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From creation to evlution: Sir William Dawson and the idea of design in the nineteenth century

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References

  1. See Charles C., Gillispie, Genesis and Geology (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1951), p. 178. Dawson announced his adherence to Miller's “orthodoxy” in a letter to Lyell, June 11, 1851, Dawson Papers (microfilm), McGill University Archives. For an example of Miller's influence on Dawson compare J. W. Dawson, Origin of the World (Montreal: Dawson Bros., 1877), p. 340, and Hugh Miller, Footprints of the Creator (Boston: Gould & Lincoln, 1854), p. 308.

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  2. Lyell to Dawson, April 21, 1856, Dawson Papers (microfilm).

  3. Dawson entered into controversy with Haeckel, Huxley, and S. R. Driver about the conflict of particular biblical passages with science. See J. W., Dawson, “Haeckel on the Evolution of Man”, Princeton Rev., 5 (1880), 444–464; Dawson to Huxley, October 9, 1870, Dawson Papers (2211); J. W. Dawson, “Professor Huxley in New York”, Internat. Rev., 4 (1877), 34–50; S. R. Driver, “Recent Old Testament Literature”, Contemp. Rev. (1889), 399–402; and J. W. Dawson, “Genesis and Some of its Critics”, Contemp. Rev. (1889), 900–909.

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  4. Frank Dawson, Adams, “Sir William Dawson”, Science, 10 (1899), 910.

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  5. T. H., Clark, “Sir John William Dawson, 1820–1899”, in Pioneers of Canadian Science, ed. G. F. G., Stanley (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1966), p. 111.

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  6. Charles F., O'Brien, Sir William Dawson: A Life in Science and Religion (Philadelphia: American Philosophical Society, 1971), pp. 184–185.

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  7. Such an evolutionary yet “Newtonian” idea of design was espoused apparently by Erasmus Darwin, Lamarck, Wallace, occasionally by Darwin, and even acknowledged by Huxley; but it accommodated rather than penetrated the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century context of assumption referred to in this study.

  8. See William, Paley, “Natural Theology”, in Paley's Works (London: Henry G. Bohn, 1844), pp. 135–136: “Every organized natural body, in the provisions which it contains for its sustentation and propagation, testifies care, on the part of the Creator, expressly directed to these purposes”. In the Bridgewater Treatises see esp. Peter Mark Roget, Animal and Vegetable Physiology Considered with Reference to Natural Theology, 2 vols. (London: William Pickering, 1834), I, 28–30; and William Kirby, On the History, Habits, and Instincts of Animals, 2 vols. (London: William Pickering, 1835), I, xxiv, 1–43. See also Loren Eiseley, Darwin's Century: Evolution and the Men Who Discovered It (Garden City, N.Y.: Anchor Books, 1961), p. 197.

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  9. Adam, Segwick, “Natural History of Creation”, Edinburgh Rev., 82 (1845), 62, 64.

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  10. Agassiz' tendency to unite design and special creations (within an overall creative plan) is suggested by his Essay on Classification, ed. Edward, Lurie (Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press, Harvard University Press, 1962), pp. 15n15, 16. Also see David L. Hull, Darwin and His Critics (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1973), p. 64; and Neal C. Gillespie, Charles Darwin and the Problem of Creation (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1979), p. 27.

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  11. For Lamarck's attack on design, see Richard W., Burkhardt, The Spirit of System: Lamarck and Evolutionary Biology (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1977), p. 172. Ghiselin believes that Darwin's work On the Various Contrivances by Which British and Foreign Orchids are Fertilized by Insects (1862) may have been in part a parody of the Bridgewater Treatises. Michael Ghiselin, The Triumph of the Darwinian Method (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1969), p. 136.

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  12. Historians have tended to lump together design and special creation, and even teleology, without questioning the idiom of nineteenth-century natural science that practically equated them. The relation of classic organismic doctrines of teleology to eighteenth- and nineteenth-century evolutionary theories will be the subject of future studies.

  13. This may illuminate A. O. Lovejoy's observations concerning the poor reception of the theory of evolution before the Origin of Species, in Forerunners of Darwin, 1745–1859, ed. B., Glass, O., Temkin, and L., Strauss (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1959), esp. pp. 413–414.

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  14. Burkhardt, The Spirit of System, pp. 77–78.

  15. Georges, Leclerc, Comte, de, Buffon, Histoire naturelle (Paris: F. Dufart, 1799), 22; “L'Ane” (1753), pp. 283–285; and “De le dégénération des animaux” (1766), pp. 321–330, 345–396.

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  16. Charles, Darwin, The Origin of Species, 1st ed. (London: John Murray, 1859), p. 3.

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  17. Arthur O. Lovejoy, “The Argument for Organic Evolution before the Origin of Species, 1830–1858,” in Forerunners of Darwin, pp. 359, 363.

  18. Neal C. Gillespie has studied the same dualism in nineteenth-century natural philosophy, from a different angle, in Charles Darwin and the Problem of Creation. See esp. pp. 11–21. I did not have the benefit of Gillespie's rich work at the time I carried out the research here presented.

  19. See Eiseley, Darwin's Century, pp. 106, 109, and Gavin de Beer's introduction to Darwin's Notebooks on Transmutation of Species in Bull. Brit. Mus. (Nat. Hist.), 2 (1960), 33.

  20. See Leonard G., Wilson, “Sir Charles Lyell and the Species Question,” Amer. Sci., 59 (1971), 43–44.

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  21. Lyell publicized a unique creationist idea of design, namely that the Creator produced a species in a unique act, endowing it with all the traits required in its future career. See Principles of Geology, III, 30, 83.

  22. See Lyell to Sir J. F. W. Herschel, June 1, 1836, and Lyell to A. Sedgwick, January 20, 1838, cited in Leonard G., Wilson, Charles Lyell, The Years to 1841: The Revolution in Geology (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1972), pp. 439–440.

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  23. William, Whewell, History of the Inductive Sciences, 3rd ed. (New York: D. Appleton, 1901), p. 644.

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  24. Ibid., p. 564.

  25. Ibid., pp. 563–564.

  26. See William, Whewell, Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences (London: John W. Parker, 1847), p. 676.

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  27. Whewell, History, pp. 564–565; and Lyell, Principles of Geology, III, 23–83.

  28. J. W., Dawson, Archaia (Montreal: Dawson Bros., 1860), p. 252.

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  29. J. W., Dawson, Archaia (Montreal: Dawson Bros., 1860), p. 353.

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  30. Gertrude, Himmelfarb, Darwin and the Darwinian Revolution (New York: Anchor Doubleday, 1959), p. 423.

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  31. This tendency in the composition of the Origin has been repeatedly noted by cultural and intellectual historians who have tried to appreciate Darwin's entire context. See, for example, Jacques, Barzun, Darwin, Marx, Wagner (Garden City: Doubleday, 1958), p. 30; Himmelfarb, Darwin and the Darwinian Revolution, p. 297; and N. C. Gillespie, Darwin and the Problem of Creation, pp. 67–81.

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  32. See Herbert, Spencer, Essays: Scientific, Political, and Speculative, 3 vols. (London: Williams & Norgate, 1901), I, 480; and Etienne Gilson, D'Aristote à Darwin et retour (Paris: J. Vrin, 1971), pp. 104, 113. The confusion of evolution with Darwinism continues in twentieth-century literature. See, for example, Earl D. Hanson, Animal Diversity (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1964), pp. 30, 112; and John V. Canfield, Introduction, Purpose in Nature, ed. John V. Canfield (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1966), pp. 3, 7.

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  33. Grant, Allen, Charles Darwin (London: Longmans, Green, 1885), pp. 3–4, 177.

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  34. See, for example, Samuel, Butler, Luck, or Cunning? (London: Jonathan Cape, 1920), p. 173: “He had no intention of playing the scientific confidence trick upon us. I dare say not, but unfortunately the result has closely resembled the one that would have ensued if Mr. Darwin had had such an intention.” See also Basil Willey, Darwin and Butler: Two Versions of Evolution (London: Chatto & Windus, 1960), pp. 65, 75.

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  35. J. W., Dawson, “Darwin on the Origin of Species,” Can. Nat., 5 (1860), 118.

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  36. Ibid., p. 101.

  37. Ibid., p. 109.

  38. Ibid., p. 116.

  39. Ibid., p. 118.

  40. Dawson, Archaia, p. 347.

  41. See, for example, J. W., Dawson, “Air-Breathers of the Coal Period,” Can. Nat., 8 (1863), 291; and “What Do We Know of the Origin and History of Life on Our Planet?” Dawson's vice-presidential address, Proc. A.A.A.S., 24 (1875), 20–21.

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  42. J. W., Dawson, “On Modern Ideas of Derivation,” Can. Nat., 4 (1869), 136–137.

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  43. J. W., Dawson, “On the Bearing of Devonian Botany on Questions as to the Origin and Extinction of Species,” Am. J. Sci., 2 (1871), 416. Dawson probably borrowed the notion of “types” from François Jules Pictet, whose types he discussed in Archaia (pp. 330, 372). See Pictet, Traité de paléontologie, 4 vols. (Paris: J.-B. Baillière, 1853–1857), I, 84–87.

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  44. Dawson, “Devonian Botany,” p. 415.

  45. J. W., Dawson, The Story of the Earth and Man (Montreal: Dawson Bros., 1872), p. 318.

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  46. J. W., Dawson, The Story of the Earth and Man (Montreal: Dawson Bros., 1872), pp. 349–352.

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  47. J. W., Dawson, The Story of the Earth and Man (Montreal: Dawson Bros., 1872), p. 348.

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  48. J. W., Dawson, The Story of the Earth and Man (Montreal: Dawson Bros., 1872), p. 321. Dawson was thinking of Spencer's Principles of Biology, 1898 ed., 2 vols. (New York: D. Appleton & Co., 1915), I, 317–440, which appeared originally in 1867.

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  49. Dawson was quoting from T. H., Huxley, Lay Sermons, Addresses, and Reviews (London: Macmillan, 1870), p. 331.

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  50. Dawson, Earth and Man, p. 349.

  51. See Spencer, Principles of Biology, I, 438: “We saw that if organisms were severally designed for their respective places in Nature ...” Another example of Spencer's confusion of ideas is, ironically, to be found in his own accusation of Lord Salisbury of confusing evolution and Darwinism, in the Essays, I, 480–481. All Lord Salisbury argued in his presidential address to the British Association (Brit. A.A.S. Rept., 64 [1894], 15) was that if natural selection was rejected, the only resource was to fall back on the agency of a principle of design. To read this, as Spencer did, as a rejection of evolution probably resulted from his own confusion of design and special creations.

  52. See, for example, Huxley, Lay Sermons, p. 331: “For the notion that every organism has been created as it is and launched straight at a purpose, Mr. Darwin substitutes the conception of something which may fairly be termed a method of trial and error.”

  53. Asa Gray, “The Attitude of Working Naturalists towards Darwinism,” The Nation, 17 (1873), p. 260.

  54. Dawson, Earth and Man, p. 350.

  55. Asa, Gray, Darwiniana: Essays and Reviews pertaining to Darwinism, ed. A., Hunter Dupree (Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press, Harvard University Press, 1963), p. 294.

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  56. Asa, Gray, Darwiniana: Essays and Reviews pertaining to Darwinism, ed. A. Hunter, Dupree (Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press, Harvard University Press, 1963), p. 316.

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  57. Asa, Gray, Darwiniana: Essays and Reviews pertaining to Darwinism, ed. A. Hunter, Dupree (Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press, Harvard University Press, (1963)), pp. 317–318; regarding Gray's preference for the word derivation, see The Letters of Asa Gray, ed. Jane L. Gray, 2 vols. (London: Macmillan, 1893), II, 497, 502.

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  58. A. Hunter, Dupree, Asa Gray (New York: Atheneum, 1968), p. 376.

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  59. Indeed, such scientist-ideologists as Ernst Haeckel, who made evolution their Zauberwort, were perhaps less interested than Gray in the constraints of evidence. See, for example, the foreword to the first German edition of Haeckel's Natürliche Schopfungs-Geschichte, 2 vols. (Berlin: Georg Reimer, 1902), I, viii.

  60. See Gray, Darwiniana, p. 320.

  61. Lyell announced his conversion to Gray's idea of “Darwinian” evolution in The Antiquity of Man (London: John Murray, 1863), pp. 505–506. In retrospect, Lyell can be seen to have been groping for such an idea of designed evolution. See Lyell's Scientific Journals, esp. pp. 168, 176, 382, 418.

  62. Gray to Darwin, March 22, 1863, Letters of Asa Gray, II, 502. Our view of the debate unfortunately is not complete, since most of Gray's letters to Darwin before 1862 were destroyed.

  63. Gray to Darwin, July 7, 1863, Letters of Asa Gray, II, 508.

  64. Darwin to Gray, Nov. 26, 1860, The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, ed. Francis Darwin, 3 vols. (London: John Murray, 1888), II, 353.

  65. Darwin to Lyell, Aug. 21, 1861, More Letters of Charles Darwin, ed. F. Darwin and A. C. Seward, 2 vols. (London: John Murray, 1903), I, 193–194.

  66. Darwin to Gray, Dec. 11, 1861, Life and Letters, II, p. 382.

  67. Darwin to Gray, Nov. 26, 1860, ibid., p. 353.

  68. Ibid.

  69. Darwin to Lyell, Aug. 21, 1861, More Letters, I, 194.

  70. Jackson St., George Mivart, The Genesis of Species (London: Macmillan, 1871), pp. 4–5.

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  71. Jackson St., George Mivart, The Genesis of Species (London: Macmillan, 1871), p. 16.

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  72. See William, Irvine, Apes, Angels, and Victorians (New York: Meridian Books, 1959), p. 198.

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  73. Butler, Luck, or Cunning?, p. 19.

  74. Erich, Wasmann, Modern Biology and the Theory of Evolution, trans. A. M. Buchanan (from the 3rd German ed., 1906) (St. Louis: B. Herder, 1923), p. 262.

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  75. Albert, Gaudry, Les Ancêtres de nos animaux dans les temps géologiques (Paris: J.-B. Baillière, 1888), chap. 2.

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  76. Joseph, LeConte, Evolution and Its Relation to Religious Thought (New York: D. Appleton, 1899; 1st ed., 1888), p. 348.

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  77. James, McCosh, The Religious Aspect of Evolution (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1890), p. 7.

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  78. Paul, Janet, Final Causes, 2nd ed., trans. William Affleck (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1892), pp. 153, 157–158.

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  79. Gray, Darwiniana, p. 309.

  80. Dawson, “Origin and History of Life,” p. 20.

  81. J. W., Dawson, Nature and the Bible (New York: Robert Carter, 1875), p. 144.

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  82. Dawson, “On Modern Ideas of Derivation,” pp. 223–224.

  83. J. W., Dawson, “Evolution and the Apparition of Animal Forms,” Princeton Rev., 1 (1878), 663.

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  84. See, for example, Dawson's description of Venus' flower-basket in “Evolution and the Apparition of Animal Forms,” p. 669, and his description of the leaf in Nature and the Bible, p. 108.

  85. Raymond to Dawson, Sept. 30, 1879, Dawson Papers (2211).

  86. Winchell to Dawson, Sept. 6, 1882, Dawson Papers (2211). A good example of Winchell's work on creation and evolution is Reconciliation of Science and Religion (New York: Harper, 1877), esp. chap. 6.

  87. McCosh to Dawson, Feb. 5, 1880, Dawson Papers (2211).

  88. Dawson, “Haeckel on the Evolution of Man,” p. 460.

  89. Ibid., p. 461.

  90. On Lyell, see Michael, Bartholemew, “Lyell and Evolution”, Brit. J. Hist. Sci., 6 (1973), 301. On Gray, see Dupree, Asa Gray, p. 376.

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  91. Gray to Dawson, May 10, 1880, Dawson Papers (2211).

  92. J. W., Dawson, “Evolution in Education,” Princeton Rev., 9 (1882), 233.

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  93. J. W. Dawson, “Remarks on Sir G. Stokes' Paper,” Trans. Victoria Inst., 17 (1884), p. 301.

  94. J. W., Dawson, “Man in Nature,” Princeton Rev., 4 (1885), 217–218.

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  95. Ibid., pp. 221, 228–230.

  96. J. W., Dawson, Modern Ideas of Evolution, ed. William R., Shea (New York: Science History Publications, 1977; 1st ed., 1890), p. 207.

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  97. J. W. Dawson, “President's Address,” Brit. A.A.S. Rept. (1887), p. 5.

  98. J. W., Dawson, “Remarks on a Paper by H. J. Clarke on Evolution,” Trans. Victoria Inst., 21 (1888), 299.

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  99. Dawson, Modern Ideas of Evolution, p. 25.

  100. Dawson discussed LeConte's Evolution and Its Relation to Religious Thought on pp. 162–170, and McCosh's Religious Aspect of Evolution on pp. 239–240.

  101. Dawson, Modern Ideas of Evolution, p. 227.

  102. Ibid., pp. 228, 230–231.

  103. J. W., Dawson, Some Salient Points in the Science of the Earth (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1893), p. 25.

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  104. See, for example, T. H., Huxley, American Addresses (London: Macmillan, 1877), p. 20, and his Lay Sermons, pp. 330–333; Ernst Haeckel, The History of Creation, trans. E. R. Lankester, 2 vols. (New York: D. Appleton, 1876), I, 7–8, 11–22. On Haeckel's style of argument, see also Wasmann, Modern Biology and the Theory of Evolution, p. 262.

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  105. Dawson, Nature and the Bible, p. 40. Dawson is referring to the last section of pt. I of J. S. Mill's essay on “Theism,” written in 1869–1870 and published posthumously (in 1874) in Three Essays on Religion.

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    John F. Cornell

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Cornell, J.F. From creation to evlution: Sir William Dawson and the idea of design in the nineteenth century. J Hist Biol 16, 137–170 (1983). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00186678

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