Controversies over the influences on and effects of Darwinian theory

Abstract

Robert J. Richards is one of the world’s leading experts on the history of Darwinism, and this set of essays amplifies many points he has made in his earlier scholarship. In the first four essays, Richards examines Darwin’s alleged belief in moral purpose and teleology. Then he compares Spencer’s and Darwin’s views on evolution. Two brief essays focus on Haeckel, and one explores August Schleicher’s theory of the evolution of language. Finally, in his title essay, Richards examines the influence (or lack thereof) of Darwinism on Hitler and Nazism. One of the most prominent arguments in these essays—and in many of Richards’s earlier publications—is that German Romanticism, especially as mediated by Wilhelm von Humboldt, influenced Darwin’s evolutionary theory, especially with respect to his perspective on teleology and morality. Most historians and scientists laud Darwin for eliminating teleology from nature. The standard story, articulated by scholars such as Michael Ghiselin, Peter Bowler, Neal Gillespie, and Ernst Mayr, is that Darwin’s natural selection demolished the argument from design, eliminating purpose from nature. Some historians, such as David Kohn, have noticed the ambiguities in Darwin’s relationship to natural theology and teleology. On the one hand, Darwin wrote in his Notebook B, ‘‘It is absurd to talk of one animal being higher than another.’’ On the other hand, in Origin of Species, Darwin referred multiple times to some organisms being higher than others. In Origin, Darwin was also trying to eliminate the interference of a deity in producing biological organisms, while still maintaining that a deity created the lawful processes of nature, including evolutionary processes. Richards does not see any ambiguity at all. He argues that Darwin was a true believer in teleological evolution. He insists that Darwin was a progressivist, who saw nature and evolution imbued with moral purpose. He states, ‘‘Yet not only did