. Press, 1890), vol. 2, pp. 376-7. Heimannargues that Maxwell's notion of immutablemolecules is a "clear indication of the importanceof theological ideas in his scientific thought."See P. M. Heimann, "MolecularForces, StatisticalRepresentation and Maxwell'sDemon:' Stud.Hist. Phil. Sci. 1 ( 1970):189-211, especially pp. 202-3. Theermanhas discussedMaxwell'sevangelicalconversionas a studentat Cambridgein 1853 and the impactof the studentdiscussion group,the CambridgeApostles, on his scientific and religious thought.See Paul Theerman."JamesClerk Maxwell and Religion,"Amer.J. Phys. 54 (1986):312-17. 39 Theerman,"JamesClerk Maxwell and Religion" (cit. n. 38), p. 316.

354

BERNARD LIGHTMAN

Mayer (1814-1878) as a neglected genius who had first made the crucial discovery. A debate ensued in 1862 and 1863 between Tyndall and Peter Guthrie Tait. Responding on behalf of the North British physicists, Tait challenged Mayer's competence in experimental physics and sought to secure the reputation of Joule as well as the whole authoritative basis of a North British science of energy.40No mere priority dispute, the heart of the matter concerned Tyndall's use of the notion of conservation of energy to defend scientific naturalism.41If the quantity of the energy in the universe remained fixed throughout all transformations of energy, then, Tyndall maintained, the mechanism of nature remained closed to all "external" (read "supernatural")interference. Furthermore, the cause-and-effect connections within this hermetically sealed system were amenable to study by a science that had no need of religious concepts. According to Turner, this interpretation of the law of the conservation of energy was probably more destructive of religious explanations involving miracles, spirits, or God than the theory of evolution by natural selection.42 Years later Tait teamed up with another Scottish physicist, Balfour Stewart (18281887), to attack Tyndall directly in The Unseen Universe: Or Physical Speculations on a Future State (1875). Intended as a refutation of Tyndall's "Belfast Address" from the preceding year, widely perceived as a materialist manifesto aimed at enlarging the scope of science, Tait and Stewart rejected any attempt to separate the natural from the miraculous. Arguing that the naturalorder included an invisible realm, they explained the operation of divine providence in terms of the transference of energy from the invisible to the visible realm.43 Though the science of energy, as interpretedby the North British physicists, began to dissipate by the 1880s, from 1850 to 1880 it represented a potent challenge to the dominance of British science by scientific naturalism.44Huxley and his colleagues could not simply dismiss eminent physicists such as Maxwell or Thomson as lacking the professional qualifications to speak upon scientific issues in the same way that an Anglican bishop such as Wilberforce could be silenced for not possessing the proper expertise. The North British physicists fit the profile of professional scientists as defined by scientific naturalists. As professor of natural philosophy at Glasgow College, Thomson developed a research laboratory designed to make precision measurement a reality. According to Crosbie Smith and M. Norton Wise, in their book Energy and Empire: A Biographical Study of Lord Kelvin (1989), Thomson had "revolutionized the practice of naturalphilosophy" in Glasgow and had "contributed in no small measure to a major transformation of British science in terms both of incipient professionalization and of the emergence of laboratory science. 45 When another North British physicist, Maxwell, was appointed to the new Cavendish Chair at Cambridge in 1871, he introduced experimental physics into the mathematical and moral culture of Cambridge.46Huxley and his friends had their hands full with 40 Smith,Scienceof Energy(cit.n. 31), pp. 171-2, 182, 191.

41Ibid., 13.Thereis an selectionof Mayeras thepioneerof energyphysics, ironyin Tyndall's p. See KennethL. Caneva,RobertMayerand sincetheGermanphysicistwasan avidantimaterialist. N.J.:PrincetonUniv.Press,1993),pp.8-14. theConservation of Energy(Princeton, 42 BetweenScienceandReligion(cit.n. 14),p. 27. Turner, 43 P. M. Heimann,"'TheUnseenUniverse':Physicsandthe Philosophyof Naturein Victorian Britain"Brit.J. Hist.Sci.6 (1972):73-9. 44

Smith, Science of Energy(cit. n. 31), p. 288.

andEmpire(cit.n. 35), p. 45 SmithandWise.Energy 46Ibid., p. 170.

117.


355

the energetic North British group. Priority disputes, arguments over the nature of molecules, and controversies about the age of the earth, as diverse as they seem, all revolved around a fundamental disagreement as to the nature of science. Two separate groups of professional scientists were pursuing their own programs for the reform of science at roughly the same time, but one program excluded religious considerations from the realm of science, while the other nested its science within a larger religious framework. III. NATURAL THEOLOGY REDIVIVUS: THE POPULARIZERS

One other influential group challenged the scientific naturalists' separation of science and religion into separate spheres: the popularizers of science. Though they could hardly aspire to be considered members of the cultural elite, the popularizers of science could throw their weight behind the Anglican clergy in their struggle with scientific naturalists for cultural authority.Of course Huxley, Tyndall, and other scientific naturalists wrote popular works designed to introduce the mass reading audience to their conception of science. Directed in Britain in its early years by an advisory committee composed of Huxley, Tyndall, and Spencer and devoted, particularly in the 1880s, to exploring the wider implications of evolutionary theory, the International Scientific Series (1871-1910) stands as a monument to the efforts of professional scientists to control the public's understanding of modern science.47But during the latter half of the nineteenth century a large group of scientific popularizers published massive numbers of books, some of which were phenomenal best sellers. The Parables of Nature (1855), published by Margaret Gatty (1809-1873), the daughter of a clergyman and wife of a Low Church clergyman, Rev. Alfred Gatty, reached its eighteenth edition by 1882. The daughter of the vicar of St. Mary's, Paddington, Arabella Buckley (1840-1929) had been secretary to the eminent geologist Charles Lyell (1797-1875) and wrote a series of popular science books during the last three decades of the century. Her Fairyland of Science (1879) was published by no fewer than seven publishers in both England and the United States, the last edition appearing in 1905. Much in demand as public lecturer and author of a series of works, Rev. John George Wood (1827-1889) was celebrated as a great popularizer of his day. When published in 1858, his natural history study, Common Objects of the Country, sold a staggering 100,000 copies in the very first week.48Compare that to the Origin of Species, which sold only 1,500 copies in its first edition in 1859 and 3,000 in its second edition (1860).4' There were many others who during the Victorian period contributed to the growing mass of popular science books written expressly for the reading public. Among 47

Roy M. MacLeod,"Evolutionism,Internationalismand CommercialEnterprisein Science: The

International Scientific Series, 1871-19102" in Development of Science Publishing in Europe, ed.

A. J. Meadows (Amsterdam:Elsevier, 1980), pp. 63-93. See also Leslie Howsam, "AnExperiment with Science for the Nineteenth-CenturyBook Trade:The InternationalScientific Series:"Brit. J. Hist. Sci. 33 (2000):187-207. 48 RichardAltick, The English Common Reader (Chicago:Univ. of Chicago Press, 1983), p. 389. 49 Adrian Desmond and James Moore, Darwin (London: Michael Joseph, 1991), pp. 477-8. Though 1,500 copies of the first edition of Darwin'sbook were sold in advance,only 1,250 copies were actually printed,and 1,192 copies changed hands. See Morse Peckham, ed., The Origin of Species by Charles Darwvin: A Variorum Text (Philadelphia: Univ. of Pennsylvania Press, 1959),

p. 17.

356

BERNARD LIGHTMAN

the women were Lydia Becker (1827-1890), Alice Bodington (1840-1897), Agnes Clerke (1842-1907), Mary Kirby (1817-1893), Jane Loudon (1807-1858), Mary Roberts (1788-1864), Mary Somerville (1780-1872), Elizabeth Twining (18051889), and Rosina Zomlin (1794?-1859). The men included Grant Allen (18481899), Rev. H. N. Hutchinson (1856-1927), Rev. Charles Alexander Johns (18111874), David Page (1814-1879), and Richard Proctor (1837-1888). Women and Anglican ministers were well represented among the popularizers of science, two groups that Huxley and his professionalizing colleagues were keen on excluding from science. Anglican ministers such as Wood and Johns were suspect because they were amateurs whose allegiance to the Church led them to support Anglican control of English scientific institutions and to resist new scientific theories such as evolution. Women were considered by Huxley and his allies to be doubly disqualified from full participation in science. In their view, women were more easily seduced by the lure of Christianity and did not possess the required intellectual power to engage in genuine scientific research.50By nature they were religious, emotional, and subjective.51Writing to Lyell, Huxley declared that "five sixths of women will stop in the doll stage of evolution, to be the stronghold of parsondom."52Huxley made it his special mission to drive women and parsons from professional scientific societies and from prominent positions in scientific institutions. But even Huxley and his scientific naturalist friends could not prevent the Victorian reading audience from buying the books written by popularizers of science. Many of the popularizers earned their daily bread through their writing, and, being professional writers and journalists, they knew their audience better than the professional scientists. They may have had more influence than the Huxleys and the Tyndalls in shaping the understanding of science in the minds of the reading public. Their success as popularizers was partially due to their ability to present the huge mass of scientific fact in the form of compelling stories, parables, and lessons, fraught with cosmic significance and illustrated by vivid visual images. Many of them, though not all, perpetuated a form of natural theology right up until the end of the century.53Compared to the natural theologians of the first half of the nineteenth century, these popularizers adopted a far more subtle approach, which enabled them to maintain their scientific credibility before a rapidly growing and increasingly sophisticated mass reading public. An Oxford M.A. and ordained Anglican minister who retired from regular clerical work in 1863 to pursue a writing career as a popularizer of natural history, John George Wood (Figure 1) constantly pointed throughout his many works to the wonder, order, and beauty of the natural world. In his Insects at Home (1872), Wood 5"The argumenthere is not intendedto imply thatreligiousscientistsnecessarilyperceivedwomen as intellectualequals to men who had the ability to engage successfully in scientific work. 51Evelleen Richards, "Darwin and the Descent of Woman," in The Wider Domain of Evolutionary

Thought,ed. David Oldroydand Ian Langham(Dordrecht:Reidel, 1983), pp. 57-111; idem, "Huxley and Woman'sPlace in Science: The 'WomanQuestion'and the Controlof VictorianAnthropology," in History,Humanityand Evolution,ed. JamesR. Moore(Cambridge:CambridgeUniv. Press, 1989), pp. 253-84; idem, "Redrawingthe Boundaries:DarwinianScience and VictorianWomenIntellectuals,"in VictorianScience in Context,ed. BernardLightman(Chicago:Univ. of ChicagoPress, 1997), pp. 119-42. 52 T. H. Huxley to Lyell, 17 Mar. 1860, MS 30.34, Huxley Papers, ImperialCollege, London, as cited in Richards,"Huxleyand Woman'sPlace in Science" (cit. n. 51), p. 256. 53BernardLightman,"'The Voices of Nature':PopularizingVictorianScience,"in VictorianScience in Context(cit. n. 37). pp. 187--211.

Figure 1. John George Wood (1827-1889), Anglican clergyman and popularizer of natural history. (Frontispiece from Rev. Theodore Wood, The Rev. J. G. Wood: His Life and His Work [New York:Cassell Publishing Company, {1890]].)

358

BERNARD LIGHTMAN

asserted, "[W]e find among insects a variety and brilliancy of colour that not even the most gorgeous tropical flowers can approach," and declared, "[S]ome of our dullest and most insignificant little insects are, when placed under the revealing lens of the microscope, absolutely blazing with natural jewellery."54Throughout this book Wood draws the reader's attention to the beauty of insect bodies and wings, making good use of his many illustrations. It is no challenge for Wood to highlight the beauty of some butterflies, moths, and beetles, but he is not satisfied unless he can persuade his readers that nearly every insect is aesthetically pleasing in some way. Even as Wood turns to insects that are commonly seen as ugly and disgusting, he finds something attractive to praise. Contrary to the customary attitude toward earwigs, for example, Wood declares that they are "furnished with wings of remarkable size and beauty."55In some cases, Wood is forced to turn to the microscope for help in finding that element of beauty that he wants his readers to see in all insects. "When placed under the microscope," Wood declares, "the Flea really becomes an interesting insect, with some share of beauty about it."56Though "singularly unpleasant" in a room, the gnat is "marvellously beautiful under the microscope." Wood recommended that the gnat be examined with a succession of powers, beginning at the lowest and ending at the highest, so that the observer could view the insect's beauties of detail "by degrees." "As dull and colourless as the Gnat may appear to the unaided eye," Wood announced, "it has only to be placed under the revealing glass of the microscope to blaze out in a magnificence which would pale all the fabled glories of Aladdin's fairy palace."57 Even though Wood's main purpose in his works was to make the reader aware of the beauty and order of God's creation, all of the heavyhanded references to God's wisdom, goodness, and power in classical naturaltheology as formulated by William Paley (1743-1805) were excluded. Wood offered a very subtle form of natural theology. In his Nature 's Teachings (1877), for example, he stated that the purpose of the book is "to show the close connection between Nature and human inventions, and that there is scarcely an invention of man that has not its prototype in Nature."58 Wood ran through the gamut of human invention, including nautical, military, architectural, instrumental, optical, and acoustic inventions, to demonstrate the parallels between nature and human arts. The fixed nets used in fishing and hunting have their natural analogy in the web of the common garden spider. The prototype of plate armor lies in the bodies of the lobster, crayfish, or shrimp (Figure 2). Even the most modern technology, such as the network of telegraph wires, has its parallel in the nervous system of the human body. Sometimes the parallel human invention is the result of unconscious imitation of nature, as in the case of the invention of the pulley, modeled on the human hand. But at other times an inventor deliberately copies a structure in nature: for example, the novel architectural plan used in the building of the Crystal Palace, based on vegetable cellular patterns.59 Even though Wood never used the word "God" in Nature 's Teachings, the book 54JohnGeorge Wood, Insects at Home (London:Longmans,Green,and Co., 1872), p. 2. 55 Ibid., 226. p. 56Ibid., p. 591. 57Ibid., pp. 601-2. 5X

Rev. J. G. Wood, Nature's Teachings: Human Invention Anticipated by Nature (London: Daldy,

Isbisterand Co., 1877), p. v. 59Ibid., pp. 452, 196.


LODSTER. PICUICIAGO.

ARMA,ILLO. CHIITON.

359

I'LA'I'E ANI) 8CAIF, AItMOUt OF MIDDLE AUES.

Figure 2. One of Wood's many examples of armor furnished by nature, anticipating human invention. (From Rev. J. G. Wood, Nature's Teachings [London: Isbister & Co., 1877], p. 120.)

employs the analogical reasoning of natural theology. As Brooke and Cantor have demonstrated in Reconstructing Nature, the use of analogical reasoning is one of the main strategies in natural theology.60Four terms are arranged in two pairs, one pair including a man-made artifact (such as a telescope or a watch) and its human maker, while the other pair includes a part of the natural world (such as the human eye) and its maker, God. In both cases design implied a designer and craftsman. But whereas Paley demonstrated that artifact is to artisan as natural object is to God, Wood leaves out any explicit reference in Nature's Teachings to the fourth term, God. He always begins with the human invention and then looks to nature for a similar, previously existing structure, in the same way that Paley moved from the contrived quality of a watch to a designed natural world. Paley explicitly pushed the reader to recognize that just as the existence of a watch demanded the existence of a human contriver, the designed quality of nature proved the existence of a divine creator. Wood leaves it to the reading audience to fill in the missing term. In many of his other works Wood did refer to God but usually limited his discussion of the religious meaning of his books to the introduction or preface. Other popularizers were similarly restrained in spelling out the naturaltheological basis of their science. Agnes Clerke (Figure 3), a popularizer of astronomy working at the end of the century, often left her references to the religious implications of astronomy to the introductions or conclusions of chapters.61 Like Wood, she was ""Brooke and Cantor,ReconstructingNature(cit. n. 2), p. 190. 61Bernard Lightman,"ConstructingVictorianHeavens:Agnes Clerke andthe 'New Astronomy,"' in NaturalEloquence:WomenReinscribeScience, ed. BarbaraGates andAnn Shteir(Madison:Univ. of WisconsinPress, 1997), pp. 61-75.

Figure 3. Agnes Clerke (1842-1907), popularizer of astronomy and honorary member of the Royal Astronomical Society. (Frontispiece from Lady Huggins, Agnes Mary Clerke and Ellen Mary Clerke [printed for private collection, 1907]. )


361

convinced that, with her help, the reader's encounter with nature would lead "towards a fuller understanding of the manifold works which have in all ages irresistibly spoken to man of the glory of God."62Clerke, whose father was a bank manager with a keen interest in science, was educated entirely at home as a child. She studied science privately, especially astronomy, but without a university education she had little hope of securing a position at an observatory. One of the few options open to Clerke, and other women who wanted to become part of the scientific community, was to adopt the role of popularizer of science.63 So, at the age of thirty-five, she embarked on a writing career and produced a series of successful popular works on astronomy that gained her partial admission into the male-dominated astronomical world. In her Popular History of Astronomy (1885), which reached a fourth edition in 1902, Clerke explained to the reading public how the new astronomical information generated by the spectroscope and camera had revealed a divinely designed universe full of complexity. A devout Catholic, Clerke perceived the hand of God in the most spectacular astronomical phenomena. Whether it was the evolution of the planets, whose growth is guided "from the beginnings by Omnipotent Wisdom," or the "sequence of Divinely decreed changes" by which nebulae are transformed into star clusters, Clerke saw the hand of God.64 However, Clerke recognized that natural theology could not continue unaltered, especially after the revelations of the "new astronomy" produced by the spectroscope and camera. She intended to present an updated version informed by the most recent astronomical discoveries, which revealed a divinely designed universe that was characterized by complexity and inexhaustible variety rather than the simple, orderly machine presented by astronomers inspired by Newtonian physics. "The heavens are full of surprises," Clerke exclaimed, after puzzling over changes of brightness in variable nebulae.65 Like Wood, Clerke made extensive use of visual images to reach her audience. She was among the first to present astronomical photographs as book illustrations, and over the years she tended to increase the number of photographs in new books and in new editions of old publications. She was wildly enthusiastic about the potential of the camera in astronomy. Since the invention of gelatine dry plates, the camera had become more powerful as an instrument for gathering empirical data than the telescopically enhanced human eye. Thomas Common's photograph "Great Nebula 62

Agnes Clerke. A Popular History of Astronomy during the Nineteenth Century (Edinburgh:

Adam and CharlesBlack, 1885),p. vi. 63 Another option was to seek employmentat an observatory.But this was open only to a select few, nearthe end of the century.who hadattendedone of the women'scolleges in Cambridge,Oxford, or Londonfoundedin the 1870s. Brtickhas examinedthe brief experimentundertakenby the Royal Observatoryof Greenwichduringthe 1890s to recruitwomen to juniorappointmentsas "computers" (numbercrunchers),which resulted in the hiring of just four women. See Mary T. Briick, "Lady Computers,"AstronomyNo;, Jan. 1998, pp. 48-51. See also Peggy Kidwell, "WomenAstronomers in Britain, 1780-1930." Isis 75 (1984):534-46. For studies of Victorianwomen who attemptedto participatein science in generalsee SuzanneLe-MaySheffield,"Beyondthe Mask of Gender,"Ph.D. diss., York University, 1997; Barbara T. Gates, Kindred Nature: Victorian and Edwardian Women Embrace the Living World (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1998); Ann B. Shteir, Cultivating Women, Cultivating Science: Flora's Daughters and Botany in England, 1760 to 1860 (Baltimore:

JohnsHopkinsUniv. Press, 1996). 64 Clerke,

Popular History (cit. n. 62), p. 348; Agnes Clerke, The System of the Stars (London:

Adam and Charles Black. 1905). p. 207: Agnes Clerke, Problemsin Astrophysics(London:Adam and CharlesBlack, 1903), p. 541 65Clerke, Problems in Astrophysics (cit. n. 64), p. 522

362

BERNARD LIGHTMAN

in Orion,"which served as the frontispiece for A Popular History ofAstronomy from the second edition (1887) on, captured details the eye could not distinguish even with the largest telescopes and symbolized to Clerke the superiority of the camera. The camera, she believed, could also produce images that demonstrated the design and order in the limitless regions of space (Figure 4). This was a godsend for a natural theologian such as Clerke. In The System of the Stars, Clerke suggested that the photograph "GreatNebula in Andromeda" helped astronomers to make sense of what had hitherto been an enigma. "The views given by this magnificent picture of the Andromeda nebula as a symmetrical, though still inchoate structure,"Clerke observed, "ploughed up by tremendous, yet not undisciplined forces, working harmoniously towards the fulfilment of some majestic design of the Master Builder of the universe, is of a nature to modify profoundly our notions as to how such designs obtain their definitive embodiment."66The camera could capture aspects of the heavens invisible to the human eye and thereby revealed the invisible hand of God in the unalterable laws that guided the heavens "towards the continually more perfect embodiment of the unfolding Eternal Thought."67Ironically, Clerke was able to reinscribe the traditional concepts of natural theology into astronomy through the use of the most up-to-date technology. Scholars have tended in the past to conclude that the appearance of the Origin of Species spelled the end for the natural theology tradition in British thought. However, the work of popularizers such as Wood and Clerke kept it alive until the end of the century. In his article "Conflict Avoidance? Anglican Modernism and Evolution in Interwar"(1998), Peter Bowler has explored the attempt by Modernists within the Anglican Church-for example Charles Raven (1885-1964), E. W. Barnes construct a new natural theology in (1874-1953), and W. R. Inge (1860-1954)-to the early twentieth century. Brooke and Cantor, in Reconstructing Nature, have pointed out that vestiges of the argument from design "continue to lurk in the corners of science" today-in the Anthropic Principle, for example, and in a contemporary revival of the writings of such theologians as John Polkinghorne.68Rather than suffering extinction at the hands of Darwin, we can trace an unbroken line of descent in the natural theology tradition from the mid-nineteenth century to the present. IV. CONCLUDING THOUGHTS: STRIKE UP THE BAND

Two major conclusions arise out of this study, one having to do with the power of scientific naturalism as an indicator of the decline of religion, and another connected to the use of models in understanding the relationship between science and religion during the Victorian period. Huxley and his group of scientific naturalists, which really also includes Darwin, have attracted the lion's share of scholarship on Victorian science and religion. Often scientific naturalists are treated as the dominant group in the intellectual landscape of the latter half of the nineteenth century, and their power is seen as symbolic of the triumph of a process of secularization. But we have overestimated their influence. They were one group among many that vied for cultural authority during this period by drawing on the immense prestige pro66

Clerke, The System of the Stars (cit. n. 64), p. 259.

67Ibid., p. 375. 66 PeterJ. Bowler, "ConflictAvoidance?AnglicanModernismand Evolutionin Interwar,'Endeavour 22 (1998):65-7; Brooke and Cantor,ReconstructingNature(cit. n. 2), p. 177.

PLATE XXXI.

Figure 4. In her Problems in Astrophysics, Clerke uses this photograph of the Milky Way in Ophiuchus by Edward E. Barnard to discuss the design in cosmic rifts or holes. She said it illustrated how the "Supreme Power is at work" dispersing or refashioning starless space and adjoining star clouds, "sending abroad their aggregated suns like flying sparks from the anvil" (pp. 541-2). (From Agnes M. Clerke, Problems in Astrophysics [London: Adam and Charles Black, 1903], pi. XXXI, p. 540.)

364

BERNARD LIGHTMAN

vided by science. The North British physicists and popularizers of science challenged their interpretations of the larger meaning of science. Furthermore,scientific naturalism was weakened from within by internal dissension and by a continuous stream of excommunications issued by "Pope" Huxley. A. R. Wallace's sin was spiritualism; Henry Bastian (1837-1915) was too materialistic; Herbert Spencer's "Unknowable" had a capital U; and biologist George Mivart (1827-1900) was found to be too Catholic, though not Catholic enough for the Roman Catholic Church, which later excommunicated him as well.69 Whatever power they possessed, scientific naturalists cannot be seen as unambiguous symbols of secularization. Although they attacked the monopolistic power of the Anglican Church, as did the Nonconformists, and expressed concern over the deadening effect of institutionalized religion, they nevertheless retained a significant role for religion in human life and embraced the "two-spheres" position in order to harmonize science and religion. Of course, in the Victorian context the separation of science and religion could be used by Huxley to protect the independence of science and reduce the size of the sphere of religion. But the two-spheres position is not utterly secular. In the changed context of the twentieth century it has become a useful strategy for liberal and neo-orthodox Christians attempting to protect religion from the incursions of science. The tendency to see Huxley and his allies as symbols of the decline of religion in the Victorian period and to feature them as the key players in a drama based on the conflict model is, in part, the result of the tremendous hold that the secularization thesis exerts over our thinking. In January 1999, at the annual conference of the American Society for Church History, held in Washington, D.C., scholars wrestled with the problems created by the dominance of the secularization thesis for the history of religion. Just as Brooke and Cantor have declared their opposition to any master narrativein science-and-religion scholarship in Reconstructing Nature, historians of religion have begun to question and unmask the use of master narratives in their field of study. In a session on the history of modem European religion, historian of religion Jeffrey Cox argued that the secularization thesis provided scholars with a master narrative, the partly hidden big story that lies behind the narrative, filling in the gaps. Explanatory rather than merely descriptive, secularization is treated as a law of history, akin to a natural law, that inevitably causes change in one direction. Despite the objections that critics have offered, the secularization story remains the only master narrative of religion in modern history. Cox contends that the authority of the secularization story rests on the difficulty of conceptualizing any alternative. But, Cox asks, how can we "tell if the secularization story is the best story to tell about religion in modem Europe as long as it remains the only story"?7(In his commentary, Frank Turner explained the attractiveness of the secularization thesis in historical terms. He pointed out that "modern academics stand functionally as the 69 Desmond, Huxley (cit. n. 24), pp. 392, 574 (for Wallace);James Edgar Strick, "The British SpontaneousGenerationDebates of 1860-1880: Medicine, Evolution, and LaboratoryScience in the VictorianContext,"Ph.D. diss., PrincetonUniv., 1997 (for Bastian);Lightman,The Origins of Agnosticism(cit. n. 13), pp. 136-8 (for Spencer);and Desmond, Huxley (cit. n. 24), pp. 407, 624, Nature (cit. n. 2), p. 262 (for Mivart). and Brooke and Cantor,Reconlstructing 70 JeffreyCox, "Secularizationand OtherMasterNarrativesof Religion in ModernEurope,"paper presentedat the annualconference of the AmericanSociety for ChurchHistory,Washington,D.C., Jan. 1999.


365

successors of a clerical culture that once dominated universities throughout the Western World."The secularization thesis has been alluring to academics because it supported and legitimized the displacement of clerics and their concerns and their replacement by scholars who deal with other kinds of questions.7' Scholars working in the field of science-and-religion have encountered problems parallel to those encountered by scholars working on the history of religion. Secularization had provided a master narrative hidden behind the conflict model. But in undoing the conflict model we do not necessarily undo the overall thesis of secularization for Victorian Britain. Our shift in perspective does, however, force us to qualify the secularization thesis and to be more aware of how it continues to shape our thinking. As Turner has argued in his illuminating essay "The Religious and the Secular in Victorian Britain" (1993) "that secularization of English and British culture occurred is true, but the occurrence was anything but inevitable, unproblematic, or systematically steady."72The transformationof the British weltanschauung during the nineteenth century provided after the midcentury greater freedom of thought for those who wished to express heterodox views. This sea change can be measured just by comparing Darwin's reluctance to reveal his views on evolution during the 1840s with his willingness to publish the Origin of Species in 1859. In terms of the social role of the Anglican Church, there is no doubt that by the end of the century there was a greater differentiation of institutions and their functions within English society, and that fewer institutions were dominated by the Church. But though the Anglican Church was losing its place as the central social institution, the cultural power of religious ideas continued well into the century. During the second half of the nineteenth century it was still an open issue whether or not the Anglican Church would regain its lost power. We need to recover the contingency of the moment and to resist the notion that the secularization of British society was inevitable. We need to be reminded that attacks on the Anglican Church are not necessarily evidence for the establishment of a secular society. We should be more careful in the use of the terms "secularization" and "secular" in the future. We need to distinguish between intellectuals who were genuinely secular figures and those who fought for the deAnglicanization of nineteenth-century British culture.73We must also be more attentive to the evidence for the continuing power of religion in late Victorian Britain. Why would the mass reading audience buy the books of popularizers of science perpetuating the natural theology tradition unless they were still attracted to religious themes in science?74 71FrankM. Turner,"Christianityin Europe:The ModernEra,"paperpresentedat the annualconference of the AmericanSociety for ChurchHistory,Washington,D.C., Jan. 1999. 72 Turner,"The Religious and the Secularin VictorianBritain"(cit. n. 23), p. 35. 73 I am following DavidHollinger'slead here when he suggests in his discussionof JewishintellecSee tuals in Americathatwe need to distinguishbetween "secularization"and "de-Christianization." American DavidA. Hollinger,Science, Jews, and Secular Culture:Studiesin Mid-Twentieth-Century IntellectualHistory (Princeton,N.J.: PrincetonUniv. Press, 1996), p. 17. 74 One plausibleanswerto this question,which does not emphasizethe naturaltheology of popular science books, would be that the reading audience was attractedto entertainingdiscussions of the naturalworld, particularlythose that were presentedas safe and wholesome. Dealing with the early nineteenth-centuryperiod, JonathanTophamhas arguedthat Broughamite,High Church,and evangelical educatorsall valued the BridgewaterTreatisesbecause they presented a nontechnicaland religiously conservativecompendiumof contemporaryscience, not because of theirapologeticfunction of demonstratingthe validity of naturaltheology. See JonathanTopham,"Science and Popular Educationin the 1830s:The Role of the BridgewaterTreatises,"Brit.J. Hist. Sci. 25 (1992):397-430.

366

BERNARD LIGHTMAN

Certainly neither the conflict nor the harmony model can be applied to the Victorian period without distorting the historical record. At one level there was conflictbetween two competing conceptions of how science and religion should relate. Scientific naturalists separated science and religion, while North British physicists and many popularizers of science maintained that science should be placed within a broader religious context. Of course, this led to heated controversies concerning the definition of science, the meaning of religion, and, not surprisingly, how the two were connected. But the combatants did not always fall into two monolithic groups, defenders of religion versus protectors of science. As James Moore demonstrated in his Post-DarwninianControversies, Anglican theologians did not reach unanimity on how to best reconcile evolutionary theory and Christian thought. The conflict within religion is matched by a conflict within science. There were disagreements between scientists--the metropolitan scientific naturalists and the North British physicistson how to integrate science and religion. But at another level there was harmony: scientific naturalists, North British physicists, and many popularizers of science believed that, rightly conceived, science and religion could coexist in peace. Suppose the leading Victorian scientists and intellectuals were all gathered together in one room and began discussing their ideas on how science and religion are related, trying to see if they could find some common ground. (This actually happened during the 1870s, when the Metaphysical Society was formed. It was during the initial meetings of this society that Huxley coined the term "agnosticism.") Now suppose-and here we begin a flight of fancy--that instead of voicing their views, they all expressed themselves by playing musical instruments. In this unusual orchestra you might find the North British physicists in the horn section, the popularizers of science handling the string instruments, and the scientific naturalists on percussion. The brass instruments play flawlessly as a unit, while the strings are in perfect harmony with each other. Led by Huxley on the cymbals, the percussion section is in sync. But the various sections of this imaginary orchestra just cannot play together, and your ears are overwhelmed by a cacophony of sound. The conductor is tearing his hair out. Disciplined by the master narrativeof secularization, some members of the audience hear only the discordant sound of battle, as "ignorant armies clash by night." Others, listening to the single melodies played by one section of the orchestra, hear the sweet sounds of earnest souls attempting to find the key to harmony. But the historian listens carefully to both at once, and enjoys the complex musical patterns emerging out of this strange symphony.

Contributors Peter Barker is Professorof the Historyof Science at the Universityof Oklahomaandformerly Directorof the graduateprogramin Science and Technology Studies at Virginia Tech, where he taughtin both philosophyand science studies.

cently reprintedby DoverPressandwill soon appear in Japanese.

Thomas Dixon is a British Academy PostdoctoralFellow at the Facultyof Divinity in the University of Cambridge,U.K., and a Junior ReJohn Hedley Brooke is the AndreasIdreosPro- searchFellow of ChurchillCollege, Cambridge. fessor of Science and Religion at the University In 2000 he was awardedthe EuropeanSociety of Oxford, where he is also Director of the Ian for the Study of Science and Theology (ESSRamseyCentreandFellow of HarrisManchester SAT) prize for studies in science and theology. College. A former editor of the British Journal His teachingandresearchinterestsarein the history of relationshipsbetween religion and the for the History of Science, he was President of the British Society for the History of Science sciences (especially during the nineteenthcenfrom 1996 through1998. His most recentbooks tury); varieties of positivism and agnosticism; scientific and religious ethics; and the philosoare Science and Religion. Some Historical Perspectives (CambridgeUniv. Press, 1991); Think- phy of science. His currentresearchprojectconcerns the nineteenth-centuryorigins of the coning about Matter: Studies in the History of cept of altruismin the works of Auguste Comte Chemical Philosophy (Ashgate, 1995), and, with and his BritishandAmericanfollowers. Nature: The Cantor, Reconstructing Geoffrey Engagement of Science and Religion, The Glas-

Noah J. Efron heads the Programfor the History and Philosophyof Science at Bar Ilan University.He received his doctoratefrom Tel Aviv University, under the direction of Menachem is co-director of both the CenCantor Geoffrey tre for Science and Religion at the Universityof Fisch. He has been a fellow at HarvardUniverLeeds andthe SciPer(Science in the Nineteenth- sity, and at the DibnerInstitutefor the Historyof Science at the MassachusettsInstituteof TechCenturyPeriodical)project.His first substantial nology. He is completinga book aboutJews and and in the area of science religion natural publication philosophy in Rudolfine Prague and, was Michael Faraday, Sandemanian and Scientist (Macmillanand St Martin'sPress, 1991). To- with the supportof the JohnTempletonFoundation, is writing anotherabout religion and biogether with John Hedley Brooke, he delivered writer the 1995-1996 Gifford Lectures at Glasgow technology. Efron is also a contributing for the Boston Book Review. gow Gifford Lectures(T & T Clark, 1998; Oxford Univ. Press, 2000).

which were published as Reconstructing Nature: The Engagement of Science and Religion (T &

T Clark, 1998; OxfordUniv. Press, 2000). More recentlyhe has studiedthe ways in which Quakers have engaged science and is currentlyworking on a comparativestudy of the attitudes to science of three religious minorities-Quakers, Jews, and Huguenots-in Britain during the eighteenthand nineteenthcenturies. Margaret G. Cook is a doctoral studentin the Departmentof History at the Universityof Calgary. She is currentlyinvestigatingthe development of "experimentalphilosophy"in England before 1660.

Richard England is the assistantdirectorof the Honors programat Salisbury State University. He studies interactions among Darwinism, teleology, and theodicy and is currentlyworking on a book about the Oxford movementand science. Martin Fichman is Professor of Humanities and Historyat YorkUniversityin Toronto.He is the author of Alfred Russel Wallace: A Scientific Biography (Twayne, 1981) and Science, Technology and Society: A Historical Perspective (Ken-

dall-Hunt, 1993). He is currentlycompleting a book on the intertextureof politics, religion,philosophy,and science in Wallace'slife and career.

Michael J. Crowe is the Rev. John J. Cavanaugh, C.S.C. Professorin the Humanitiesin the Maurice A. Finocchiaro is DistinguishedProProgramof Liberal Studies and GraduatePro- fessor of Philosophy at the University of Negramin HistoryandPhilosophyof Science at the vada-Las Vegas. He recently published Galileo Universityof Notre Dame. His most recentbook on the World Systems: A New Abridged Translation and Guide(Univ. of CaliforniaPress, 1997). is A Calendar of the Correspondence of Sir John Herschel (Cambridge Univ. Press 1998). His He is currentlyworking on a critical history of the Galileo affair, 1633-1992. Extraterrestrial Life Debate, 1750-1900 was re367

368

CONTRIBUTORS

Menachem Fisch teaches at the Cohn Institute for the History and Philosophy of Science and Ideas at Tel-Aviv University and is Senior Research Fellow at the Shalom HartmanInstitute for Advanced Judaic Studies, Jerusalem.He is Presidentof the Israel Society for History and Philosophyof Science. He has publishedwidely on the history of nineteenth-centuryBritish science and mathematics,on confirmationtheory and rationality,and on the philosophy of talmudic legal reasoning. He is author of William Whewell, Philosopher of Science (Clarendon Press, 1991), Rational Rabbis: Science and Tal-

Phillip R. Sloan is a Professorin the Programof LiberalStudies and the Programin History and Philosophyof Science at the Universityof Notre Dame and also directs the Programin Science, Technology,and Values. Sloan's scholarly work is in the history and philosophy of the life sciences, with particularfocus on the naturalhistorical sciences, evolutionary theory, and recent genetics and molecularbiology. He is the editor and a contributorto the volume ControllingOur

Destinies: Historical, Philosophical, Ethical and Theological Perspectives on the Human Genome

Project (Notre Dame, 2000) and authored the mudic Culture(IndianaUniv. Press. 1997), and critical edition Richard Owens Hunterian Lecco-editor (with Simon Schaffer) of William tures (Chicago, 1992). He was awarded the Whewell: A Composite Portrait

(Clarendon

Medal of the Museum National d'Histoire Na-

turelle in Paris in 1994 for his contributionsto the history of the life sciences. His currentproBernard R. Goldstein is University Professor jects are an introductorybook on Darwinfor the Emeritusat the Universityof Pittsburgh.He has Johns Hopkins series, and a study of the impact published extensively on the history of astron- of German philosophical biology on early omy from antiquityto the seventeenthcentury nineteenth-centuryBritishbiomedical science. and has recently completed a book with Jose Stephen Snobelen completedhis B.A. andM.A. Chabds, Astrolnomy in the Iberian Peninsula. in historyat the Universityof Victoriabefore reAbraham Zacut and the Transition firom Manuscript to Print, Transactionsof the American ceiving his M.Phil. and Ph.D. degrees in history Philosophical Society, vol. 90, pt. 2 (Philadel- and philosophy of science at the University of Cambridge.He wrote his doctoral dissertation phia, 2000). on the naturalphilosophy and theology of the Newtonian, William WhisBernard Lightman is Professorof Humanities eighteenth-century ton. His academic interests lie in radical theoland a memberof the Science and Society Promillenarianism, biblical exegesis, Newgrammeat YorkUniversityin Toronto.He is the ogy, science popularization, and the tonianism, author of The Origins of Agnosticism (Johns interactionof science and religion. His previous of Victoand editor Univ. Press, 1987) Hopkins publicationsinclude articles on Newton, Whisrian Science in Context (Univ. of Chicago Press, ton, and SamuelClarke,along with propheticin1998). Currentlyhe is workingon a monograph terpretationand nineteenth-centurynaturalhison popularizersof Victorianscience. tory.He is a memberof the editorialboardof the Newton Project(ImperialCollege, London)and Margaret J. Osler is Professorof History and is currentlya ResearchFellow in the historyand AdjunctProfessorof Philosophy at the Univer- philosophy of science at Clare College, Camsity of Calgary.Her publicationsinclude Divine bridge. Press, 1991).

Will and the Mechanical Philosophy:. Gassendi and Descartes on Contingency and Necessity in the Created World (Cambridge Univ. Press,

1994) and the edited volume Rethinking the

Scientific Revolution (Cambridge Univ. Press,

2000). F. Jamil Ragep is Professor of the History of Science at the Universityof Oklahoma,wherehe teachescourseson ancientandmedievalscience. His research interests are in the history of Islamic science and the historyof ancientand medieval astronomy.He is the authorof Nasrr alDfn al-Tiusls Memoir on Astronomy (Springer,

Jitse M. van der Meer is Professorin the departments of biology and philosophy at RedeemerUniversityCollege. He foundedthe Pascal Centre for Advanced Studies in Faith and Science at Redeemerin 1988 andwas its director from 1988 to 2000. His professionalwritingsinclude journal articles in developmentalbiology, philosophyof biology, and issues in religion and science. He also has edited the four volumes on religious belief and the naturalsciences entitled Facets of Faith and Science (Pascal Centre/Uni-

versity Press of America, 1996).

1993) and the coeditor (with S. P. Ragep) of a Stephen J. Wykstra is Professorof Philosophy collection of essays on the transmissionof sci- at Calvin College in Grand Rapids, Michigan. ence between culturesentitled Tradition,Trans- He has publishedarticles in espistemology,hismission, Transformation: Proceedings of Two tory and philosophy of science, and philosophy Conferences on Premodern Science Held at the of religion.He is currentlyworkingon a book on worldviewsand science. University of Oklahoma (Brill, 1996)

Index,

vol.

Osiris,

ABARBANEL,ISAAC,75

academics,and clerics, 365 accuracyand theology,98, 353 action, principleof least, 157 adaptation,perfect, 271-74, 282-84, 286 and see naturalselection aesthetics,and fossils, 19; and landscape,254, 259-61; and science, 8, 358 agnosticism,Darwinand, 275; and naturalselection, 280; as term, 344, 347-49, 366 alchemy,and chemistry,146 Alston, William, 34-36 anachronism,15, 23, 114-16; andlanguage,x, 4 analogicalreasoning,in naturaltheology,359 Anaxagoras,215 ancientscience, astronomyas, 53 Andreae,Jacob,96 AnglicanChurch,9, 252, 349; andDarwin,252, 271-86; establishment,13, 346-47; High Church,271, 278-86; and loss of power, 344-49, 364-65; modernistsin, 362; Newton and, 27; and Quakerism,323, 326; and secularization,365; and tithes, 13 and Darwin,268 anthropomorphism, anti-intellectualism,in Quakerism,327, 331, 333, 336 antireligiousand nonreligiousbeliefs, x, 290-91 and Newton, 169-208 antitrinitarianism, Antoniadi,E. M., 223 Apian, Philip, 96, 98 appearance,outward,as source of knowledge, 305-6, 319 Aquinas,Thomas,and languageof passions, 294, 296 archetype,Kepler'suse of, 106 Argyll, duke of, 275 Arianism,in Newton, 191, 193-95 Aristoteliannaturalphilosophy,91, 93, 96, 153-54. 156, 164; in Arabicastronomy,5859, 63; and Boyle, 134, 135, 137-38, 14243, 145-46, 148; demise of, 151; and exemplum, 103-4; and Gassendi, 159-61; and teleology, 151-69, 276 artifice,see mechanicalphilosophy,craftsman Ash, Edward,329-30, 341 Ash'arites,54-55, 61 astrology,and astronomy,Islamic, 52, 62 astronomy,and biblical exegesis, 84-85; and Islam, 49-71; and Jewish interpretationof, 72-87; and naturalphilosophy,49-71, 154; and physics, 92, 361; and religion, 209-27 Athanasiandoctrine, 184, 188, 280 atheism,and Bain, 303-13; and Darwinism, 270, 274, 276; and Hume, 298; and mechani-

16

cal philosophy,153; and naturalselection, 280; and Newton, 174; and psychology,318; and Quakerism,332-33, 335 atomism, 158-60, 346 atoms, creationof, 353 attitudes,conservativeand progressive,in Galileo affair, 116, 128, 132 Augustine. 15, 41; and Galileo affair, 122; and languageof passions, 294, 318 authority,clerical, 11-12 autonomyof science and of religion, viii Averroists,and Copernicus,89-90, 94 Avicenna,see Ibn Sina BACON,FRANCIS,7-8, 87, 333, 155

Bain, Alexander.288-90, 293, 302-13, 315-16, 318-19 Balfour,Arthur,343, 349-55 Barbour,Ian, vii Barnes,E. W., 362 Baronio,CardinalCesare, 121, 126 Barrett,Sir WilliamE, 248-49 Bastian,Henry,364 Baynes, Thomas, 308, 312 Beacon controversy,325-26 Beattie, James, 296 Beer, Gillian, 256 belief, statusof, 36 beliefs, classificationof, 29-46 Bell, Sir Charles,306-8, 315 Bellarmine,CardinalRobert, 116, 118-19, 124-25 Bennett,Alfred, 324, 333, 341 Bennett,Edward,331 Bensaude-Vincent,Bernadette,28 Bentley,Richard,xi, 16-17, 172-74 Bernoulli,Jean,39 Berthelot,Marcellin,28 Bezalel, JudahLoew b., see Maharal Bible, and astronomy,84-85, 119, 126; and creation, 136-37. 144; interpretationof, 10-11; Newton'sinterpretationof, 177, 198-202; in Quakerism,321-42; and teleology, 152, 163 biblical interpretationand scientific inquiry,122 Biddle, John, 1994 al-Bruini,Abu Rayhan,58-61 al-Birjandi,'Abd al-'All, 60, 63-64 Blackwell, Anna. 242-43 Blackwell, Richard,118 Bosanquet,Bernard,351 Boscaglia, Cosimo, 117 botanicalgeography,255, 258 botany,Darwinand, 258 boundary,between religion and science, 285-86 Bowler, Peter.283, 325, 362

369

370

INDEX

Boyle, Robert,ix, 7, 13-14, 25, 30-31, 133-50, 257; and adaptation,272; and teleology, 155, 158, 161-67 Bradlaugh,Charles,351 Bradley,F. H.. 242, 351 Brady,George Stewardson,331, 335-36 Brahe,Tycho, 73-74, 76, 92-93, 102, 106-7 Brath,Stanley de, 249 Broca, PierrePaul, 240 Brooke,JohnHedley,xi, 49, 85, 120, 229, 267, 273, 290-91, 344, 359, 362, 364 Brougham,Henry,299 Brown,Thomas, 289-90, 293-303, 311-12, 316,319 Bruno,Giordano,210 Biichner.Ludwig, 268 Buckland,William. 19 Buckley,Arabella,247, 355 Buffon, George-LouisLeclerc, 18 Burgess shale, ix Burnet,Gilbert,26 Burnet.Thomas, 15, 18, 20 Burney,Fanny,215 Burtt,Edwin A., x, 151 Butler,Joseph,297 CAIRD, EDWARD, 242, 351

camera,use of in popularscience, 361-62 Campanella.Tommaso, 117 Campbell,John,256, 266 Candolle,Alphonse De, 258 Cantor,Geoffrey,xi, 4, 12, 22, 344, 359. 362, 364 capitalism.Wallaceand, 228 Cardwell,D. S., 41 Carlyle.Thomas,348 Carpenter.William Benjamin,237 Carus,CarlGustav,262 categories,historyof, 30; science and religion as, 246 CatholicChurch,see RomanCatholicChurch causality, 151-69; Newton and, 201; see also teleology causation,denial of efficient, 298 Chadwick,Owen, 344 Chalmers,Thomas,293, 298, 302-3, 326-27 Chambers,Robert,21 charityand theism, 247 chemistry,Boyle and, 138-39, 145-50; mechanistic, and naturalselection, 246 Chiaramonti,Scipione, 117 Christian-Jewishrelations,78-80 Cicero. 95 Clarke,Samuel. 11, 171-72, 186, 191-93 Clave, Etiennede, 160 Clavius,Christopher,80-81 clergy, and academics,365; exclusion of from science. 356 Clericuzio,Antonio, 138-39 Clerke,Agnes, 215, 359-62 Clerselier,Claude, 156 Clifford,William Kingdon,347, 353 clock/watchanalogy. 159, 162-63. 257, 317; Boyle and, 139-40. 142, 144

coherence,of science and religion, 24 Colombe, Ludovicodelle, 117 Columbus,Christopher,78 comets, 24, 91-94, 97-98, 116 Common,Thomas,361 compatibilityof science and religion, 131 Comte,Auguste, 28, 274, 310 Conduitt,John,27, 205 conflict thesis, and Galileo affair, 116-19, 12425; and secularization,343-66; in Victorian era, 344; see also harmonythesis conservationof energy,theoryof, 346 content, scientific, shapingof, viii, 14-20, 347 contextualisthistoryof science, 45 continuism,man-animal,306-10, 313 ConwayMorris,Simon, ix Cook, Margaret,ix, 14 Coperican theory,209, 211, 215, 226, 251; demonstrationof, 123; and Galileo affair, 114-32; and Islamic astronomy,63-64 Copernicus,Nicholas, 15, 74, 80-81, 83, 88113,210 Cornell,John, 272, 274 corpuscularphilosophy,136, 138-41, 144, 146, 149; and Gassendi, 160, 164-66; see also mechanicalphilosophy corroboration,of science and religion, 20-28 cosmology, and demonstration,100-101 cosmos, as image of God, 103 Cotes, Roger, 175, 188, 207 Cox, Jeffrey,364 craftsman,and artifice, 137-38; God as, 14145, 150; see also mechanicalphilosophy Craig,John, 26 creation,and atomism, 158-60; biblical account of, 18, 136-37, 144; and Darwinism, 326-27, 329; and Quakerism,326-27, 33233, 337; and science, ix; and teleology, 152, 162-63 creator,role of in naturalselection, 262, 264 Crell, Johann,192-94 Cremonini,Cesare, 117 Crewdson,Isaac, 326 Crookes,William,232, 234 Crusius,Martin,96-98 Cudworth,Ralph, 137-38 Cunningham,Andrew,4, 173 Cuvier,Georges, 273 DALTON,JOHN,28

Dana, JamesDwight, 238 Darwin,Charles,4, 8, 227, 236-37, 239-41, 245, 288, 290; and biblical language,21-22; and Christiantheology,xi, 5; and divine law, 18; on divinity,251-69; on humanemotion, 303-8, 312, 319; and Huxley,362; and natural selection, 270-87; and perfect adaptation, 19-20; and publication,365; and Quakerism, 321-42 Darwin,William, 269 Darwiniansect, 312-13 Daston, Lorraine,150 Davies, Paul, vii Davis, EdwardB., Jr., 134-35

INDEX

371

Dawkins,Richard,vii de Elcano, JuanSebastian,78-79 De Morgan,Augustus,233 Deason, Gary B.. 135 definitions, 132; of naturalphilosophy,physics. and theology, 162 deism, Darwinand, 274, 279-80; and mechanical philosophy,153; and Newton, 174, 176. 202, 207; and Paley, 284 deity, to Newton, 175-80 Democritus, 159 demonstration,science as, 123 Den Otter,Sandra,351 Derham,William, 205 Descartes,Rene, 18, 27, 117, 141, 173, 202, 210-11; Boyle on, 163; and causality,15558; and deductionfrom theology,6; and teleology, 153, 155-58, 160-61, 166 design theology,95, 164, 257, 297, 313, 319. 326, 334, 339, 359, 361-62 Desmond,Adrian,340, 349 Dettelbach,Michael, 255 Dini, MonsignorPiero, 116 discovery,context of, 44 disestablishmentof Anglican Church,see Anglican Church Disraeli, Benjamin,4 dissonance,and coherence, 23-24 distance-velocity relation. 106-11 divine artifice,see mechanicalphilosophy; craftsman.God as divinity,and astronomy,51; Darwinon. 251-69 Dixey, Frederick,271, 282-86 Dixon, Thomas, xi Dobbs. Betty Jo, 9, 24, 32 dogma, and Quakerism,337, 341 Dominicans,and Galileo affair. 117, 131 doubt,Darwinand, 275 Drake, Sir Francis,79 Drake,Stillman. 116-17, 131 Draper,JohnW.. 131, 340 dual-aspectidentitytheory,253 dual-aspectmonism, 304 dualism,mind-body,304-6, 313. 315-16, 319; in Newton'sthought,206 Duncan,David, 331 Dupleix. Scipion, 153

Esenbeck, Christian Nees von. 253 ether. 24, 246, 248 Euler, Leonhard, 30-31 evangelical Quakerism, 322-30, 335-36 evidence for worldview claims, 291-92, 319-20 evolution, 346; Darwinian, 251-69; and Quakerism, 337-39; spiritual, 241; and theism. 227-50; and see continuism; Darwin; Lamarckism; natural selection exclusion from science, of women and clergy. 356

EDWARDS,JOHN, 192-95 Edwards, Jonathan, 293, 305, 316-18 Efron, Noah, xi Einstein, Albert, vii-ix, 8. 31-32, 119 elite, Anglican. 346, 349; cultural, 364-65; and scientific popularizers, 355 Ellegard. Alvar, 321-22, 324 emotion, cognitive theories of. 316-18; discourse of, 289-90, 299-303; originally defined, 295-303 Empedocles, 159 ends, see teleology energy conservation, 353 Eny6di, Gyorgy, 194 Epicureanism, Gassendi and, 158-61 epistemology. Galileo's, 123

GABBEY,ALAN, 142

exclusion of women, from religion and science, 14

exegesis. biblical, and scientific theory,16; Newton'sbiblical, 199-200 exemplum, 103-9. 111-13 extraterrestrial life, belief in, 209-27 FACT, AND BEIIEF.

119,

122

Faraday, Michael. 12, 22. 353

Fegan.W. C.. 252 Feldhay,Rivka. 117

Ferguson. James, 212-14 Fermat, Pierre de, 157 Ferngren. Gary. 209

Feyerabend.Paul.on Galileo affair,124-25 131 final causes, see teleology Finocchiaro, Maurice. xi Fisch. Menachem, xi Fisher, Arabella Buckley, 247; see also Buckley, Arabella Flaimmarion, Camille, 224

Flint. Robert.230 Fontenelle, Bernard le Bovier de, 211 Foote, G. W., 351 force, and "endeavour," 167; Newtonian concept of, 167 Force. James. 9. 23, 171 Formula of Concord. 96-98 Forster. Joseph B.. 33 1 Foscarini. Father Paolo Antonio, 116, 124 fossil studies. and religion, 18-19. 327 Fox, George. 323, 331. 336 Fox. W. D., 252 Fridlund. Alan. 307 Frisius, Reiner Gemrna, 92. 98 Fry. Edward. 321-22 Funkenstein, Amos, x, 9

Galen, 159 Galileo affair.xi. 114-32; historiographyof. 128-31

Galileo Galilei, 10, 64. 210-211; and epistemology. 123; and Galileo affair, 114-32; and Newton, 199; and science of motion, 154; trial of, 343 Galton, Francis, 3, 347 Gans. David b. Solomon. 72-87

Gassendi,Pierre.ix. 18. 155. 158-61, 164, 166 Gastrell,Francis. 187 Gatty, Margaret, 355

Geminus.58-59 geographicfactors,in conceptualchange. 293 geokineticism,see also motion. Earth's

372

INDEX

geology, and Quakerism,326-27; and uniformi- Hodgkin,Thomas.332-33, 336-39, 342 tarianism,353 Hogben,LancelotT, 227, 231 geometryand epistemology. 102 Holy Office, Congregationof the, 126 al-Ghazali,53-56 Holyoake,George, 351 Home, D. D., 234 Gilkey,Langdon,345 Homoousians, 183, 203 Gillispie, Charles,31 Hooke, Robert,25 Gillespie, Neil, 267. 274 Hooker,Joseph,8 Gilpin, Charles,324 Gingerich,Owen, 15 Hooykaas,Reijer, 135-36 Horner.Francis,299 Gladstone,William E.. 343 Gnostics, 348 Howell, Kenneth, 16 God, Newton'suse of terml.178-84, 186-87, Hoyle, Fred,viii 192-93, 195,200 Huggins,William, 221 Humboldt,Alexandervon, 22; influenceon DarGoethe, JohannWolfgangvon. 252, 254, 262. 348 win, 252-56, 258-60, 261,263-64, 268, 272 Gorman,Michael, 118 Hume, David, 268, 295, 298-99, 350 Hunter,Michael, 135 Gould, StephenJay.vii-ix, 15, 273. 345 Graham,William, 275 Hutcheson,Francis,293, 296 Grant,Robert.260 Hutchinson,Jonathan,338-39 Hutton, James, 19 Grassi,Orazio, 116 gravity,ix, 16-17. 25, 112, 198, 200, 206, 217 Huxley,Thomas Henry,12, 27, 312, 341; and Wallace,233, 237, 240; and teleology, 279, Gray,Asa, 230, 274, 277, 278, 280-81 Green,Thomas Hill, 242, 279, 286, 351 282; on scientific naturalismand religion, 343-52, 354-56, 362, 364, 366 Gregory,Frederick,277 Grote,George, 311 Huygens,Christiaan,210-11 Grove,William, 332 IBN SINA, 52, 56, 59 Grynaeus,Simon, 98 idealism, British philosophical, and evolution, Gurney,Edmund,234 351 Gurney,JosephJohn, 326-27 Gutenberg.Johannes.79 al-Ij,i 'Adud al-Din, 55, 57, 60, 63 Iliffe, Robert,9, 25 Inchofer,Melchior, 118 HANCOCK,THOMAS.323 Index, Congregationof the, 126 harmonythesis, Boyle and, 135-36; Darwin and, 328, 337-39; in Galileo affair, 119-24, Inge, W. R., 362 Innes, Rev. Brodie, 252 131; Huxley and, 349; NorthBritishphysicists and, 352-53; two spherestheory and, Inquisition,and Galileo, 126-27, 131 instrumentalism,and Islamic astronomy,54, 56, 362, 364, 366 63 Harrison,Frederic,347 intellectualisthistoryof science, 45 Hartley,David, 295. 299 internalisthistoryof science, 45 Harvey,William, 158, 340-41 intra-actionbetweenscience andreligion,23, 25 Heerbrand,Jacob,96-97 Heimann,P. M., 352 irenicism,and Darwinism,340-42 heliocentrism,224: and see Copernicanism; Islam, and astronomy,49-71; and Greekphilosmotion ophy, 56 island universetheory,217-220, 224 Helmont,J. B. van, 160 Israeli,Isaac, 77 Henry,John. 17, 141 Henslow,John Stevens, 252, 258, 260 JACYNA,STEPHEN,306 heredity,and Quakerism,338 James, William, 314 heresy,Galileo and, 124-28; in Newton, 170. Jameson, Robert, 258 172, 180, 186. 195; science as. 11 Jammer, Max, viii Herschel,Caroline,214 Herschel,John,21, 219. 274 Jeffrey,Francis,299 Jenkin, Fleeming, 352 Herschel,William.213-17, 224-26 Jesuits, and Galileo affair, 117-18, 131 Hesse, Mary,16 Jewish interpretation of astronomy, 72-87 heterodoxy,and Newton, 171, 203-4. 208; see Jewish-Christian relations, 78-80 also heresy John Paul II, Pope, 119-22 Hickok, Laurens,315 Jones, Henry,351 Hiebert,Erwin, 30-31 Joule, James Prescott, 41, 44, 353-54 Hilton, Boyd, 326 Historian'sDilemma, 31 Jung, Carl, 234 al-JurjanL,al-Sharif, 57, 63 historiography,of Galileo affair, 128-3 1; and mythology.132; of science, changing, vii KANT, IMMANUEL,19, 91, 217 Hobbes,Thomas, ix, 166-67 Kawaler, Steven, 215 Hodge, Charles,276

INDEX Kelvin, Lord, 39, 41, 44 Kepler,Johannes,ix, xi, 8, 15, 73, 76, 88113,210-11,251 al-Khafri,Shams al-Din, 63 Khunrath,Heinrich.7 King, David, 50 Kingsley,Charles,348 Kirby,William. 258 Kitto, . Bowyer, 324 Klaaren,Eugene M., 134 Kohn, David, 19-22, 270, 274, 276 Kottler,Malcolm J., 238 Koyre,Alexandre,31-32, 34 LADD,GEORGETRUMBULL,289. 293, 31319

Lamarck,Jean-Baptiste,273 Lamarckism,325, 342; and see neoLamarckism language,4, 8, 10, 21, 23, 261 Lankester,E. Ray,281, 285, 347 Laplace,Pierre-Simon,vii-viii law, definitionof, 106; divine, and Darwin, 274-75; and divine legislator, 17-18; in Lutheranism,95; natural,and divine action, 285; andTrinitarianism,280 LeConte,Joseph, 244 legislator,divine. 17-18, 21 Leibniz, GottfriedWilhelm, 155, 157-58, 171, 174, 176, 186,202 Lennox, James, 161, 275-77 Leslie, John,297-98 Lewes, George Henry,233, 311. 347 libration,see reciprocityrule Liceti, Fortunio, 117 Liddon,HenryParry.278 Lightman,Bernard,xi Lindberg,David, 31 Linnaeus, 18 Linus, Franciscus, 167 Littleboy.JohnE., 335-36 Locke, John, 194 Lodge, Oliver,232, 246-47 Logos, and Darwinism,271, 279; and natural law. 285 London,and radicalthought,293. 312; and scientific naturalists,347, 352 Lovejoy,Arthur,211 Lowell, Percival,220-21 Lubbock,Sir John,240, 347 Luther,Martin,as model, 347 Lutherantheology,and Copernicanism,89-90, 93-95; and naturalphilosophy,111-12 Lyall,William, 297, 302, 315 Lyell, Sir Charles,235-36, 329, 355-56 MACKENZIE,J. D., 351

Mackintosh,Sir James, 293-94 Maestlin,Michael, 80-81, 93-94, 96-99 Magellan,Ferdinand,78 Magini, GiovanniAntonio, 90 Magirus.Johannes,154 magneticforces, and planetarymotion, 109 Maharal.81-84, 86

373

Malthus,Thomas, influenceon Darwin, 256, 263-64 Mandelbrote,Scott, 9-10 Manier,Edward.256 Manuel,Frank,25, 31. 186, 203 Marchant,James,245 Martiancanals, 220-25 Martineau,Harriet,276 materialism,and Darwin,267-68; and mechanical philosophy,153; and psychology,318; and Quakerism,326 mathematics,and physics, 58 Maudsley.Henry,312, 347 Maunder,EdwardWalter,220-26 Maxwell, JamesClerk,242. 352-54 Mayer,JuliusRobert.353-54 McCosh,James,289, 293, 295, 302, 311-19 McGuire,J. E., 32, 134 McMullin,Ernan,43, 267 mechanicalphilosophy,ix, 133-50; andAristotle, 161; and teleology, 152-53, 157 mechanism,defined, 142; meaningof in Boyle, 138-42; and naturalselection, 246 medievalnaturalphilosophy,152-54 medievalperiod, and extraterrestriallife. 210 medievaltheologicalpsychology,293 medievaltheology. 134 Melanchthon,Philipp. 16, 90, 94-98, 101, 103-5, 11 1-112, 210 mentalscience. Thomas Brown and, 299-303 mentalstates. classificationof, 300-303 Mersenne.Marin.7 Merton,Robert,5 mesmerism.231, 234 metaphor,in Darwin,256 metaphysicalbeliefs, and religion, 32-36, 297 metaphysics.defined,32-33 Micanzio. FraFulgenzio, 116 Milbank,John. 292 militaristterminologyand evolution, 340 Mill, James.299. 302 Mill. John Stuart,279, 302, 310, 312 millenarianism,and utopia, 17 Miller.Hugh, 19, 229 miracles.statusof, 346 Mischel, Theodore,305 Mivart,George, 364 monism, 304-6 monist psychology,315 Moore,Aubrey,5, 271, 277-83, 285 Moore, JamesR., 4, 252, 271, 277, 352, 366 moralorder.Darwin'ssense of, 269 Morell, J. B., 296, 301 Morley,John, 233 Guido, 123-24, 131 Morpurgo-Tagliabue, 166-67 motion, and "endeavour"' motion,conservationof, 6 motion, planetary.27, 95, 100-101, 103, 105-7, 113, 198;in Arabicastronomy,62, 64; Earth's, 88-113, 121, 127-28; and Kepler,88-113; and magneticforces, 109; planetary,science of, 154; and see nesting hypothesis motion, lunar, 90, 198

motion, of comets, see comets

374

INDEX

motion, of corpuscles. 164-66 multiple theories, tolerance for coexisting.

72-87

mutationismi, 283-84 Myers. Frederic, 234 mysticism, in Kepler. 100-101 mythology, and historiography, 129, 132 NARRATIVE, MASTER, IN HISTORY.344

natural law, and Darwin, 262: defined by Melanchthon, 105 natural light doctrine, 106 natural philosophy, and astronomy, 49-7 1 as lying. 82-83 natural religion. 297 natural selection. Darwinian, 19, 251-69, 325; and spirituality in Quakerism. 338; and teleology, 263. 270-87; see also adaptation: Lamarckis-m; neo-Lamarckism natural theology. 340. 347. 359: and adaptation. 271-73: in America. 313; continuity of. 362; critiques of. ix: and Darwin. 270-87: and natural selection. 277-78; and popular science, 361: pre-Darwinian. 343 naturalism, distinguished from science, 350 nature, concept of in Darwin. 251-69: definition of, 25S3 265-66- and the divine, distinctness ot. 82-83: in Quakerism, 326; rationality of. 25 I Naturphilo sophie. 276: influence on Darwin, 252-56. 268 nebulae, 213-17. 219. 224. 361---62

necessitarianism.298 neo-Darwinismi281-86 neo-Lamackislm. 282-83. 325, 338-39 neo-Scholastic Christian psychology. 302 nesting hypothesis. 90, 94. 101 New Reformiation. 347 Newcomb, Simoln. '3 Newman. Edward. 324, 328-29 339-40 Newman, John Henrv. 293 Newman. Williaim. 138-39. 146 Newton. Isaac. ix. xi 280: and astronomy, 21011. 217: direction of influences on, 22-26: and gravity. 112. 217: metaphysics of. 16-17: and physics of mind. 299-300; and relation of religion and science. 9-1 1 27. 30-32, 39-

40, 42-44; and teleology. 154-55. 158: theology of. 169--)08; see also Descartes;gravity

North British physicists. see physicists OBJECTI'VIl Y. AND REIGI)ON.

viii

occasionalismI. Islamic. 54 Ockham's LIraor. I )9 Oken. Lorenz. 253 optimism. scientific. 168 orthogenesis. 283

Osiander,and Islamicastronomy.63 Osier, Margaret.ix, 14, 18. 135 Ospovat. Dov. 19-20. 256. 272-73 PAINE.MARI\YN.315. 317

Paine,Thomas. 212-13. 219

Paley, William, 21, 257, 270, 272-74, 276, 278-81,284,286,358-59 pantheism, in Darwin, 266, 272; Humboldt and, 256; rational, 253-54

passions vs. emotions. 289 Payne.George, 302 Pemberton,Henry,188-89 Pena. Ioannes,91-92 Pera.Marcello. 119 perfectadaptation,see adaptation Peripateticnotion of nature,134, 136-38, 14245.147-48, 150 personal experience, and religion, 341 Peucer, Caspar, 80-81

Peurbach,Georg, 89-90, 98 philosophy.Greek,as transcendentalreligion, 56

phrenology,231,234, 298

physicists, North British, 242, 349-55, 364,

366: and religion, 352 physics. and astronomy,92, 361; as naturalphilosophy. 158 physiologicalpsychology,see psychology Piccolomini,Ascanio, 116, 129 Planer,Andreas,96 planetary systems. multiple theories of, 75-87 planets. motion of, see motion

Plato, 101: and teleology,276 plenitude,principleof. 211-12, 222 Plotinus.75 Polkinghorne,John, 362

polyphony in exegesis, 72-87 Popper, Karl, 334

popularizers,scientific, influenceof, 355-62

positivism, 168, 298, 312; and Bain, 311; and

Comte. 28, 274: and Darwin,267; andhistoriography. vii: secular, religion of, 27-28

Poulton,Edward.271, 282, 285-86 Powell, Baden. 274, 346, 348

Power. Henry, 134 practice of religion vs. science, 6-14 preacher-psychologists, 289, 313-18 Presbyterian Church. in Scotland, 297-98, 302, 310-13 prestige of science, 364

priest, role of, 24 Priestley,Joseph. 13

process theology, 229 proclerical theses. and Galileo affair, 124-28 Proctor. Richard. 220 professionalization of science, x, 347 progress. see Lamarckism, neo-Lamarckism progressivism, and Quakerism, 342 Protestant Reformation, and science, 347 providence, and artifice, 141; and astronomy, 98: and energy. 354; Lutheran doctrine of, 96-97, 103. 105, 108. 113; and natural seleclion, 240. 267: and prophecy, 10; and science, ix: and teleology, 162-63 prudence. and biblical assertion, 122 Prutenic Tables, 91 psychology, and religious influence, 288 Ptolemy. Claudius, 51-52, 58, 60-62, 74, 76,

INDEX 80-81; and Ptolemaicastronomy,90, 92, 9394, 98, 106-7, 112 Pusey,Edward,278 Pythagoras,101 QUAKERISM, AND DARWIN, 321-42

Quakers.evangelical, 325-330; moderate,33037 al-Qushjl,'All, 55, 61-63 RADICAL REFORMATION, 172

Ramsay,Sir George, 302 Ranelagh,Lady Katherine,133-34 Rankine,Macquorn,352 Raven,Charles,362 reason,and presumption,7 reciprocityrule, 106. 109-11 Reed, Edward,292 regressus, 91-92, 95, 98, 100, 103, 108, 110-

13 Reid, Thomas,295-97, 299, 300-302 reincarnation,247 Reinhold,Erasmus,90, 92, 98, 112 religion, boundarywith science, 285-86, 351; characteristicsof, 40-42; defined,34-35, 248-49; distinguishedfrom theology,in Newton, 196-97; impressionof on science, 27-28; and metaphysicalbeliefs, 32-36; statusof, 351-52; and theology,defined, 345-49; see also science; theology religious requirementsfor academicpositions, 297-98, 311 religious sources for naturalselection, 271 remnant,in Newton'stheology,204-5, 207-8 Rheticus,Georg Joachim, 15, 101, 112 rhetoric,and astronomy,80-81 Ricardo,David, 256 Richardson,Lawrence,334 Ritchie, David George, 351 ritual,Islamic, and astronomy,51 Roback,A. A.. 315 Robinson,Daniel S., 345 RomanCatholicChurch,and Galileo affair, 116-32; see also Jesuits,Dominicans,Augustine. Aquinas,JohnPaul II Romanes,George, 278, 280-81, 285, 351 Rothmann.Christoph,92, 94, 98 Rowntree,John Stephenson,323 Rudolf II, 99 Rudwick,Martin,4, 5, 12-13, 18-19 Ruskin.John, 8 SACROBOSCO,JOHANNES DE, 80

saltpeter,Boyle on, 146-49 Salusbury,Thomas, 129-30 Samarqand,55, 61 Sand, Christopher,194 Sandemaniansect, Faradayand, 12 Sarton,George, 31 Schaefer,EdwardA., 245-46 Scheiner,Christopher,116-18 Schelling, Friedrich,252 Scheuchzer,Johann,19

375

Scheuer,Hans Giinther,209 Schiaparelli,Giovanni,220-21, 224 Scholastic naturalphilosophy,153-56, 160, 164 Scholasticism,and ScottishEnlightenment,296 science and religion, in Quakerism,326; relation of, vii; separationof, vii, 339-40, 34550, 364 science and theology,fusion of, x; Quakerseparationof, 333-34 science, as disinterested,3; historyof, 45; as religion, 312-13; and spiritualevolution, 241 scientific naturalism,345-49, 364, 366; Balfour on, 350; and energy conservation,353; and physicists, 352-53 Scientific Revolution,historyof, 151-52, 168 Scopes trial, 343 secularizationof science, and personalconvictions, ix secularization,andAnglican Church,365; and conflict thesis, 343-66; definitionof, 13 Sedgwick, Adam, 19, 252, 258, 347 Seebohm, Henry,335 Senior,NassauWilliam, 233 Sennert,Daniel, 138-40 sensationalism,French,298 Severinus,Petrus, 160 Sewell, William, 293 Shanahan,Timothy,161 Shapin, Steven, 3, 45, 151

al-Shlraz,iQutbal-DTn,58, 60-62 Sidgwick, Henry,234, 351 simplicity,in nature,198-99 Simplicius, 58 Sloan, Phillip R., 22, 272 Smith,Adam, 256 Smith, Crosbie, 352, 354 Snobelen, Stephen,9-11 social goals, and scientifictheory,78 social status,and science, 346-47 socialism, Wallaceand, 228 Socinianism,in Newton. 191-96, 203 Somerville, Mary,14 Spencer,Herbert,on emotions, 288, 290, 293, 302-7, 315, 318-19; and island universetheory. 217; as scientific naturalist,347-48, 355, 364 Spinoza, 155, 253-54; and Spinozism, 304 spiritualism,and science, 227-250; and theism, 230-235 spiritualityand naturalselection, in Quakerism, 338 Sprat,Thomas, 3 stars,as habitable,215-17 Steffens, Heinrich,253 Stephen,Leslie, 299, 347-48 Stephens,William, 189 Stewart,Balfour,354 Stewart,Dugald, 295-96, 299, 302 Stewart,Larry,11, 171 sublime,Romantic,255 sunspots,discoveryof, 116, 118; Herschelon, 216. 225; Maunderon, 223

376

INDEX

TAIT,PETERGUTHRIE,242, 352, 354

Tallack,William,327-28 Talmud,and astronomy,74, 77 Taylor,Richard,262 teleology, ix. 151-68; and Darwinism.270-87; evolutionary,228; in Humboldt,254, 256; and naturalselection, 263; and Plato, 276; and neo-Lamarckism,325; Paleyan,271; preDarwinianviews of, 276 telescopes, Herscheland, 213-15. 224 Tennant,E R., 20 terminology,xi; in mentalscience, 300-303; Newton's, 178-80; in Quakerism,340; of science and religion, 114-15, 132 tests, religious, see religious requirements Thackeray,William Makepeace,233 Theerman,Paul, 352 theism, 227-50; and belief, 350-51; and Darwinism, 265-69, 274, 278; defined.228-31; and evolution,235-43; and naturalselection, 280; and plenitude,211-12; and scientific content,x theology,and astronomy.81-84; and cosmology, 88-113; and Newton, 22-26, 196-97, 200-202. 205; Malthusian,271; medieval, 134; vs. religion, 348 of. 16, 21 theorychoice, underdetermination theosophy,247 Thompson.SilvanusPhillips, 334, 336 Thomson.William, 242, 352-54 Thorndike,Lynn, 80 Tindal,Matthew,13 Toland,John. 174 Torah,82, 87 trans-scientificguiding ideas, 31-32 Trinitarianism,and naturallaw, 280; and Newton. 177-78 Turner,Frank,351, 354, 364-65 al-Tusi, Nasir al-Din, 55-62 two spheres,see science and religion, separation of Tylor,Edward,347 Tyndall,John,233, 237, 282, 329, 332, 341, 347-48,353-55 ULUGHBEG, PRINCE,61

of theorychoice, 16, 21 underdetermination uniformitarianism,353 Unitarianism,297; and Darwin,252; Newton and, 170. 177, 184; and Quakerism,325-26. 331 unity,as heuristicdevice, 24-25 universalhypothesis.Boyle's, 136-38 Upham,Thomas. 302 UrbanVIII. Pope. 116, 118, 129-30

utility principle,in naturalselection, 236-37, 250, 273-74 utopia, scientific, and religion, 17 VAN INWAGEN,PETER,33-35

Vespucci,Amerigo, 78 Veverka,J., 215 Vigani, JohnFrancis,26 vitriol, Boyle on, 149 Viviani, Vincenzio, 129, 131 voices, multiple,84-85 voluntarism,and Boyle, 134, 136; Newton and, 23, 176, 202; and science, 45 WACE,HENRY,343

Wallace,Alfred Russel, 227-50, 335, 341, 351, 364 Wallace,William, 123, 351 Wallis,HenryMarriage,322, 335-36 Ward,James, 351 watch and watchmakeranalogy,see clock Watts,Isaac Webster,Charles, 17 Webster,Richard,292 Welsh, Rev. David, 297 Wertheim,Margaret,14 Westfall,Richard,23, 32, 170, 196-98, 204 Westlake,WilliamColson, 324, 332 Westman,Robert, 15 Whewell, William, 14, 19, 252, 270, 346; and emotions, 293-94; on Galileo, 130-31; and pluralityof worlds,217-20, 224-26 Whiston,William, 10-11, 173-74, 187-88 White, AndrewD.. 131 Wilberforce.Samuel, 343, 349, 354 Wiles, Maurice, 195 William IV of Hesse-Kassel,Landgrave,94 WilliamThomson,see Kelvin, Lord Wilson, David, 4, 30-31, 352 wisdom, vs. naturalphilosophy,83 Wise, M. Norton,352, 354 Wojcik,Jan, 135 women, exclusion of, 14, 356; in science, 361 wonder,uniquenessof, 63, 334 Wood, Rev. JohnGeorge, 355-59, 362 worlds, pluralityof, 211, 215, 218-220, 224 worldview,componentsof, 291-92 Worsdell,Edward,335 Wiirttemberg,duke of, 96 Wykstra,StephenJ., xii, 6, 16-17, 28, 290-91, 229, 267 YOUNG,EDWARD,211 Young, Robert, 256-57, 286 Young, Thomas, 217

SS90ZO 9ZZ08Z 6

IJ

1111 IIIJ1I

9-5959

O-922-0

1 N8SI

Osiris, Volume 16: Science in Theistic Contexts

ADVANCES IN CATALYSIS VOLUME 16, Volume 16

Science Education in International Contexts

Osiris, Volume 12: Women, Gender, and Science: New Directions

Advances in Parasitology Volume 16

Advances in Taxation, Volume 16

Advances in Genetics Volume 16

Methods in Microbiology, Volume 16

Topics in Stereochemistry, Volume 16

Advances in Agronomy, Volume 16

Advances in Geophysics, Volume 16

Advances in Parasitology Volume 16

Health issues in Chinese contexts, Volume 2

Science Fiction Stories 16

16 Science Fiction Stories

Volume 16: Engineering Society (Vol 16)

Advances In Chemical Engineering Vol 16, Volume 16

Advances in Clinical Chemistry Volume 16

Advances in Heat Transfer, Volume 16

Reviews in Mathematical Physics - Volume 16

Advances in Carbohydrate Chemistry, Volume 16

Progress in Heterocyclic Chemistry. Volume 16

Progress in Heterocyclic Chemistry, Volume 16

Advances in Ecological Research, Volume 16

Advances in Applied Microbiology, Volume 16

Advances in Carbohydrate Chemistry, Volume 16

Advances in Marine Biology, Volume 16

Econometric Models In Marketing. Volume 16

ADVANCES IN HETEROCYCLIC CHEMISTRY V16, Volume 16

Advances in Applied Mechanics, Volume 16

Advances in Botanical Research, Volume 16

Osiris, Volume 16: Science in Theistic Contexts

ADVANCES IN CATALYSIS VOLUME 16, Volume 16

Science Education in International Contexts

Osiris, Volume 12: Women, Gender, and Science: New Directions

Advances in Parasitology Volume 16

Advances in Taxation, Volume 16

Advances in Genetics Volume 16

Methods in Microbiology, Volume 16

Topics in Stereochemistry, Volume 16

Advances in Agronomy, Volume 16

Advances in Geophysics, Volume 16

Advances in Parasitology Volume 16

Health issues in Chinese contexts, Volume 2

Science Fiction Stories 16

16 Science Fiction Stories

Volume 16: Engineering Society (Vol 16)

Advances In Chemical Engineering Vol 16, Volume 16

Advances in Clinical Chemistry Volume 16

Advances in Heat Transfer, Volume 16

Reviews in Mathematical Physics - Volume 16

Advances in Carbohydrate Chemistry, Volume 16

Progress in Heterocyclic Chemistry. Volume 16

Progress in Heterocyclic Chemistry, Volume 16

Advances in Ecological Research, Volume 16

Advances in Applied Microbiology, Volume 16

Advances in Carbohydrate Chemistry, Volume 16

Advances in Marine Biology, Volume 16

Econometric Models In Marketing. Volume 16

ADVANCES IN HETEROCYCLIC CHEMISTRY V16, Volume 16

Advances in Applied Mechanics, Volume 16

Advances in Botanical Research, Volume 16

Recommend Documents