The inspiration of Charles Darwin
Talk for Eton 19.10.2015 Dr Carolyn Boulter
Why I am interested in Darwin
My grandfather was born in 1879, twenty years after the publication of Charles Darwin’s great book
“ On the Origin of Species” and he, like Darwin, would love to talk with young people about ideas of
all sorts, - in his case contrasting new origami models and his theories on the lost city of Atlantis
and the fourth dimension with Darwin’s theories of evolution along the way! When I was 11 he gave
me his Baker brass microscope made in 1860. It is very similar to the one that Darwin ordered 1847
from James Smith to help him to dissect the barnacles from the seashore rocks sent him from across
the world by post. With his microscope Darwin, like my 11 year old self, could magnify if a bit fuzzily
the internal organs of the small specimens about 850 times. He used it in his study at Downe House
where he lived with his family and it took 8 years to make a complete survey of all the known
barnacles with the purpose of using the evidence in his book in order to make the argument of what
he called “ descent with modification”. This was his great achievement to provide a mechanism for
evolution - species change or as he called his secret notebook on the subject “ ...the transmutation
of species”.
Along with the microscope was his facsimile of Darwin’s Origin of Species.
Darwin Inspired Learning
So started my journey as a biologist and my lifelong fascination with Darwin and the reason I am
here with you tonight . But it is also why I was taken on by the Charles Darwin Trust for 6 years as an
educational consultant, running workshops and writing materials that are designed to use Darwin’s
life and work as an inspiration for science education. You can find those materials online at the
Linnaean and STEM websites on your sheet. The last published unit was written by myself on
Darwins Brilliant Barnacles and gets 6th form pupils to assess the observational methods Darwin
used including microscopy to compare different barnacles classify them and create a family tree of
the group using his evidence. This work allowed him to suggest the evolutionary progress of the
barnacle group and how new species might have emerged. This went on to form a major plank in his
long argument in the Origin that what is known as natural selection is the mechanism by which new
species arise.
The unit goes on to address another very important aspect of Darwin’s work that we have looked at
already tonight and that George has introduced us to, that of the inspiration his work gives to
contemporary science. Our units pick this up and this one goes on to use the data of new modern
molecular evidence produced by biochemists today to provide a computer generated maximum
likelihood consensus tree showing how the various features might be resolved into a family tree of
relationships through time. Then our unit shows students current observational work on the feeding
hairs of barnacles which uses the scanning electron microscope (this can magnify with good
resolution up to 5 times further than the light microscope) to suggest further modifications to the
family tree.
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Darwin’s argument in The Origin
His argument in the Origin went as follows: in the huge numbers of offspring of one species there
was variation produced due to an as yet unknown process and that only those best adapted would
survive the effects of natural selection by predators, climate and competition to reproduce
themselves and endow the next generation with their new modification. By this slow accumulation
of adaptive characteristics species change would gradually occur over vast eons of time. Both
evolution and this explanatory mechanism are accepted by practising scientists today and the
missing gap in the explanation - the production of the variations has been shown to be the genetic
processes taking place when cells divide and combine in reproduction.
The Scientific understanding of Darwin’s time: Fixed created species
But the scientific understanding of Darwin’s time was that each species of plant and animal though
there might be local variation, was fixed and unchangeable having been independently created
perfectly adapted to its particular environment by the Deity. It is likely with his training for the
Anglican ministry that when Darwin boarded The Beagle which sailed round the world 1831-1836 to
accompany the Captain Fitzroy he held these views like his captain and his peers:
Whilst on board the Beagle I was quite orthodox, and I remember being heartily laughed at by
several of the officers (though themselves orthodox) for quoting the Bible as an unanswerable
authority on some point of morality. Autobiography by Frances Darwin
Indeed this is similar to the views of some religious groups today who hold that the Bible should be
read literally as plain truth and that it shows that God has created each species independently for
each habitat and that they do not change.
Reflecting on his visit to the Brazilian rain forest early in the voyage in his autobiography edited by
Nora Barlow in 1958 he was filled with religious awe :
Formerly I was led by feelings such as those just referred to, (although I do not think that the religious
sentiment was ever strongly developed in me), to the firm conviction of the existence of God, and of
the immortality of the soul. In my journal I wrote that whilst standing in the midst of the grandeur of
a Brazilian forest, 'it is not possible to give an adequate idea of the higher feelings of wonder,
admiration, and devotion which fill and elevate the mind.'
Reading on the voyage
He took with him on the voyage William Paley’s Natural Theology (1802). Paley was a believer in this
independent special creation but importantly also captivated Darwin by his detailed descriptions of
the adaptations in plants and animals. This inspired Darwin to observe closely and note the
adaptations he observed.
He also took Sir Charles Lyell’s Principles of Geology which contradicted the commonly held view
that the earth was only a few thousand years old and that cataclysms like the flood had formed the
appearance of the geology of the rocks (Still an enduring idea with some religious groups . See
Norah’s Ark Farm Park near Bristol). Instead Lyell wrote that geological features were entirely
natural and mostly caused by gradual processes over long periods of time. He began as Darwin’s
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mentor at Cambridge and became one of his close friends. During the voyage Darwin’s eyes were
open to see the effects of slow changes over eons of time and in some places to see the catastrophic
effects of volcanic and seismic activity eg in the Galapagos.
The young man who set off on the voyage of collection round the world in his “gap years” was an
unlikely candidate for becoming the “father of Biology” and paradigm-changer spoken of in the same
breath as Galileo. His father said of him at 16: "You care for nothing but shooting, dogs and ratcatching, and you will be a disgrace to yourself and all your family." He had not enjoyed the content
of his two university courses – medicine at Edinburgh Theology at Cambridge, but he was in many
ways well prepared for the experience of the voyage- he read widely and he had been encouraged to
think independently.
Darwins religious heritage
Darwin came from a family of non-conformists, or dissenters from the prevailing Anglicanism. His
grandfather Erasmus had worked with the idea of evolution and the family were Unitarian as were
many of their friends. They were strong supporters of the scientific quest for knowledge and the
desire for human progress and were Deist rather than Trinitarian in their outlook. The family had a
strong tradition of independent thought and a deep social conscience especially the campaign for
the abolition of slavery. It was common for such families to ally themselves with the Anglican Church
through baptism and attendance as the Darwins of Charles generation did. This was the gateway to
academic and social acceptance. So he carried with him this religious background with him as he set
off on the Beagle- Unitarian ideals and training in Anglicanism.
His heritage also meant he had deep fascination with the natural world and how it worked. Since a
child he had been a keen collector and on the seashore in Edinburgh where he studied medicine for
a while and he probably had his first serious brush with barnacles under the Instruction of Robert
Grant who collected sea sponges. Then at Cambridge whilst studying theology it was beetle
collecting and geology expeditions.
Collecting and observing, theorising, note taking and questioning became hall marks of his method
on the Beagle fuelled by the comparisons he could make across habitats together with his reading
and his family inheritance of thinking outside the box. So we find Darwin on The Beagle with his eye
sharpened and his mind prepared to see the discontinuities in the geology, the plants and animals
he encountered on his voyage round the world, so that when he returned he could open his
Transmutation notebook and begin to crystalise his big idea, what Richard Dawkins refers to as his
“dangerous idea” of species changing and evolving through natural selection. As his notebook
amassed more evidence for his argument in the Origin, his belief in God remained but it was not
inspired by literal interpretation the text of the Bible but by the text of nature and the experience of
the natural world.
The inspiration of Darwin
For Science
I have suggested that Darwin’s big idea continues to be an inspiration for modern science. Marking
the millennium Steve Rose remarked:
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“Darwin’s theory of common descent does for biology what Galileo did for the planets. It was laid out
in a book written for the general reader, the only best seller to change man’s conception of himself.
An idea put forward in 1859 is still the cement that binds the marvellous discoveries of today. The
Origin of Species is, without doubt the book of millennium.”
For education
I have touched on the ways in which Darwin can inspire science education through my brief
description of the unit on barnacles which uses Darwin’s organism and ways of working connecting
the work to the inspiration for scientists today. I could give examples of work with bees, with
carnivorous and climbing plants and pigeons- all on the websites. Ann analysis what we call Darwin
Inspired learning was published this year with worldwide contributions from educators of many
kinds who have used Darwins work and ways of working as an inspiration for their work.
The science versus religion debate: Working towards dialogue
We all know that what came in the wake of the publication of his big idea was a tremendous public
debate in which science and religion were seen to be set in opposition to each other in 1860 at the
meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of science in Oxford when Bishop Samuel
Wilberforce challenged Darwin’s friend Thomas Huxley who was supposed to have been asked if he
was descended from an ape on his grandmothers or grandfathers side. Ian Barbour in his 1990 Gifford
Lectures that dealt with the conflict of science and religion and suggested us moving through from
conflict to independence to dialogue and then to integration or synthesis. There is still conflict but
there is also much possibility of dialogue, which is I hope what will happen tonight.
It is Keith Ward’s view that : “That science and religion are in conflict is a distorted view of what
actually happened. The conflict on each occasion was between traditional science and new science
and there were religious believers on both sides of the conflict every time”
This makes sense when we consider that Darwin’s long argument was against the prevailing
independent special creation and the immutability of species. The scientific community today
accepts the Neo-Darwinian view of species change through natural processes and there are many
people of faith within that community.
This discussion has been convened in an interfaith setting and I feel our task is to discuss the faith
issues that arise as we try to dialogue both with each other and with the way science reads the text
of nature after Darwin and the ways in which we read our scriptural texts. For those of us today who
hold no religious views or are humanist, agnostic or atheist, I ask you to bear with me as I try to
unpick how I think Darwin inspires and challenges those of faith of whom I am one and how current
representative Christian theologians have responded. I will leave those of other faiths here to speak
for themselves it is quite beyond my capacity or brief to do so.
Darwins struggle with religion
So lets begin this task with Darwins own religious understandings , having explored already some of
his heritage and work. Darwin wrote little about his own religious ideas considering it personal and
not liking to be controversial but his autobiography written at the end of his life and published by his
son after his death then re-edited by his granddaughter in a fuller form in 1958, gives some insights
into his spiritual convictions which he struggled to describe.
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When thus reflecting I feel compelled to look at a first cause having an intelligent mind in some
degree analogous to that of man; and I deserve to be called a theist. This conclusion was strong in my
mind about the time, as far I can remember, when I wrote the Origin of species; and it is since that
time that it has very gradually with many fluctuations become weaker.
Keith Ward
So how have modern theologians been challenged and inspired by Darwin? I shall start with the work
of Keith Ward who I quoted earlier, an Anglican priest and theologian and Regius Professor of
Diviniy at Oxford.
Trying to describe what God is : The cosmic mind and theist evolution
Like Darwin, Professor Ward describes himself as a theist and imagines something he calls the
“cosmic mind” and believes that this closely connects with the purpose of the cosmos:
The basis theistic hypothesis is that there is a personal explanation for the universe as a whole. The
universe exists in order to realise values that are envisaged by something akin to a cosmic mind...the
universe exists because it realises values conceived by God that can only exists in such a universe and
which perhaps in their general nature are necessarily emergent from the reality of God itself”
He sees the questions about the purpose of the cosmos being questions for theology and faith and
the questions of mechanism and cause those of science. He is attempting to frame a worldview that
takes both seriously responding to the challenge and inspiration of Darwin.
“Darwinism asks about the causal processes by which states of affairs have come into being. The
other asks about the purpose for which they have come into being....... they are complementary
forms of explanation.”
“ Both seek an adequate understanding of what the universe is like. One looks to objective,
dispassionate, quantifiable and publically accessible evidence. The other looks to the data of
subjective experience, of feeling, evaluation, intention and obligation which require a more engaged
and intuitive approach....theistic evolution allows a prospect of framing an integrated worldview that
takes both traditions with equal seriousness.
God is within the cosmos and also outside time
The conception of the nature of God perceived by Ward is both within the cosmos and the minutia
of the world and yet outside of time. Within the cosmos God’s creative activity from within brings
the universe into being through its own innate capacity to evolve through natural processes.
Because God is mature love God brings freedom to evolve. And God is also simultaneously outside of
time. It is a massive expansion in thinking that is akin to that required by modern physics.
“ God can enter into many different times , acting and responding in them while also existing in a
trans-temporal way. We cannot imagine this trans-temporality of god but it should not be conceived
as a totally immutable and static existence. It might better be conceived as a transcendent agency
that acts incessantly in many temporal streams, manifesting its changeless perfection in continual
creative activity, sensitive awareness and over-flowing goodness.”
God emerges through the evolutionary process
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The development of life and the evolution of living forms that Darwin describes is one of emergence
of new forms and of consciousness and the capacity to think these ideas expressed today. For Ward
because God is within the process of evolution at all levels God experiences the necessary pain and
suffering of the process because that is the way emergence works. Without pain and death there
can be no new life. He almost goes as far as to say that God emerges through this process.
“Pain is involved in the emergent physical being of universes like this and even God who experiences
all actualities must share it if such a universe is actualised”
This brings us to one of Darwin’s questions again:
After the publication of the Origin amidst the fury generated by the Oxford meeting Darwin was in
correspondence with Asa Gray an American botanist, in which the question of the providence of the
God who Gray believed in was raised:
I cannot persuade myself that a beneficent and omnipotent God would have designedly created the
Ichneumonidae with the express intention of their feeding within the living bodies of Caterpillars, or
that a cat should play with mice "Letter 2814 — Darwin, C. R. to Gray, Asa, 22 May [1860]"
John Haught
With that thought in mind I shall turn to the second theologian that I shall quote Professor John
Haught from Georgetown, USA. Like Ward, Haught recognises that science and theology represent
two distinct horizons for looking at the story of life and the universe and wants to integrate them
into a synthetic vision .
God allows the self determination and independence of creation
Haught writes in Darwin Design and Divine Providence
“Theologically speaking, therefore the vastness of evolutionary duration, the spontaneity of random
variations or mutations, and even the automatic machinations of natural selection could be thought
of as essential ingredients in the emergence of cosmic independence.”
God is love and allows, in fact is embedded in, the self determination of evolution and the
emergence of new forms. Gods allows the universe to freely become itself.
“ a theology after Darwin also argues that divine providence influences the world in a persuasive
rather than a coercive way. Since God is love and not domineering force, the world must be endowed
with inner spontaneity and self-creativity that allows it “to become itself” and thus participate in the
adventure of its own creation”
God is self giving love Divine Kenosis
For Haught divine providence is self- giving love , that is the nature of God and is what is within and
behind evolution and that as Ward has pointed out involves suffering and pain which is part of the
nature of the process and the nature of God. A God of this nature wants creatures to be themselves
and become, and the process involves suffering pain and death.
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This concept is mirrored by my final theological quote from John Polkinghorne the Anglican priest
theologian and physicist
“ An extremely important aspect of twentieth century theology has been the recognition that
creation is an act of divine Kenosis, God’s self limitation in allowing the creaturely other to be and to
make itself.”
So I hope that I have provided enough to inspire and challenge you to share from your own positions
of religious faith or otherwise.
In summary I see the inspiration from Darwin and the challenges it poses for faith as being:
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Darwin’s close attention to the Book of Nature and rejection of the plain reading of the
Book of Scripture challenges us to consider how we read our own scriptures in the light of
the discoveries of science.
Darwin’s use of species change in his theory challenges the concept of God’s ex machina
intervention to create a independent species in a special perfect creation and to consider
the, liberating nature of God
Darwins theory of natural selection as the mechanism for evolution challenges the idea of a
providential God who does not suffer and encourages us to consider the nature of God as
self emptying love.
As people of faith we are challenged to consider the purpose of evolution in a way which is
in unison with science
As people of faith we are rightly challenged to consider in the light of the above, the purpose
of the creation and the beginning and ending of time.
A small fragment of one of my own poems:
When the time is rightWhen it is possible,
God becomes and makes anew
And the radiance spills out to make the angels shout. CJB
The last paragraph of the Origin in 1860
There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed by
the Creator into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on
according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful
and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved.
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The inspiration of Darwin for science, education and faith
Dr Carolyn Boulter
Bibliography
Ian Barbour (2000) “When science meets religion” Harper Collins: London
Janet Browne (2002) “Charles Darwin: The Power of Place” Random: London
Francis Darwin “The Life of Charles Darwin” Tiger : London Reprint of 1902 edition in 1995
Charles Darwin (1958) (With original omissions restored. Edited with Appendix and Notes by his
grand-daughter Nora Barlow). “The Autobiography of Charles Darwin 1809-1882”Collins:London
William Dembski and Michael Ruse (eds) (2004) “Debating Design: From Darwin to DNA”.
Cambridge University Press.
Randal Keynes (2002) “Darwin his daughter and human evolution” Riverhead: New York
Mark Isaak (2005) “The Counter Creationism Handbook” Univeristy of California Press: London
Elizabeth Johnson (2014) “Ask the beasts:Darwin and the God of Love” Bloomsbury:London
Mary Midgley (2007) “Intelligent Design Theory and other ideological problems” Philosophy of great
Britain Society Impact pamphlet No 15
John Polkingthorne (1983) “The way the world is: The Christian perspective of a scientist”
SPCK;London
Clifford Reed (2011) “Till the peoples are one- Darwins Unitarian connections” Lindsay Press:
London
Ruth Scott (200£) “Darwin and the barnacle” Faber and Faber: London
Keith Ward (2006) “Pascal’s Fire: Scientific Faith and Religious Understanding” One world: Oxford
Websites for all Darwin manuscripts online and Darwin Correspondence Project of all letters
http://darwin-online.org.uk/
http://darwinproject.ac.uk
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The inspiration of Darwin for science, education and faith
Dr Carolyn Boulter
http://www.linnean.org/Education+Resources/Secondary_Resources/darwin_inspired_learning
http://www.nationalstemcentre.org.uk/elibrary/collection/1459/darwin-inspired-secondaryschool-materials
Barnacles feeding
Ichneumen wasp
lays eggs in a
caterpillar
Carolyn Boulter, Michael Reiss, Dawn Sanders (2015)
“Darwin-Inspired Learning” Sense : Rotterdam
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