tothesource: The Darwin Myth—that's a strange title for a biography of Charles Darwin, isn't it?
Benjamin Wiker: Yes, perhaps it is! But all too many of the biographical treatments of him mix facts with fancies, so that we get mythological treatments of Darwin as a kind of secular saint, rather than Darwin the man, warts and all. Since this is the Year of Darwin—the 200th anniversary of his birth, and the 150th anniversary of the publication of his Origin of Species—I thought it was high time to sort things out, and present a critical biography.
tothesource: By "critical biography," do you mean an entirely negative account of Darwin?
Wiker: Not at all. Darwin himself was a charming man, very kind, a model husband and father, a man of high personal moral character, and a man who suffered with the patience of Job through a lifetime of sickness. At the same time, however, he could be rather dishonest about his own theory, even with himself insofar as he remained blind to its morally corrosive implications.
tothesource: Dishonest? In what way?
Wiker: Several ways, actually. Let's begin with the question of his originality. Part of the Darwin Myth passed down and popularized, is that Charles Darwin was wholly original, the man who "discovered" evolution while sailing around the world aboard the HMS Beagle in the early 1830s, and then set out the unambiguous facts in his Origin of Species in 1859, taking the world entirely by surprise. Then, so the myth goes, every reasonable man suddenly saw the truth of Darwinism, and thereafter, only hidebound and irrational biblical literalists opposed Darwin.
tothesource: That's not what happened?
Wiker: Not at all, although Darwin dearly wanted it to be perceived that way. The truth is that the notion of evolution had been around for quite some time. Darwin's own grandfather, Erasmus Darwin, was an immensely famous late Enlightenment figure, and offered his own account of evolution—or transmutationism, as it was called—in his book Zoönomia, published near the end of the 18th century. That was over fifty years before Charles Darwin published his Origin of Species. Charles Darwin's own father, Robert, was also an evolutionist. So, the notion that Charles Darwin discovered evolution is absurd. It was a family tradition! He had carefully read his grandfather's evolutionary account, and that of the French evolutionist Jean Baptiste Lamarck before ever stepping foot on the Beagle. He had even done research under the evolutionist Robert Grant!
tothesource: But you say that Charles Darwin wanted to appear to be original?
Wiker: Yes, he seemed quite obsessed with it. In fact, after he published the Origin, he was immediately brought to task for failing to mention the long line of evolutionists who had published this or that aspect of his theory in the first half of the 1800s. In later editions, he humbly acknowledged them—including his own grandfather!
tothesource: Why was Darwin so bent on being original?
Wiker: That's hard to say, but it brings up another aspect of the Darwin Myth. My educated guess is that Darwin wanted to see himself as a central figure, a pivotal figure, in the great liberal Whig historical drama of secular progress, where humanity escapes from the darkness of religious superstition to the light of rational secular science. This led to what I would call his most serious act of dishonesty, insisting that evolution had to be Godless to be scientific. That is a myth, a falsehood, that unfortunately still forms the minds of all too many scientists today. But evolution does not have to be Godless to be scientific.
tothesource: What does this all have to do with Darwin's account of evolution through natural selection?
Wiker: Everything! Darwin crafted his account of natural selection specifically to eliminate any need for God as an explanation for the variety of species, and their extraordinary design. Natural selection is indeed a powerful and important concept, and other scientists had already set out aspects of natural selection decades before Darwin published his Origin of Species. But Darwin insisted on making it an all-encompassing explanation of everything in biology, an explanation that entirely eliminated God. In this, he was quite like his contemporary Karl Marx who wanted to explain everything about man through a very materialist account of economics precisely so that he could eliminate God. Darwinism is, in this, much like Marxism.
tothesource: So Darwinism and evolution are distinct.
Wiker: Yes, just as Marxism and economics are distinct. Darwinism like Marxism offers a materialist, reductionist explanation of its subject. Both explain a great deal. The problems arise when they claim to explain everything. Marxism has important things to say about the problems with capitalism and about the foundations of culture in economic life. But it puts forth a grossly distorted view of human beings in trying to reduce everything about humanity—our greatest thoughts, religion, art, music, morality, all aspects of culture—to the way we get food. Like Marx, Darwin wanted to explain everything about humanity—its greatest thoughts, religion, art, music, morality, all aspects of culture—as an aftereffect of natural selection. But what if the process of evolution is much grander than Darwin imagined, so complex, intricate, and wonderful, especially in the case of humanity, that any reasonable man would conclude that it had a Divine Cause?
tothesource: Darwin wouldn't allow that?
Wiker: No, and neither will Darwinists today. The alternative to Darwinism, that evolution is so magnificent that it implies God, is not something I just made up, but was known to Darwin himself. It was an alternative he explicitly rejected. It was the position of Darwin's acknowledged co-discoverer of evolution through natural selection, Alfred Wallace, as well as the position of Darwin's most potent critic, the evolutionist St. George Mivart. It was also the position of Darwin's main allies, the eminent scientists Asa Gray and Charles Lyell. They all pointed out that mere natural selection could not explain the development of the moral and intellectual nature of man.
tothesource: You mentioned that Darwin was blind to the moral implications of his own theory. Did that, in part, form the criticisms of Mivart, Gray, and Lyell?
Wiker: In part, yes. All of them warned of the danger of reducing our moral nature to a mere aftereffect of natural selection. The result would seem to be obvious: if we believe that morality is an unintended effect of natural selection, then we will tend to reduce morality to survival of the fittest (and the elimination of the unfit). That is, in fact, what Darwin did, even though he refused to believe that it would lead to a kind of moral barbarism. The 20th century bears witness to the horrifying effects of collapsing morality into Darwinism.
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