Philip R. Sloan, Gerald McKenny, and Kathleen Eggleson, Darwin in the Twenty-First Century: Nature, Humanity, and God (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 2015), xviii+461 Pps., $49.00.
The title under review is derived from one of the last major academic conferences that commemorated the 150th anniversary of the publication of Darwin’s On The Origin of Species (November 24, 1859), and the bicentennial of his birth on February 12, 1809. Cosponsored by John J. Reilly Center for Science, Technology, and Values at Notre Dame, and the Science, Theology, and the Ontological Quest project within the Vatican Pontifical Council for Culture, it brought together well over twenty interdisciplinarians to explore the heritage of evolutionary theory and its implications for human, social, and religious concerns in November, 2015. The volume is intended as both a product of the events that transpired, as well as advancement toward maturity of the field in the twenty-first century. The focus of this volume is on present and future developments within evolutionary science and its impact on the humanities, rather than a strict historical commemoration of achievements. While based on the conference at Notre Dame, it does not include all the papers presented there, and has a distinctively Roman Catholic orientation (as might be surmised). The division of this collection of essays into the three areas of “Nature,” “Humanity,” and “God” reflects not only the conference itself, but also the major areas that evolutionary theory impacts: “natural philosophy”; humanity’s place in the cosmos; evolutionary ethics; and the relation between a scientific explanation of human origins and theological ones. In what follows, on will find a selective representation of notable highlights that this author deems particularly important.
A particularly strong chapter within the first section on “Nature” is Scott F. Gilbert’s “Evolution Through Developmental Change: How Alterations in Development Cause Evolutionary Changes in Anatomy.” Therein, Gilbert relates how the Modern Synthesis explains natural selection within both a species and in populations exceptionally well. However, this situation changed in mid-1970s when two major advances contributed to a more complex evolutionary theory that could explain both micro- and macroevolution: 1). DNA sequencing, and 2). Developmental genetics (38). Gilbert claims that the classical modes of evolutionary developmental biology – i.e., heterotypy, heterochrony, heterometry, and heterotopy supplement and extend the Modern Synthesis, but symbiotic and epigenetic contributions could be more revolutionary (53). In chapter five, “Accident, Adaptation, and Teleology in Aristotle and Darwinism,” David J. Depew contrasts how Aristotle perceived teleology – as consisting of a duality of both natural and intentional aspects – with how the Victorian Englishman restricted teleology to merely its intentional aspect. Depew contends that biological evolution exhibits natural teleology, but not intentional teleology (127). Gennaro Auletta, Ivan Colagè, and Pablo D’Ambrosio join together in the sixth chapter, “The Game of Life Implies Both Teleonomy and Teleology,” arguing that both teleonomy and teleology are valid explanatory mechanisms in biology. In the essay, they make a notable distinction between teleonomy – which may be ascribed to all biological processes that imply forms of co-adaptation but not built-in goals – whereas teleology concerns processes that have goals which are built-in and necessarily nested in the constitution of an organism (146).
Chapter eight, by Robert J. Richards, is entitled “Darwin’s Evolutionary Ethics: The Empirical and Normative Justifications,” and argues that Darwin employed a community-type selection to explain those human social behaviors and instincts that were costly to self but were advantageous to kin and the wider community (189). To this, it is claimed, Darwin added that the fundamental altruistic impulse is augmented by two processes: praise/blame, and the promise of reciprocity (190). In “Questioning the Zoological Gaze: Darwinian Epistemology and Anthropology,” Philip R. Sloan develops a philosophical anthropology that returns to the phenomenological tradition, and draws upon the tradition of Continental philosophical anthropology. More specifically, Sloan argues that we must break with a line in philosophical reflection predominant within Anglo-Americans that assumes reflections on human beings must necessarily begin with the natural sciences, and avers instead that it is apropos to begin from the experience of ourselves as existentially existent and self-reflective beings (250).
Chapter eleven begins the section on “God”, and is entitled “Evolution and the Catholic Faith,” written by John O’Callaghan. Frankly, this essay is out of place, when viewed from the perspective of the rest of the volume, and the transition is unnecessarily abrupt. O’Callaghan posits a very conservative position on the Roman Catholic faith, and the volume would have been better positioned by placing William E. Carroll’s chapter twelve, “After Darwin, Aquinas: A Universe Created and Evolving,” first in this section. Carroll states that the challenges posed by evolutionary biology do not so much demand a new theism, but rather a Reappropriation of insights gleaned from Aquinas, especially with regards to the doctrine of creation, God’s transcendence, and God’s action within the world. Interestingly, Carroll stipulates that we have no need of positing a kenotic theology, as many do in the contemporary environ, in contradistinction to what a later author in the book does (Życiński, chapter thirteen). Personally, I also take issue with Carroll’s position on this, and posit instead that rather than seeing divine kenosis as a self-limitation, we should view it as a divine self-offering (which kenou connotes in the Greek). Viewed as such, one can picture kenosis as a divine pouring of self into the very constituent matter that composed the early, chaotic universe.
The title closes with two contributions, looking at past and future prospects. Indeed, in chapter fifteen, “Imagining a World Without Darwin,” Peter J. Bowler sets up a counterfactual scenario that reconstructs history as if Darwin’s theory had not been proposed in 1859. He contends that an evolutionary movement would most likely still have emerged in the 1860s, but exploiting a non-Darwinian mechanism, and suggests that although natural selection would have eventually been discovered, the theory would not have been a major component of the debate until early in the twentieth century (385, 388). In the final chapter, “What Future for Darwinism?,” Jean Gayon proposes that Gould’s (2002) distinction between extension, replacement, and expansion, provides a useful basis from which to gauge the future of Darwinism. “Expansion” means that the same principles remain central to the theory, but they have been reformulated in a way to give a truly different aspect to the entire edifice. Gayon contends that we observe this “expansion” of a theoretical framework in the generalization of the concept of “descent with modification” to infra-organismic levels, and the addition of new principles in the source of variation – lateral gene transfer and symbiosis (413).
All in all, this title is an adequate exploration of the heritage of evolutionary theory and its implications for human, social, and religious concerns from a Roman Catholic perspective. This latter part might be off-putting for some of PSCF’s readers, especially in view of, for example, John O’Callaghan’s essay entitled “Evolution and the Catholic Faith.” However, the major division of the book into the three areas of “Nature,” “Humanity,” and “God” reflects the major areas that evolutionary theory impacts: “natural philosophy”; humanity’s place in the cosmos; evolutionary ethics; and the relation between a scientific explanation of human origins and theological ones. If one is able to overlook the decidedly Catholic emphases, the essays potently assess the continuing relevance of Darwin’s work from the perspectives of biological science, history, philosophy, and theology. To be recommended for those who are involved in the ever-proceeding science and theology dialogue.
Bradford McCall
Holy Apostles College and Seminary