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Joseph McCabe: A Forgotten Early Populariser of Science and Defender of Evolution

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Abstract

Joseph McCabe (1867–1955) was one of the most prolific and gifted polymaths of the twentieth century. Long before such a thing was thought respectable, and almost a century before any university established a chair in the public understanding of science, McCabe made a living as a populariser of science and a critic of philosophical and religious obscurantism. Through the first half of the twentieth century he wrote countless cheap and widely distributed books and pamphlets for those whose thirst for knowledge exceeded the money or time they could devote to such pursuits. This article will detail, and give some assessment of, McCabe’s career as a populariser of science and expositor of evolutionary theory and its philosophical, religious and cultural ramifications.

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Notes

  1. A full account of McCabe’s life and thought can be found in Cooke (2001).

  2. For a good examination of Haeckel’s influence see Kelly (1981); for a shorter summary see Lynch (2007).

  3. In particular see Popper (1963), Gasman (1971), and Weikart (2004).

  4. See entry on ‘Haeckel, Ernst’ in Milner (1990, p. 206).

  5. One of the more able criticisms, and which I will take as representative, was from John Hedley Brooke in his Science and Religion (1993). Brooke’s aim was to show that the popular antithesis between science and religion was a great deal more complex than had been appreciated. He admits that the conflict model is ‘not without support’, but that it tends to see science and religion as entities in themselves. He also admits that there have been sustained attacks on evolution by Christian communities but dismisses the evolution issue as something that militants from both camps ‘still like to dwell’ upon (pp. 281–282).

  6. There is no shortage of reputable scholars active today who share McCabe’s views with respect to evolution and religion. As well people like Richard Dawkins, views similar to McCabe’s can be found in, or implied from, the works of Daniel Dennett, Ernst Mayr, Lewis Wolpert, Helena Cronin, Susan Blackmore, and many others. McCabe’s understanding of science was a lot more sophisticated than he was given credit for in his own day.

  7. This approach remained popular for decades. Hilaire Belloc, for example, insisted in 1926 that natural selection was ‘quite dead’ and that evolution was driven by ‘Design’. See Belloc (1929), p. 26.

  8. See Bowler (1989, p. 285). This point is ignored by contemporary creationists, who prefer to lay all these, and many other, demons at the feet of Darwinism.

  9. This passage is taken from McCabe (McCabe 1931b, p. 63), but could equally have come from any of his other works.

  10. This criticism notwithstanding, McCabe was an early reader of Nietzsche, and admired much of his work.

  11. It is perhaps worth noting that McCabe had four children.

  12. Oddly, McCabe wrote little directly about education. His most extended treatment was the Little Blue Book, The Crying Need of School Reform: How to Make Education Attractive and Effective (1944). McCabe shared with H. G. Wells an aversion to narrow memorizing of facts, preferring broader learning of principles and how best to apply them. He was also a consistent advocate of adult education.

  13. McCabe’s thought compares favourably with a long-time opponent, Father Vincent McNabb, who employed the most anthropocentric forms of the great chain of being. He began one such passage by giving it the authority of what he took to be a scientific law: ‘the higher the organism the wider is its area of assimilation.’ More eccentric still, he went on to declare that, by the Church’s ‘vast powers of assimilation it proved itself to be an organism of the highest type.’ See McNabb (1927, p. 11).

  14. Ballard specifically invokes Spencer as his authority for this definition.

  15. More than half a century later we find that monism, suitably shorn of any suggestion of vitalism, is making a comeback. Nicholas Humphrey has described monism as ‘that there is in reality only one sort of stuff, of which both minds and brains are ultimately made.’ (Humphrey 1992, p. 4) And in her celebrated study of cyberspace, Margaret Wertheim wrote of the ‘complete misnomer to call the modern scientific world picture dualistic, as is so often done. This world picture is entirely monistic, admitting the reality of the physical world alone.’ (Wertheim 1999, p. 37) McCabe would be well satisfied.

  16. See the transition from McCabe’s The ABC of Evolution p. 8 to The Marvels of Modern Physics p. 114.

  17. See also Bunge (2006, Chaps. 1, 8, 11).

  18. Literary Guide, June 1918, p. 82. McCabe is referring to the French philosopher Henri Bergson (1859–1941) whose influential book Creative Evolution (1911) introduced the vitalist principle to the world. McCabe had originally raised this objection in The Evolution of Mind (1910, p. 152).

  19. For further treatment of this issue see Calne (1999, pp. 231–232).

  20. See also McCabe (1910, p. xi).

  21. This notion of ‘educability’ was not peculiar either to McCabe or to rationalists in general. What was unusual in his treatment was the absence of apocalyptic fervour in his dealing with the subject. In stark contrast Basil Mathews, a prominent Anglican theologian, writing for a popular audience, described the ‘race problem’ as ‘fundamental simultaneously in the fields of ethnology, sociology, biology, psychology, economics, ethics, and religion. Geographically world-wide in its range, if affects the future of the life of men in every continent.’ Like McCabe, Mathews saw education as an important part of the solution, but his notion of education sounds more like indoctrination. Mathews wanted religious education, by which he insisted he did not mean education about religion but education with a religious aim. ‘To this end the co-operation of the scholarship, experience, and executive leadership of Christendom is essential.’ (Mathews 1930). So while theologians like Mathews saw the race problem only being solved by the systematic imposition of Christianity among subject peoples, McCabe counselled a cautious wait-and-see approach, leaving the initiative to the peoples in question..

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  1. Center for Inquiry, Auckland, New Zealand

    Bill Cooke

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Cooke, B. Joseph McCabe: A Forgotten Early Populariser of Science and Defender of Evolution. Sci & Educ 19, 461–484 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11191-009-9194-6

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