Darwinism’s Apostate The Scientific Career of St. George Mivart By Matt Bowman History 101.016 Professor Riasanovsky Fall 2901History is written by the winners. Since Thomas Kuhn's Structure of Scientific, , Revolutions, the same principle has been applied to the realm of science, At eritical points in history, old scientific paradigms prove insufficient to explain the growing mass of data, and the elite scientific community is responsible for selecting a new paradigm At such impasses, there is a need for a scientific prophet to develop a new theory that will, through a mixture of scientific data and creative philosophical speculation, dethrone the old theory and defeat competing theories in the struggle to win the approval of the NO cc scientific community. In the second half of the 19" century, science needed a new paradigm, and Darwin emerged as the prophet. Darwinism was one among many theories of evolution. The story of how the scientific community came to accept Darwinism over its alternatives has been told elsewhere.' But since science, like history, is written by the winners, what about the losers? The prospect of examining the story of a scientific loser may seem a rather dull venture. Ifa particular theory of evolution was defeated, it was probably shown to be less compatible with the evidence than alternative theories. But are there issues other than cogency that determine the fate of a scientific theory? What if a theory was defeated in other ways? What if scientist who took issue with Darwinism, who was himself an accomplished biologis}who was considered at one time to be Darwin’s most formidable scientific opponen€)whom Darwin himself feared would completely discredit his theory — what if such a man had been defeated not simply because his theory was less cogent, but because a powerful group of scientists had become his personal enemy, and had engineered his professional destruction? Such a case would reveal much about the * Sce Gertrude Himmelfarb, Darwimand the Darwinian Revolution (Garden City: Doubleday & Company, Inc., 1959):history of modem science. Such a ease would bear consequences for our understanding of both organic evolution and the rs paradigms. Such a case is that of St. George Mivart. 4 Existing Explanations Mivart’s biographer, Jacob W. Gruber, attempts to account for his controversial himself An and ultimately disregarded views by describing him as a man at war wit ionist, but, says Gruber, his rigid eliefs, inhibited accomplished scientist, Mivart was an evoluti philosophical and theological preconceptions, informed by his Catholic b his success in the realm of science. Gruber agrees with one of Mivart’s obituaries, which claimed that Mivart’s “scientific work was...limited by his religious creed. Perhaps had he been less domineted by preconceived ideas, he would, with his industry, have achieved something more striking than anything that can be claimed for him." Such an explanation conveniently agrees with the common perception, as prevalent today as i: was in Mivart’s time, that Darwin's discoveries discredited orthodox Christianity. However, it suffers from the vice of being unsympathetic, which in Gruber’s case produces an inaccurate summary of Mivart’s ideas. Both Gruber and the anonymous obituary writer take Mivart’s ultimate lack of influence in academia as proof of his intellectual failure. However, popularity in the academic community is an imperfect indicator of the truthfulness of ideas. Mivart’s ideas deserve to be examined sympathetically, within their context, but without reducing them to the thoughts of a scientist “hindered” by faith. 2 The Athanaeum, London, April 7, 1900, 438. Cited in Jacob W. Gruber, A Conscience in Conteh Ei of eve eh Published for Temple University Press by Col versity Press, 1960), 64.The most grievous mistake Gruber makes is apparent in his explanation for Mivart’s belief in the origin of the human soul: “Only with respect to the origin of man’s soul did he speak with the voice of revelation, reaffirming that the most important aspect of the human individual was, in keeping with tradition, infused in the body by a divine creative act.” It is of utmost significance to Mivart’s thought that he did not support the special creation of the human soul with “the voice of revelation.” Rather, Mivart \ ew hema believed this to be a truth of the natural order. Similarly, Mivart regarded Darwin’s theory of the natural selection of random variations, to be, on scientific grounds, Wa insufficient to account for the evolution of organic nature a Early in his career, Mivart was a prodigy of the Darwinian scientists, and the personal friend of both Charles Darwin and Thomas Huxley, the popularizer of Darwinism. As a result of his scientific work and his philosophical and theological reflections, Mivart came to the conclusion tha philosophy common among the Darwinians had hindered their ability to understand evolution correctly. By examining Mivart’s life, and taking a particularly close look at the time when his own theory of evolution was forged, Tintend to present a sympathetic and more accurate account of Mivart’s ideas than hitherto recorded. This task calls for a close examination of his rel ionship with the Darwinian scientists, particularly with TH. Huxley, his mentor In researching Mivart’s life, I have relied heavily on the biography by Jason Gruber. I am indebted to Gruber for guiding my research, and providing passages from | documents otherwise unavailable to me. I have tried to credit Gruber with any | interpretations I gleaned from his work. However, this paper is largely a corrective to * Gruber, 71per Gruber’s often-unsympathetic account of Mivart’s ideas, and the interpretations of the texts are my own. Furthermore, since the publication of Gruber’s book in 1960, there has appeared a complete Calendar of the Correspondence of Charles Darwin (1985) edited by Frederick Burkhardt and Sydney Smith, which has brought to light significant letters apparently unavailable to Gruber in 1960. Beginnings St. George Jackson Mivart was born in London on November 30, 1827 to a teligiously lax, cosmopolitan father and a staunchly devout mother * “The Mivart home,” Gruber explains, “like so many of this period and this class, was torn by then often conflicting currents of the worldly sophistication of the father and the religious orthodoxy of a retiring mother.”}) James Edward Mivart had been a chef in the house of a great English country family, and became famous for his culinary skill Several years of professional success earned him considerable wealth and high-class status, He eventually left his employer and built a small hotel in London, which proved very profitable and became a famous residence for English nobility. He married Caroline Georgina Cunningham, a Scotch-Irish woman who was described by a close associate as a woman “of strong religious bias, and... rather uneasy in her somewhat lively surroundings. Like her husband, she had a decided inclination for literature and a curiously retentive memory.... She was of very charitable disposition, giving freely to the poor, and spending much time in visiting the sick and gee | tc ke oud: “yer denomination is not certain. Ky... 6. F. St. George Mivart, “Early Memories of St. George Mivart.” Dublin Review, CLXXIV, 1924: 3-4, Cited in Gruber, 6. Gruber meations in his endnotes that “I is this source, reproducing autobiographical material recorded between 1881 aad 1885, that provides the only information regarding Mivart's early years.”