Abstract
Design was the subject of great controversy before and after the development of Darwinian theories. Deeply rooted in classical and Christian intellectual traditions, providential design had traditionally defined the way of interpreting the natural world as created by the divine hand. Questioning this claim was arguably the biggest problem in admitting Darwin’s proposal, beyond discussions of evolution as fact. Despite his firm commitment to an alternative argument based on natural selection, Darwin himself showed his concern when confronted with the explanatory power of design. Some popularized views of Darwin’s contribution have stimulated a misunderstanding of this problem, shaping a biased interpretation of Darwin’s biography that reduces the historical accounts to a justificatory explanation of the dominant worldview of today.
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Notes
- 1.
I quote from the English translation by Hugh Elliot (Lamarck 1963, pp. 169–170).
- 2.
Some of these treatises, expressing Anglican orthodoxy in relation to science, were written by Darwin’s own teachers, such as Adam Sedgwick, an important man in his training.
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Català-Gorgues, J.I. (2022). The Problem of Design in the Darwinian Proposal: A Historical Overview. In: Bertranpetit, J., Peretó, J. (eds) Illuminating Human Evolution: 150 Years after Darwin. Evolutionary Studies. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-19-3246-5_4
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