Darwin's Ambiguity: The Secularization of Biological Meaning
- 1 July 1989
- journal article
- research article
- Published by Cambridge University Press (CUP) in The British Journal for the History of Science
- Vol. 22 (2) , 215-239
- https://doi.org/10.1017/s0007087400026005
Abstract
Darwin is well known for his wondrously ambiguous rhetoric. The author who used an ‘entangled bank’ as his metaphor for Nature and its complex relationships built up the substance of his text from a corresponding entanglement of unresolved theoretical relations. Ambiguous positions, arguments that seem to fold in on themselves, vacillations, contradictions, and pluralities of explanation suffuse Darwin's science and its constituent metascience. TheOriginabounds in ambiguities with regard to the technical features of evolutionary biology. But the domain of ambiguity I wish to address is Darwin's metaphysical stance. I want to approach the question of Darwin and secularization through what might be called the trope of ambiguity. My principle concern is with the origins of that ambiguity. These lie in the conflicting cultural and ideological resources Darwin used to construct the theory of natural selection.Keywords
This publication has 22 references indexed in Scilit:
- Chapter 13. Darwin on Animal Behavior and EvolutionPublished by Walter de Gruyter GmbH ,1988
- Chapter 8. Darwin's Principle of Divergence as Internal DialoguePublished by Walter de Gruyter GmbH ,1988
- Science and ReligionPublished by Cambridge University Press (CUP) ,1988
- Darwin and the Emergence of Evolutionary Theories of Mind and BehaviorPublished by University of Chicago Press ,1987
- Instinct and intelligence in British natural theology: Some contributions to Darwin's theory of the evolution of behaviorJournal of the History of Biology, 1981
- Darwin's botanical arithmetic and the ?principle of divergence,? 1854?1858Journal of the History of Biology, 1980
- Darwin and the political economists: Divergence of characterJournal of the History of Biology, 1980
- The Young Darwin and his Cultural CirclePublished by Springer Nature ,1978
- The origin of theOrigin revisitedJournal of the History of Biology, 1977
- The foundations of the origin of species, two essays written in 1842 and 1844,Published by Smithsonian Institution ,1909