Darwin and the Enlightenment

Darwin did challenge dogma according to reason… and observation.

This claim needs to be substantiated, as it sounds reductive at best.

This claim also needs to be substantiated. From what I understand, you had it more correct initially— that it was about reason over dogma.

I actually don’t have a cherished ideological “dog” in this particular fight, but your claims appear specious.

Could ya say that little bay bay chatbot has surrogate parents.

I hope its parent companys are of leagl age.

Actually  You have to be of a certain age to be a baby AI

Yes but that wasn't really what the enlightenment was about.

Just look at what he originally said.

Even if I were to take your word for it or found your assertions to be largely correct, so what? What difference does it make to Darwin’s findings?

One of the more interesting myths is the idea that Darwin was the product of the Enlightenment, someone who challenged dogma according to reason.

Nothing could be further from the truth.

Darwin promoted the idea that the evolution of species on earth was due to chance and probability, and thus nature is inherently chaotic.

The ENTIRE idea of the Enlightenment was to prove that the world was orderly, harmonious, and non-chaotic.

Previous taxonomies tried to prove that nature just worked in perfect harmony and, if anything, was naturally positioned to progressing. For some reason, every scientist of this period was obsessed with clock analogies, so it would be like all the reductionist parts of the clock coming together for a goal. The cogs of the machine working independently.

I mean look at geology, the two main clashes within that field during the 19th century were between uniformitarianism, in which the earth's geology formed over small, incremental, reliably predictable processes and catastrophism, in which earth's geological development was dominated by large-scale random disasters.

Isaac Newton would have smacked Charles Darwin for even SUGGESTING that the natural world was probabilistic.

That is an unfair characterization of Darwin’s work, there is no reason whatsoever to conclude that Darwinism said nature is inherently chaotic. Recognize that Darwin’s theory is a two-step process, only the first step in natural selection, the production of variation, is a matter of chance. The character of the second step, the actual selection, is progressive and directional.  The concept of natural selection had remarkable power for explaining directional and adaptive changes, it pretty much explicitly said that evolution was not chaotic.

I don’t think that is a fair characterization of the Enlightenment either, “orderly, harmonious, and non-chaotic” certainly fits the point you are trying to make about Darwin, but it is more a characterization of the “resultant” ideas that emerged from the Enlightenment, particularly the Enlightenment’s development of the Newton’s physical sciences.

Darwin recognized the importance of the variations and their relationship to natural selection, but he did not know that chance mutation was the underlying mechanism.  The scientific study of genetics, and the idea of random genetic mutations being the mechanism of variation came much later. He focused on the effects of natural selection and heritable variations, the idea that the underlying cause of those heritable variations was random genetic mutations didn’t really develop until the 20th century.

Darwin stood squarely in the tradition of Enlightenment science of applying reason and observation while challenging traditional authority and promoting a more secular and rational worldview. Enlightenment science had developed Newton’s physics into an overly mechanistic view of the universe, but Darwin rigorously applied the scientific method to life, and the result challenged the traditional authority of Enlightenment’s Newtonian physics.

Enlightenment science was at its peak of materialistic and deterministic hubris, and when Darwin applied the scientific method to life and found it did not fully conform to the mechanistic laws of matter that enlightenment science was uncompromisingly committed to. 

What evolution contends about life is that life is contingent, probabilistic, and that it constitutes a unity, it says we are all interconnected to each other and to everything.  In the study of life, there are no isolated systems and life is not deterministic

Darwin took Charles Lyell’s book with him on the Beagle, it was instrumental to Darwin’s development of the theory of evolution, especially his belief in gradual change. The two main clashes within biology were between chance or necessity, as far as biology was concerned, Darwin settled the question by demonstrating the dual nature of biological processes, it isn’t one or the other, it’s both in a two-step process, the variation step being dominated by randomness, the natural selection step by necessity.

I don’t think so, I think Newton would have recognized that his physics is a predictive science of deterministic laws, and that evolutionary biology, in contrast with physics, is a historical science, it attempts to explain events and processes that have already taken place.  He would have seen it as a different kind of science, one that constructs a historical narrative to explain observational evidence that the history of life was characterized by variation that progresses by the natural selection of favorable variations.

I would suggest, that there is sometimes a murky difference between the objectives and intentions of the relative protagonists.

It's all in the eyes of the beholder.

So scientists did stuff, whereas philosophers could only talk about it.

And Darwin theorised the evolution of species, and the elightened ones went blah blah blah....As they often do.

Begorrah.

Darwin proposed a theory of species development.

What's up Doc.