Darwin and Mendel on Inherited Variability

Darwin’s Origin of Species took many years of compilations and it was even accelerated by Alfred R. Wallace paper on the same subject in 1858. Origin of Species was really groundbreaking, because Darwin not only proposed common ancestry – that was in the air since Humboldt and Lamarck, and “Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation” -, but he proposed also a process for the underlying mechanism of the diversity of species.

His theory of evolution had 2 principles: common ancestry and natural selection. Natural selection can be described with 5 words: Variation, Inheritance, Selection, Time, Adaptation. Inherited variability and a selection pressure to adapt to the environment.

In Darwin’s time, the source of inherited variability was unknown. Darwin considered heredity as a “blending” process and the offspring were seen as essentially a “dilution” of the different parental characteristics.

Erich Wasmann, SJ: an Early Advocate for Theistic Evolution

Erich Wasmann, SJ, was born in 1859, in Tyrol, Austria, the same year Charles Darwin published his seminal work, “On the Origin of Species.” Wasmann is renowned for his efforts to reconcile the Catholic faith with Darwin’s theory of evolution, advocating the idea that the two were compatible.

In 1883, Wasmann was asked to contribute articles on eusocial insects to the Jesuit periodical “Stimmen aus Maria Laach,” later called “Stimmen der Zeit”. In 1884, he began studying ants, both in their natural habitat and by constructing artificial ant colonies. Over his lifetime (he died in 1931), Wasmann assembled a unique collection comprising over 1,000 ant species, 200 termite species, and 2,000 species of myrmecophiles, ultimately describing 933 new species.

St. George Mivart challenging Charles Darwin

St. George Mivart (30 November 1827 – 1 April 1900) was a prominent zoologist and initially a strong proponent of Darwin’s theory of evolution. However, in 1871, he published “The Genesis of Species”, in which he acknowledged the reality of evolution as a historical fact but criticized natural selection as the sole mechanism driving evolutionary processes. Mivart argued that natural selection had limitations and that other biological factors must be considered in association with it. Charles Darwin found Mivart’s critique significant enough to respond to it in detail in the sixth edition of “On the Origin of Species”.

Mivart’s career was long and distinguished. In 1862, he was appointed Lecturer on Comparative Anatomy at St. Mary’s Hospital Medical School. In 1874, he was appointed professor of Biology at the (Catholic) University College, Kensington. From 1890 to 1893, he gave a course of lectures on “The Philosophy of Natural History” at the University of Louvain. He was a member of the Royal Institution from 1849, a Fellow of the Zoological Society from 1858, and served as Vice-President twice (in 1869 and 1882). He was elected a Fellow of the Linnean Society in 1862, served as its Secretary from 1874 to 1880, and was later named Vice-President in 1892. In 1867, he was elected a member of the Royal Society. He received honorary degrees in 1876 from Pope Pius IX and in 1884 from the University of Louvain.

E.O. Wilson: from ants to biodiversity and creation care

Out of high respect to this great biologist, who died yesterday at the age of 92, I am breaking the rule to only document Christian scientists here on my blog. Yes, Wilson was not a Christian believer: we cannot say he never was because he was raised a Southern Baptist, but he said of himself that he could not see or feel any transcendence.

His specific field was myrmecology, the study of ants. My admiration comes from this angle: I did my PhD on honey bees and my latest article was on Erich Wasmann, another myrmecologist whose memory Wilson (and his co-writer Bert Hölldobler) kept carefully.

Arthur Holly Compton: a Physicist on God, Science and the Freedom of Man

Arthur Holly Compton (10 September 1892 – 15 March 1962) was an American physicist. In 1927, he won the Nobel Prize in Physics for his discovery of what is called the Compton effect, in which a photon can interact with an accelerated particle. From 1941 to 1945, he directed a program to produce plutonium for military use within the scope of the Manhattan Project. He had ethical and religious doubts about continuing the project; yet, he did go on to participate with Enrico Fermi in achieving the first nuclear reactor, deciding that producing the atomic bomb would bring the war to a close more quickly. His work The Atomic Quest (1956) delves into the issues surrounding the production of the atomic bomb.

He was also interested in philosophical problems involving science, becoming vice-president of the American Philosophical Society. Among his interdisciplinary works are The Freedom of Man (1935) and The Human Meaning of Science (1940). He was the son of a Presbyterian pastor from whom he inherited a deep religious faith.

From 1938 to 1947, he was Protestant Co-Chairman of the National Conference of Christians and Jews, an important interfaith organization founded in 1927 as a united front to combat bigotry and promote understanding, and he served three terms on its Board of Directors after the war.

In his book The Freedom of Man, he said:

“We could, in fact, see the whole great drama of evolution moving toward the making of persons with free intelligence capable of glimpsing God’s purpose in nature and of sharing that purpose. In such a case we should not look upon consciousness as the mere servant of the biological organism, but as an end in itself. An intelligent mind would be its own reason for existence. “ (p. 140)

In 1957, he stated:

“The great task is nothing less than developing a civilization in which men grow in true liberty, in order to be worthy of their magnificent heredity as sons of God”
“Lebengestaltung und Menschheitsziele im Atomzeitalter,” in Universitas. Zeitschrift für Wissenschaft, Kunst und Literatur, Stuttgart 1957, 6, p. 613.

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No, evolution is not “just a theory”

In his 2008 paper, the biologist TR Gregory explains this as follows:

The common and scientific definitions of “theory,” […] are drastically different. In daily conversation, “theory” often implicitly indicates a lack of supporting data. Indeed, introducing a statement with “My theory is…” is usually akin to saying “I guess that…”, “I would speculate that…”, or “I believe but have not attempted to demonstrate that…”. By contrast, a theory in science, again following the definition given by the [National Academy of Sciences] (NAS), is “a well-substantiated explanation of some aspect of the natural world that can incorporate facts, laws, inferences, and tested hypotheses.” Science not only generates facts but seeks to explain them, and the interlocking and well-supported explanations for those facts are known as theories. Theories allow aspects of the natural world not only to be described, but to be understood. (1)

(1) Gregory TR “Evolution as Fact, Theory and Path” Evo Edu Outreach (2008) 1:46-52

Scientists reflect on their faith (V)

Francis Collins

Francis S. Collins is an American physician-geneticist who discovered the genes associated with a number of diseases and led the Human Genome Project. He is director of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in Bethesda, Maryland, United States. He is is an Evangelical Christian and an important voice in the dialogue between science and faith. He founded and served as president of The BioLogos Foundation and is a member of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences since 2009. Continue reading

Scientists reflect on their faith (I)

william T Newsome

William T Newsome is an Investigator of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and Professor of Neurobiology at the Stanford University School of Medicine. He received a B.S. degree in physics from Stetson University and a Ph.D. in biology from the California Institute of Technology. Dr. Newsome is a leading investigator in systems and cognitive neuroscience. He has made fundamental contributions to our understanding of the neural mechanisms underlying visual perception and simple forms of decision making.

Stanford News did an interview with Prof. Newsome in June 2018 and asked him:

What tensions do you see between science and faith?

There are two ways in which one could find tension. One, which I think is a red herring, is saying that the discoveries of science make religious faith untenable.

I actually think that most of the discoveries of science are open to a religious worldview. I think that the discovery of the big bang, for example, shows that our universe has not been in existence forever, that there was a moment where it started, and that’s very consistent with the notion of creation in early Genesis stories.

The theory of evolution has been a flash point obviously. People have said that religious faith requires purposeful creation and evolution depends on random mutations and random events, so how can anything that depends on randomness be purposeful? That’s a red herring. Scientists, including my own laboratory, use random events to purposeful ends all the time. That’s why people who create good random number generators are so valued in science.

Read the whole interview here: How a Stanford neurobiologist balances science and faith

Father John Augustine Zahm: Evolution and Providence

john augustine zahm 1

On 10 November 1921, Father John Augustine Zahm (1851-1921), a Holy Cross priest, author, scientist, and South American explorer died in Munich en route to the Middle East. He was one of the first Catholic theologians writing about evolution. He accepted the fact of evolution and found it compatible with the faith, but had some reservations, as many scientists at that time with Charles Darwin’s slowly and gradual change over time.

He was a strong promoter of a harmony between science and Catholic theology, and was deeply concerned to let ‘‘science have its say’’ in these matters, and he was not interested in altering the science to fit his theology. If he does not embrace the theory of natural selection, it is because a very large portion of the scientific community did not do so at that time.

Zahm’s inspiration was largely taken from George Jackson Mivart (1827–1900)’s “Genesis of Species” (1871), a book Zahm put on his list of the 100 most important books for Notre Dame students to read. According to Mivart, a concept of creation that operated over time could be found in the writings of the early Christian Fathers of the Church, especially Gregory of Nyssa and St. Augustine, and in the writings of the great Scholastics, especially Thomas Aquinas and Francisco Suarez. Mivart, and Zahm following him, attribute considerable importance to the writings of St. Augustine as the foundation of this concept.

In his book “Evolution and Dogma” (1896), Zahm writes:

God, then, according to St. Augustine, created matter directly and immediately. On this primordial or elementary matter He impressed certain causal reasons, causales rationes; that is, He gave it certain powers, and imposed on it certain laws, in virtue of which it evolved into all the myriad forms which we now behold.

And later in this book:

Wolfhart Pannenberg: Trinitarian Evolutionist

03.02.1983
Friedenskongreß der CDU im Konrad-Adenauer-Haus, Bonn. Wolfgang Pannenberg died on 5 September 2014. He has been one of the greatest Protestant theologians in the second half of the 20th century. Pannenberg’s staunch defense of the historicity of the resurrection made him a champion among American evangelicals. His extensive involvement in the ecumenical movement and his unsurpassed knowledge of the history of theology were crucial to the most important ecumenical breakthroughs in the World Council of Churches. Taken together, Pannenberg’s extensive writings, including his three-volume systematic theology, offer a theological program unrivaled its comprehensiveness, depth, and rigor.

Here is a quote from “Confessions of a Trinitarian Evolutionist”:

“God as a Creator is working in His creation through His creatures. This doesn’t distract from the immediacy of the relationship between the Creator and His creatures. God always used creatures to bring about other things. Think of the function of the earth in the first part of Genesis. The earth is addressed by God to assist in His act of creation. First, the earth is addressed to bring about vegetation. So we may wonder, ‘How can the earth, an inorganic reality, bring about an organic reality, vegetation, and then bring about the self organization of organisms from inorganic materials?’ Yet, this is the Christian creation story. The second address of the earth is even bolder than that! God addresses the earth to bring about animals. And the text means higher animals. Such boldness does not really characterize even Darwin’s theory of evolution. Darwin wouldn’t have dreamed to have higher animals spring immediately from the earth, from inorganic matter. Darwin is much more moderate than that. In criticizing the doctrine of evolution, our creationist friends among Christian theologians should read their Bibles more closely.“

pannenberg creation

Confessions of a Trinitarian Evolutionist, Interview with W. Pannenberg by J.T.Oord, 2001 on metanexus

a longer post on Pannenberg can be found on my personal blog: WOLFHART PANNENBERG (1928-2014)

Science meets Faith

Can you be both, Scientist and Christian at the same time? Yes, you can – yes, we can!

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