Discussion

READ THESE GUIDELINE5!

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Darwin and IIts Readers

Charles Darwin's On the Ori gin of Species (1 8se) and his theory of natural selection tra nsformed Western hnof natural history. The impact of Darwin's work, owever, extended well beyond scientific circles, and assumed aimportance that exceeded even his sch ol arly co ntri b uti o n. How Darwinism was popularized is a complex question, t'orwriters and readers could mold Darwin's ideas to t'it a variety of political and cultural purp0ses The first excerpt comesfrom the conclusion to On the Origin of Species and sets out the different laws that Darwin thought governed the

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natural world. The second excerpt comes from the autob iography of Nicholas Osterroth (1g75 -1933), a clay minerwestern Germany, who was ambitious and s elf-educated. The passage recounts his reaction to hearing about Da rwinconveys his enthusiasm t'or late-nineteen th-century science.

Charles Darwin, On the Origin of Species i

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It he natural system is a genea-logical arrangement, in whichwe have to discover the lines of descent by the most permanent char_ acters, however slight their vital impor- tance may be.

The framework of bones being the same in the hand of a man, wing of a bat, fin of the porpoise, and leg of the horse,-the same number of vertebrae forming the neck of the giraffe and of the elephant,-and innumerable other such facts, at once explain themselves on the theory of descent with slow and slight successive modiflcations. The similarity of pattern in the wing and leg of a bat, though used for such differ_ ent purposes,-in the jaws and legs of a crab,-in the petals, stamens/ and pistils of a flower, is likewise intelligible on the

view of the gradual modification of parts or organs, which were alike in the early progenitor of each class. . . .

It is interesting to contemplate an entangled bank, clothed with many plants of many kinds, with birds sing_ ing on the bushes, with various insects flitting about, and with worms crawling through the damp earth, and to refleci that these elaborately constructed forms, so different from each other, and dependent on each other .in so complex a mannel have all been pro_ duced by laws acting around us. These laws, taken in the largest sense, being Growth with Reproduction; lnheritance which is almost implied by reproduc- tion; Variability from the indirect and direct action of the external conditions of life, and from use and disuse; a Ratio

Natural Selection, entailing of Character and the Extinction improved forms. Thus, from the nature, from famine and death, the exalted object which we are of conceiving, _narnely, the of the higher animals, dire ctly fol There is grandeur in ihis view of life, its several powersi breathed into a few forms o and that, whilst this planet cycling on according to the gravity, from so simple a b eginning Iess forms most beautiful and most derful have been, and are being, evol

Source: Charles Darwin, On the Origin of (Harmondsworth, UK: 196g), 458-60.

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Competing Viewpoints

also relied on a similar set of racial assun

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Nicholas Osterroth: A Miner's Reaction

tl[iln';:x:T#ili lvlosaic story of creation with the natu- ral evolutionary history, illuminated the contradictions of the biblical story, and gave a concise description of the evo- lution of organic and rnorganic nature, interwoven with plenty of striking proofs.

What particularly impressed me was a fact that now became clear to me: that evolutionary natural history was monop- olized by the institutions of higher learn- ing; that Newton, Laplace, Kant, Darwin, and Haeckel brought enlightenment only to the students of the upper social classes; and that for the common people in the grammar school the old Moses with his six-day creation of the world still was the authoritative world view. For the

upper classes there was evolution, for us creation; for them productive liberating knowledge, for us rigid faith; bread for those favored by fate, stones for those who hungered for truth!

Why do the people need scienceT Why do they need a so'called Weltan- schauung [worldview]? The people must

keep Azloses, must keep religion; religion is the poor man's philosophy. Where would we end up if every miner and every farmhand had the opportunity to stick his nose into astronomy, geology, biology, and anatomy? Does it serve any purpose for the divine world order of the possessing and privileged classes to tell the worker that the Ptolemaic heav- ens have long since collapsed; that out there in the universe there is an eternal process of creation and destruction; that in the universe at large, as on our tiny earth, everything is in the grip of eternal evolution; that this evolution takes place according to inilterable natural laws that defy even the omnipotence of the old Mosarc Jehovah. . . .Why tell the dumb people that Copernicus and his follow- ers have overturned the old Mosaic creator, and that Darwin and modern science have dug the very ground out from under his feet of clay?

That would be suicidel Yes, the old religion is so convenient for the divine world order of the ruling classl As long as the worker hopes faithfully for the beyond, he won't think of plucking the blooming roses in this world. . . .

The possessing classes of all civilized nations need servants to make possible their godlike existence. So they cannot allow the servant to eat from the tree of knowledge.

Source: Alfred Kelly, ed., lhe Germarl Worher: Worhing-Class Autobiographies from the Age of lndustrialization (Berkeley, CA: 1987), pp. 185-85.

Questions for Analysis

1. Was the theory oI evolution revolu- tionary? lf so, howT Would it be fair to say that Darwin did for the nineteenth century what Newton had done for the seventeenth and eighteenth cen- turies? Why or why not?

2. Why did people think the natural world Was governed by lawsT Was this a religious belief or a scientific fact?

3. What aspects of Darwin's theory appealed to Osterroth? Why?

nature o[ human experience. Darwin had already called into question the notion that humanity was fundamentally superior to the rest of the animal kingdom, and similarly discomfiting conclusions came from a new freld of psy- chology. The Russian physiclan Ivan Pavlov (1849-1936)

asserted that animal behavior could be understood as a series of trained responses to physical stimuli. Pavlov's

famous experiment showed that if dogs were fed after they heard the ringing of a bell, they would eventually salivare at the sound of the bell alone, exactly as if they had smelled and seen food. Moreover, Pavlov insisted that such condi- tioning constituted a significant part of human behavior as well. Known as "behaviorism," this type of physioiogi- cal psychology avoided vague concepts such as mind and

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