Abnormal Interests

Michael Shermer recently brought the quotation to the front in a Scientific American column. It lives many places on the web: for example; Answers in Science uses it in a header, Ektopos cites it and Evolution Blog cites Shermer citing it. I even had a business friend bring it up at lunch a few weeks ago. I was reminded of the quote when I read "Battle on Teaching Evolution Sharpens" in today's Washington Post. This article has already been discussed at Dispatches from the Culture Wars and by Chris Mooney. What reminded me of the Spencer quote was the incredible comment by one William Harris of the University of Missouri at Kansas City medical school.

To say God did not play a role is arrogant," Harris said. "It's far beyond the data."

It is exactly this kind of remark that draws one to remember Lord Spencer's commit.

However, I wondered about the origin of this quotation. How could something be supportive of evolution, or at least Darwinian evolution four years before Darwin made his views known beyond a very few trusted acquaintances? I had heard of Spencer in the biographies of Darwin, Wallace and Huxley. I vaguely remembered that Spencer coined the expression "survival of the fittest." But, want was the context of this, now famous, quotation?

When one looks at the complete text of "The Development Hypothesis" one comes to understand that this is the work of a Lamarckian evolutionist. In fact, Joachim Dagg, Abteilung für Entomologie, Institut für Phytopathologie und Pflanzenschutz, Göttingen, told The Victoria Web that the 1852 version read,

Those who cavalierly reject the Theory of Lamarck, as not adequately supported by facts, seem quite to forget that their own theory is supported by no facts at all. [emphasis added].

Spencer was a Lamarckian who extrapolated Lamarckian evolutionary idea into social and psychological realms. He was one of Darwin's rivals.

The whole context of the well used quotation is interesting.

In a debate upon the development hypothesis, lately narrated to me by a friend, one of the disputants was described as arguing that as, in all our experience, we know no such phenomenon as transmutation of species, it is unphilosophical to assume that transmutation of species ever takes place. Had I been present I think that passing over his assertion, which is open to criticism, I should have replied that as in all our experience we have never known a species created, it was, by his own showing, unphilosophical to assume that any species ever had been created.

Those who cavalierly reject the Theory of Evolution as not being adequately supported by facts, seem to forget that their own theory is supported by no facts at all. Like the majority of men who are born to a given belief, they demand the most rigorous proof of any adverse belief, but assume that their own needs none. Here we find, scattered over the globe, vegetable and animal organisms numbering, of the one kind (according to Humboldt), some 320,000 species, and of the other, some 2,000,000 species (see Carpenter) and if to these we add the numbers of animal and vegetable species which have become extinct, we may safely estimate the number of species that have existed, and are existing, on the Earth, at not less than ten millions. Well, which is the most rational theory about these ten millions of species? Is it most likely that there have been ten millions of special creations? or is it most likely that, by continual modifications due to change of circumstances, ten millions of varieties have been produced, as varieties are being produced still?

Notice that the context is an argument over the "transmutation" of species. This argument predates Darwin and continues today. Spencer thinks the argument plan silly. Latter on, Spencer says,

If they have formed a definite conception of the process, let them tell us how a new species is constructed, and how it makes its appearance. Is it thrown down from the clouds? or must we hold to the notion that it struggles up out of the ground? Do its limbs and viscera rush together from all the points of the compass? or must we receive the old Hebrew idea, that God takes clay and moulds a new creature? If they say that a new creature is produced in none of these modes, which are too absurd to be believed, then they are required to describe the mode in which a new creature may be produced - a mode which does not seem absurd; and such a mode they will find that they neither have conceived nor can conceive.

Should the believers in special creations consider it unfair thus to call upon them to describe how special creations take place, I reply that this is far less than they demand from the supporters of the Development Hypothesis."

And

Which, then, is the most rational hypothesis? - that of special creations which has neither a fact to support it nor is even definitely conceivable; or that of modification, which is not only definitely conceivable, but is countenanced by the habitudes of every existing organism?

. . .

For whence has he got this notion of "special creations," which he thinks so reasonable, and fights for so vigorously? Evidently he can trace it back to no other source than this myth which be repudiates.

All the evidence that supports Lamarckian evolution also supports Darwin's ideas and our modern neo-Darwinian science. It's just that a whole lot more has been added. We can still look to Spencer's essay as a counter to Creationism. He quite correctly assigns the complete burden of proof to them and that is where it belongs.

On the other hand, we should be careful with comments like those make by Clemson, Associate Professor of Philosophy, Kelly C. Smith, who said in another wise very good letter to the editor of The Tiger News on February 25, 2005,

The observation of Herbert Spenser, the famous 19th century defender of Darwin, is as true today as it was then: "Those who cavalierly reject the Theory of Evolution, as not adequately supported by facts, seem quite to forget that their own theory is supported by no facts at all. [emphasis added]

If Spencer's quotation was in defense of Darwin, it was truly prophetic.

References:

Darwin, On the origin of species. London, John Murray, 1859

Desmond, Adrian & James Moore, Darwin, The Life of a Tormented Evolutionist, New York, Time Warner, 1991

Desmond, Adrian, Huxley: From Devils Disciple to Evolution's High Priest, Helix Books, Reading, MA, 1999

Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy

New School University, Department of Economics, The History Of Economic Thought Website

Richards, Robert J., "The Relation of Spencer’s Evolutionary Theory to Darwin’s," The University of Chicago.

Shermer, Michael, In Darwin's Shadow, The Life and Science of Alfred Russel Wallace, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2002

Spencer, Herbert, Essays Scientific, Political & Speculative, Williams and Norgate, 3 vols, 1891

Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

Wallace, Alfred Russel "On the Law which has Regulated The Introduction of New Species", Volume 16 (2nd Series), Annals and Magazine of Natural History, September 1855.

Young, Robert M., "The Development Of Herbert Spencer's Concept Of Evolution"