90 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



DAKWIN'S INFLUENCE UPON PHILOSOPHY 



By Professor JOHN DEWEY 



COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY 

 I 



THAT the publication of the " Origin of Species " marked an epoch 

 in the development of the natural sciences is well known to the 

 layman. That the combination of the very words origin and species 

 embodied an intellectual revolt and introduced a new intellectual 

 temper is easily overlooked by the expert. The conceptions that had 

 reigned in the philosophy of nature and knowledge for two thousand 

 years, the conceptions that had become the familiar furniture of the 

 mind, rested on the assumption of the superiority of the fixed and 

 final; they rested upon treating change and origin as signs of defect 

 and unreality. In laying hands upon the sacred ark of absolute 

 permanency, in treating the forms that had been regarded as types of 

 fixity and perfection as originating and passing away, the " Origin 

 of Species " introduced a mode of thinking that in the end was bound 

 to transform the logic of knowledge, and hence the treatment of 

 morals, politics and religion. 



No wonder then that the publication of Darwin's book, a half 

 century ago, precipitated a crisis. The true nature of the controversy 

 is easily concealed 'from us, however, by the theological clamor that 

 attended it. The vivid and popular features of the anti-Darwinian row 

 tended to leave the impression that the issue was between science on 

 one side and theology on the other. Such was not the case — the issue 

 lay primarily within science itself, as Darwin himself early recognized. 

 The theological outcry he discounted from the start, hardly noticing 

 it save as it bore upon the " feelings of his female relatives." But for 

 two decades before final publication he contemplated the possibility of 

 being put down by his scientific peers as a fool or as crazy; and he 

 set, as the measure of his success, the degree in which he should affect 

 three men of science : Lyell in geology, Hooker in botany and Huxley 

 in zoology. 



Eeligious considerations lent fervor to the controversy, but they 

 did not provoke it. Intellectually, religious emotions are not creative 

 but conservative. They attach themselves readily to the current 

 view of the world and consecrate it. They steep and dye intellectual 

 fabrics in the seething vat of emotions; they do not form their warp 



