On the morning of September 1, 1835, HMS Beagle dropped anchor off the coast of a volcanic island in the Pacific that most Europeans had never heard of. Charles Darwin, twenty-six years old and five years into a voyage he had originally expected to last two, climbed ashore on the Galápagos Islands and began to collect. What he found over the following weeks would not yield its full significance for years, but the observations he made, of finches with differently shaped beaks on different islands, of tortoises whose shells the local governor claimed he could identify by island of origin, of mockingbirds that varied subtly from one island to the next, planted a question he could not dislodge. He did not have the theory of natural selection in mind when he visited the Galápagos. He did not experience a sudden revelation. What he had was a nagging, productive unease, a sense that the distribution of species he was observing did not fit comfortably with the idea that each had been separately created and placed where it lived. The theory that eventually resolved that unease would take another twenty-three years to publish, held back by Darwin's own awareness of what it would mean when it arrived.
British biologist Charles Darwin (1809–1882) laid the foundations of the theory of evolution and transformed the way we think about the natural world. Few books have influenced human thought more profoundly than On the Origin of Species, published in 1859, which expounded his theory of natural selection with an accumulation of evidence so carefully marshaled and an argument so clearly made that it shocked society and revolutionized science simultaneously. The idea that all living things share common ancestors, and that the diversity of life is the product of variation, inheritance, and selection acting over vast stretches of time, was not merely a biological theory. It was a new way of seeing existence itself, with consequences that extend into philosophy, theology, psychology, and the social sciences, which are still being worked through today.
To navigate that legacy with the depth and the critical honesty it demands requires a scholar who has spent a lifetime at the intersection of biology and philosophy. Michael Ruse, Professor at Florida State University and one of the world's foremost philosophers of biology, has devoted his career to examining Darwin's ideas, their scientific foundations, their philosophical implications, and the cultural battles they have generated. The author of numerous works, including Darwinism and Its Discontents (2006) and The Evolution-Creation Struggle (2005), Ruse brings to his subject both rigorous analytical precision and a genuine feel for why these questions matter beyond the academy.
In the conversation that follows, Ruse guides us into Darwin's world and its long aftermath, illuminating the theory that changed everything and asking why, more than a century and a half after that first edition sold out on the day of publication, it continues to provoke the passions, the arguments, and the resistance that Darwin himself, with characteristic prescience, anticipated and feared.
Charles Carlini: How did Darwin first come to accept evolution, and which kinds of evidence most influenced his views?
Michael Ruse: He accepted evolution around March 1837. Clearly, a number of things were important, but the geographical distributions of the organisms he had seen in the Galapagos were very important. Empirical evidence was not the only thing, however. By this time, he had become a deist—God works through unbroken law—and he knew about evolution from his grandfather, from Lyell, who discussed Lamarck, and from Robert Grant when he was a student at Edinburgh. So it was as much a metaphysical shift as a scientific one.
CC: One of the unanswered questions remains whether Darwin believed in evolution during the Beagle voyage. Darwin said that as far as he could remember, he still believed in the fixity of species—derived from the ideas of Plato, Aristotle, and Carolus Linnaeus—but that vague doubts occasionally flitted across his mind. What is your view?
MR: Almost certainly, Darwin did not become an evolutionist on the Beagle voyage. It was six months after returning home, especially when the ornithologist John Gould had looked at his bird specimens and declared them different species. Then Darwin knew he had to embrace evolution.
CC: Darwin is commonly considered the father of evolution, but in reality, others preceded him, including his own grandfather, Erasmus Darwin; the French scientist Jean-Baptiste Lamarck; and the Scottish geologist Dr. James Hutton. Were Darwin’s views in any way influenced by those of others before him, or did they differ?
MR: I am sure that these people, I would add Robert Grant as an important influence on Darwin. I would not in any sense speak of Darwin as a follower of any of these people—apart from anything else, he had a much more tree-based view of evolution than earlier people (thanks to the Galapagos being a big inspiration). He always accepted so-called Lamarckism, the inheritance of acquired characteristics. But this was not unique to Lamarck—it is in his grandfather’s thinking—and played only a minor role for him.
CC: Darwin’s contemporary, Alfred Wallace, presented his theory of evolution by natural selection at the same time, in July 1858. Was there any divergence of views between the two theories, and why did Darwin become known as the “father of evolution” but not Wallace?
MR: The two men had the same idea, although perhaps Wallace was a little more inclined to see the struggle at the group level and Darwin at the individual level. In his essay, Wallace argued against an analogy with the domestic world (because we never change a pig into a horse), whereas Darwin argued for it.
Darwin deserves the major credit because he was first by twenty years, he backed up his thinking with a full-blown theory about the fossil record, biogeography, embryology, and more, and because it was he who built a band of supporters like Thomas Henry Huxley.
CC: Darwinists claim that genetic engineering and many medical advances have been made possible by the evolutionary hypothesis. Others argue that no application of evolutionary science led to these discoveries and that Darwin’s theory, while widely accepted by the scientific community, remains unprovable. What is your view?
MR: There are two questions here. I would say that the basics of Darwin’s theory have been proven—that argument is over. Whether Darwinism plays into genetic engineering and medicine is another question, and frankly, I am not sure how much it has to say that is relevant to these issues.
CC: Is it totally inconceivable to find common ground between evolutionists and creationists?
MR: Yes. It is not just a theological issue, but also a social one, as evolution represents modernism, sex ed, abortion on demand, and so forth (when I say represents, I mean acts as a marker for people who have these sorts of beliefs). Creationism stands for anti-modernism (anti-abortion and so forth). I don’t see much hope for a meeting of the extremes; whether people more in the center can be influenced is, of course, another matter. I very much hope so.
CC: Darwin’s wife Emma was deeply religious. Did this create any conflict between them, and do we know for sure what, if any, was Darwin’s personal faith? He once defined himself as an agnostic, but some published reports claim he accepted Christ on his deathbed. Is this truth or fiction?
MR: Towards the end of her life, Emma’s religious beliefs started to fade, as they did for so many Victorians. Darwin was first a Christian, then about halfway through the voyage became a deist, believing in a God but not one of miracles, and denying the divinity of Christ (as well as all the stuff about hellfire and so forth), and then in the last ten to fifteen years of his life, perhaps because of the influence of Huxley, this faded into agnosticism. Darwin never became an atheist, and he certainly did not convert on his deathbed. There was a bit of tension between husband and wife, but they kept it to a minimum. His daughters were more eager to downplay his lack of belief than his wife was.
CC: If it’s true that all theories of science are fallible, and new data often negates and overturns previously held theories, are there any flaws in Darwin’s theory? Are any mainstream scientists today disputing or at least re-thinking the theory of evolution?
MR: No mainstream scientist denies evolution or that natural selection is very important. There are debates about how important it is. I suspect that some people think macro changes might be significant, while others think genetic drift is important, but by and large, it is important to see these as debates within limits.
CC: Some historians believe that, by suggesting that some races had evolved further than others, Darwin fuelled the development of racism and, later, Nazism. What is your view?
MR: Total bullshit. Of course, the Nazis used quasi-social Darwinian terms, but by and large, they did not like evolution because it showed that we are all Jews and Gentiles of one race. The difference between The Descent of Man and Mein Kampf is simply huge. Hitler owed more to Austen Chamberlain and others like him than to Darwin.
CC: What does your research into the philosophy of biology entail, and how does it relate to Darwin?
MR: I am interested in the foundations of morality, and if ethics is an adaptation, like hands and teeth (I think it is), then in some respects my work is very Darwinian, but I am not interested in building models of cultural evolution. I am inclined to think that meme-talk is nonsense.
I am also interested in the relationship between science and religion and in showing how one can be religious in an age of science. (I am not a believer, but I think finding some middle ground is vital to making a place for evolution in our society today).
And I am really interested in Darwin and his contemporaries—I am just about to write an essay for a new edition of Huxley’s Evolution and Ethics.
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