Gertrude Himmelfarb: The Debate Over Darwin Hasn't Evolved
In 1958, at a cocktail party in London, I was introduced to Sir Julian Huxley, one of England's most eminent scientists. (He had just been knighted.) My hostess, seeking, in good English fashion, to establish some common denominator between her two guests, told him that I was writing a book on Darwin, and then, perhaps to provoke him, went on to say that the book might put evolution in a new light. "New!" Huxley protested. "There is nothing new to say about evolution. Everything that needs saying has already been said. The theory is incontrovertible." That was the end of that conversation, Huxley promptly going off to find a more congenial drawing-room partner.
I have had occasion to be reminded often of that remark in the almost half-century since, as scientists discovered many new things about fossils, mutations, and genetics, all of which have prompted some adaptation of Darwinism, in token of which the doctrine is now known as the "Modern Synthesis." Julian Huxley would no doubt have been pleased with most of these findings. But he would have been appalled to realize that this new and improved Darwinism, so far from being a settled cause, has re-emerged as a subject of public controversy--as a "theory," its critics insist (meaning a "hypothesis"), not merely a "synthesis."
Indeed, most scientists are appalled by this controversy, including the editors of these two handsome one-volume editions of Darwin's major works: The Voyage of the Beagle (1845), On the Origin of Species (1859), The Descent of Man (1871), and The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals (1872). Both editors are eminent scientists: Edward O. Wilson is best known as the proponent of sociobiology, and James D. Watson, as the co-discoverer of the DNA molecule. And both, in their introductions, express their unequivocal support of Darwinism and their impatience, if not contempt, for its present critics. The re-issue of the founding texts of Darwinism is all the more welcome, because it invites us to return to the fons et origo of the disputes that are now being so passionately argued--and were argued, with equal passion and no less intelligence, in Darwin's time. ...
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I have had occasion to be reminded often of that remark in the almost half-century since, as scientists discovered many new things about fossils, mutations, and genetics, all of which have prompted some adaptation of Darwinism, in token of which the doctrine is now known as the "Modern Synthesis." Julian Huxley would no doubt have been pleased with most of these findings. But he would have been appalled to realize that this new and improved Darwinism, so far from being a settled cause, has re-emerged as a subject of public controversy--as a "theory," its critics insist (meaning a "hypothesis"), not merely a "synthesis."
Indeed, most scientists are appalled by this controversy, including the editors of these two handsome one-volume editions of Darwin's major works: The Voyage of the Beagle (1845), On the Origin of Species (1859), The Descent of Man (1871), and The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals (1872). Both editors are eminent scientists: Edward O. Wilson is best known as the proponent of sociobiology, and James D. Watson, as the co-discoverer of the DNA molecule. And both, in their introductions, express their unequivocal support of Darwinism and their impatience, if not contempt, for its present critics. The re-issue of the founding texts of Darwinism is all the more welcome, because it invites us to return to the fons et origo of the disputes that are now being so passionately argued--and were argued, with equal passion and no less intelligence, in Darwin's time. ...