Why Darwin Matters_ The Case Against Intelligent Design - Michael Shermer [77]
10. Adapted and paraphrased from Ernst Mayr, The Growth of Biological Thought (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1982), p. 501.
11. Theodosius Dobzhansky, “Nothing in Biology Makes Sense Except in the Light of Evolution,” American Biology Teacher 35 (1973), pp. 125–29.
1. The Facts of Evolution
1. Letter reprinted in Francis Darwin, The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Vol. 2 (London: John Murray, 1887), p. 121.
2. When Darwin was in college there was a debate raging over the concept of induction—what it is and how it is used in science. Although definitions varied, it was roughly understood to mean arguing from the specific to the general, from data to theory. In 1830, the astronomer John Herschel argued that induction was reasoning from the known to the unknown. In 1840, the philosopher of science William Whewell insisted that induction was the superimposing of concepts on facts by the mind, even if they are not empirically verifiable. In 1843, the philosopher John Stuart Mill claimed that induction was the discovery of general laws from specific facts, but that they had to be verified empirically. Kepler’s discovery of the laws of planetary motion were a classic case study of induction. For Herschel and Mill, Kepler discovered these laws through careful observation and induction. For Whewell, the laws were self-evident truths that could have been known a priori. By the 1860s, as the theory of evolution was gaining momentum and converts, Herschel and Mill carried the day, not so much because they were right and Whewell was wrong, but because empiricism was becoming integral to the understanding of how good science is done. This drove Darwin to compile copious data for his theory before going public. Classic texts in this debate include John F. W. Herschel, Preliminary Discourse on the Study of Natural Philosophy (London: Longmans, Rees, Orme, Brown and Green, 1830); William Whewell, The Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences (London: J. W. Parker, 1840); and John Stuart Mill, A System of Logic, Ratiocinative and Inductive, Being a Connected View of the Principles of Evidence, and the Methods of Scientific Investigation (London: Longmans, Green, 1843).
3. Francis Darwin (ed.), The Autobiography of Charles Darwin and Selected Letters (New York: Dover Publications, 1958), p. 98. Originally published 1892.
4. T. H. Huxley, Darwiniana (New York: Appleton, 1896), p. 72.
5. In Francis Darwin, More Letters of Charles Darwin, Vol. 2 (London: John Murray, 1903), p. 323.
6. Francis Darwin (ed.), Autobiography of Charles Darwin.
7. John Ray, The Wisdom of God Manifested in Works of the Creation (London: Samuel Smith, 1691).
8. William Paley, Natural Theology: or, Evidences of the Existence and Attributes of the Deity, Collected from the Appearances of Nature (London: E. Paulder, 1802).
9. For a thorough discussion of Paley’s influence on Darwin, see Keith Thomson, Before Darwin (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2005).
10. Letter from Charles Darwin to John Lubbock, November 15, 1859, in Francis Darwin, The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Vol. 2, p. 8.
11. Ernst Mayr, Toward a New Philosophy of Biology (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1988).
12. Ernst Mayr, “Species Concepts and Definitions,” in The Species Problem (Washington, D.C.: American Association for the Advancement of Science Publication 50, 1957). Mayr offers this expanded definition: “A species consists of a group of populations which replace each other geographically or ecologically and of which the neighboring ones intergrade or hybridize wherever they are in contact or which are potentially capable of doing so (with one or more of the populations) in those cases where contact is prevented by geographical or ecological barriers.” See also Ernst Mayr, Evolution and the Diversity of Life (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1976).
13. Charles Darwin, On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection: or, The Preservation