Biology Reference
In-Depth Information
truth is found in the Bible, while at the same time acting out the idea that
sacred truth
is
found in science—that science is ultimately infallible and
comprehensive.
What the earth says to Bryan in Osborn's topic is prophecy, not sci-
ence. Osborn answers Bryan's religious objections by saying that science is
the truer source of spiritual truth. The “simple, direct teaching of Nature is
full of moral and spiritual force, if we keep the element of human opinion
out of it,” but what this amounts to when Osborn spells it out is the moral
elevation of survival of the fittest.
The moral principle inherent in evolution is that nothing can be gained
in this world without an effort; the ethical principle inherent in evolu-
tion is that only the best has the right to survive; the spiritual principle
in evolution is the evidence of beauty, of order, and of design in the daily
myriad of miracles to which we owe our existence.
30
This was meant to refute fundamentalism, but by insisting that evo-
lutionary science is an alternative source of ethical meaning, Osborn was
affirming the very premise that had inspired Bryan's attacks. The author
goes out of his way to argue that his own position should not be confused
with the merely speculative vitalism of Henri Bergson because it had a sci-
entific foundation. Osborn's own doctrine of “creative evolution” was, in
fact, “the outstanding result of forty years” of his “own observation.”
31
He
believed that his own research had repaired the rift that Huxley seemed to
open up in his Romanes lecture between “moral and spiritual evolution”
and Darwin's “struggle for existence.”
32
This meant that those who did not
accept evolution were not merely against science; they were also incapable of
finding their way upon the moral and spiritual course it mapped. This was
why “in the Tennessee case, the governor, the legislators, the courts, and
the majority of the people, including certain of the teaching class, were pur-
suing a course quite fatal both to religion and morals. No code of morals,
however Draconian, can stand up against the laws of Nature.”
33
The tragedy of Osborn's scientistic fundamentalism may be found in
the equally Draconian morality that these “laws of Nature” were already
inspiring in the United States. His belief that science had found moral truth
in biology sustained his lifelong support for the eugenics movement and,
in his final years, his sympathy for Hitler and Mussolini.
34
But this was
also a tragedy for the American religionists he opposed. Both the predomi-
nant scientism and the predominant fundamentalism of 1925 partook of
