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Science and Religion: Baden Powell and the Anglican Debate, 1800-1860 (Past and Present Publications)

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It's one of the cardinal beliefs of the Darwin Legend that prior to the publication of the Origin, there was scarcely any acquaintance with evolution theory among England's scientists or the general public, let alone any favorable opinion. Huxley, Wallace, and George Romanes strongly endorsed this belief as part of their hallelujah to Darwin's originality. In this they followed Darwin, who expressed the same opinion, claiming that although he had talked with many naturalists, never had he found anyone who endorsed evolution. He insisted on this view despite two pre-Origin evolutionists who publicly offered their own defense of evolution as proof to the contrary. More amazing still, he didn't revise his spurious claim to originality, in the closing chapter of Origin, even after he had added, in the 3rd edition, a lengthy statement on transmutation theory prior to the publication of his book.

The articulate response to the Origin clearly exposes the error. In his outstanding study, A Victorian Sensation, James Secord documents the spread of awareness of `transmutation' as England responded to the anonymously published Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation (1844). The present study performs a like service for the period 1820-1860. His focal character, Baden Powell, was Savilian professor of geometry at Oxford from the mid-1820s until his death in 1860. Corsi tracks a progression from Baden Powell's initial apologetics, concerned with reconciling faith and reason, to complete abandonment of any ascription of literal truth to Scripture. What remains is Unitarianism. This position had been available in post-Cromwell England, when it was known as Latitudinarianism (also Deism). Indeed it was continuous among some clergy from that time. But Baden Powell came to it through his endeavor to integrate an evolutionary natural history with faith. Rather than writing an intellectual biography, Corsi uses Baden Powell's placement in English thought to describe the relevant intellectual culture.

England's encounter with transmutation was stimulated by the reception of French evolutionary thought, which the author described in his outstanding study, The Age of Lamarck. One of the earliest expressions of transmutationism was the 1816 anatomical lectures of William Lawrence. J. H. Green in 1824 and Jones Quain in 1830 lectured at the College of Physicians on anatomy and physiology considered from an evolutionary point of view. During this time David Brewster, Robert Grant, and Robert Knox studied transmutationist natural history in France and brought it back with them. Corsi writes: `During the 1830s the debate on the succession of species through the ages of the earth became a central feature of the natural sciences. Awareness of French developments created great anxiety among British intellectuals, in particular the Christian apologists. It could indeed be argued that the first phase of the debate on species in Britain represented the reaction to new trends in French science' (p. 228). One such response was Peter Mark Roget's Animal and Vegetable Creation Considered with Reference to Natural Theology 1834. Roget endorsed Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire's theory of unity of composition and endorsed Serres-Tiedemann theory of embryonic recapitulation of evolutionary phylogenesis. Yet he maintained that species were immutable--clearly a precarious position.

Corsi is in agreement with Secord that the anonymous publication of the Vestiges introduced a strong stimulus to scholarly natural history as well as exciting enormous public interest. The book innovated by arguing the case for natural history uncompromised by any concessions to religious doctrine and by setting out the story, beginning with the nebular hypothesis of the origin of the solar system, and continuing to the origin and evolution of life, including the primate origin of the human species. The author, Robert Chambers, endorsed non-catastrophic continuous variation in the geological record and rejected the interpretation of the fossil record which showed long periods of stasis interrupted by sudden introduction of new species. This was the dominant view among French authors; and it was adopted by Darwin. The theological question Chambers resolved by opting for a superintending Providence that set natural laws and then did not intervene. (This is basically the Cartesian-Spinozist position at the basis of Deism). Corsi states: `the question of species was discussed with full awareness of the epistemological, cosmological and theological issues involved . . . the question of species became the highly publicized ground for the confrontation between those who believed that nature was governed by laws, and those who insisted on the continuous intervention of God in natural and human affairs'. A canvass of the views of Whewell, Lyell, Brewster, Sedgwick and other leading lights shows the variety of positions taken to prevent slippage into the unbearable materialism that Chambers' position seemed to imply. Lyell is perhaps the most interesting of these authors because he wished avoid accepting species evolution, especially the natural origin of man (with its materialist implication) but at the same time wished to avoid acknowledging divine intervention anywhere in the natural scheme of things. That takes fancy footwork, including silences and evasion.

It's indicative of how much there is to learn about the history of evolutionary thought that so few science historians, let alone Neo-Darwinians, recognize Baden Powell's name and contributions. Yet he claimed to have forestalled Chambers' position and identified it with his own (p. 274). Corsi is to be commended and thanked for this outstanding contribution. But it's a pity that the Cambridge Press has priced the book out of the market.