Notes on Michael Ruse: The Darwinian Revolution

Kevin T. Kelly

Department of Philosophy

Carnegie Mellon University

Chapter 5: Ancestors and Archetypes

1844 Robert Chambers (Edinburgh): Vestigesof the Natural History of Creation. (published anonymously)

• Pro-evolutionary book.
• Destroyed frientliness of origins debate in England.
• Attracted popular audience, reviewed in popular press.
• Provoked more invective than Darwin.

1840's Richard Owen's archetype theory.

• More orthodox account of origins.

Continental Background: Embryology and Paleontology

French and German Transcendentalism

Law of parallelism, biogenetic law, Meckel-Serres law: individual development runs from lower to higher types.

Ernst Haeckel: evolutionism based on Meckel-Serres law.

Karl Ernst von Baer: "ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny": more guarded interpretation:

• Cuvier's four basic types.
• Individual development begins with general form of that type and radiates to specific adult form by different paths.
• Embryonic forms do not resemble lower adult forms.
• Development may fail to realize later intermediate forms.

Agassiz (paleontologist):

• progressiveness in the fossil record, not just in adaptation and intelligence, but in structure.
• starting point is Cuvier's four basic types.
• Progress radiates from there.
• not evolutionist: unbridgable gaps in fossil record from advanced forms to more primitive forms.
• no temporal progression within classes.
• Meckel-Serres law.
• Three parallel orders:
• ordering of current adult forms.
• temporal ordering of first appearance in fossil record.
• order of forms in ontogenesis.

Transmission to Britain:

• Lyell mentions Meckel-Serres law in Principles, denies evolutionary implications.
• Martin Barry (Scottish embryologist) published von Baer's views in a Scottish journal.
• Richard Owen
• William B. Carpenter: popular textbook Principles of General and Comparative Physiology (1839).
• Agassiz: address to British Association for the Avancement of Science's Glasgow meeting (1840).
• Hugh Miller: nontechnical popularization of Agassiz.

Robert Chambers (1802-71):

• intended for church.
• sinking fortunes ---> bookselling career:
• began with a a few textbooks and cheap bibles.
• Chamber's Journal: successful magazine empire.
• wrote widely on popular topics.

Structure of Vestiges

Governance by law:

• Nebular hypothesis. cosmic law
• Statistics: moral and demographic laws(M.A. Quetelet).
• Hence, origins of species are subject to law (midway between Nebular hypothesis and demographics).

Progressive fossil record (longest section):

• zoophytes, polyps, mollusks, crustaceans, primitive fish, reptiles, birds, marsupials, mammals, man.
• side mention of progression in plants.
• in later book, he admits branching.

Spontaneous generation:

• chemico-electric operation
• frost ferns.
• creation of a mite from spark in solution of silicate of potash and nitrate of copper.
• Organic chemicals (urea) can be synthesized from inorganic chemicals.
• only domestic pigs can get measles, so measles arose after pig's domestication.
• primordial conditions changed, so less spontaneous generation now.

Transmutation of species:

• Babbage's argument: unlike can follow like according to law. Production of new species can be sudden.
• equivocates between Meckel-Serres law and von Baer's embryology.
• new organisms originate through prolonged ontogenesis. Reptile is overdeveloped fish.
• worker bee takes longer to develop than queen. Queen is morally depraved (sex and jealousy).
• oats repeatedly chopped to reduce gestation time become rye.
• light and oxygen may extend development: increased light and oxygen may have driven evolution.
• preconception and forethought: man is folded into the law of development from the beginning.

Grandiose conclusion: law of development matches Newton's law of gravitation.

Note:

• units of evolution are organisms, not species. Species just happen due to ontogenetic mechanism of evolution.
• escalator evolution like Lamarck's. Tried to distance himself from Lamarck by emphasizing lawlike structure of species.
• totally progressive: one linear order up to man.

Responses to Vestiges

Denounced by everybody.

Moral: Sir David Brewster: sign of bad education, poison in the fountain of science.

Scientific:

• anti Lamarck arguments: failure of breeding to cross species lines, mummies, etc.
• Frost ferns, mite, easily dismissed.
• Equivocal embryology attacked by both sides.
• fossil record:
• best attack Hugh Miller's Footprints of the Creator (1847)
• another poor Scot made good as editor of Witness, organ of evangelical secessionist branch of Church of Scotland.
• friend of Chambers.
• published accounts of progressive fossil record based on Lyell in Chambers' journal.
• Argument of Footprints
• fossil forms appear suddenly, fully formed.
• fossil record has gaps rather than transitional forms.
• progress from class to class, but degradations through time within classes: e.g., reptiles.

Philosophical:

• Nebular hypothesis got into trouble (no observations of stars forming out of clouds?).
• Sedgwick: Quetelet's laws of behavior are not physical.
• Sedgwick: Babbage's laws were due to his own machinations, not discovered like Newton's.
• Proper Newtonian laws don't deal with origins. They assume the existence of the things they govern.
• Herschell: no true cause of species isolated. Newton could feel force of whirling stone and draw analogy to moon. Chambers observed no causes analogous to species generation.

Religious:

Chambers:

• lawlike creation ===> competent God.
• Ascent from brutes O.K. because brutes are creatures of God too.
• Human generation isn't so dignified either (yuck!) but it's true.
• We all look like fish early on. Why is it less dignified for ancestors to be fish?

Hugh Miller:

• Either mites are immortal or we are not. Without immortality, Christianity is worthless and "anything goes". Objection not based on Genesis.
• O.K. to have design implemented through law.

Whewell: No law of origins is compatible with final causes of design. City cannot grow by piecemeal evolution.

Chambers' response in 3rd edition:

• Design could be implemented through law.
• But actually, not much opatimal design in nature. Animals could have lived in coal age, but they didn't.
• Invoked secondary Lamarckian mechanism of evolution.

Richard Owen's Archetype theory

Alternative origins paradigm for conservatives, based on considerable comparative anatomy expertise.

Synthesis:

• Georges Cuvier: adaptation
• Geoffrey St.-Hilaire (transcendentalist): unity of plan.
• Owen: archetypal plans adapted to circumstances.

Structural similarities of Bat and mole make no adaptive sense.

• analogy: similar function
• homology: non-functional similarity

Archetype of a class: basic plan representative of the class that can be adapted in different directions accorading to different needs.

• phylogenetic clues: extrapolate back past most primitive forms (e.g., fish)
• ontogenetic clues: extrapolate to ealiest developmental forms (e.g., fish).
• if in doubt, parts of adult are more important than immature forms (barnacles start like crustaceans but end up different).
• general homology: homology of organism to archetype.
• special homology: homology to other organism.

Homotypes of a class: abstract parts from which archetype can be reconstructed via serial homologies.

• serial homology: structural similarities among successive parts of an archetype (e.g., starfish arms or vetebrae of vertebrate).
• Skull is four fused vertebrae. Arms are part of skull.

Platonic Forms: specific adaptive form imposed on general archetype.

Ontogenesis:

• Homotypes line up due to forces analogous to crystallization that would tend to produce the archetype if unimpeded.
• Platonic idea pulls archetype into a specific, adaptive form.

Confusion: sometimes confused Platonic Forms with archetypes (ouch!).

Not obviously anti-evolutionary, but secretly so.

• Adaptations within an archetypal class.
• Insisted on natural account of organic origins.
• Historical appearance of species in fossil record is somewhat progressive.
• Archetype is law governing adaptation.

Whewell's reaction to Owen

Conservative half-way theory:

• Retained the archetypal account of troublesome homologies. (Why would God bind Himself to archetypes)?
• Replaced Platonic ideas with direct interventions by God to produce adapted forms.

Whewell's early Kantianism devolved into Platonism. Platonism made it easier to defend the central role of math in the Trinity honors program (Whewell was master of the college).

Concession to archetypes governing creative acts was thin end of long wedge.

Impact of Vestiges

Character: Origins debate now public.

Timing effect: Used up the initial broadside of the conservatives. Hard to get the full-scale assault going a second time.

Tar-baby effect: huge volume of criticism elevated evolution's stature.

Positive influence: public liked it. Women really liked it (not clear why). Many professionals liked it in private.

Explanation of professional opposition:

• Professionals defend turf against popular amateurs.
• Fear of class war: university fellows' incomes based on land rents and benefitted from corn laws. 1840s were time of famine and depression. 1848 was a wave of revolution on the continent. any popular attack on the Church of England looked like an incitement to revolution against the establishment.
• Conservative scientists already in trouble with conservative non-scientists. Chambers made the waves Sedgwick et al. were trying not to make.
• Sexism. Sedgwick: "the ascent up the hill of science is rugged and thorny, and ill-fitted for the drapery of a petticoat."