said that both Darwin’s theory of evolution and his own psychoanalysis had
resulted in an affront to mankind’s naive egoism.”
“That was a lot of names at one time. Are we talking about Marx,
Darwin, or Freud?”
“In a broader sense we can talk about a naturalistic current from the
middle of the nineteenth century until quite far into our own. By ‘naturalistic’
we mean a sense of reality that accepts no other reality than nature and the
sensory world. A naturalist therefore also considers mankind to be part of
nature. A naturalistic scientist will exclusively rely on natural phenomena—not
on either rationalistic suppositions or any form of divine revelation.”
“And that applies to Marx, Darwin, and Freud?”
“Absolutely. The key words from the middle of the last century were
nature, environment, history, evolution, and growth. Marx had pointed out that
human ideologies were a product of the basis of society. Darwin showed that
mankind was the result of a slow biological evolution, and Freud’s studies of
the unconscious revealed that people’s actions were often the result of
‘animal’ urges or instincts.”
“I think I understand more or less what you mean by naturalistic, but isn’t
it best we talk about one person at a time?”
“We’ll talk about Darwin, Sophie. You may recall that the pre-Socratics
looked for natural explanations of the processes of nature. In the same way
that they had to distance themselves from ancient mythological explanations,
Darwin had to distance himself from the church’s view of the creation of man
and beast.”
“But was he a real philosopher?”
“Darwin was a biologist and a natural scientist. But he was also the
scientist of recent times who has most openly challenged the Biblical view of
man’s place in Creation.”
“So you’ll have to say something about Darwin’s theory of evolution.”
“Let’s begin with Darwin the man. He was born in the little town of
Shrewsbury in 1809. His father, Dr. Robert Darwin, was a renowned local
physician, and very strict about his son’s upbringing. When Charles was a
pupil at the local grammar school, his headmaster described him as a boy
who was always flying around, fooling about with stuff and nonsense, and
never doing a stroke of anything that was the slightest bit useful. By ‘useful,’
the headmaster meant cramming Greek and Latin verbs. By ‘flying around,’
he was referring among other things to the fact that Charles clambered
around collecting beetles of all kinds.”
“I’ll bet he came to regret those words.”
“When he subsequently studied theology, Charles was far more
interested in bird-watching and collecting insects, so he did not get very good
grades in theology. But while he was still at college, he gained himself a
reputation as a natural scientist, not least due to his interest in geology, which
was perhaps the most expansive science of the day. As soon as he had
graduated in theology at Cambridge in April 1831, he went to North Wales to
study rock formations and to search for fossils. In August of the same year,
when he was barely twenty-two years old, he received a letter which was to
determine the course of his whole life . . .”
“What was the letter about?”
“It was from his friend and teacher, John Steven Hens-low. He wrote: ‘I