Evolutionism

Evolutionism, from the accusative of the Latin evolutio, "unrolling" + the Greek -ισμός, "suffix of action or state", is generally used by creationists as a pejorative label for the scientific theory of evolution.

In the creation-evolution controversy, those who accept the scientific theory of biological evolution by natural selection or genetic drift are often called "evolutionists", and the theory of evolution itself is referred to as "evolutionism" by creationists. This label is used by creationists to suggest that evolution is similar to other "isms", such as creationism, evangelism, Judaism, socialism, communism, Catholicism and fascism. In this way, creationists bolster their claim that the scientific theory of evolution is a belief, dogma, ideology or even a religion, rather than a scientific theory. The terms "evolutionism" and "evolutionist" are rarely used in the scientific community as self-descriptive terms.

"Evolutionism", is defined by the OED as " [t] he theory of evolution, evolutionary assumptions or principles". Creationists tend to use the term evolutionism in a misleading sense in order to suggest that evolution and creationism are equal in a philosophical debate.

Development of usage
Anthropologists and biologists will refer to "evolutionists" in the 19th century as those who believe that the cultures or life forms being studied are evolving to a particular form. (see Platonic form). Very few scientists today, if any, believe that evolution in culture or biology works that way, and serious discussions generally take caution to distance themselves from that perspective.

Evolutionary biology explains biotic changes in terms of internal processes and gradual development as a natural progressin of previously existing lifeforms. Evolution neither denies nor requires a role for divine intervention. Before the 19th century there were a number of hypotheses regarding the evolution of all material phenomena: suns, moons, planets, earth, life, civilization, and society. The number of hypotheses being propounded increased dramatically in the middle of the 19th century.

In modern times, the term evolution is widely used, but the terms evolutionism and evolutionist are rarely used in scientific circles to refer to the biological discipline. The term evolution was popularised during the 19th century by Herbert Spencer to mean cultural evolution; i.e. the improvement of cultures (see History of the theory of cultural evolution) &mdash; it was only later that it acquired its biological meaning. Advocacy of such theory was called evolutionism.

Scientists object to the terms evolutionism and evolutionist because the -ism and -ist suffixes accentuate belief rather than scientific study. Conversely, creationists use those same two terms partly because the terms accentuate belief, and partly perhaps because they provide a way to package their opposition into one group, seemingly atheist and materialist, designations which are irrelevant to science.

Ancient Evolutionary Thought
Anaximander is generally agreed to have been the first Greek thinker to propound evolutionary ideas. Empedocles, quoted by Aristotle, went further and gave a hypothetical description of evolution that is startlingly similar to natural selection ('Why should not nature work... of necessity? ....(some) things survived, being organized spontaneously in a fitting way; whereas those which grew otherwise perished and continue to perish.'). By 400 BC, Greek atomists were teaching that the sun, earth, life, humans, civilization, and society emerged over eons from the eternal atoms colliding and vibrating in the void. In the epic poem On the Nature of Things, the Roman atomist Lucretius in about 60 BC described the stages of the living earth coming to be what it is. "The earth and sun formed from swirls of dust congregated from atoms colliding and vibrating in the void; early plants and animals sprang from the early earth's own substance because of the insistence of the atoms that formed the earth; the aging earth gave birth to a succession of animals including a series of progressively less brutish humans that made a succession of improved tools, laws, and civilizations with increasing complexity finally arriving at the current earth and lifeforms as they are." These ideas were more or less forgotten about in the West for the next 1400 years although they continued to be discussed in the Islamic world.

Circa the 4th Century BCE, there were proto-evolutionist and evolutionist concepts being expressed in Indian and Chinese philosophy. In the Vedas of Hinduism, there are passages that indicate that more complex phenomena rose out of simpler phenomena. An evolutionary approach is also evident in ancient Indian texts, in both the writings of Patañjali and the Vedas. In the Vedas the incarnations of Vishnu reflect the theory of evolution. Buddhist metaphysics (which tended to emphasise the extent to which peoples and creatures rose and fell, frequently over vast periods of time) also contained much that is of an evolutionary nature. In China, according to Joseph Needham, "“the Taoists elaborated what comes very near to a statement of a theory of evolution. At least they firmly denied the fixity of biological species."

Medieval Evolutionary Thought
In the Middle Ages, evolutionary ideas continued to be propounded in the Islamic world. In the 9th century, Al-Jahiz considered the effects of the environment on the likelihood of an animal to survive, and first described the struggle for existence, an important precursor to natural selection. Ibn al-Haitham went even further, writing a book in which he argued explicitly for evolution (though not natural selection), and numerous other Islamic scholars and scientists, such as Ibn Miskawayh, and the great polymaths al-Biruni, Nasir al-Din Tusi, and Ibn Khaldun, discussed and developed these ideas. Translated into Latin, these works began to appear in the West after the Renaissance.

Evolutionary Thought in the Modern West before Darwin
Robert Carneiro, describes the progression of evolutionary thought at two levels: First, explanations that did not require a causative agent; second, the use of the word evolution itself.

In giving an example of an early form of evolutionism theory, Carneiro notes that Gottfried Leibniz in 1714 explained the motion of objects by describing "monads" that operated solely by internal forces. Historian Arthur Lovejoy points to the "monad" or "germ" idea as a characteristic of typical evolutionary thought from 1700 to 1850; as such, it maintained that "the 'germs' of all things have always existed . . . [such that they] contain within themselves an internal principle of development which drives them on through a vast series of metamorphoses" through which they become the geological formations, lifeforms, psychologies, and civilizations of the present (Lovejoy 1936:274).

An early application of evolutionary thinking to biology was Charles Bonnet's 1762 assertion that each feature of the embryo was preformed in the parts; some of the parts came from the egg and some came from the sperm. Bonnet hypothesized that when the embryo grew, those preformed parts merely expanded, shifted, and rearranged themselves to grow into the adult. Hence, Bonnet was called a "preformationist." This idea long preceded modern embryology.

In 1780, Erasmus Darwin, wrote his observations on the processes of geological developmentalism, biological evolutionism, developmental psychophysiology, cosmological developmentalism, and scientific and political progressivism, many of these observations were in verse. He made the most complete statement in a poem titled "Temple of Nature", wherein he described biogenesis, the formation of diverse life forms, star formation and collapse, and planetary formation, in a process remeniscent of a cycle of Big Bangs and Big Crunches. In addition, Darwin described how the animals compete with each other, driven by "three great objects of desire," namely sex, hunger, and fear. Through the competition, "the strongest and most active . . . [will] propagate the species, which should thence become improved."

Charles Darwin and after


Charles Darwin 1859 First Edition of Origin of Species did not contain the word evolution, though he used evolved at the end of the last sentence in the book. The word evolution in popular use in 1859 applied to a speculative explanation of how the world and life could be created from chance, probabilities, and the mere physical properties of atoms.

Darwin's contemporaries, notably Herbert Spencer argued publicly that the theory of evolution explained how the universe, the world, animals, plants, civilization, ethics, laws, and art would result from the probabilities inherent in atoms that found themselves in favorable circumstances. Like Spencer, Thomas Huxley concerned himself with explaining how a world of sunlight, seas, rocks, gases, and trace minerals could generate the full span of life, intelligence, and civilization. According to Huxley, he could not believe the creationists, because they had no convincing evidence. "And, by way of being perfectly fair, I had exactly the same answer to give to the evolutionists of 1851-8."

But according to Huxley, Darwin's 1859 Origin of Species provided the first explanation that was better than creation. "That which we were looking for and could not find, was a hypothesis respecting the origin of known organic forms, which assumed the operation of no causes but such as could be proved to be actually at work. We wanted, not to pin our faith to that or any other speculation, but to get hold of clear and definite conceptions which could be brought face to face with facts and have their validity tested. The 'Origin' provided us with the working hypothesis we sought."



In 1869, Thomas Huxley used the term evolutionism to refer to gradual geological processes when he wrote of the "three schools of geological speculation which I have termed Catastrophism, Uniformitarianism, and Evolutionism." (Scientific Opinion, Apr. 28, 1869, p. 487/1)

By 1872, in some scientific circles, the term evolutionism was used only to refer to life-form processes such as natural selection. Under this emerging usage, the term evolutionism specifically did not apply to either geological processes or to the origin of life as in abiogenesis. Thus, one reviewer wrote, "Evolutionism does not propose to explain the unfolding of life out of dead matter." (E. Fry, Spectator, Sep. 21, 1872, p. 1201)

Though Darwin had excluded the words evolution and evolutionist from the first five editions of Origin of Species, he imported both of the terms evolution and evolutionist into his Sixth Edition in 1872, as illustrated in the following examples.
 * "If numerous species, belonging to the same genera or families, have really started into life at once, the fact would be fatal to the theory of evolution through natural selection."
 * "It is admitted by most evolutionists that mammals are descended from a marsupial form; and if so, the mammary glands will have been at first developed within the marsupial sack."

In 1872, The Times published a review of Darwin's book The Expression of the Emotions. Darwin attributed much of the human emotional capability to an inheritance from the common ancestors of today's animals: "A fierce sneer, in which the upper lip is retracted and the canine tooth exposed on one side alone, Mr. Darwin ventures to say, 'reveals man's animal descent.'" The reviewer finds fault with the mechanical determinism in Darwin's analysis that attributes too much to "our early progenitors" and not enough to the person's consciousness. Then the reviewer says: "His [Darwin's] thorough-going 'evolutionism' tends to eliminate from the developed human form any relations beyond those of the bare mechanism of animal existence." (The Times, Dec. 13, 1872; pg. 4, col A)

During this period, evolutionism was used to label scientific theories that explained the presence of humans on this earth without assistance from divine intervention. For example, one opponent of Darwin's theory of evolution said, "Evolutionism . . . excluded creation and theism." (Sir John W. Dawson, The Story of the Earth and Man (1873), p. 348)

Modern controversies
Today, the scientific community rarely uses either of the words evolutionist or evolutionism. However in America, the National Center for Science Education does use the related term "anti-evolutionism" to label the organized political and religious movement that opposes the teaching of evolution in public schools. For example, the National Center for Science Education website is dedicated to "defending the teaching of evolution in public schools," and that website offers the "resource" of a page about "Dealing with Anti-Evolutionism."

In contrast, the words evolutionist and evolutionism are widely used by creationists and others in the United States who are opposed to the theory of evolution; they use those two words to imply that the scientific community's attachment to the theory of evolution is a matter of religious faith and is just another -ism, not a matter capable of being substantiated by the scientific method. However, the common colloquial usage of "darwinsim" as an interchangeable term for evolutionary theory suggest that "-isms" extend beyond the religious arena and enjoy routine usage within the scientific community as well.

Furthermore, Young Earth creationists sometimes use the term evolutionism to attack the empirical methods of science generally, such as attacking geology and astronomy which have concluded that the Earth and the universe are roughly a million times older than the young-earth creationists believe. Other groups maintain that these two competing views do not need to be mutually exclusive.

Opponents of evolutionary theory may also use the words evolutionist and evolutionism to place a belief in evolution in the same vein as other philosophical systems that they (religious creationists) traditionally attack, such as atheism, agnosticism, secular humanism, rationalism, and materialism. However, as many supporters of evolutionary theory are self-described "evolutionists," this term is not used exclusively by detractors of the evolutionary school of thought. Some opponents to evolutionary theory also argue that the evolutionist's belief in "survival of the fittest" leads to disregard for the value of life, which creationists perceive to be manifested in eugenics, euthanasia, and abortion.

In 1994, John Peloza, a high school biology teacher in California, U.S.A., sued his school board in federal court, claiming that he was being forced to teach the "religion" of "evolutionism". The federal court dismissed the case, holding that Peloza's suit was "frivolous" and requiring Peloza to pay the school board's attorneys' fees and court costs. When Peloza appealed, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals overruled the claim of frivolity and the assignment of fees, but otherwise upheld the lower court's dismissal. Notably, the Court of Appeals held that evolution said nothing about "how the universe was created" or "whether or not there is a divine Creator"; and moreover that "evolution" and "evolutionism" are not religions, so the state can teach them in public schools as long as it does not teach a "belief that the universe came into existence without a Creator."