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Part II Chapter Four:
From Descartes to Darwin: Evolution and the Elaboration of Myth
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On the problem of the ‘body’ in the Christian proselytizing effort: “The uncomplicated Pagan acceptance of corporeality, as the locus of all experience (and spirituality), had a deeply disturbing effect upon the composure of medieval Christianity. An objective of the latter, we may remind ourselves, had been not just to conceive the physical world as something apart from the ‘Divine’ but to place all meaning and motivation, indeed the creative process itself, outside its natural province in the living universe. In dividing and selectively derogating nature, in its general constituency and specific representations, Eastern and Middle Eastern precursors to Christianity - I have in mind Greek epistemologies in addition to the obvious Jewish influences - had already prepared a milieu which was receptive to the sweeping denial of the flesh which came, eventually, to characterize the outlook of mature Christianity. This denial was manifest in numerous forms which, though all too familiar to inquiry, continue to strike us as rather bizarre in their various presentations. Among these were (1) the use of torture and flagellation as punishment for alleged infractions of established doctrine; (2) the punishment of the ‘flesh’, as the wicked instrument of natural discourse, through the deliberate production of physical discomfort: the use of ‘hairshirts’ and the like; (3) the extensive shrouding of this fleshy instrument of discourse in both life and death; (4) charnel houses and other quasi-ritual settings and methods designed to rid, more quickly and more efficiently, the human anatomy of its hated visceral components (in that conceptually problematic period immediately following death) while preserving the departed individual’s skeletal remains, that relatively enduring and, to earlier Pagan perceptions at least, extremely significant transitional linkage to the afterlife and to the divine; and, in that same vein, (5) the general fascination with (and seeming glorification of) the natural process of physical decay, a preoccupation revealed, as one example among many, in the interesting late medieval concept of the momento mori and its often explicit graphic representations.”

On the ‘re-discovery’ of nature: “There can be little question that the increased receptivity of European science to the study of material nature was due directly to the European voyages of ‘discovery’. These encounters with new continents, the American tropics in particular, drew positive attention to the astonishing diversity of nature in general (while weakening the authority of the document which had been, hitherto, the sole basis for scientific reckoning and explanation: i.e. the Christian Bible and its self-serving taxonomies)... An effect of this rich new exposure seems to have been to shift the frame of philosophical reference from the domain of the metaphysical to the ‘concrete reality’ of living nature.”

On the Cartesian legacy: “First, cognition was the chief reality. What really mattered was not what was but what was thought. Secondly, in Descartes the focus moved to the ‘individual’, as represented in the ‘first person singular’ of the famous epigram, though this move was deceptive. The creative ego of the European Renaissance had its mythic residence not in what the present-day observer would call the ‘individual proper’ but in the State. The State, in its power and singularity, was the ‘first person’ of the collective discourse... The State gathered to itself all the power denied nature, the power to intervene in the world, to pursue its particular goals without opposition... Besides, Descartes gave his imprimatur to the Christian belief that the diverse products of nature were separate in their origin. In this he served the wider reactionary interest of the Counter Reformation which opposed the erosion of class divisions (and authority) in the social and religious life of the continent. Happily, one mythic precept discovered its complement in another. Entrenched interets found comfort in the understanding that though the world was divided from the very beginning, political power was not. (Descartes lived well. Authority was grateful...)”

On the emergence of Romantic science: “My point in all this is that the intellectual world of the late eighteenth century, building on ancient lore, the work of the herbalists, the classificatory system of Linnaeus (which drew explicit attention to likeness among co-existing organisms and, by implication, to likeness in descent), and other influences too complex to enumerate, had begun to free itself from the rigid biblical (and Cartesian) notion of nature as somehow complete, as consisting of a certain array of ‘finished objects’. The world was prepared to accept a more flexible model of the natural environment, one which was more accommodating of the principle of change (and in which creative energy was better distributed one might add)... This nationally diverse group of individuals, from which the natural sciences of the nineteenth century would draw their initial inspiration, looked with disdain on the ‘mind’ as the organ of so-called ‘reason’ and discovered the ‘body’, the locus of animal emotion... Life became understood once again as a corporeal reality. Descartes’ popular epigram experienced herewith a chiastic transformation. Of primary interest to the new ‘romantic generation’ was not so much what the organism thought but what it was. This was perhaps the lasting legacy of the new age to science.”

Progress impeded: “The Romantics, poised on the shoulders of Linnaeus and inspired by a selective reading of the science of the late renaissance, were able, for a while, to look beyond the mythic obstructions of their own time and discern the outline of a continent which was as new to the human imagination and intellect as the landscape of the Americas had been to the ‘conquistadors’ of the sixteenth century. It should have been possible, now at the beginning of the nineteenth century, to bring the study of evolution significantly forward... But unfortunately this expectation confronted serious social and political obstacles. Conditions had arisen which would impede, for a protracted period of time, all definite movement in this promising direction.”

On Darwin and the delayed appearance of the principle of Natural Selection: “The study of evolutionary process brought the two sides of Darwin’s disposition into conflict. The principle of selection, which was evident in the workings of nature, appeared unfortunately to operate on a nature which, to his acute powers of observation, was nothing if not the expression of energy surging from within. (The problem, as Darwin must surely have perceived it, ...was not too little display of ‘will’ in nature but too much.) Working from the perspective of the romantic tradition which placed great weight on the integrated reality of nature, the dependence of the latter on inherent properties of ‘will’ would have been self-evident (as it had been, at the end of the eighteenth century, to the controversial Lamarck). Yet, as the scion of a pampered social class, whose very existence depended on the quiescence (and fragmentation) of the impoverished masses in England, Darwin was inclined to deny any natural expression of energy (and dreaded autonomy). Especially when this was collectively manifest, revealed in deliberated actions by the group... The notion of a distributed consciousness and ‘will’, which might have seemed (in Darwin’s epistemology) to take the place of the missing creator, bristled with hazards to established interests. It questioned the whole basis of centralized power, as manifest both in the microcosm of the Victorian family and in the community at large, and the mythic precept of ‘singular cause’ upon which the social institutions of Darwin’s world seemed to rest. For this reason alone it is no wonder that he ‘dithered’.”

On the crucial input of Malthus and Herbert Spencer: “But, as we have seen, Malthus and the ‘struggle for existence’ came to the rescue which, for Darwin and the mythology of entrepreneurial capitalism, served twin purposes. First, the difficult concept of the ‘will’ found expression, finally, within a politically acceptable frame of reference: i.e. the energies of the ‘individual’, if no longer to be denied, were seen, at least, as highly focused: as directed against the ‘collective’, which is to say, against the rest of ‘nature’... But secondly, the central position Darwin awarded the ‘individual’ in adaptive process and change gave support to the idea that an evolutionary advantage exists in his and her release from the regulatory pressures of social organization. Face-to-face interaction with others (of the same or different species), was seen as coercive (and thus ‘hostile’) or, at most, ‘useless’ (and thus irrelevant) to individual survival. Separation from community meant, in any case, increased ‘freedom’ for the individual, a clear ‘step forward’ in evolutionary process! This is a most curious notion which continues to find acceptance among social scientists and educated sectors of the public...”

On the larger picture: “Violent forces were leaving the social viscera of industrial Europe in shreds, like the bloodied victims of ‘Jack the Ripper’ who stalked the streets of London in ritual celebration of the historical moment in which he lived. Yet incredibly, the wholesale destruction of community, which had come down on humanity and fundamentally altered the traditional relations of ordinary people to each other (while immensely worsening the physical conditions of their existence), were not recognized, much less addressed by those in the vanguard of the science which purported to explain evolutionary change. The ‘Ripper’ himself captured the public imagination but was regarded as a social aberration. The structures, which his behavior seemed to emulate, were not to be acknowledged, much less curbed. They were the perfectly natural by-product of a ‘struggle for existence’ which was scientifically ‘predicted’ and unavoidable. For Darwin and others who, in their distance and comfortable isolation from the raw effects of these events, were privileged to grasp the ‘larger picture’, the real changes which took place in nature were not ‘violent’. They were revealed rather in infinitesimally tiny transformations of physical structure and were, for the largest part, imperceptible to the affected organisms.”