Darwinism: Science or Philosophy - Chapter 9a

Response to Leslie K. Johnson - Evolution as History and the History of Evolution

by David L. Wilcox
1994

This paper is a response to a presented paper.


MY PRIMARY CRITICISM of Leslie Johnson's interesting paper will, I'm sure,
be unexpected, even thought impolite. Her primary focus is irrelevant to
the topic of this symposium. But that irrelevance is highly significant.
It is clear that I need to justify such an outrageous statement. Dr.
Johnson makes an eloquent plea for the adequacy of the fossil record in
documenting descent, and that is just the problem. Common descent is not
particularly relevant to our theme, the reason for the acceptance of
neo-Darwinism. "Evolution" and "Darwinism" are not synonyms, and Darwinism
is not a theory that creatures share common ancestors-even structurally
very different ancestors-it is rather a theory of how those creatures
became different. Darwinism is a theory of mechanism, not a proposed
historical scenario.

I realize that words like evolution and Darwinism have been used like the
walnut shells in a shell game to obscure distinctions and to persuade the
faint in heart. Evolution has at least been used to mean change,
mechanism, history, paradigm, and world view, more linguistic freight than
any word can meaningfully carry. However, neoDarwinism-the Modern
Synthesis-is supposed to be a theory of a mechanism by which genotypes
(and the phenotypes they produce) can be transformed. Evidence that links
two different forms of life in common descent simply describes a
phenomenon that we need to explain.

This probably seems like nit-picking to a 1990s audience, but it would
have made perfect sense to one in the 1890s. The Modern Synthesis has been
so generally accepted that it has practically become synonymous with all
the various meanings carried by the word evolution. To evaluate why this
confusion exists, we must disentangle those meanings.

A quick trip to pre-Darwinian England can help to clarify the confusion.
One hundred and fifty years ago, according to Gillespie (1979), most
naturalists accepted the idea of common ancestry, but they differed on how
new forms arose. The Establishment at Oxford (Buckland, for instance)
evidently thought that God occasionally remodeled an existing form into a
perfectly adapted new type (Rupke, 1983). The Radical Materialists such as
Grant and Knox followed Lamarck in considering matter itself energized
with an intrinsic tendency for unifomm development (Desmond, 1989). The
followers of German Naturphilosophie (Richard Owen, for instance) held the
theory that autonomous extra-material archetypes shaped lineages
progressively into their own images (Desmond, 1982). All the schools (with
the exception of Louis Agassis) viewed fossil sequences as demonstrations
of common descent. They differed on the nature of the power that shaped
biological form, but not on whether things shared common ancestry. One
further note: although they differed in their philosophies of nature, each
school had both Christian and non-Christian adherents.

According to historian James Moore (1982), however, around 1840 a new
movement of young middle-class reformers calling themselves "Naturalists"
appeared. This group as young adults typically changed their creed from
Christianity (which they felt was morally bankrupt) to one based on
"Nature." They were "poets and lawyers, doctors and manufacturers,
novelists and naturalists, engineers and politicians." The group included
such well-known individuals as George Eliot, Herbert Spencer, Matthew
Arnold, Francis Galton, J. A. Froude, G. H. Lewes, Charles Bray, Alfred
Lord Tennyson, John Tyndall, F. W. Newman, A. H. Clough, Harriet
Martineau, F. P. Cobbe, and, of course, T. H. Huxley. Moore shows that the
central feature of this new creed was the redefinition of human nature,
society, order, law, evil, progress, purpose, authority, and nature itself
in terms of the Naturalists' particular view of Nature, as opposed to the
Christian Scriptures. In fact, they tended to attack the Christian
Scriptures as the true source of societal evil. God, if he existed, was to
be known only through the Nature which he made. Thus, according to Moore
(1982) and Young (1980), "positivism" was not primarily a methodology for
science, but a religious movement that sought to replace the cultural
dominance of the Established Church.

Charles Darwin launched his theory of biological change in this context.
He proposed a mechanism for the appearance of new forms that did not
depend on any pre-existing or exterior shaping forces. The environment
became the only needed constraint. It was a theory of strategic importance
for the Naturalists, particularly for the "X" club, Huxley's "Young Guard"
party in science.

The significance of a mechanism can be understood only within the world
views of its proponents. The "Naturalism" that initially proposed and
supported Darwin's mechanism was both a world view and a social movement.
These individuals viewed the world as autonomous, and the Darwinian
mechanism as autonomous creator. The scientific members of this movement,
Huxley's "X" club, were engaged in a successful campaign to wrest the
university chairs in the sciences from the clergymen/naturalists of the
Established Church. The ability of Darwinism to replace the divine with a
natural process was a critical support.

Turner (1978) has proposed that this fabled Victorian conflict was
primarily a "professional" struggle for scientific autonomy and authority,
a struggle between the "professionally" trained and validated scientists
and the Anglican dons. Still, if the professionally validated "scientist"
is viewed as the only one who can adequately understand nature, and if
Nature has replaced Scripture as the source of moral and teleological
truth, ipso facto the scientist has replaced the priest. Thus, the
"professional" position at stake was as much the pulpit as the lectern.
Thus, although in reality it is just a simple proposal of natural
processes, Darwinism historically was accepted by the Naturalists by
philosophical preference. Huxley himself did not accept its scientific
inference for the fossil record until after 1864 (Desmond, 1982). Indeed,
as a "scientific inference," a description of material cause, other
schools of thought also accepted Darwin's mechanism, but they considered
it inadequate as an explanation of important biological change.
Neo-Lamarckians such as Cope, and Mutationalists like De Vries, held
competing theories of mechanism for morphogenesis.

In particular, Christian theists who held the universe to be governed at
all points, rather than autonomous at all points, simply took the
mechanism to be an aspect of God at work (Livingstone, 1989). This view I
want to highlight for a moment, since it directly bears on the "blind
watchmaker" question. Such men included the "American Darwin," Harvard
botanist Asa Gray, who introduced and defended Darwin's theory to America,
and the conservative Princeton theologian, B. B. Warfleld. But Gray said,
"If Mr. Darwin believes that the events which he supposes to have occurred
. . . were undirected and undesigned . . . no argument is needed to show
that such a belief is atheistic." Warfeld (1988) commented:

Mr. Darwin's difficulty arises on one side from his inability to
conceive of God as immanent in the universe and his consequent total
misapprehension of the nature of divine providence, and on the other
from a very crude notion of final cause which posits a single extrinsic
end as the sole purpose of the Creator. No one would hold to a doctrine
of divine "interpositions" such as appears to him here as the only
alternative to divine absence. And no one would hold to a teleology of
the raw sort which he has here in mind-a teleology which finds the end
for which a thing exists in the misuse or abuse of it by an outside
selecting agent.

Even Charles Hodge, a theologian who attacked Darwin, did so because he
said Darwin intended by the term "natural" selection to exclude
"supernatural" selection. According to Hodge (1874),

It is however neither evolution nor natural selection which give
Darwinism its peculiar character and importance. It is that Darwin
rejects all teleology, or the doctrine of final causes. He denies design
in any of the organisms in the vegetable or animal world."

Hodge rejected not the mechanism, but the theological hypothesis of the
blind watchmaker.

Darwin did not publish his rejection of the design argument until 1868 at
the end of Animal and Plants under Domestication. Using the analogy of a
building constructed from the stone fragments at the base of a precipice.
Darwin stated:

In regard to the use to which the fragments may be put, their shape may
be strictly said to be accidental . . . Can It be reasonably maintained
that the Creator intentionally ordered, if we use the words in any
ordinary sense, that certain fragments of rock should assume certain
shapes so that the builder might erect his edifice? . . . we can hardly
follow Professor Asa Gray in his belief "that variation has been led
along certain beneficial lines" . . . On the other hand, an omnipotent
and omniscient Creator ordains everything and foresees everything. Thus
we are brought fact to face with a difficulty as insoluble as is that of
free will and predestination.

According to Gray's school of thought, the Darwinian mechanism could be
used to support the existence of God. But can you imagine any scientist
saying that in public today?

The Naturalists succeeded. The "Young Guard" used the trappings of
religion to sacralize their "science." Three centuries of cooperation
between science and religion were forgotten and their history was
rewritten as "warfare." Hymns to nature were sung at popular lectures
before the giving of "lay sermons" by a member of Galton's "Scientific
Priesthood." Museums were built to resemble cathedrals, and following
frantic string-pulling by Lubbock (a member of the "X" club) Charles
Darwin was buried in Westminster Abbey. The new church was established
(Moore, 1982).

In her paper Dr. Johnson objects that many scientists are religious, which
is of course true. But, the ongoing success of "scientific naturalism" as
a religious movement can be judged by the present general acceptance by
"Science" and by the "Public" of the pronouncements of those "true
believers" of the "church scientific" who still exist and evangelize among
us. E. O. Wilson (1978) is clearly acting in a clerical role when he tells
us:

This mythopoeic drive [i.e., the tendency toward religious belief] can
be harnessed to learning and the rational search for human progress if
we finally concede that scientific materialism is itself a mythology
defined in the noble sense . . . Make no mistake about the power of
scientific materialism. It presents the human mind with an alternate
mythology that until now has always, point for point in zones of
conflict, defeated traditional religion . . . The final decisive edge
enjoyed by scientific naturalism will come from its capacity to explain
traditional religion, its chief competitor, as a wholly material
phenomena.

The societal clout and ability of scientific naturalism to marginalize its
competitors has been evaluated by sociologist of science Eileen Barker
(1978), who concludes:

The Biblical literalist, the Evangelical revivalist, the political
visionary and even the slightly perturbed old priesthood of the
established theologies turn to the new priesthood [of science] for
reassurances that their beliefs have not been left behind in the wake of
the revolutionary revelations of science. The new priesthood has not
been found wanting. Sometimes with formulae, sometimes with rhetoric,
but always with science, the reassurance is dispensed.
Again, can you imagine any scientist saying in public today that the
Darwinian mechanism supports the existence of God? Don't misunderstand me.
I am not suggesting they should. I am sure you will agree that scientists
should leave the mention of God out of their writing, and just discuss
science. However, until, for instance, the AAAS comes out with a public
statement censuring such mention in the writing of popular spokesmen for
science, it remains a critical issue. It is a fact that God is
continuously being publicly discussed by very well-known scientists- just
read Gould, Dawkins, Hull, Provine, Wilson, Simpson, Futyama, Sagan,
Hawking, and others. From a nineteenth century perspective, books like The
Blind Watchmaker (Dawkins, 1986) and Wonderful Life (Gould, 1989) are
simply Bridgewater treatises such as Paley, Owens, and Roget wrote, works
in which up-to-date science is used for the task of world-view apologetics.

In such a climate, it is a trifle hard to be objective with the data-
which are all viewed as support for the dominant paradigm/world view;
hence, Dr. Johnson's use of the evidence for descent.

But what do we need from the fossil record if we are to test for the
adequacy of Darwinism (defined as mechanism)? Neither proof for descent
nor for transformation; they might have other causes. Rather, we need
evidence for the action of the environment in selecting that form,
evidence that the environment has acted as a pattern-fitting
mechanism-that is, evidence of the causes that produce morphological
change. And if we want to test the blind watchmaker world view, we need
evidence that demonstrates that such changes are unguided. We must explain
the cause and pattern of the appearance of biological novelty. In that
light, I have a few other comments or questions.

First, a minor point. It is true that new fossils fit the patterns
predicted by the evolutionary sequence (but that's not particularly
relevant). That pattern, however, was proposed long before the general
acceptance of descent with transformation, not to speak of Darwin's
theory. Those who proposed it were clearly working from some sort of
hypothesis other than complete randomness. No one has ever thought that,
and using it to "test" for evolution is testing against a straw-man. How
can you know where groups would be placed if they arose independently? Why
suppose random placement? Would not an intelligence be the expected source
of new groups in such a case? Why would an intelligence use a
pseudo-random scatter of appearances? The fact that such groups fit into
the accepted patterns is proof only for some sort of shaping pattern-it is
not even proof of descent.

Second, the major support adduced by Dr. Johnson for the neoDarwinian
hypothesis is the model world created by Thomas Ray (1991) of the
University of Delaware. As an old "model builder," I would love to get my
hands on Ray's intriguing model. Nevertheless, I don't think that it is an
adequate proof of the Darwinian hypothesis. Models never are. Rather, it
explores the implications of its instruction set-and that is the
equivalent of "raw" fitness values, reproductive information with no tie
to a phenotype. The world of Ray's critters, the computer itself must be
programmed into the instruction set for it to be a real equivalent. Ray's
computer is more than a coherent and limited environment. With "energy"
gaining and "replicative" machinery built into the computer, and with
those fundamental aspects of the model unable to be mutated, the computer
is the equivalent of an infected cell, an electronic host in which viruses
live. Maynard Smith (1992) considers it the equivalent of an "RNA" world,
with no distinction between phenotype and genotype. But, an RNAzyme has
both: nucleotide sequence (genotype) and molecular surface (phenotype). In
Ray's world, the reproductive "phenotype" is built into the computer, and
the "virus" just gives it instructions.

Also, Ray's critters produce no encoded morphology. The various critters
produced vary only in their particular variant of the programmed commands
for "reproduction." Although the outcomes are intriguing, all the
complexity produced is "economic" rather than "morphological." The model
does suggest that parasitism is a logical and necessary implication of a
world with reproduction, rather than an ethical issue. But, the model is
not truly open ended. If it was, Ray would not have to be planning to add
new instructions for sex and multicellularity. The program would write
them for itself. It would produce its own Cambrian explosion (Lewin,
Two final notes: to avoid being swamped by inviable changes, and thus to
allow mutants that could survive, Ray specifically limited his
instruction-set to 32 possible mutant changes from a possible
instruction-set of 1011 But even that full instruction set is equivalent
to the probability space of only 37 DNA bases. Thus, this random walk
occurs in an unrealistically limited probability space.

In addition, the genomes of flesh-and-plasma organisms contain
cybernetically error-checked programs for the production of morphologies.
Thus, real genomes constrain encoded instructions of at least two classes,
prescriptive and adaptive. Ray's critters have neither. Fascinating they
are, significant in some ways, but they are no particular proof of the
ability of neo-Darwinian mechanisms to produce novel structures.
Finally, Dr. Johnson defends evolution in terms of its importance for
biology, pointing to its unifying, predictive, and productive
capabilities. That statement raises intriguing questions about the nature
of science. Is it true that biology cannot live without evolution, that
(to quote Dobzbansky) "nothing in biology makes sense except in the light
of evolution"?

First, is it the unifying theory in modern biology? Why not cell theory?
or molecular energetics? or hierarchy theory? or ecosystem dynamics? or
cybernetic control theory? The fact that a theory applies to all living
things does not mean that it is the essential organizing framework. In
reality, what is probably meant by evolution in this "unifying" context is
simply philosophical materialism, but that is general philosophy rather
than science.

Second is it all that predictive? It is true enough that Sereno and
Chenggang's (1992) new birds fall into the right gap, but that is not an
effective logic for rejecting a theory that makes the same predictions.
For instance, Richard Owen's nineteenth century theory of metaphysical
archetypes would have "predicted" the same findings (or at least their
probability). As I have already pointed out, the prediction of a designed
universe is not the appearance of new morphologies in a random scatter.
Third, is the productivity of the theory evidence for its validity? The
evidence of history is that any new and widely accepted paradigm leads to
a furious round of research and scientific advance. It was, after all, the
"higher anatomy" of the idealists that led to the science of comparative
anatomy. Certainly it is not the productivity of the theory of the
spontaneous generation of life that has kept that field so busy.

In reality, we all do science caught between our world views and the
hard-edged facts of the real world. But that tension is buffered by a
hierarchy of progressively more inclusive theoretical lenses through which
we view the world. We investigate the real world under the guidance of our
recognition frameworks. As Stephen Gould put It (1980):

First, facts do not come to us as objective items seen in the same
unambiguous way by all reasonable people. Theory, habit, prejudice and
culture all influence the facts we choose to observe and the way in
which we perceive them. Second, the construction of theories is not a
'second story operation in science, an activity to be pursued after
constructing a factual ground floor. Theory informs any good scientific
work from the very beginning; for we ask questions in its light, and
science is inquiry, not mindless collection. Moreover, the sources of
theory are manifold; new ideas arise more often by the creative
juxtaposition of concepts from other disciplines. . . than from the
gathering of new information within an accepted framework.

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