Insight Spring 2021

Darwin Isn’t an Empiricist, But That’s O.K. Mac Dilatush ’21 Darwin ranks among the fathers of modernity. His theory of natural selection, espoused in the landmark Origin of Species and later The Descent of Man, advanced science significantly and helped facilitate a shift away from religious fundamentalism by challenging prior evolutionary theories concerning intelligent design and the role of a higher power, or creator.

However, some more recent thinkers have challenged Darwin’s credentials as an empiricist, defined as a thinker who believes that knowledge derives from sensory experience and scientific evidence alone. Michael Behe, in his fittingly titled Darwin’s Black Box, asserts that Darwin and other supporters of natural selection “interfere with the theory that flows naturally from observable scientific data”and fail to recognize “the conclusion of intelligent design” that derives “from the data itself ” (Behe 600, 598). The debate between intelligent design and natural selection aside, Behe is correct — to an extent — that Darwin isn’t totally empiricist. Darwin sometimes re sorts to prognosticating, and he credits philosophers in his footnotes. Still, Behe’s charge fails to diminish Darwin’s general theory of natural selection and standing as a modern thinker, because current modern thinkers aren’t necessarily more empiricist than Darwin. In fact, analyzing modern standards of empiricism relative to Darwin reveals the importance of pairing and guiding data with philosophical inquiry.

Darwin often bases his conclusions on observations, asserting that “reason ought to conquer… imagination,” but he develops some of his claims through assumptions and theory instead of evidence (145). The most glaring example involves the geological record. Darwin acknowledges that his theory has been challenged to answer “why does not every collection of fossil remains afford plain evidence of the gradation and mutation of the forms of life?” (160). He admits that he “meet[s] with no such evidence” to refute the argument against his theory and that he “can answer these... objections only on the supposition that the geological record is far more imperfect than most geologists believe” (160). Darwin’s response reflects a failure to adhere to complete empiricism. He relies on an assumption to counter concerns about his evidence, or lack thereof. Similarly, Darwin contends that “although [he] do[es] not doubt that isolation is of considerable importance in the production of species, on the whole [he is] inclined 62