You're Here:
Home > Chapter 5 > Section 5.2
In this section, I will discuss the relation between British Idealism and scientific discoveries of its time and the time recently before. I will emphasize the evolutionary theory which developed during the second half of the nineteenth century.
Ideas about evolutionary development of species have been around since the 1850s. One discovered that parent animals pass characteristics on to their offspring, and Darwin found out about the different races in one animal. He theorized that this was to better accommodate to one’s environment. There was, however, disagreement about the exact process of evolution. Lamarck thought that individual organisms could evolve as a means of adaptation to their environments, while Darwin said that species evolve through the survival of accidental mutants who happen to be better adapted to their environments.
A movement known as social Darwinism claims that policy should be in place allowing prevention of suffering and, in some way, eugenics in allowing the weak and unfit to die, rather than keeping them alive through all sorts of treatments. This movement has, besides its name, little relation to actual Darwinism. Its most notable follower was nineteenth century philosopher Herbert Spencer, and the movement is derived from Hobbes' philosophy via Malthus'. Although Darwin was inspired philosophically by for instance Malthus' theory of population growth - that the food production will likely grow slower than the population, but that disaster (eg. hunger) will bring the situation back into balance -, it must not be assumed that he initiated social Darwinism.
Towards the end of the nineteenth century most of the significant forms of social understanding were converging upon the view that the idea of evolution provided the key to unlock the secrets of natural and human experience. (70) People compared the evolution of species to that of societies. In the early stages of this philosophy, two ideas were held that later are condemned: firstly, that al evolution of societies is progress, and secondly, that this progress is towards a predestined goal.
Philosophers like Burke held that, following the comparison of society’s evolution to that of species, there must be considerable value in tradition. After all, institutions that have endured a considerable time period apparently had value and purpose, for otherwise they would not have survived. The British Idealists D.G. Ritchie and Henry Jones agree with this viewpoint, but they replace Burke’s conservatism by radicalism. They state that if an institution had once value, it does not mean that it retains this value in our current generation. They further argue that a reformer is just faithful to the principles of evolutionary science by attempting to mitigate unnecessary suffering resulting from natural selection (NR, 18). (70)
According to Ritchie, evolutionary theory is perfectly compatible with Idealism. He applied Hegel’s starting point of the unity of experience to that of scientific thinking, and especially evolution theory. Furthermore, social theory was, by implication, normative because Idealist metaphysics characterized reality with reference to immanent ideals and ends. (70) Ritchie also compared it to self-realisation: the self always has a concept of a better self, which opens the door to a realisation of a moral good (see also the discussion on morality in section 1.2).
Many Idealists, such as Jones, Bosanquet and Ritchie, thought that evolution could be the key to the ultimate understanding of the universe. The explained this by arguing that all forms of knowledge - such as poetry, history, philosophy and the natural sciences - were converging in a universal form of explanation (70). All these, but most explicitly Ritchie, argued that Darwin's evolutionary theory should be accommodated in a form of Idealist social explanation.
Both Jones and Ritchie denied the idea of a distinction between moral and organic or spiritual and natural evolution. Many philosophers, for example T.H. Huxley, namely said that the organic evolution of species is distinct from the evolution of morality and that each serves a different cause. A.R. Wallace also tried to make a differentiation, but, because he considered occurrences like gravity, electricity, chemical force, radiant force and cohesion to be spiritual, without which the natural world however cannot live, Ritchie found that he has hardly any grounds for making the differentiation. Ritchie wanted to unite the spiritual and natural, and he therefore said that the two are related not because of the power of the lower (natural), but of the higher. For example, nature is infused with spirit not because it is intelligent, but because it is intellegible (70). Ritchie further says that natural selection can account for organic development as easily as for moral development.
Jones also discusses Huxley's arguments. He says that it'd be folly to overlook the difference between naturalistic processes and rational or moral occurrences. He, however, unites the two in stating that nature does not exist independently of the rational mind, which however cannot exist without nature either. Andrew Seth Pringle-Pattison, another British Idealist, compliments the naturalistic evolutionists, because they establish the unity within the cosmos.
Hegelian Idealism (see section 4.2) is clearly visible in the reaction of the Idealists towards evolution theory. They apply the concept that a part must always be understood in its whole to the issue of biological evolution, and, unlike Darwin and Spencer, do not want to understand the human development by its origins, but by its end.