It helps to know your history

This morning I was browsing YouTube in an attempt to find some nutty creationist argument no one had seen yet, but instead I came across a few cable TV "debates" between creationists and defenders of evolution. They were painful to watch; the creationists proffered the same nonsense and the various skeptics/scientists often talked right past them and did not do a very good job at refuting the "freedom of inquiry" spin creationists love to use. This clip is a case in point;

Ouch. I don't have warm feelings for Anderson Cooper, either, as asking vague, "objective" questions that create such wrecks. To the best of my recollection I've never seen a good debate between a creationist and a scientist/skeptic in such a format, and I doubt that they serve to enlighten anyone, especially since many of these clips end up being carbon copies of each other (creationist says "It's about intellectual freedom," evolutionist says "You're telling kids dinosaurs lived alongside humans.")

What I've never heard during these exchanges (and do not expect to), though, is that for a number of years after Darwin published On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection there was a reinvigoration of Neo-Lamarckism, a competing idea that was viewed as more "positive" than natural selection. Ultimately Neo-Lamarckism was rightfully discarded and the Modern Synthesis married evidence from population biology, genetics, paleontology, etc. to natural selection, but most of the public seems to assume that scientists all "believed in evolution" as soon as Darwin published and that the "orthodoxy of Darwinianism" has never been challenged. I know that's what I thought I knew before I started reading more about the history of evolution as an idea, and I assert there needs to be a more concerted effort to help people understand what Darwin said, what his critics responded with, and why evolution by natural selection was ultimately vindicated.

I was reminded of discarded scientific objections to evolution by natural selection last night as I read the preface & introduction of E.D. Cope's Primary Factors of Organic Evolution (oddly enough, my book came with a note inside saying that it is a review copy that was sent courtesy of the Open Court Publishing Co. for $21.00 in 1896). I still have to give my attention to the whole work, but from what Cope says in the introduction (and a brief review of other Neo-Lamarckians in the last section) he views natural selection as a negative, destructive force within nature, while he believed evolution proceeded due to positive changes within the organism (including thought). Indeed, it appears that at the close of the 19th century some naturalists felt that natural selection (while a real phenomenon) could not account for evolution, nor could it explain variation, and other mechanisms had to be proposed. If I had not heard about such views before (primarily in Peter Bowler's Monkey Trials and Gorilla Sermons) I may have missed this tell-tale paragraph from Cope's preface;

Many zoologists of this country, in common with many of those of other nations, have found reason for believing that the factors of evolution which were first clearly formulated by Lamarck, are really such. This view is taken in the following pages, and the book may be regarded as containing a plea on their behalf. In other words, the argument is constructive and not destructive. The attempt is made to show what we know, rather than what we do not know. This is proper at this time, since, in my opinion, a certain amount of evidence has accumulated to demonstrate the doctrine here defended, and which I have defended as a working hypothesis for twenty-five years. [emphasis mine]

Such a view of evolution, as a positive force by which organisms could evolutionarily "better themselves," appealed to some liberal theologians and church-leaders at the time. We have no such luxury today, especially since the old saw of "natural selection is a destructive force that reduces information" is one heard over and over again in the current iteration of the evolution/creationism debacle. If there is no direction, no purpose, and no way for organisms to make themselves better by their own habits, evolution as is presently understood can appear to be extremely threatening to the faithful. This doesn't mean we should try to resurrect Neo-Lamarckism, make an attempt to reclaim the language of design, or bring back any other tactic that would undercut the power of the evolution idea. It may be unfortunate, but the fact of the matter is that being honest about science will continue to put scientists in opposition to religious fundamentalists.