CHARLES DARWIN: Continuity, Teleology and Ideology

摘要

It is a widespread habit to interpret all great scientific revolutions as a break with Judeo-Christian anthropocentric views. This habit has included Darwin and his theory as prime representatives of such a break. In doing so, it has downplayed important elements in Darwin's theory, grouped around the principle of continuity, that contradict such an assumption. It is true that Darwinian theory broke with a static view of the world and succeeded in removing mysterious elements from the living world. It tore down many conceptual barriers between the living and non-living world. Consequently, it tore down some barriers between the world of humans and non-humans as well. Nonetheless, such advances did not eliminate the habit of placing the human being at the centre of attention. Darwin was interpreted as a definite break with every kind of anthropocentrism and teleology by his own contemporary social sectors, eager to eliminate every vestige of Creationist ideas in particular. These sectors needed a conception that explains and justifies the dynamics proper to the world that was already in construction, for which they were seeking their own support in materialist and scientific explanations. Such explanations were able to show the real, natural existence of a Universe in constant change. The members of these sectors and their intellectuals thought that the denial of separated Creations, and the substitution of a mechanism selecting the most perfectly adapted varieties, represented that radical break with teleology and anthropocentrism. An important conceptual tool enabling such a break was the principle of continuity, i.e. gradual and slow variations. This is the principle that, according to those intellectual needs, allowed for the introduction of particular conceptions of design, of progress, of perfection and imperfection and of the nature and dynamics of adaptations. Throughout this article I have shown that in Darwinian discourse 'the principle of continuity' is an important conceptual tool that gives meaning to an anthropocentric teleology. In Darwin there is an idea of natural selection as the carrier of moral attributes, as an organizing force of all that is 'good' for each species, as a purposeful agent enabled to serve as a guide in the struggle for existence. For Darwin, natural selection is a force capable of neutralizing 'chance' in variations and giving them sense, while discriminating between those that are useful for survival from those that are not.