Lecture 25

Evolution, the answer to the biological explosion.

There are entries relevant to this chapter in the blog for these lecture notes

Introduction

Four decades after Lavoisier's death, three years before Mendeleyev was born, in other words in the middle of the revolution of chemistry, the young graduate Charles Darwin joined the English naval vessel Beagle on a five year voyage around the world. It was to become the opening scene for controversy that lasted for a century and in some circles continues today.

The revolution of biology completed the scientific revolution that had begun in the 17th century with the revolution in physics and continued in the 18th century with the revolution in chemistry. It was prepared by the pioneering work of the Swedish botanist Linnaeus, was opened by the French naturalist Lamarck in the 18th century, and was completed by Darwin in the middle of the 19th century:

Why did biology have to wait nearly 200 years to see its own revolution after Newton had formulated his laws? Why did it lag half a century behind the development of the new philosophy (Lecture 22) and 70 years behind the revolution in chemistry? The answer, as always, is that science develops when the need arises.

From colonial acquisition to colonial exploitation

In Lecture 17 we discussed the motives behind the European desire for the acquisition of colonies and saw that it was driven by the expectation of profit, which explained the brutality of the Spanish colonial conquerors of the early 16th century. During the next 200 years Dutch, English, French and other explorers had crossed all oceans and continents, often supported by their governments in the search for profitable enterprise.

By the time of the 18th century three types of colonies had developed (Anderle et al., 1966): Spain, the bulwark of reaction and entrenched feudalism, was only interested in pillage and plunder; its colonies are described as robbery colonies. The Dutch republic with its tradition of trade established trading posts that exploited the population of the colonies through trading monopolies and unfair trading conditions; its colonies are described as trading colonies. England and France opened their colonies for large numbers of settlers who displaced and eliminated the local population; their colonies are classified as settler colonies.

The type of colony was determined by the interest and social and economic structure of the colonizing power and the state of social and political development in the colonies. When the Dutch could not find useful trading "partners" in South Africa they established the first settler colony in Africa in 1652. Feudal Portugal, on the other hand, took over the space trade from the Arabs, established a sea trade monopoly based on its Asian trading colonies, and developed the slave trade.

The new colonial activity brought new plants and animals to Europe that no European had ever seen before. The number of described plants doubled within less than a century and had virtually exploded into tens of thousands of species before the 18th century was over. Some of the animals were so unusual to European eyes that even science found their authenticity hard to believe; the first platypus to arrive in England in 1799 was declared a hoax.

The wave of new life forms did not go unnoticed by the public. The debate over Ptolemy and Copernicus had been decided a century ago in favour of the latter, and after dinner talk began to focus on the strange world of the colonies. The successful industrialist and professional moved his armillary spheres aside to add a heated glasshouse - called conservatory or orangery - to his property to show his admiring guests palms and oranges from distant lands.

Initially the new plants served only as exotic decoration for royal gardens. Potatoes were cultivated for their flowers, tomatoes for their showy fruits; both were not harvested. But it did not take the European governments long to realize that much material of value could be found in the colonies, and scientific expeditions were organized "to investigate the plants and the metals and minerals" and bring information about medicine used by other people. On average one major expedition left Europe for every decade between 1700 and 1850. All included at least one botanist and one draughtsman for the documentation of the investigations.

The utilitarian motive of these expeditions is demonstrated by the emphasis laid upon accurate description of all plants found in the new territories. Plants promised useful cultivation. Zoology was secondary, and compared with the masterly drawings of plants the depiction of animals was mostly crude and inaccurate.

A major driving force in the study of new plants was the desire of the colonial powers to find species suitable for plantations in their colonies. This required scientific study and propagation under controlled conditions and gave botanical gardens a new role. Royal houses of all civilizations always had their botanical and zoological pleasure gardens. (The zoo of the Mughal emperor Jahangir is just one particularly well organized example. Others are known from the earliest civilizations. Queen Hatshepsut of Egypt sent an expedition to the mouth of the Red Sea in about 1460 BC and established a botanical garden and zoo for plants and animals collected during the voyage.)

In 18th century Europe the botanical gardens were transformed into scientific institutions for the classification and study of new plants. In France the revolutionary government took over the royal Jardin des Plants and established the Muséum National d'Histoire Naturelle (National Museum of Natural History), still one of the leading scientific institutions of the world. In London the Royal Botanical Gardens (known today as Kew Gardens) became the location of an orangery and were expanded during 1841 - 1885 into a leading scientific institution with the addition of a tropical Palm House and a Temperate House. In Russia Peter the Great established a Pharmaceutical Garden on Vorony Island for the purpose of growing medicinal plants that was reorganized in 1823 to become the Imperial Botanical Garden and is today part of the Komarov Botanical Institute.

Tea, rubber and coffee were the most profitable plants. The Royal Botanical Gardens were instrumental in introducing rubber from its American origin into all tropical British colonies. Tea originated from China, where it had been planted and consumed since ancient times, and had been introduced to Japan in 805 AD. But these two countries were determined not to become European colonies and did not allow foreigners access to tea plantations, and for a long period tea was only available through trade. The first shipment arrived in 1601, brought by the Dutch East India Company. In 1669 the English East India company brought tea from Java, where it had been introduced from Japan in 1684 by the German physician Andreas Cleyer. But access to Chinese tea was still barred for another 150 years. In 1827 the Dutch tea taster J. I. L. L. Jacobson managed to get into the forbidden royal tea gardens and risked his life to take seeds and experienced labourers out of the country. This ended the Chinese monopoly, and the first tea plantation in Assam, British India, was established in 1835. The Scottish adventurer Robert Fortune entered China in 1843 and collected tea specimens and many other plants. Plantations in Darjeeling were established in 1856, plantations in Ceylon in 1867. For most of the 18th century the British East India Company had a most profitable monopoly on the tea trade.

The taxonomic system

While chemists of the 17th century found their situation difficult because new chemical elements were discovered every few years but could hope to get order into the chaos (Lecture 24), biologists had real reason for despair. Tens of thousands of new species had to be described and classified, but nobody knew how. Jean-Jacques Rousseau, who in 1774 began work on a Dictionnaire des termes d'usage en botanique ("A Dictionary of Terms Used in Botany"), wrote:

"I ask every intelligent reader how it is possible to pursue the study of plants, but reject the study of nomenclature. It is as if one wished to become learned in a language without wanting to learn the words. ... It is a question of knowing whether three hundred years of study and observation should be lost to botany, if three hundred volumes of figures and descriptions should be thrown into the fire, if the knowledge gained by all the scientists who have devoted their money, their lives and their attention to the immense, costly, difficult and dangerous voyages, are useless to their successors, and if each starting off again from zero can by himself attain the same knowledge that a long series of investigations and studies have distributed through the mass of the human race. ... To accept the study of botany but to reject that of nomenclature is therefore to fall into the most absurd contradiction." (Drouin, 1995)

This was about forty years after the publication of Systema Naturae ("The System of Nature") by the Swedish botanist Carl von Linnée, known by his Latinized name Carolus Linnaeus. Linné had only undertaken a relatively modest expedition into Lapland, but he returned from it determined to set out his discoveries in orderly fashion. 25 years later he had completed his System of Nature, an all-embracing classification system for the living world.

Much of Linnaeus' classification did not stand up to the test of time. His classification of primates (the genus that includes humans) was influenced by the racist ideas of colonialism, and his sexual classification of the flowering plants caused much controversy as soon as it was published. His lasting contributions to biological science are the discovery that sexual reproduction is not limited to the animal world but also the most widespread mode of reproduction in plants and the introduction of the binomial classification.

We shall see the importance of sexual reproduction for evolution in Lecture 34 when we shall discuss Mendel's system of inherited traits and the deciphering of the genome. At the time of Linnaeus the importance of sexual reproduction in plants for evolution was not understood, and Linnaeus' "sexual classification" was popular mainly because it provided an easy means of plant identification by simple inspection of the flower structure. Easy identification in the field was indeed the main purpose of Linnaeus' classification system, which was one reason why it had to be strongly modified in parts and abandoned in others because it did not follow the natural relations between species as they had developed through evolution.

Linnaeus did not see animals and plants related to each other through an evolutionary process. He had devised his system as a means of documentation for the many life forms that he assumed had been created or at least had existed independently of each other since the beginning of time. The idea does not stand up to evidence, but Linnaeus' system was extremely useful and is still the basis for classification today. In his binomial system every plant or animal is described by a genus and a specific name; thus, humans are described as the species sapiens of the genus Homo. In the modern system the taxonomic hierarchy of Homo sapiens is:

Evolution

It is a widespread but mistaken belief that the theory of evolution was first proposed by Charles Darwin. The idea of evolution occurred variously during the history of civilizations. When Saint Augustine tried to understand the laws of nature in the 4th century (Lecture 12) he wrote:

"In the beginning God made Heaven and Earth, that is the seeds of Heaven and Earth, for the material of Heaven and Earth was yet in confusion; but since it was inevitable that from these seeds Heaven and Earth would be, therefore the material is thus called." (Singer, 1959)

In this concept the act of creation is restricted to creating "the seeds" of all that we can see today but not the original form of the various creatures themselves; the creatures evolved from the seeds of creation. The similarity of many life forms with others could not go unnoticed even during the earliest civilizations, and some form of relationship between species would appear perfectly reasonable. The big question of evolution was not so much whether it occurred but how it works. This question remained unanswered until the 19th century.

The first scientist to formulate an answer to that question was Jean-Baptiste Lamarck, a French aristocrat who had devoted himself to biology and embraced the new ideal of rational thought to such an extent that he took a leading role in the initiatives of the French Revolution to advance science. Lamarck was the driving force behind the decision of the revolutionary government to establish the National Museum of Natural History, to which he was appointed as curator of invertebrates. In May 1803, ten years after the Museum's foundation, he presented his conclusions from a decade of invertebrate studies to an audience in the Museum's lecture hall:

"We perceive that, relative to the animal kingdom, we should chiefly devote our attention to the invertebrate animals, because their enormous multiplicity in nature, the singular diversity of their systems of organization, and of their means of multiplication ... show us, much better than the higher animals, the true course of nature, and the means which she has used and which she still unceasingly employs to give existence to all the living bodies of which we have knowledge.

Do we not therefore perceive that by the action of the laws of organization. ... nature has in favourable times, places, and climates multiplied her first germs of animality, given place to developments of their organizations, ... and increased and diversified their organs? Then ... aided by much time and by a slow but constant diversity of circumstances, she has gradually brought about in this respect the state of things which we now observe. How grand is this consideration, and especially how remote is it from all that is generally thought on this subject!"

Lamarck envisaged evolution as a process in which modifications to the organs of an individual are inherited by the next generation. In the famous example of the giraffe he said that the giraffe's neck would be stretched by repeated attempts to reach higher branches and that as a result the offspring would inherit a longer neck. He formulated his theory in two laws:

1. Organs are improved by repeated use and weakened by disuse.
2. The changes to organs so produced "are preserved by reproduction to the new individuals which arise."

The validity of his first law is easily confirmed by observation; it is the basis of any personal fitness programme. Lamarck's second law, known as the "inheritance of acquired traits" and termed the theory of Lamarckism or Lamarckianism, has, however, been shown to be not in accordance with nature. We know today that traits are inherited from parents through chromosomes and inscribed into our DNA. Physical exercise of the parents can influence the development of their organs but cannot change their chromosomes and therefore cannot be transmitted to their offspring.

Lamarck's theory was not accepted during his lifetime, but not for reasons of its factual erroneous nature. Lamarck's distracters did not accept the very idea of evolution. The science community ignored him, and on his death one magazine obituary did grave injustice to his many achievements in various areas of science (which are outside the context of this lecture) by stating that his name would soon be "consigned to oblivion."

A detailed discussion of the modern concept of evolution is left to Lecture 34. In the present context it is sufficient to note that today the development of species is not seen as a linear process towards an ultimate goal but as the product of random events. Lamarck was closer to Augustine in this respect; he viewed evolution as a process that aimed towards increasing perfection. In the Philosophie zoologique he wrote: "Nature, in producing in succession every species of animal, and beginning with the least perfect or simplest to end her work with the most perfect, has gradually complicated their structure." One consequence of this concept was that in Lamarck's view species did not disappear because of natural catastrophes or imperfect adaptation to their environment but because they evolved into different, more perfect species.

Fifty years after Lamarck's death in 1809 Charles Darwin changed the ideas on evolution dramatically. In his view the multitude of existing species was not the result of constant improvement; the single cell creature that floats in the sea is equally well adapted to its living space as any complex mammal. Darwin saw evolution as a response to the large variation of the conditions of life and a method to exploit ecological niches. In his now famous Origin of Species he wrote:

"The affinities of all the beings of the same class have sometimes been represented by a great tree. I believe this simile largely speaks the truth. The green and budding twigs may represent existing species; and those produced during each former year may represent the long succession of extinct species. ... The limbs divided into great branches, and these into lesser and lesser branches, were themselves once, when the tree was small, budding twigs; and this connection of the former and present buds by ramifying branches may well represent the classification of all extinct and living species in groups subordinate to groups. ... From the first growth of the tree, many a limb and branch has decayed and dropped off, and these lost branches of various sizes may represent those whole orders, families, and genera which have now no living representatives, and which are known to us only from having been found in a fossil state. ... As buds give rise by growth to fresh buds, and these, if vigorous, branch out and overtop on all a feebler branch, so by generation I believe it has been with the Tree of Life, which fills with its dead and broken branches the crust of the earth, and covers the surface with its ever branching and beautiful ramifications." (Darwin, 1859, quoted from Guralnick et al, 1993)

The work established Darwin as the naturalist who discovered the method of natural selection through which evolution occurs. He developed his concept during his participation in the voyage around the world of the British navy vessel Beagle. An extended stay on the Galapagos Islands proved particularly fruitful, since the islands had no contact with any continent and its animal and plant life, which had evolved in isolation, provided Darwin with a natural laboratory, which he complemented with own experiments.

The history of Darwin's discovery provides another example for the fact that science develops as the need arises. The evidence for natural selection accumulated as the amount of observational material collected around the world increased, not only from living plants and animals but for the first time from long extinct species. The first dinosaur fossils had been found decades before the first nearly complete dinosaur skeleton was discovered in 1858, one year before Darwin's Origin of Species. It was only a matter of time until a biologist would come up with the theory of natural selection.

As it happened, Darwin himself was rather unhappy about his discovery and kept it from the public for nearly 15 years. As a religious man he did not want to offend, and the thought of going public caused him physical pain and much suffering. He was forced to declare his position in 1858 when he received a manuscript from the naturalist Alfred Russell Wallace, who had been working in the Malayan archipelago. Wallace's paper set out the theory of natural selection in terms identical to Darwin's ideas. Darwin and Wallace presented their concept as a joint paper to the Linnean Society, and in the following year Darwin published his Origin of Species. The book sold out within six weeks and had to be reprinted again and again.

Darwin, who held Lamarck in high esteem and accepted his idea of inheritance of acquired traits, nevertheless did not adopt Lamarck's idea of evolution as a linear process of continuously improving adaptation; he saw evolution as a process of adaptation for the purpose of exploiting additional niches of the general living space. The starting point of his theory was the observation that most species produce more offspring than can survive and that individuals of a species therefore compete with each other for food. Darwin postulated that individuals that are better adapted to the situation than others live longer and produce more and healthier offspring, which inherit the adaptation advantage.

In reality the process of evolution through natural selection is more complex. Modern biology has unravelled much of the detail, based on our understanding of heredity, cell structure and the dynamics of species populations. Modern biology is now solidly based on a quantitative, highly mathematical description of evolution. (Lecture 34)

The 19th century did not have the tools to verify Darwin's theory beyond doubt. The experiments and writings of Gregor Mendel, which were produced during Darwin's lifetime and eventually furnished much of the necessary proof, went unnoticed for several decades. Lamarck's concept of inherited traits therefore co-existed with Darwin's concept of natural selection for half a century - a repeat of the development of physics (Lecture 20), where the Ptolemaic and the Copernican system co-existed for nearly a century, and in chemistry, where the idea of phlogiston co-existed with the concept of elements for nearly fifty years (Lecture 24). The proof that Darwin's theory was correct came only when Mendel's work was rediscovered at the beginning of the 20th century.

"Social Darwinism"

One of the reasons why Darwin's theory of natural selection became so popular was that in bastardized form it could be used as an excuse for the misery brought upon the population by the rapidly expanding capitalism. In the public mind Darwin's natural selection was translated into the "survival of the fittest," a phrase coined by the social philosopher Herbert Spencer.

In Darwin's concept evolution is not the result of the survival of the most adapted individuals but the result of preferential reproduction of such individuals. In other words, the success or failure of an adaptation is not decided during the life span of the existing generation but can only be assessed during the following generations. The formulation "survival of the fittest" shifted the focus to the survival success in the present generation and allowed evolution to be used as an argument of adaptive superiority of the rich.

The foundation for this aberration and deliberate misuse of scientific argument had been laid a decade before Darwin's birthday by the reverend Thomas Malthus. His theory of population growth and the laws that limit it was so ideally suited to the politics of the ruling bourgeoisie that Malthus was considered the greatest economist of his day. The inscription on his grave stone in the church of Bath reads:

The East India Company found Malthus' theories so appealing during his lifetime that in 1805 it made him professor of history and political economy at its company college in Haileybury, Hertforshire. For the rest of his life Malthus lived pleasantly on the company's salary; in 1819 he was elected a fellow of the Royal Society, in 1833 a member of the French Académie des Sciences Morales et Politiques and in the same year to the Prussian Royal Academy of Berlin.

The foundation of Malthus' career was his discovery of the "laws" that govern population growth. In An Essay on the Principle of Population, a tract he published anonymously in 1798, he wrote:

"Population, when unchecked, increases in a geometrical ratio. Subsistence only increases in an arithmetical ratio. A slight acquaintance with numbers will show the immensity of the first power compared to the second."

Although Malthus prided himself to be an experienced statistician (he became a founding member of the Statistical Society of London) he never derived his "laws" scientifically. In an age where science was firmly based on observation and experiment he was required to show some pretence of proof. He expanded his tract into a lengthy book that went through six revised editions filled with much empirical observation but no attempt at a derivation of his laws from the collected data.

The range of reproductive strategies of species varies from the production of a single offspring at intervals of several years in some mammals (including humans) to a million offspring per female per year in fishes, and it is obvious that no single population theory can describe all populations. When only the human species is considered a simple calculation shows that under the assumption of zero infant mortality and an equal number of males and females the population remains stagnant if every female produces two offspring. Malthus' geometrical ratio is achieved with four offspring per female. Obviously, any other ratio is possible within reasonable limits and depends on the fertility rate of females (Lamarck was an 11th child) and the survival rate of the offspring (queen Maria Theresia of Austria gave birth to 16 children; 10 survived to reproductive age, a ratio much above that of the common people). Modern experience of developed countries shows that a zero population growth requires about 2.3 offspring per female.

The growth of the means of subsistence, on the other hand, depends mainly on the available workforce and the development of the means of production (productivity). Experience has shown that as a result of scientific discoveries the productivity of agriculture and industry grew so rapidly that the world population was never limited by food, water or energy shortages. Studies made by various organizations of the United Nations have shown that this situation will continue even under the anticipated growth of the world population. The world has sufficient resources to feed all people. The widespread starvation and suffering that we see today is not the result of overpopulation but of the prevailing economic system. This issue will be discussed again in more detail in Lecture 27.

A scientific population theory starts from the premise that people are the most precious resource of a country and that under otherwise identical conditions the country with the larger population is in a better situation to create wealth. It is an assumption that would certainly have been correct in Malthus' time. There are of course limits to endless population growth; but history has shown that the population of Europe stopped growing not because it ran out of means of subsistence but because the society became affluent enough to provide social security, health insurance and an old age pension system, which eliminated the need for many children as an insurance policy for old age (Lecture 9).

Today a responsible population policy has to balance industrial development, environmental protection, and social security issues and does not promote unchecked population growth regardless of the circumstances. The England of the 19th century was not under the same pressure. Reverend Malthus recommended a check on population growth nevertheless:

"It is an evident truth that, whatever may be the rate of increase in the means of subsistence, the increase in population must be limited by it, at least after the food has been divided into the smallest shares that will support life. All the children born, beyond what would be required to keep up the population to this level, must necessarily perish, unless room be made for them by the deaths of grown persons. ... To act consistently, therefore, we should facilitate, instead of foolishly and vainly endeavouring to impede, the operation of nature in producing this mortality, and if we dread the too frequent visitation of the horrid form of famine, we should sedulously encourage the other forms of destruction, which we compel nature to use. Instead of recommending cleanliness to the poor, we should encourage contrary habits. In our towns we should make the streets narrower, crowd more people into the houses, and court the return of the plague. In the country we should build our villages near stagnant pools, and particularly encourage settlements in all marshy and unwholesome situations. But above all, we should reprobate specific remedies for ravaging diseases: and those benevolent, but much mistaken men, who have thought they were doing a service to mankind by projecting schemes for the total extirpation of particular disorders. If by these and similar means the annual mortality were increased ... we might probably every one of us marry at the age of puberty and yet few be absolutely starved." (Hamlin, 2001)

Social Darwinism and its slogan "survival of the fittest" were used to provide the appearance of scientific support for Malthus' theories and social recipes. Both contributed without doubt to the decision of the English government during the Great Potato Famine in Ireland of 1845 - 1846 not to send food relief to the starving Irish people. It was never part of Darwin's theory of evolution, and the use of Darwin's name in a pseud-scientific invention cannot detract from Darwin's standing as one of the greatest scientists of the European civilization.

Does this mean that true science as practiced by Darwin was above issues of class and power? It should be remembered that the five-year voyage of the Beagle was ordered and financed by the government, so the bourgeoisie must have expected some return. Whether it was cheap subsistence for the common people like potatoes, luxury goods like coffee or plants for profitable industrial use like rubber, the expectation was that the Beagle would return something worth the effort.

The history of Malthus and Darwin illustrates the interest in science of two factions of the ruling class. The government, acting in the interest of the ruling class in general, supported exploration voyages that fostered new scientific ideas and discoveries, which could eventually be exploited by industry and commerce. The East India Company belonged to the more aggressive faction of the bourgeoisie that has no scruples to use pseudo-science to advance its interests. The situation has not changed much today, as we shall see in later lectures.

Although "Social Darwinism" flourished during the 19th century, it is not extinct. The dismantling of social services and of the public health system practiced by the neo-conservative governments of today is clearly based on the concept of the "survival of the fittest." It is no longer expressed in these words, because in that form it has been discredited long ago. But there is no fundamental difference between the principle of "the user pays" for what used to be free public services and the principle of the survival of the fittest; both view society only as a collection of competing individuals and ignore the layered social structure of society. In such a concept the suffering of an individual from lack of access to adequate health care, education and social security can only be the result of a competitive disadvantage of that individual as a badly adapted specimen of the species, not as a member of a social class.

Creation "science"

Darwin's concept of evolution through natural selection represented a scientific revolution of biology. It generated a response as virulent as the response to the scientific revolution of physics (Lecture 19). But during the 200 years since Galilei's trial the organized churches had learned not to offer organized resistance to new scientific insights into the laws of nature. The virulent protest came from individuals and churches at the fringe of Christianity and was mostly restricted to the USA.

We shall look at North American colonial science and society in the next lecture, where it will become evident that the states that eventually constituted the USA grew from a unique mixture of the liberal principles of the Enlightenment and dogmatic Calvinist religion. The two influences are still in conflict today, and this is the reason why the USA much more than any other country with a Christian background is characterized by double standards and pretence in public and private life.

The first protests against evolution as being counter to Christian faith were raised already during the times of Lamarck but had no great impact. The situation changed as soon as Darwin included the human species in the evolutionary process. The idea that humans had evolved and were not the result of divine intervention threatened basic values of dogmatic Christianity. It threw into question the subservient status of women, which could no longer be justified because God said to Eve that she should be obedient to Adam. It liberated humans from the dogma of the original sin (also a result of Eve's failure to obey) and was therefore seen as a threat to the mechanism the church used to control people.

The economic convulsion of the early 20th century (to which we shall return in Lecture29 in detail) sharpened the conflict between science and fundamentalist Christians. World War I and the depressed state of the economy that followed went hand in hand with an attitude of reckless spending of the affluent classes. Traditional moral values were openly flouted; people ignored prohibition and flocked to dance halls. Fundamentalist Christians tried to stem the tide by banning the teaching of evolution from public schools.

In 1925 the state of Tennessee passed a Statute that prohibited the teaching of "any theory that denies the story of the Divine Creation of man as taught in the Bible, and ... teach[es] instead that man has descended from a lower order of animals." The formulation "descended from a lower order of animals" was a widespread bastardization of Darwin's concept of evolution. Darwin had stated that apes and humans have common ancestors; the fundamentalists turned this into the claim that humans evolved from apes.

When the Tennessee school teacher John Scopes volunteered to challenge the Act the ensuing "Scopes trial" developed into a national showdown between science and fundamentalism that took on the face of a national carnival and was watched by the rest of the civilized world in amazement. The defence wanted the Act declared unconstitutional, but the judge avoided the issue and imposed on John Scopes the minimum fine described under the Act. The Act was not repealed until 1967.

Modern creationists still try to force changes of state laws of the USA. The courts today generally accept that the teaching of creationism in state-funded schools is a violation of the constitution, which prescribes the separation of state and religion. Creationists therefore promote the idea of "creation science" or "intelligent design theory" now as an alternative scientific theory to evolution and say that both theories are as yet unverified and therefore should be taught with equal emphasis. Some paragraphs are thus necessary to address the issue.

To begin with, there cannot be even the slightest doubt that "creation science" is not science but a religious movement. Creationism claims that the world was created as described in the Bible. The creation story told in the Bible's Genesis is just one of many creation stories that developed in different civilizations and cultures over the millennia. It is remarkable that none of the other creation myths has ever been promoted as evidence against evolution. Evolution is accepted as the correct description of the history of life on Earth by all religions, with the exception of some organizations at the Christian fringe.

The creationists themselves acknowledge that "the controversy is less about scientific fact than about promotion of a theistic versus atheistic world view." (Browning, 1998) This suggests that the many arguments offered by creationists in favour of their idea that the Earth is only some 10,000 years old and was completely flooded 5,000 years ago are pseudo-science invented to support their theory. This does of course not relieve scientists from analyzing their arguments. However, this is not the place to do that. Anyone who wants to follow the debate is invited to visit the internet, the place where fringe groups congregate. A simple search engine search will unearth a multitude of creationist web sites. It will also lead to sites devoted to defeating their ideas.

We saw in Lecture 22 that since the Age of Reason the separation between science and religion can be defined by allocating to science the inquiry into how nature works and to religion the inquiry into why life and the universe exists. As our understanding of the mechanism of evolution progresses, the final line of defence for creationism has been retreating back in time: "All theories of origins ultimately come down to either a supernatural or natural (no) cause. Evolution postulates that complex living systems self-developed from dead chemicals. Macro-evolution has never been demonstrated. ... Supernatural causes are a necessity!" (Browning, 1998)

The question how the first common ancestor to all living beings arose is probably the only question raised by the creationists that has legitimacy; it may also be the one that could decide for or against divine intervention. Science has some ideas but has not found the answer yet. The problem of the creationists is that the question is not sufficient in itself to lend support to the creation story of the Bible. Augustine could already accommodate evolution with divine intervention. Modern Christians should be able to do that, too. Creationism is not putting science into question; it is an instrument of people who follow a totally different agenda, one of indoctrination and control for the purpose of political power.

Creationism is still an active force in the USA, to the extent that the National Academy of Sciences in 1999 saw the need to publish a booklet that describes some of the positions taken by creation "science" and presents an analysis of these claims. (National Academy of Sciences, 1999)

Summary

• Between 1700 and 1850 colonial expansion was accompanied by one major expedition for every decade.
• This lead to an explosion in the number of known plant and animal species and created the need for uniform taxonomy.
• The leading colonial powers established botanical gardens and museums for the study and commercial exploitation of the new species.
• Linnaeus' classification system introduced the principle of binomial names for species as a means for describing a static living world.
• Lamarck developed the concept of evolution through inheritance of acquired traits.
• Darwin and Wallace introduced the concept of evolution as a process of natural selection.
• Darwin's concept was misused as "Social Darwinism" for political purposes in support of Malthus' population theory.
• Opposition to the science of evolution from Christian fundamentalism culminated in the Scopes trial of 1925.
• This opposition continues under the guise of "creation science."

References

Anderle et al. (1966) Weltgeschichte in Daten. VEB Deutscher Verlag der Wissenschaften, Berlin.

Browning, J. D. (1998) Basics of Creation Versus Evolution, http://emporium.turnpike.net/C/cs/basics/ (accessed 15 April 2004)

Drouin, J.-M. (1995) Lavoisier: From Linnaeus to Darwin: Naturalists and Travellers. In: M. Serres (editor): A History of Scientific Thought, Elements of a History of Science. Blackwell, Oxford, 401 - 421. (Translation of Éléments d'Histoire des Sciences, Bordas, Paris, 1989)

Guralnick, R., D. Polly, C. Whitney and D. Smith (1993 - 2000) Evolution: theory and science, http://www.ucmp.berkeley.edu/history/evotheory.html (accessed 15 April 2004)

Hamlin, J. (2001) Malthus, Department of Sociology and Anthropology, University of Minnesota, http://www.d.umn.edu/cla/faculty/jhamlin/2111/Malthus/Malthus.htm (accessed 19 April 2004)

National Academy of Sciences (1999) Science and Creationism, National Academy Press, Washington, DC. Also at http://www.nap.edu/html/creationism/ (accessed 27 August 2004)

Singer, C. (1959) A Short History of Scientific Ideas, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 525 pp., p.502.