Darwin and Evolution: Life as History

Before Darwin: Fixism and Natural Theology

Before Darwin, the prevailing view of living nature was fixism: species are immutable and were created in their present form. William Paley, in "Natural Theology" (1802), proposed the famous analogy: if you find a watch on a heath, you conclude that it had a maker. The complexity of living organisms points to a Creator.

This was not just a religious position, but quite a rational scientific one: living organisms truly are astonishingly complex and well-adapted. Without an evolutionary explanation, the most reasonable answer is that something intelligent created them.

The first evolutionists (Lamarck) proposed a mechanism of inheritance of acquired characteristics: a giraffe stretches for leaves, its neck becomes longer, this is passed on to offspring. A beautiful idea, but incorrect—and without explanatory power for complex adaptation.

Darwin: Natural Selection

Charles Darwin, in "On the Origin of Species" (1859), proposed a mechanism explaining adaptation without a Creator. Three key observations and a conclusion:

1. Variation: individuals of one species differ from each other
2. Heritability: traits are passed on to offspring
3. Competition: in each generation more individuals are born than can survive

Conclusion: individuals with traits that give an advantage in survival and reproduction are more likely to leave offspring. Their traits will be more common in the next generation. Over many generations, the accumulated changes create new species.

Natural selection is a mechanism of adaptation without mind or purpose. It is "blind" (Dawkins: "the blind watchmaker"). There is no goal, plan, or direction. There is just differential survival and reproduction.

Philosophical Consequences

Darwin caused an upheaval comparable to Copernican. Copernicus deprived Earth of its central place. Darwin deprived humankind of its privileged place: man is not the crown of creation, but one of many species arising through the same process of natural selection.

The problem of purpose: if evolution is blind—there is no "purpose" in life in an objective sense. Man is not for something, he simply is the result of a process. This has caused and continues to cause powerful cultural resistance.

The problem of morality: if we are the product of selection, our moral instincts are also a product of selection. This does not mean that morality is "unreal"—it explains where it came from (sociobiology, evolutionary ethics). But it leads to an acute question: how do we get from what "is" (what exists in nature) to what "ought" (how we ought to act)?

Darwinism and society: "social Darwinism"—the application of the principle "survival of the fittest" to society—was popular at the end of the 19th century and served to justify laissez-faire capitalism and colonialism. This is a crude misuse of the theory: natural selection describes nature, but does not prescribe human policy.