From Deism to Evolutionism – Positivism Denuded

 “Not only is a death blow dealt here for the first time to ‘Teleology’ in the natural sciences, but their rational meaning is empirically explained.”

-Karl Marx, reflecting on Charles Darwin’s The Origin of Species

The Theory of Evolution by Natural Selection proposed by Charles Darwin in the early 19th century is now widely accepted in biology, complete with its own global science aptly named Evolutionary Biology.  But in 1830’s Europe, and especially in Britain, the manifold ideas springing from the nascent science of evolutionary biology were appropriated by various people and institutions to justify preconceived notions about the human condition, and, indeed, society.  This appropriation resulted in the ideology of evolutionism, reminiscent of Europeans’ 16th century notions of The Great Chain of Being, a mural of which is reprinted here from Didacus Valades' Rhetorica Christiana (1579). ​ (Image 1)

But new technological advances of the 18th century demanded new philosophical and religious ideations of the providence of Christian people.  The industrial revolution was underway, and large, developing population centers like those in Britain had led many 19th century citizens away from fervent Christianity to Deism, a belief in a holistic and benevolent God that downplayed the rigor of mysterious Christian notions such as the trinity and miraculous events.  At the same time, the British people had extended their empire across the Western world and even colonized and made independent the United States of America.  Prosperity was becoming a reality for many more Western peoples than it had been in the past.  And in tandem with both, coming off the heals of Romantische Naturphilosphie, German-style philosophy that, loosely speaking, equates God with nature, British positivism was on the rise as more Western people embraced the idea that the human experience is governed by physical laws. A positivist, British Deism, then, became fashionable in lieu of the structured organized religion of old.  “By the 1830’s,” philosopher of science Michael Ruse notes in his book The Evolution-Creation Struggle, “[the British were] ready again for a progressivist metaphysic.”

​ Science at this time was making remarkable advances, as Ruse notes, in areas such as embryology and the fossil record.  As well, Charles Darwin’s Theory of Evolution by Natural Selection generated much buzz in the nascent field of evolutionary biology. The concatenation of Darwin’s new theory with modern Christianity resulted in a new and progressive Deism that was an excellent candidate, some thought, for the “progressivist metaphysic” so many struggled to understand. But acknowledging a mechanism for evolution, natural selection, stood contrary to accepted notions about the relative superiority of various races.  How could the newest scientific theories about the origin and superiority of a white, Christian patriarchy depend on a mechanism that was blind to race, social mores, and religion?  It could not in Victorian England.

​ The philosophical sapling of positivism, then, was again denuded of any roots, and most limbs, in the physical sciences, being stripped bare of its honest inquiry by the unscientific and presumptive ideology of evolutionism.  Against a backdrop of Deism permeating thinking people in British society, which only a century earlier had cowered under the fear of a vengeful Christian God, positivism, in its support for rational and physical laws governing human affairs, briefly gained favor among Western people before evolutionism stepped in to adjudicate any ideological dissonance.  These intertwined but distinct ideologies were at the core of interpretation of scientific theories in the field of evolutionary biology for a century, evolutionism arguing for pseudo-sciences such as phrenology, while empiricism marched onward, weathering the storms, collecting data.

​ Ruse goes on to argue that evolutionism was not an ideology, but a religion unto itself.  As the 20th century broke, evolution ideologues had converted evolutionism into mantras for free enterprise, the removal, assimilation, and genocides of indigenous people worldwide, and even human bondage, tired remnants of which continue to linger around the world today.  This is a compelling argument for adding evolutionism to the pantheon of world religions, but is also a double-edged sword for the philosophical, religious, or scientific mindset.  Words are important, and they carry great meaning, especially for cultures whose histories are so old they can only be transmitted orally, or, for the Jewish, for example, for which Judaism encompasses an oral and written history passed down by Jewish movements over thousands of years of human history.  As well, all religions require an exactness in words, actions, and deeds, as words that connote an eschatology where there is none to be found run afoul of the root of religious meaning – the divine, the supernatural, and the human soul.  There is great debate among scholars today regarding the inclusion of mass-movements in religious studies, where philosophers and other social scientists have a role in helping to accurately define -ism’s, such as evolutionism.

At the core of this debate is theology, and the central role that a divine being and a dualistic, supernatural world view play in religion and religious studies, and this is strong evidence that movements like evolutionism, fascism, communism, and others, even though they share a handful of common denominators in an otherwise broad array of religious dogmas and positions, do not, in and of themselves, form religions as they are formally defined in the modern world today.