"Beautiful Contrivance: Science, Religion and Language in Darwin's
Fertilization of Orchids (1862)"
Thursdays at 4PM in Room 1116, Institute for Physical Science and Technology (IPST)
Richard England - Oct. 18
Salisbury State University
Abstract
In this paper I examine Darwin's view of design in his work on the fertilization of orchids, and contemporary reactions to that work. The relationship between teleological argument and Darwinian theorizing is often read from his notebooks and passages in the {Origin of Species} (1859), but controversies over his work on orchids in 1862 demonstrate a subtle struggle to control the language and meaning of design. In particular Darwin frequently referred to "contrivance," a term which had been essential to the arguments of Paley's {Natural Theology} and the {Bridgewater Treatises}. Darwin's critic, the Duke of Argyll insisted that the term contrivance necessarily implied a contriving mind. Alfred Russel Wallace
insisted that Darwin meant nothing of the sort, and tried to recast Darwin's argument in more metaphysically neutral language. I argue that
while contrivance was a loaded metaphor it was necessary to his vision of nature. This historical case illustrates aspects of the place of metaphor in scientific explanation which illuminate some current controversies about design.
Biography
Richard England is the Assistant Director of the Bellavance Honors Program at Salisbury University. He received the Ph. D. in the History and Philosophy of Science from the University of Toronto in 1997. England studies the cultural authority of science in the Victorian period, with particular interests in the relationship between scientific and theological readings of the book of nature, vivisection, and ways of valuing and controlling the natural world. He is currently writing a book on the relationship between Anglo-catholicism and science in Victorian Oxford. His work has appeared in the {Journal of the History of Biology} and {Osiris}.
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Fall 2001