Discussion Group Report

"It may be argued that...[Charles Darwin's] theory of evolution is the most important contribution to biology in the history of science." It is "supported by overwhelming empirical evidence and convincing logical argumentation," observes James Birx in his useful article, "Evolution, God and Humanism," in Religious Humanism, XXX, No. 1 and 2.

In Western intellectual thought, the idea of evolution first appeared during the Presocratic age (600-400 BCE). The earliest philosophers as naturalistic cosmologists rejected traditional legends and myths as well as personal opinions and religious beliefs. Several of them even anticipated to a certain degree the evolutionary framework.

Thales claimed that life forms first appeared in water, changed through time, and later were able to adapt to and survive on dry land. By maintaining water to be the cosmic substance, he intuited the essential unity of all reality, a great insight! Anaximander, the father of comparative morphology, critically compared and contrasted our species with fishes. He maintained that the line leading to our own species had once passed through a fish-like stage of development. Heraclitus held that the essential characteristic of all reality is change itself. Being or reality is actually cosmic becoming manifested as the cyclical recurrence of all things. Rejecting all human-centered views of the universe, Xenophanes recognized both the biological and historical significance of fossils as the remains of once-living but different species. Today it may be argued that the fossil record is the single most important body of empirical evidence to support the fact of organic evolution.

Perhaps the most relevant of all the Presocratic thinkers, Empedocles claimed that, at the beginning of life, the surface of this planet was covered with free-floating organs of different sizes and shapes: all kinds of heads, arms, legs, and trunks were moving about. These organs haphazardly came together, farming organisms (collections of organs), which were usually monstrosities with multiple heads and strange combinations of arms and legs. Such monstrosities died off, but occasionally an organism formed that could adapt to its environment and survive long enough to reproduce. This bizarre explanation does contain some of the essential principles of the Darwinian theory: multiplicity, variation, adaptation, survival, and reproduction.

Since these ideas anticipated evolution, why did science have to wait 2000 years for Darwin to present his theory? The reason is Aristotle, the greatest philosopher of creek antiquity. Although the father of biology, he was an essentialist and a teleologist, not an evolutionist. He held that every plant and animal has its own unique essence that is eternally fixed in nature.

Later on and before Darwin's time, other thinkers in ancient, medieval, and Renaissance times who anticipated the evolutionary framework were Lucretius, Giordano Bruno, Avicenna, and Leonardo da Vinci,

Bruno claimed that the universe is eternal, infinite, and endlessly changing. He even speculated that life forms, even intelligent ones, exist among the stars and planets. His cosmology went far beyond the conceptual views of Nicolas Cusa, Copernicus, Kepler, and Galileo. It may be argued that his ideas ushered in the modern worldview free from a closed, finite, earth-bound and human-centered interpretation of nature. For overcoming dogma and superstition, he was burned at the stake.

Seventeenth and eighteenth century evolutionists preceding Darwin were Carolus Linnaeus, who placed the human animal in the same primate order with the apes, monkeys, and lemurs; Georges Buffon; LaMettrie; Diderot; Helvetius; d'Holbach; Condorcet; Lamarck, Robert Chambers, and Phillip Gosse.

Organic evolution is now documented by empirical evidence from geology, paleontology, biogeography, anthropology, and genetics as well as comparative studies in taxonomy, biochemistry, immunology, embryology, anatomy, and physiology. Grounded in science and reason evolution has descriptive, explanatory, and predictive powers free from supernatural claims and dogmatic religious beliefs. It is always subject to modification and expansion in light of new discoveries in science and widening perspectives in philosophy. "For humanists," says Birx, "the challenge of evolution is to save and enrich and fulfill human life, despite pervasive problems and the inevitability of death. It is science and reason, not theology and mysticism, that offer human beings a long and fulfilling and joyful life within a cold and violent universe uninterested in our emerging species with its personal goals and entrenched illusions. Despite ultimate abstract speculation on God, Charles Darwin's lasting legacy is the power of science and reason. Invoking Nietzsche's affirmation of life, both secular and religious humanists should celebrate that creative web of life which Darwin has helped us to understand and appreciate in terms of organic evolution."