editdarwin

In the Introduction to The Origin of Species Darwin composed the following two passages of great importance:

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(cit.1.4) "The author of the 'Vestiges of Creation' would, I presume, say that, after a certain unknown number of generations, some bird had given birth to a woodpecker, and some plant to the misseltoe, and that these had been produced perfect as we now see them; but this assumption seems to me to be no explanation, for it leaves the case of the coadaptations of organic beings to each other and to their physical conditions of life, untouched and unexplained. It is, therefore, of the highest importance to gain a clear insight into the means of modification and coadaptation." Charles Darwin,The Origin of Species Introduction.par. 6/7

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(cit.1.5) "No one ought to feel surprise at much remaining as yet unexplained in regard to the origin of species and varieties, if he makes due allowance for our profound ignorance in regard to the mutual relations of all the beings which live around us. "Ibid. par.10

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It is impressive how deeply immersed Darwin was in ecological considerations. It was his starting point, and the unremitting evidence of coeval modifications of varieties and species in the fossil record he could not separated from it.

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A thoughtful reading of the two passages by Darwin, (cit.1.4 and cit.1.5) which significantly were placed no more than three paragraphs apart in his Introduction to The Origin of Species suggests that Darwin had, perhaps unwittingly, experienced a penetrating insight into their connection. In these passages, he argued that an explanation of the origin of species would be enhanced by an understanding of the ecological presentation of mutual relations between living organisms; just as he argued that a better explanation of ecological coadaptations of organisms to each other and to their physical conditions would require an understanding of the variations and modifications that occurred in varieties and species. So it would seem his insight was to unite the epochal or evolutionary with the present ecology.

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The following from Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation (1844), written anonymously but later attributed Chambers. It is the source of Darwin's contemplations in cit.1.4 and cit.1.5.

It is a most enjoyable work: e.g.

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(cit.1.6) "The giraffe has in its tall neck the same number of bones with the pig, which scarcely appears to have a neck at all." Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation (1844)

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(cit.1.7) "The whole train of animated beings, from the simplest and oldest up to the highest and most recent, are, then, to be regarded as a series of advances of the principle of development, which have depended upon external physical circumstances, to which the resulting animals are appropriate. I contemplate the whole phenomena as having been in the first place arranged in the counsels of Divine Wisdom, to take place, not only upon this sphere, but upon all the others in space, under necessary modifications, and as being carried on, from first to last, here and elsewhere, under immediate favour of the creative will or energy. [As footnote by Chambers: When I formed this idea I was not aware of one which seems faintly to foreshadow it-namely, Socrates's doctrine, afterwards dilated on by Plato, that "previous to the existence of the world, and beyond its present limits, there existed certain archetypes, the embodiment (if we may use such a word) of general ideas ; and that these archetypes were models, in imitation of which all particular beings were created.]" Chambers VESTIGES.

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Lonergan himself has some criticisms of Plato's theory of the Immutable Ideas. In his work Method in Theology he writes:

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(cit.1.8) "At a certain stage in Plato's thought there seem to be asserted two really distinct worlds, a transcendent world of eternal Forms, and a transient world of appearance. " MIT Chap 3

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By and large Lonergan is against there being two really distinct worlds. So at least there is a measure of consistency in finding that Lonergan's theory works well with Darwin as opposed to Chambers.

My purpose is to associate several writings of Charles Darwin and Bernard Lonergan, S.J. In so doing I will indicate how Lonergan's thought can bring to light a scientific understanding and a scientific will, namely Darwin's. I shall further show that Ecology, a newer science*, contained within the field of Biology, a study of the coadaptations and mutual relations between living things with one another and with their environment, today has arisen to meet an explanatory need, to fulfil an explanatory relation with the concepts of 'modifications', 'chance variations', and change contained within the theory of evolution also contained within Biology. Darwin's theory of evolution is the transition to a new model of creation for the life sciences, one which involves probability, and probability of survival. The meaning of probability as it is used here is discussed in INSIGHT which was one of Lonergan's major works.

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Finally, I will explain why Darwin's notion of natural selection was a revolution in science, or more correctly, presaged and prophesied an actual revolution. The power of Darwin's theory did not depend on the psychology of a blow to man's narcissistic self-image**, nor of a displacement of man's anthropocentrism in the manner of a Copernican revolt. Nor does it take its force from the fashionable anti-theism of the new and non-teleologic age of science; nor even from the theatrical drama of species in a fight to the death for survival. Darwin's idea, I believe, drew its power from a simple single factor, his unique and early grasp of explanation.***

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Darwin, I contend, was ecologically oriented in a modern way, the orientation of his knowledge due to an insight, and he looked upon the many living organic beings as well as those of the fossil record and saw that their coadaptations and their mutual relations which he also observed could not be engineered into the formation of biomes, or shaped into theories, except in light of a a few intelligible processes that he grouped under his own theory of natural selection of chance variations.

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Any process occurs in time although its visible results are extensive in space. In the case of biological process, it is manifest in the biome and habitat as well as in the living organism. So processes which resulting in coadaptations and mutual relations of organic beings; or in the homeostasis of a single organism must also conduct their work, so to speak, by extending from the past and continuing into the future. The explanation then would be invariant in space and time, four dimensions.

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Darwin's concern was for an explanation of temporal development in its relation to spatial relationships of living organism. From this one might say Darwin's theory seems almost Einsteinian because the Darwinian theory of Origin of Species, 1) if suitably abstract, and at the level of correlations and laws, (see cit.1.1) would exist outside of particular time and space, and; 2)if true in a scientific sense, that is, supportable, probable, estimable, must be invariant and continuous, i.e. applicable without major revision, in all of life, in all times and all places. Were its machinations timeless and not limited to a particular time and place, It would be best ultimately explained perhaps as contained in a space-time continuum. The intelligibility of life would tend to be explained independent of the space-time continuum. This is not far afield from Lonergan who points out in a discussion of invariance of scientific laws:

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(cit.1.1) "all scientists expect their correlations and laws to be independent of merely spatio-temporal differences" INSIGHT Chap II.2.5

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The fact, and the observation I wish to impart, is that Darwin shared in the renaissance of a fully intelligibility based idea of science that more obviously manifested itself around the end of the nineteenth century. In addition to obliging the life science to follow this course, it is arguable that Darwin also bears the distinction of having been one of the earliest members of this late century renaissance.

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Invariance of abstract theory is much the province of the work of Bernard Lonergan who took an original approach to scientific reasoning and method. He begins with a contemplation of 'insight into insight', discovering that an 'insight into insight' would be in some sense a 'knowledge of knowledge' and a 'clear and distinct idea of clear and distinct ideas'. His plethora of scientific examples in demonstration of this make up a major part of his work in INSIGHT. This suggests that second only to his call for 'self appropriation' by means of hashing out one's own insights into insight, and these may often be quite peculiarly one's own but in a satisfactory and salutary way, is the effect of a 'conversion' on our knowing. Lonergan does say that in this intellectual conversion of insight into insight we might undergo a reorientation**** of what we know. I suggest that Lonergan could capture and depict the 'glimmer' that I think Darwin had (and perhaps nurse it to a purer flame in his theory of Emergent Probability); and that, after struggling a bit to understand Lonergan, some valuable insights may be had into the scientific insights such as that of Darwin. I hope to relate Darwin's 'ingenious insight' to Lonergan's view of conjugate form, and sense of formal causality and then to his notion of 'dialectic'.

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Darwin's insight then was that there must be a certain explanatory correlation between chance variations and modification occurring in a temporal epoch with the mutual relations and coadaptations of living organisms in a spacial habitat or biome. He gathered a wealth of botanical, zoological, and fossil data, from not only direct observation but also from his reading and discussions with those involved with artificial selection in animal husbandry and horticulture. He provided us with a scientifically plausible model of biological process and progress.

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Bernard Lonergan wrote INSIGHT during the mid-twentieth century, at a time when the formal science of Ecology was only dawning in popularity and not quite well known *****, but he examined the intelligible underpinnings of the sciences and he identified the intelligible underpinnings of biology with 'in a word, evolution'. His enthusiasm for Darwin and evolution is fairly evident:

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(cit.1.2) "Biology has become an explanatory science by viewing all living forms as related to one another in that complex and comprehensive fashion that is summarily denoted by the single word, evolution." Bernard Lonergan, S.J. INSIGHT Chapter IV Sec.3

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(cit.1.3) "There are those that date the dawn of human intelligence from the publication of Darwin's Origin of Species in 1859. In fact, though the work does not contain any systematic statement of methodological foundations, it does present the outstanding instance of the employment of probability as a principle of explanation." INSIGHT LONERGAN IV.3.3

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The Introduction to The Origin of Species reveals an implicit interest in things ecological bright in the mind of Darwin. Darwin thought an explanation of the origin of a species would be incomplete unless coadaptations between living organisms, and the modifications that occur in individuals were recognized, considered, and the pattern of their mechanisms of interaction, empirical or logical, at least considered as part of a single explanation even if not fully explained as yet.

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Darwin I think wanted, yearned for an explanation that would relate mutual relations and coadaptations between organic beings to modifications in individuals in the present, and satisfy his interest in the explanation of the fossil record by linking present to past in the same theory . In seeking a way to recognize both and consider the possible mechanisms of their interactions Charles Darwin advanced his theory of the Origin of Species. Lonergan's enthusiasm for the 'Darwinian World View' was tempered somewhat by his realization that even so an extensive a claim about biological process is still only a theory of a particular case, the case of life on this earth. It would still requires complete verification at an empirical level, and this would require an excursion of all instances of evolution. Thus, in Lonergan's view, it begs for an explanatory underpinning of its own, one with immanent and complete intelligibility, and Lonergan claims to have moved towards this, or even accomplished it, in the theory of 'emergent probability'.

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