Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-jkksz Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-29T15:18:12.897Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The Relationship between Science and Religion in Britain, 1830–1870

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 July 2009

Michael Ruse
Michael Ruse
Affiliation:
Professor of philosophy in the University of Guelph, Guelph, Ontario, Canada.
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

It is almost a truism that when Charles Darwin's Origin of Species first appeared, in 1859, many people found its evolutionism to be unacceptable for religious reasons. They thought the theory of natural selection working by random variations conflicted with long-held and cherished beliefs about God and His relationship with man and the world. But although the general fact of the religious opposition to Darwinism is well-known, precise questions about the nature of the opposition—if indeed there was total opposition—have yet to be answered fully The present article seeks to go some way towards the asking and answering of such questions, although the discussion will keep to relatively sophisticated thinkers who took both science and religion seriously, and who were therefore concerned to achieve some harmony between the two. It will not deal with those who cared only for either science or religion.

Type
Research Article
Information
Church History , Volume 44 , Issue 4 , December 1975 , pp. 505 - 522
Copyright
Copyright © American Society of Church History 1975

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1. The best analysis is in Ellegârd, A., Darwin and the General Reader (Göteborg: Göteborgs Universitets Arsskrift, 1958).Google Scholar See also Hull, D. L., Darwin and His Critics (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1973)Google Scholar; Gruber, H. E. and Barrett, P. H., Darwin on Man (New York: Dutton, 1974).Google Scholar

2. Gillespie, C. C., Genesis and Geology (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1951)Google Scholar; Millhauser, M., “The Scriptural Geologists. An Episode in the History of Opinion,” Osiris 11 (1954): 65–86CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Rudwick, M. J. S., The Meaning of Fossils (London: Macdonald, 1972).Google Scholar

3. Cannon, W. F., “Scientists and Broad Churchmen: an Early Victorian Intellectual Network,” Journal of British Studies 4 (1964): 65–88,CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed gives very full details of these men, their work and their relationships. See also Whately, E. W., Personal and Family Glimpses of Remarkable People (London: Hodder and Stoughton, 1889).Google Scholar

4. A Preliminary Discourse on the Study of Natural Philosophy (London: Longman, Rees, Orme, Brown, and Green, 1831).Google Scholar

5. History of the Inductive Sciences, 3 vols. (London: Parker, 1837)Google Scholar; Philosophy of the Inductive Sciences, 2 vols. (London: Parker, 1840).Google Scholar

6. 3 vols., London: Murray, 1830–1833.

7. Vindiciae Geologicae (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1820)Google Scholar; Reliquiae Diluvianae (London: Murray, 1823).Google Scholar

8. Lyell, , Principles, 1, chs. 2–4.Google Scholar But see also, Bartholomew, M., “Lyell and Evolution: An Account of Lyell's Response to the Prospect of an Evolutionary Ancestry for Man,” British Journal for the History of Science 6 (1973): 261–303, esp. p. 267.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed

9. Oxford: Parker, 1833.

10. Powell, Baden, Revelation, p. 35Google Scholar; quoting Herschel, , Discourse, p. 9.Google Scholar

11. Sedgwick, A., “Address to the Geological Society,” Proceedings of the Geological Society of London 1 (1831): 281–316;Google ScholarWhewell, , Philosophy, 2:137–157.Google ScholarBuckland himself took back his claims about evidence for the Flood (in a footnote!), Geology and Mineralogy Considered with Reference to Natural Theology (Bridgewater Treatise, 6) (London: Pickering, 1836), 1:94n–95n.Google Scholar

12. Whewell, W., “Principles of Geology … by Charles Lyell … Vol. 1. …,” British Critio 9 (1831): 180–206, esp. p. 206.Google Scholar

13. Whewell, , History, 3:602.Google Scholar

14. Whewell, , Philosophy, 2:145.Google Scholar

15. Sedgwick, A., Discourse on the Studies of the University (Cambridge: University Press, 1833)Google Scholar; Whewell, W., Astronomy and General Physics (Bridgewater Treatise 3) (London:Pickering, 1833).Google Scholar The Bridgewater Treatises (1833–1836) were eight commissioned works on natural theology.

16. Whewell, , Philosophy, 2:83;Google Scholar quoting p. 348 of Owen, R., “On the Generation of the Marsupial Animals, with a Description of the Impregnated Uterus of the Kangaroo,” Philosophical Transactions (1834), pp. 333–364.Google Scholar

17. Whewell, , Astronomy, pp. 293–303.Google Scholar

18. See Bartholomew, , Lyell, esp. pp. 285–286Google Scholar; Herschel, , Discourse, p. 4.Google Scholar

19. Babbage, Charles, Ninth Bridgewater Treatise: A Fragment, 2d ed. (London: Murray, 1838), pp. 30–49.Google Scholar

20. Powell, Baden, The Connexion of Natural and Divine Truth (London: Parker, 1838) pp. 113–204.Google Scholar

20. Powell, Baden, The Connexion of Natural and Divine Truth (London: Parker, 1838) pp. 113–204.Google Scholar

21. Herschel, , Discourse, p. 98.Google Scholar

22. Whewell spoke of “physical” or “causal” laws, and “formal” or “phenomenal” laws.

23. Herschel, , Discourse, p. 144.Google Scholar

24. Whewell, Philosophy; “On the Nature of the Truth of the Laws of Motion,” Transactions of the Cambridge PhilosophicaL Society 5 (1834): 149–172.Google Scholar

25. Cannon, W. F., “The Problem of Miracles in the 1830's,” Victorian Studies 4 (1960): 5–32.Google Scholar

26. Cannon, W. F., “The Impact of Uniformitarianism, Two Letters from John Herschel to Charles Lyell, 1836–1837,” Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 105 (1961): 301–314,Google Scholar esp. p. 308.

27. Cannon, , “Impact,” p. 305.Google Scholar This passage was reprinted with endorsement by Babbage, Treatise, p. 226. See also Powell, Baden, Connexion, p. 151.Google Scholar

28. Lyell, , Principles, 2:183.Google Scholar

29. Babbage, , Treatise, pp. 30–49.Google Scholar

30. Whewell, , History, 3:588–589.Google Scholar

31. Lyell, , Principles, 2:1–35.Google Scholar

32. Whewell, W., “Principles of Geology … By Charles Lyell … Vol II …,” Quarterly Review 47 (1832): 103–132,Google Scholar esp. p. 125. See also Sedgwick, , “Address.,” p. 305Google Scholar; “… an adjusting power altogether different from what we commonly understand by the laws of nature…”

33. Whewell, , Philosophy, 2:116Google Scholar; Whewell, , History, 3:574.Google Scholar

34. “Objections to Mr. Darwin's Theory of the Origin of Species,” The Spectator (1860), p. 285Google Scholar; reprinted in Hull, , Darwin, p. 161.Google Scholar

35. Whewell, , History, 3:574.Google Scholar

36. Sedgwick, , “Address,” p. 306.Google Scholar

37. For example, Babbage, , Treatise, pp. 45–46Google ScholarWhewell, , History, 3:580–588.Google Scholar

38. Bartholomew, , “Lyell,” p. 286.Google Scholar

39. Lvell, , Principles, 1:162.Google Scholar

40. Millhausër, “Scriptural Geologists,” is very good on the less sophisticated positions on the sciene-religion relationship.

41. 1st ed., London: Churchill, 1844. See also Millhauser, M., Just Before Darwin: Robert Chambers and “Festiges”. (Middleton. Conn.: Weslevan University Press; 1959)Google Scholar: Hodge, M. J. S., “The Universal Gestation of Nature: Chsitnbers' Vestiges and Explanations,” Journal of the History of Biology 5 (1972): 127–151.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed

42. Chambers, , Vestiges, pp. 387–390.Google Scholar

43. Ibid., p. 325. Whewell and Buckland, it will be remembered, had contributed to the Bridgewater Treatises.

44. Chambers, , Vestiges, pp. 359–360.Google Scholar

45. Herschel, J. F. W., “Presidential Address to the British Association for the Advancement of Science, 1845,” reprinted in Herschel, J. F. W., Essays (London: Longman, Brown, Green, Longmans, and Roberts, 1857), pp. 634–682, esp. p. 675.Google Scholar

46. Essays on Inductive Philosophy (London: Longman, Brown, Green, and Longmans, 1855), pp. 315–481.Google Scholar Although this essay (titled “On the Philosophy of Creation”) did not appear until 1855, Baden Powell did respond favorably to Chambers' ideas in the 1840s. The exact date of Baden Powell's initial support for Chambersian ideas does not really matter— it happened before the Origin.

47. Powell, Baden, Essays, p. 76 and p. 466.Google Scholar

48. Sedgwick, A., “Vestiges …,” Edinburgh Review 82 (1845): 1–85Google Scholar; Discourse, 5th ed., (1850); Whewell, W., Indications of the Creator (London: Parker, 1845, 2d ed., 1846).Google Scholar

49. Sedgwick, , “Vestiges,” p. 3.Google Scholar

50. Ibid., and p. 12.

51. Sedgwick, Discourse (5th ed.), p. xix; see also, for example, Sedgwick, , “Vestiges,” pp. 11–12.Google Scholar

52. Sedgwick, , “Vestiges,” p. 32 and p. 43.Google Scholar

53. Whewell, , Indications (2d ed.), pp. 12–16.Google Scholar The same kind of argument was always invoked when the question of man arose. Although it was religion which made men desperately keen not to have to include man's origin in the natural course of events, scientific or pseudo-scientific reasons were advanced for the impossibility of such a natural origin. Man has a moral sense, reasoning power, and so on, all things which supposedly preclude origination through blind law.

54. Ibid., p. 13.

55. Ibid.

56. Owen, R., On the Archetype and Homologies of the Vertebrate Skeleton (London: Taybr, 1848)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; On the Nature of Limbs (London: Royal Institution, 1849).Google Scholar See also Rudwick, , Fossils. pp. 207–214Google Scholar; and Macleod, R. M., “Evolutionism and Richard Owen, 1830- 1868,” Isis 56 (1965): 259–280.CrossRefGoogle Scholar Whewell and Sedgwick actually consulted Owen before responding to Vestiges. See Owen, R., Life of Richard Owen, 2 vols. (London: Murray, 1894), 1:252–255.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

57. Baden Powell. conversely, liked Owen's position precisely because of the appeal to law. Essays, pp. 400–401.

58. Owen, , Limbs, p. 86.Google Scholar

59. Whewell papers, Trinity College, Add Ms. a. 21069 dated Feb. 14, 1844. This letter is pretty harsh on Vestines, in contrast to the friendly letter Owen wrote to Chambers, in Owen, , Life, 1:249–252.Google Scholar

60. Bartholomew, “Lvell,” argues convincingly that Lvell was so concerned about man that he deliberately advocated a non-progressionist reading of the fossil-record, for he feared (despite Sedgwiek) that a progressionist reading could well support evolutionism and hence threaten man's uniqueness.

61. [Whewell, W.], Plurality (London: Parker, 1853, 3rd ed. 1854).Google Scholar Everyone knew that Whewell was the author.

62. See Todhunter, I., William Whewell, 2 vols. (London: Macmillan, 1876), 1: 184–210,Google Scholar which lists and discusses many of the responses.

63. Wilson, L., ed., Sir Charles Lyell's Scientific Journals on the Species Question (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1970), for example, pp. 99, 156.Google Scholar Darwin also read the Plurality and knew Whewell to be the author. (Information front an unpublished readinglist, Darwin Collection, University Library, Cambridge.)

64. Whewell, , Treatise, p. 208.Google Scholar Few of the critics of Plurality missed the opportunity of suggesting that the anon ens author might consult this work with profit.

65. Todhunter, , Whewell, 2:292, 294.Google Scholar

66. Whewell, , Plurality, 3d ed., pp. 283–288.Google Scholar

67. Ibid. p. 44.

68. Ibid., pp. 342–343.

69. Ibid., pp. 376–377.

70. Powell, , Essays, p. 239.Google Scholar

71. Ibid., p. 231.

72. London: Murray, 1854.

73. The Origin of Species (London: Murray, 1859).Google Scholar

74. Darwin, , Origin, p. 488.Google Scholar This reference to man was deliberate. Darwin thought it dishonest entirely to conceal his views. See Darwin, F., ed., Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, 2 vols. (London: Murray, 1887), 1:94Google Scholar; 2:263–264.

75. Darwin, , Origin, p. 453.Google Scholar

76. Mandelbaum, M., “Darwin's Religious Views,” Journal of the History of Ideas 19 (1958): 363–378,CrossRefGoogle Scholar is most valuable on this subject.

77. Three Essays on Religion (New York: Holt, 1874), p. 174.Google Scholar

78. Darwin himself, towards the end of his life, seems to have swung this way. See Barlow, N., ed., Autobiography of Charles Darwin (New York: Norton, 1969), esp. p. 87.Google Scholar

79. Hull, Darwin; Vorzimmer, P., Charles Darwin: The Years of Controversy (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1970).Google Scholar

80. “Agnostic” in this context may be slightly anachronistic, for the word was invented by Huxley (Collected Essays [London: Macmillan, 1901], 9:134).Google Scholar

81. This appears in his contribution, “On the study of the Evidences of Christianitv,” to Essays and Reviews (London: Longman. Green, Longman, and Roberts, 1860); p. 139.Google Scholar

82. See Sedgwick's letter to Darwin in Clark, J. H. and Hughes, T. M., Life and Letters of the Reverend Adam Sedgwick, 2 vols. (Cambridge: University Press, 1890), 2:356–359Google Scholar; his review of the Origin is reprinted in Hull. Darwin, pp. 159–166, and his final, unchanged 1872 views on man, in Clark and Hughes. Life and Letters, 2:468–469. Whewell criticized Darwin's theory to a correspondent, Todhunter, , Whewell, 2:433–435Google Scholar; and hē raised again the question of final causes, suggesting natural selection's inadequacies, in a new prefaee to the seventh edition of his Bridgewater Treatise, (1863).

83. Wilberforce, S., “On the Origin of Species …,” Quarterly Review 108 (1860): 225–264.Google Scholar

84. Huxley, L., ed., Life and Letters of Thomas H. Huxley (New York: Appleton, 1900), 1:192–204.Google Scholar

85. Wilberforce, , “Origin,” pp. 256–260.Google Scholar

86. Darwin, , Life, 2:241.Google Scholar

87. Herschel, J. F. W., Physical Geography (Edinburgh: Black, 1861), p. 12n.Google Scholar

88. Wilson, , Lyell's Journals, pp. 123, 246.Google Scholar

89. Ibid., p. 382.

90. Lyell, , Principles, 10th ed. (1868), pp. 491–492.Google Scholar

91. Vorzimmer, Darwin; Gruber, J., A Conscience in Conflict: The Life of St. George Jackson Mivart (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1960).Google Scholar

92. Genesis of Species (London: Macmillan, 1870).Google Scholar

93. “It [Genesis] is a book that I think will please Sir Charles Lyell.” Letter from A. R. Wallace to Miss A. Buckley, February 2, 1871, in Marchant, J., Alfred Russell Wallace, Letters and Reminiscences (London: Cassell, 1916), p. 288.Google Scholar

94. Genesis, 2d ed., pp. 325–326.

95. Kingsley, F. E., Charles Kingsley (London: King, 1877), p. 386,Google Scholar expresses support for Hugh Miller, a miracle-advocate, although p. 377 suggests that Kingsley may have had a slightly weaker notion of miracle than, say, Sedgwick.

96. Kingsley, C. K., “The Natural Theology of the Future,” Macmillan's Magazine 23 (1871): 369–378.Google Scholar