This chapter chronologically follows the development of the American science essay from the eighteenth century, through the foundation of government, corporate, and university research institutes, and ending with contemporary criticism of research practices. Throughout history, science essayists have brought knowledge of new discoveries to the general public by writing in accessible, unexpected, and lyrical prose. They fill a gap between the specialist’s research and the public’s hunger for science news. Beyond communicating research to a mass audience, the science essay offers a space for moral reflection and debate about the implications of scientific knowledge and technological advancements. Science essayists share the common goal of situating research within both a personal perspective and a broad worldview. The science essay acknowledges humanity’s place within nature, embracing scientific insight while questioning the instrumentalism from which it springs.

On November 24, 1859, the English naturalist Charles Robert Darwin published On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life . In that book (Darwin 1859), he argued that all organisms, living and dead, were produced by a long, slow, natural process, from a very few original organisms. He called the process “natural selection,” later giving it the alternative name of “the survival of the fittest.” This first chapter is devoted to presenting (without critical comment) the argument of the Origin, very much with an eye to the place and role of natural selection. As a preliminary, it should be noted that the Origin, for all it is one of the landmark works in the history of science, was written in a remarkably “user-friendly” manner. It is not technical, the arguments are straightforward, the illustrative examples are relevant and easy to grasp, the mathematics is at a minimum, meaning non-existent. Do not be deceived. The Origin is also a very carefully structured piece of work (Ruse 1979a). Darwin knew exactly what he was doing when he set pen to paper.

Now we come to the elephant in the room. Darwin’s theory was incomplete. When the theory was completed, would natural selection prove to be that effective? Although he threw in a lot of assorted, presumed-relevant facts, no one, starting with Darwin, had much idea about the nature of variation – how it comes, what form it takes, how regular it is. And, without this knowledge, given that natural selection supposedly works on this variation, it is hard to make definite judgments about its effectiveness; especially since Darwin stressed that, although variation has causes, it is random in the sense of not appearing according to need. When he was not pushing the Lamarckian alternative, he was adamant that it is selection alone that is responsible for adaptation.

Turn now to those who think natural selection is vastly overrated as a cause of evolutionary change. It is at best a clean-up process after the real creative work has been done. It is little surprise that these critics come from within the organismic model, implicitly or explicitly. At the scientific level, we have encountered already the most (and properly) distinguished of them all, the American population geneticist Sewall Wright. Remember his “shifting balance theory,” where the key lay in genetic drift, as gene levels fluctuated randomly in small subpopulations, and then, when new adaptive features appeared, the subpopulations rejoined the larger group (probably the species), and through a form of group selection the new feature spread through the whole group. This is highly Spencerian – infused with a solid dose of Bergsonian vitalism – as equilibrium is disturbed and then regained at a higher level, part of an overall progressive process, presumably ending in humankind.

A little arbitrarily, but not entirely without reason, let us take 1959, the 100th anniversary of the Origin, as the date when the Darwinian paradigm finally came into its own. Natural selection and Mendelian genetics, now rapidly becoming molecular genetics, gave the explanation of the tree of life. If we continue to think in Kuhnian terms, what now of normal science? We should expect to see the subbranches of the consilience come into their own, as practitioners moved forward, theoretically, experimentally, and in nature, raising and solving their problems. And in major respects we do see exactly this.

In 1866, Thomas Hardy, raised a sincere member of the Church of England, wrote his sonnet “Hap.” It expressed the anxiety about – “fear of” is not too strong a term – the world into which natural selection has pitched us. No longer can we rely on a Good God to care for us, to suffer for us, to make possible eternal life. In the non-progressive world of Darwinian evolution, all is meaningless.

Among the many books authored by Peter Bowler, the eminent historian of evolutionary biology, three stand out: The Eclipse of Darwinism (1983); The Non-Darwinian Revolution: Reinterpreting a Historical Myth (1988); and Darwin Deleted: Imagining a World without Darwin (2013). Bluntly, he says: “there is now a substantial body of literature to convince anyone that the part of Darwin’s theory now recognized as important by biologists had comparatively little impact on late nineteenth century thought” (Bowler 1988, ix). I cannot say Bowler is entirely wrong. Indeed, in The Darwinian Revolution: Science Red in Tooth and Claw (1979), I contributed to this “body of literature,” and my book was quite openly a synthesis of the state of Darwinian play in the second half of the nineteenth century. But is this the end of the story, and if it is, why is it the end of the story? Today, as Bowler also recognizes, we accept the finding of natural selection as a major scientific achievement, up there with relativity theory. Let us pick up on this paradox.

Natural selection. I am an evolutionist, which means that, to understand the present, we must dig into the past. That holds for culture as much as for biology. So, taking my own advice, where do we end up? Or, more precisely, where do we start off? As always, when dealing with Western culture, we begin with the Greeks, Plato and Aristotle. Neither of them was an evolutionist. Indeed, rather like the Buddhists, they believed that the (physical) world is eternal: no beginning, no end. But they did have much to say of great interest to our inquiry.

Time to pull back and get a little more conceptual. We need to ask some penetrating questions about the nature, the scope, the truth-value of natural selection. Finding answers, the quest begins in the past. Charles Darwin was a graduate of the University of Cambridge. The greatest British scientist of them all, Isaac Newton, was also a graduate of the University of Cambridge, and his spirit, his achievements, his reputation, infused every discussion about science, including about the life sciences. In his Principia, Newton started with his three laws of motion, together with his law of gravitational attraction, and then went on to infer, deductively, the pertinent terrestrial laws, those of Galileo, and the pertinent celestial laws, those of Copernicus affirming the heliocentric nature of the Universe and those of later thinkers, especially Kepler on planetary motion. It was a given that the ambitious young Charles Darwin would want to show Kant dead wrong. There could be a Newton of the blade of grass, and that Newton was going to be Charles Darwin.

When a new cause is introduced into science, as often as not it is accepted without trouble. Few, if any, had worries about the Watson–Crick double helix and the subsequent working out of the genetic code. Genetics was put on a molecular causal basis. However, it is not uncommon for there to be opposition. Huygens’ wave theory of light was an outsider for nearly two centuries. Sometimes worries are ongoing. One doubts that, as long as there are those interested in mental health, Freud’s Oedipus Complex is going to be happily accepted by all. There have been, continue to be, and probably always will be disputes, often bitter, about its causal status. As we have seen, natural selection did not have an altogether easy birth. But as time went by, things seem to have improved. Newton and Leibniz all over again.

In this chapter I address flaws in lineage thinking that are common in the professional, popular, and eductional literature, and which result from confusing the branching relationships between collateral relatives in the realm of systematics with the linear relationships between ancestors and descendants in the realm of evolutionary descent. The influential voices of the late Stephen Jay Gould and Robert O’Hara, who dubbed the now ubiquitous phrase ‘tree thinking’, have warned readers for decades against the sins of linear evolutionary storytelling and the use of linear evolutionary imagery. However, I argue that their impact has been deeply pernicious. The writings of Gould and O’Hara fundamentally misconstrue the relationship between the branching realm of systematics and the linear realm of evolving lineages. I close with a discussion of the problem that, in the absence of a vocabulary designed to talk about lineages, we are forced to discuss them in the taxic language of systematics. This inevitably causes problems.

Is there progress in evolution? Many, including Erasmus Darwin (grandfather of Charles), Herbert Spencer, Julian Huxley, and Richard Dawkins think there is. Others are not so sure. Some, like Charles Darwin himself, sit on the fence. It is hard enough getting progress, let alone putting up barriers like the non-directedness of the Darwinian evolutionary process. One problem is that of defining evolutionary progress. Often it is done in the name of complexity, but as paleontologist Dan McShea points out, to define complexity is a far from easy process and it is not always the case that complex means desirable. The backbone of the whale is simply but highly adapted for life in the deep. A number of possible progress-supported mechanisms are introduced and discussed – arms races, morphological convergence, and even some natural unguided processes simply emerging. The drunkard is going to fall off the sidewalk eventually, even though he doesn’t plan it. All are found lacking, as one might have predicted. Darwinian theory is drained of absolute value judgements. Progress is of absolute value. Hence, it cannot be derived from Darwinian theory.

Several high-profile evolutionary biologists in the twentieth century were committed organicists. Conrad H. Waddington, the British geneticist was one, trying to simulate Lamarckian processes through orthodox genetical approaches. Another was the well-known American paleontologist and scientific popularizer Stephen Jay Gould, who promoted morphology over adaptation. And a third was the founding populational geneticist, American Sewall Wright. He argued that random processes, genetic drift, could and would lead to major adaptive breakthroughs. Philosophers likewise embrace organicism, including the British John Dupré and the American philosophers Jerry Fodor and Thomas Nagel. Nagel in particular has been highly critical of Darwinian theory, thinking it to be crude materialism masquerading as science. Expectedly, the Darwinian mechanists have struck back, confirming the suspicion that we have paradigm differences at stake. The two sides, mechanism and organicism, defend their positions with alternative reasons. For the mechanists, the triumphs of their approach trumps all. The double helix is a popular example in support of mechanism. For the organicists, the special place of humans trumps all. We are superior and no further argument is needed.

Here, I start by discussing Stephen Jay Gould’s famous thought-experiment of ‘replaying the tape of life’. If we could wind back to the early days of evolution and reboot, would the tape play out in a similar way? Gould thought not, but his hypothesis was untestable since a real version of his thought-experiment is impossible – at least on Earth. However, other inhabited planets represent independent playings of the tape of evolution, and when we can observe enough of these we will know to what extent evolution is repeatable in a broader context than the one that Gould considered. We can hypothesize in this broader context, confident in the knowledge that our hypotheses will ultimately be testable. Plausible hypotheses are: (1) most life is based on carbon (not carbon chauvinism – the assertion that all life must be based on carbon); (2) most life is based on cells; (3) many features of large life-forms will recur often across different inhabited planets, including skeletons and muscles; (4) intelligence will be absent from some inhabited planets, just as it initially was on Earth – where it occurs, it will be the exception rather than the rule, just as it is here.

In 2005 I was invited to contribute to a volume celebrating the life and work of Richard Dawkins, which was published in 2006 under the title Richard Dawkins: How a Scientist Changed the Way We Think. My essay title plays on Richard’s 2003 anthology A Devil’s Chaplain: Reflections on Hope, Lies, Science, and Love. After decades of illuminating the minds of millions of people through his popular science writing, Richard Dawkins turned his keen mind to religion, and the result was the birth of the New Atheist movement, which began shortly after this tribute volume was published.

This chapter relates religious experience to morality, with special attention to the role of God and with response to Kant and Stephen Jay Gould.