Biology Reference
In-Depth Information
to transform science into the institutional giant that it is today. The chief
rhetorical problem with Baconianism rested in the fact that it placed the
center of scientific authority outside of science by continuing to identify
its work with theology. This older meta-paradigm gave science tremendous
prestige but little autonomy. To overcome this limitation, the new meta-
paradigm has retained those spiritual resources that made science a tran-
scendent authority but also transformed them to give it greater autonomy.
Instead of abandoning natural theology, evolutionism has scientized it by
perpetuating the notion that evolutionary science and evolutionism are one
and the same. Huxley did not want to abandon the great idea that Bacon
had brought to science, the belief that it advanced God's work. Why would
any scientist want to give up the already widely held belief that science had
prophetic significance? What he needed to do was to reinvent this idea. The
logical solution was to naturalize natural theology, and the emerging field
of evolutionary science provided an ideal material that he could manipulate
to accomplish this goal.
If evolutionism lies at the center of this contemporary meta-paradigm,
then it will be important to consider the means by which this core is pro-
tected. The fact that evolutionism can exist only so long as it is thought to
be identical with evolutionary science means that the teaching of evolution-
ary science is vital to its survival. If nothing in
biology
makes sense except in
the light of evolution, as Theodosius Dobzhansky (1900-1975) proclaimed
in the title of his famous essay, we might also add that
science's place in the
world
only makes sense in the light of evolutionism. Dobzhansky's influ-
ential article, in fact, conjoins both ideas.
40
The body of the essay defends
evolutionary science by showing, as the PBS “Evolution Library” summa-
rizes it, that “evolution is the cornerstone which supports and unifies the
many fields within biology.”
41
But evolution gives way to evolutionism in its
concluding paragraph.
One of the great thinkers of our age, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, wrote
the following: “Is evolution a theory, a system, or a hypothesis? It is much
more—it is a general postulate to which all theories, all hypotheses, all
systems must henceforward bow and which they must satisfy in order to
be thinkable and true. Evolution is a light which illuminates all facts, a
trajectory which all lines of thought must follow—this is what evolution
is.” Of course, some scientists, as well as some philosophers and theolo-
gians, disagree with some parts of Teilhard's teachings; the acceptance
of his worldview falls short of universal. But there is no doubt at all that
