Preface

n October 1997, Alvin Plantinga, the John A. O'Brien Professor of Philosophy at the University of Notre Dame, petitioned the National Association of Biology Teachers to change the wording of their statement on the teaching of evolution. His objection? That presenting evidence for biological evolution as conclusive proof of a "godless and mechanistic" universe was unwarranted and insupportable given the actual state of biological science. The NABT conceded this point and removed the words "unsupervised" and "impersonal" from their description of evolution. This was not an isolated event.

In November and December of 1997, Technopolitics, a public television show underwritten by Microsoft Corporation, dedicated two episodes to airing the work of biochemist Michael Behe. Behe had recently published a book with the Free Press (Darwin's Black Box: Free Press, 1996) in which he argued that living cells and the chemical processes within them are so complex as to defy random origin, itself an important assumption of traditional Darwinian thinking. Behe fully accepted that evolution occurs among living organisms, but questioned whether that scientifically documented process could in fact account for the origins of life. He also contended that bio-molecular and cellular science does not support the current predominant practice of teaching origins-of-life evolution as a self-defining, exclusively material-mechanical process. His opponents in debate were Paul Gross of Harvard and Michael Ruse of the University of Guelph. Ruse in particular had for fifteen years distinguished himself nationally as a noted historian and philosopher of science and an advocate of scientific evolution. Nonetheless, as a featured guest speaker at the 1993 annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, Ruse had warned that for some proponents of evolution the theory had become a "secular religion," leaving the realms of empirical science. He cited as a modern example the noted scholar Edward O. Wilson.

What was going on? What in fact were these people saying? Why were these professionals and other scholars with degrees and faculty positions at places like Harvard, Princeton, Notre Dame, and Berkeley even having such conversations? Why were sponsors like the Free Press, the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and Microsoft Corporation giving venue to these discussions? Still the controversy spread.

In 1999, the Kansas State Board of Education voted to de-emphasize what they styled the "speculative" elements of evolutionary theory. Contrary to contemporary news coverage, the Board did not vote down teaching evolution in Kansas classrooms. Instead, the objection was that evolution teaching had strayed into fields of philosophy not supported by empirical evidence. Scientists, pundits, and educators suddenly squared off against one another. On one side, the Kansas board rallied dissenters from around the nations. In states like Kentucky and Oklahoma, officials also moved to tone down what protestors called the philosophical pretensions of classroom biology. Other states endured similar arguments in the immediate preceding years: California, Colorado, Idaho, Illinois, Iowa, Nebraska, Oregon, and Washington. Similar episodes in Ohio and Georgia followed Kansas. On the other hand, the Kansas board decision infuriated scientists and teachers who argued that any official connivance at questioning the foundational tenets of evolutionary biology equated classroom promotion of religious belief. Commentators as far afield as Stephen Jay Gould at Harvard, A.N. Wilson in London as well as professional associations like the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the National Academy of Science and the National Science Teachers Association, all denounced the Kansas decision as a horrible mistake. As Harvard biologist Richard Lewontin had once put it in another context, science must maintain an a priori commitment to a "materialism [that] is absolute, for we cannot allow a divine foot in the door." Otherwise, science as done in the modern worlds would be stymied.

Several conclusions can be drawn from these and similar episodes occurring over the decade, but first it is important to note what cannot be inferred: evolution, as a general scientific phenomenon, has not been proven "false" or debunked. The thinking spawned by Darwin's work constitutes the very best efforts of modern science to grapple questions of speciation and even the origins of life itself. As such, it is overwhelmingly accepted by men and women in the biological sciences. It commands a voluminous body of experimental and evidentiary data that corroborate evolutionary hypotheses and fuel further research and theoretical work.

Dissent to evolution has taken several forms over the many years since Darwin's genius opened the modern debate. There was in the 1850s and remains to this day a viable, committed movement of "young Earth creationists." These dissidents adhere to many religious beliefs, but in the Atlantic west they are overwhelmingly Christian. They contend that Genesis is an accurate, though sometimes cryptic, description of the origins of the Earth and life. They therefore attempt to fit scientific data into a paradigm calling for a recent (roughly 6,000 year-old Earth), special creation of species each of its own kind, and a global flood. These are the dissidents most familiar to the casual observer and the sort lampooned in the famous play, Inherit the Wind. Less familiar are types of dissent from orthodox evolution that range across a spectrum of theistic beliefs and scientific theory. These arguments range also across a spectrum of opposition: from posing serious denials of evolutionary theory, to questioning various hypotheses without calling the fundamentals into question. One form of theistic evolution, for example, describes as Howard van Till puts it, a universe "intentionally gifted" by God to develop life in many forms. Attributes of the universe like the cosmological constants, the special properties of water, the finely tuned chemical balances within living things indicate to theistic evolutionists that, while science accurately describes the interactions of material forces, the origins of those interactions rests in a conscience intention. Agnostics impressed by the so-called "anthropic principle" make similar points. The universe to them is simply too complexly fine tuned to accept as the produce of totally random, undirected and unintelligent chance interactions.

At the near end of the scale of dispute stand observers who neither question the fundamental validity of evolution nor make any case for external or pre-existing intelligence to explain the complexity of the biosphere. They do, however, question the validity of the orthodox gradual-mutation-selection model. Most famously, Stephen Jay Gould and Niles Eldrege have proposed that evolution is not gradual at all. The contend that the fossil record demonstrates not gradual change over time but long periods of species stasis "punctuated" by rapid change and emergence of new organisms. Less well known is the work of Motoo Kimura. Beginning in the 1960s, Kimura demonstrated that most DNA mutation does not affect the course of evolution but is in fact "selectively neutral." According to Kimura's research, the material of dramatic evolutionary change cannot be random DNA mutation acted on by natural selection. There must, according to some lines of thought extending from Kimura's work, exist another mechanism. Similar dissident debates surround the origins of sexual reproduction, the theory that dinosaurs evolved into birds, the relationship between minor variation and major species differentiation, the role of cataclysm in natural history, or even the origin of life on Earth. None of these arguments calls into question the place of evolution as the foundational concept of modern biological science.

What then are the conclusions to be drawn from the persistence of forms of dissent or of the sorts of political events of the 1990s? First, contrary to some popular opinion, evolution is a developing field of investigation. Much science remains to be done, particularly regarding very primitive life and the origins of life. The field has a future and therefore public discourse about it will continue. Second, while there now exists practical unanimity among scientists and scholars that of course evolution occurs, the questions of its initiation, propulsion, and meaning are not answered. Some scholars say that the questions have yet to be defined. Finally, it is evident that when learned scholars with mainstream credentials review acknowledged evidence but diverge radically in their final analysis, issues beyond the laboratory have been broached: cultural, philosophical, political, and yes, religious ideas come into play as people seek to understand the world around them. No field of knowledge is hermetically sealed of from all others. Once acknowledge this, and we enter the realm of history: the interplay of the actions and ideas of men and women, themselves responding to contemporary conditions as well as to the context created by the lives of their predecessors. Evolutionary theory is a living science, but it is also a rich and complex historical heritage of western culture and thought. There is need for an historical reference work on the evolution controversy, which in fact has never quieted from the publication of On the Origin of Species to the dawn of the 21st century.

Therefore, this work, while making no attempt to augment or judge technical debates, will record them. Who are the great contributors to evolutionary theory? Who has ever objected to evolutionary science and what have such dissidents said? What is "creationism"? Is it a single phenomenon at all? What are the Intelligent Design Movement and other forms of modern rejection of orthodox evolutionary theory? What are the great written documents of evolutionary theory? What is the literature subversive to it? What vocabulary might be necessary to the lay observer to make this history more accessible? These are the sorts of questions answered in the following pages. Moreover, the effort here is to bring to light aspects of the Darwin debates not thoroughly covered in other sources. Rather than simply to recite the most prominent examples of contention over evolution, this dictionary will explore those aspects of the debates that have had profound, if subtle and overlooked, impact on popular thinking about evolution.

Here, the editors have attempted to follow the penetration of evolution into philosophy, theology, politics, and public policy. Certainly, the great triumphs of evolutionary science, the champions who have best promoted the paradigm and their literary record are here. So too are those who have said "no," sometimes at all costs. Here are abusers, the wreckers, even those who have turned human science against the human race. So too are those participants of good will who have not necessarily immersed themselves in the technical science, but who have instead focused on the most difficult questions of purpose and meaning. This perhaps will be the single most important contribution of this work. Students of evolutionary science will find here a wealth of information to enhance their understanding of the development of perhaps the most important scientific theory ever. Students will also find some of the little-known by-ways by which people have tried to understand what evolutionary theory says to and about the human race. As proponents and dissidents alike have proclaimed, evolutionary theory strikes at the roots of human experience. Given the basic validity of the Darwinian paradigm, what then does it mean to be human? No simple answers have emerged, nor are any likely to do so.

If controversy is the occasion of this work, it is not its agenda. Readers searching here for ready-made ammunition will be disappointed because this work merely maps an intellectual terrain. For others who, like the editors, marvel at the stunning impact of the career and legacy of Charles Darwin; who see the great breadth, scope, and duration of the evolution debates; who are fascinated by the passionate struggles of people over the ideas they hold dear; may this dictionary prove both a fruitful resource and an invitation to study more deeply.

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