Abstract
We have become accustomed to invest the notion of organic evolution with two distinctive features: First, living creatures undergo changes in kind over geological time; second, these changes take place through the operation of natural selection upon variations which are randomly generated in populations of organisms. While this second feature of classical evolution was not adequately articulated until the appearance of Darwin’s Origin of Species in 1859, from about the end of the seventeenth century there had been numerous theories of ‘evolution’ which relied upon other mechanisms of change. In this paper I shall outline a number of such theories which were motivated by theological concerns.
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Notes
More, An Explanation of the Grand Mystery of Godliness (London, 1660), p.240.
Ibid. On the impact of Descartes’ cosmology in England see Jacques Roger, “The Cartesian Model and Its Role in Eighteenth-Century `Theory of the Earth’”, in Problems of Cartesianism, ed. T. Lennon, J. Nicholas, J. Davis (Kingston and Montreal, 1982) pp.95112; Peter Harrison, “The Influence of Cartesian Cosmology in England”, in Descartes’ Natural Philosophy, ed. S. Gaukroger, J. Schuster, and J. Sutton, ( London, 2000 ), pp. 16892.
Thomas Burnet, The Theory of the Earthchrw(133) the Last Two Books (London, 1690), Epistle Dedicatory (p.231). All citations from Bumet’s Sacred Theory (Books I-IV), are taken from a Centaur reprint of the second editions (London, 1965 ). Pagination differs from original imprints. Also see F M van Helmont, The Paradoxal Discourseschrw(133) concerning the Macrocosm and Microcosm (London, 1685 ) p. 114.
Bumet, Sacred Theory, bk. III, ch. 7 (pp. 270–8 ).
Erasmus Warren, Geologia, or, A Discourse Concerning the Earth before the Deluge (London, 1690); John Keill, An Examination of Dr Burnet’s Theory of the Earth, Together with Some Remarks on Mr Whiston’s New Theory of the Earth (Oxford, 1698), and an Examination of the Reflections on The Theory of the Earth together with A Defence of the Remarks on Mr Whiston’s New Theory (Oxford, 1699); William Whiston, A New Theory of the Earth (London, 1696); Thomas Robinson, The Anatomy of the Earth (London, 1694), p.177f. Cf John Ray, Three Physico-Theological Discourses, 2nd edn. (London, 1693), pp. 278–330; Joseph Glanvill, Lux Orientalis, pp.137–41, in More, Two Choice and Vseful Treatises (London, 1682 ). Other critics of the `theorists’ include John Beaumont, Considerations on a Book entitled The Theory of the Earth (London, 1693); Herbert Croft, Some Animadversions upon a book entitled The Theory of the Earth (London, 1685); John Edwards, Brief Remarks upon Mr Whiston’s New Theory of the Earth (London, 1697 ); Bernardino Ramazzini, The Abyssinian Philosophy Confuted (London, 1697 ).
Keil1, An Examination, p.11. The same criticism is found in Erasmus Warren, Geologia, pp.124–7, William Nicholls, Conference with a Theist Part 11 (London, 1697 ), pp.193209; John Edwards, Brief Remarks pp.27–9; John Beaumont, Considerations, pp. 44–7.
Whiston, A Vindication of the New Theory of the Earth (London, 1698 ), p.32. For a discussion of the “Newtonian” solutions to this dilemma, see James Force, “Newton’s God of Dominion”, and “The Breakdown of the Newtonian Synthesis of Science and Religion”, both in James Force and Richard Popkin, Essays on the Context, Nature, and Influence of Isaac Newton’s Theology, ( Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1990 ).
See Burnet, Theory of the Earth, bk. III, chs. 4,8 (pp.253, 281); and An Answer to the Late Exceptions made by Mr Erasmus Warren against the Theory of the Earth (London, 1690 ), pp. 2–4.
Whiston, New Theory, p.211. Whiston comes close to Spinoza’s assertion that God’s `general’ and `special’ providence are merely two distinct kinds of universal laws of nature. Tractatus C.3 (Gebhardt edn.7, pp. 45–7). Also see Amos Funkenstein, Theology and the Scientific Imagination, (Princeton, NJ: Princeton UP, 1986), p.220, and Peter Harrison, “Newtonian Science, Miracles, and the Laws of Nature”, JHI 56 (1995), pp. 531–53.
Whiston, New Theory, p.360; cf. p.219.
See, e.g., Augustine, De Genesi ad litteram I, xxx.15; Aquinas, Summa theologiae, la2ae. 98, 3. On the principle of accommodation, see Funkenstein, Theology and the Scientific Imagination, pp.213–21; Scott Mandelbrote, “Isaac Newton and Thomas Burnet: Biblical Criticism and the Crisis of Late Seventeenth-Century England”, in J.E. Force and R. Popkin (eds.), The Books of Nature and Scripture, pp.149–178; Historisches Wörtebuch der Philosophie, ed. J. Ritter (Basel: Schwabe, 1971-), I, s.v. “Akkomodation”; Stephen Benin, The Footprints of God: Divine Accommodation in Jewish and Christian Thought (Albany: SUNY Press, 1993); Peter Harrison, The Bible, Protestantism and the Rise of Natural Science ( Cambridge: CUP, 1998 ), pp. 133–8.
Thomas Burnet, A Review of the Theory of the Earth and of its Proofs (London, 1690), p.44.
See Newton’s letter to Burnet on this issue, The Correspondence of Isaac Newton. ed. H W Turnbull et al., (7 vols, Cambridge: CUP, 1959–77), II, 323. Burnet’s position on this issue becomes clear when he treats the new heavens and the new earth. Thus, for example: “These later Texts of Scripture, being so express, there is but one way left to elude the force of them; and that is, by turning the Renovations of the World into an Allegory: and making the New Heavens and New Earth to be Allegorical Heavens and Earth, not real and material, as ours are. This is a bold attempt of some modern Authors, who choose rather to strain the Word of God, than their own notions.” A Review, p.47.
More, An Antidote against Atheism (2nd edn., London, 1662 ), p. 55
Bumet, Sacred Theory, bk.II, ch.v; bk. III, ch.3 (pp. 60, 148 ).
Thomas Robinson, The Anatomy of the Earth, pp.2–4; cf. his New Observations of the Natural History of this World of Matter, and of this World of Life (London, 1696), pp.109-
Cf. Jean D’Espagnet, Enchyridion physicae restitutae, (London, 1651 ), pp.21, 91. 17. John Ray, Three Physico-Theological Discourses, p. 46.
Burnet, for example, was ridiculed by Bishop Herbert Croft: “And here you might have seen their heads first peeping out of the Earth, and then their bodies, legs, tails and all, frisking forth and taking their career.” Some Animadversions, Preface. Presumably the bishop was less of a literalist than Burnet.
chrw(133) we have just and necessary reasons to conclude, That as the Forms of all things would be far more permanent and lasting in the Primitive state of the Heavens and the Earth; so particularly the Lives of Men, and of other Animals.“ Theory of the Earth, bk. II, ch. iv (p.163). Cf. John Edwards, A Demonstration of the Existence and Providence of God (London, 1696), p.185.
Whiston, New Theory, p. 169. Cf. Godfrey Goodman, The Fall of Man or the Corruption of Nature (London, 1616 ).
Ibid., p.170. For seventeenth-century speculations about the perfection of Adam and Eve, see Philip Almond, Adam and Eve in Seventeenth-Century Thought ( Cambridge: CUP, 1999 ), pp. 41–8.
Ibid., p.381.
On the general theme of degeneration in the early modern period see D. C. Allen, “The Degeneration of Man and Renaissance Pessimism”, Studies in Philology, 35 (1938), 20227; Clarence Glacken, Traces on the Rhodian Shore (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1973), pp.162f., 379–92; Margaret Hodgen, Early Anthropology in the 16th and 17th Centuries (Philadelphia, 1964 ), pp.254–94; Victor Harris, All Coherence Gone (Chicago, 1949 ).
See e.g., Goodman, Fall of Man, pp.275,305,350; Meric Casaubon, A Treatise of Vse and Cvstom (London, 1638), p.80; John Webster, Academiarum Examen (London, 1654 ), pp. 30–2.
Piene-Louis Moreau de Maupertuis, Venus Physique, contenant deux dissertations. l’une sur l’origine des hommes et des animaux; et l’autre sur l’origine des noirs (The Hague, 1746), Preface; Buffon, Animaux communs aux deux continents, in Oeuvres completes de Buffon, nouvelle edn., (12 vols., Paris, 1817–19) VI, 515–321; Corneille de Pauw, Recherches philosophiques sur les Américains 3 vols., (London, 1774), I, Discours Préliminaire; Joseph Glanvill, Scepsis Scientifica, ed. John Owen, (London, 1885), p.211. Cf. Meric Casaubon, A Treatise of Vse and Custom, p. 1.
See, e.g., E Guyenot, Les sciences de la vie XV11 e et XVI11 e siecles (Paris, 1941), pp, 3979.
Thomas Hodges, The Creatures Goodness (London, 1675) pp. 17f.; Nathaniel Holmes, The Resurrection Revealed (London, 1653), pp. 89,190, 528–30; Whiston, New Theory, pp. 100f, 170, 273.
Goodman, Fall of Man, pp. 18f. Cf. Aquinas, Summa theologiae, la. 96, 1
Bumet, Theory, bk. I, ch. 4 (pp. 44f.) Also John Woodward, An Essay Towards a Natural History of the Earth (London, 1695 ), pp. 83, 90, 92.
On the deleterious effects of climate and dispersion see, e.g., Nathaniel Carpenter, Geographie Delineated, 2nd edn., (Oxford, 1635), bk, II, pp. 276–8; Corneille de Pauw, Recherches philosophies, II, pp. 107–22. As late as the nineteenth century, Chateaubriand was arguing that the nobility of Elephants was related to the fact that they had never strayed far from Eden. Genie du christianisme (Paris, 1877) I.v.9.
the role played by the New World in the degeneration thesis, see Antonelli Gerbi, The Dispute of the New World (Pittsburgh, 1973 ), chs. 1–3; H.S. Commager and E. Giordanetti, Was America a Mistake? (New York, 1967 ).
David Hull, “The Effect of Essentialism on Taxonomy — Two Thousand Years of Stasis”, British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 15 (1965), pp.314–26. For a critique of this standard view, see Scott Atran, “Pre-Theoretical Aspects of Aristotelian Definition and Classification of Animals: The Case for Common Sense”, Studies in the History and Philosophy of Science 16 (1985), 113–63.
For recent commentary on the status of Buffon in the history of evolutionary theory see John H. Eddy Jr., “Buffon’s Histoire naturelle: history? A critique of recent interpretations”, Isis 85 (1994), pp. 644–62.
Sur les Oiseaux, Oeuvres, IX, 3
Les Animaux Domestiques, Oeuvres, V 1, 61.
Ibid., 62. It is unlikely that this denial is simply a tactical or ironic statement by Buffon. He later gives a number of reasons — including a lack of intermediate species — to show that this more radical evolutionary thesis is improbable.
Buffon generally observed a clear distinction between `varieties’ and `species’. He famously defined `species’ in terms of ability to interbreed and produce fertile offspring. Diverse types within a species were `varieties’. See J. Gayon, “The individuality of the species: A Darwinian theory? From Buffon to Ghiselin, and back to Darwin”, Biology and Philosophy 11 (1996), pp.215–244; D. N. Stamos, “Buffon, Darwin, and the non-individuality of species — A reply to Jean Gayon”, Biology and Philosophy 13 (1998), 44370; 0 Lovejoy, “Buffon and the Problem of Species”, in Forerunners of Darwin, ed. Bentley Glass et al., (Baltimore, 1968), pp. 98–101.
Harris, All Coherence Gone, p. 161. Even Buffon himself came to speak of the possibility of “variation, improvement, alteration and degeneration”. Sur les Oiseaux, Oeuvres, IX, 10.
For the creation waits with eager longing for the revealing of the sons of God; for the creation was subjected to futility, not of its own will but by the will of him who subjected it in hope; because the creation itself will be set free from its bondage to decay and obtain the glorious liberty of the children of God. We know that the whole creation has been groaning in travail together until now; and not only the creation, but we ourselves, who have the first fruits of the Spirit, groan inwardly as we wait for adoption as sons, the redemption of our bodies.“ (Romans 8. 19–23)
Consider Bumet’s statement: “Two of the greatest Speculations that we are capable of in this Life, are, in my Opinion, The REVOLUTION OF WORLDS, and the REVOLUTION OF SOULS; one for the Material World, and the other for the Intellectual”, Sacred Theory, bk. IV, Preface (p. 316).
chrw(133)we may look upon this Spirit of Nature as the great Quartermaster-General of Divine Providence, but able alone without any under-Officers, to lodge every Soul according to her rank and merit whenever she leaves the Body: And it would prove a very serviceable Hypothesis for those that fancy the Praexistence of Human Souls, to declare how they may be conveyed into Bodies herechrw(133) as also how the Souls of Brutes, though the earth were made perfectly inept for the life of any Animal, need not lye for ever useless in the Universe.“ More, Antidote against Atheism, p. 203. See also above, Robert Crocker, ”Henry More and the Preexistence of the Soul“, chapter 5.
More, Annotations uponchrw(133).Lux Orientalis and the Discourse on Truth (London, 1682), p. 16.
Ibid., p. 126.
Souls “will be naturally conveyed to such places and be associated to such company as is most congruous to their Nature.” The Immortality of the Soul (London, 1662) p. 156.
More, Annotations, p. 126. More is at pains to point out, however, that these `natural laws’ do not describe features of the mechanical powers of matter, but arise from the `spirit of nature’. Immortality of the Soul, pp. 193, 199, 203.
Even More himself was reluctant to do so. See Mystery of Godliness, p. 241.
Robert Boyle, Some Physico-Theological Considerations about the Possibility of the Resurrection (London, 1675), pp. 3, 29, 10 (my italics). “Ibid., p. 11 Athanasius Kircher had apparently conducted such an experiment according to Boyle, p. 10.
Thomas Browne, Religio Medici, ed. R. Robbins (Oxford, 1982), 1.48 (p.51) Jean d’Espagnet wrote, on similar lines, that “We may guess, that that root of Nature, which survives the ruin of the mixt bodie, is a footstep, and the purest and immortal portion of the first matter informed and signed with the divine character of Light. For that ancient matrimonie betwixt the first Matter and its Form, is not to be untiedchrw(133).” Enchyridion physicae restitutae, p. 148. Leibniz too, early in his philosophical career, subscribed to the similar notion of a `florem substantiar’. See Stuart Brown, “Leibniz and More’s Cabbalistic Circle”, in Henry More (1614–1678): Tercentenary Studies, ed. Sarah Hutton (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1990), pp. 77–95 (p. 93, n 46).
Thomas Browne, Religio Medici, ed. R. Robbins (Oxford, 1982), 1.48 (p.51) Jean d’Espagnet wrote, on similar lines, that “We may guess, that that root of Nature, which survives the ruin of the mixt bodie, is a footstep, and the purest and immortal portion of the first matter informed and signed with the divine character of Light. For that ancient matrimonie betwixt the first Matter and its Form, is not to be untiedchrw(133).” Enchyridion physicae restitutae, p. 148. Leibniz too, early in his philosophical career, subscribed to the similar notion of a `florem substantiar’. See Stuart Brown, “Leibniz and More’s Cabbalistic Circle”, in Henry More (1614–1678): Tercentenary Studies, ed. Sarah Hutton (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1990), pp. 77–95 (p. 93, n 46).
Corinthians 15. 35–50. See, e.g. Boyle, Physio-Theological Considerations, p. 9. A second “natural” process considered to be analogous to resurrection was the transmutation of metals. Thomas Vaughan utilized this metaphor as well, again citing St Paul’s description of the resurrection: “we shall not all die, but we shall all be CHANGED, in a Moment, in the twinkling of an Eye.” “Salvation”, concluded Vaughan, “is nothing else but transmutation.” As base metals are changed to gold, so “from the hard stubborn Flints of this world, we may prove Chrysoliths and jaspers in the new eternal foundation.” Thomas Vaughan, Lumen deLumine (1651), in The Works of Thomas Vaughan, ed. Alan Rudrum, (Oxford, 1984), p. 357. Thomas Browne used a similar image: “I have often beheld as a miracle that artificial resurrection and revivification of mercury, how being mortified into thousand shapes, it assumes again its own, and returns to its numerical self.” Religio Medici 1.48 (p.51). The principle behind alchemical aspirations was that metals, and indeed all material objects, differed not in their primary matter (materia prima) but in their form. Thus if the form could be changed, metals might be transmuted. Boyle explicitly relied on this principle in arguing that resurrection is logically possible. Some Physico-Theological Considerations, pp. 26f. By analogy, the resurrection was the imposition of a new form on the existing primary matter.
Vaughan, Lumen de Lumine, 92, in Works, p. 356. I have as yet been unable to locate this quotation in the hermetic literature.
Malebranche, Father Malebranche his Treatise Concerning the Search After Truth, 2nd edn, tr. T Taylor, (London, 1700 ), I. vi.3 (p.14) II.vii3 (p.57); Jan Swammerdam, Historia insectorum generalis (Utrech, 1669), pt. II, 29f; Whiston, New Theory, p 224. On theories of embryological pre-existence see Jacques Roger, Les Sciences de la vie dans la pensee francaise du XVIIIe siede, 2nd edn., (Paris, 1971), ch. 3; Peter Bowler, “Preformation and Pre-existence in the Seventeenth Century”, Journal of the History of Biology, 4 (1971), 221–224; Edward Ruestow, “Piety and the defence of natural order: Swammerdam on generation”, in Religion, Science, and Worldview, ed. Margaret Osler and Paul Farber, ( Cambridge, 1985 ).
Strictly, Swammerdam’s version of pre-existence involved what Peter Bowler has described as “a pre-existent design, in the form of a material system `programmed’ to develop into the living organism”. “Preformation and Preexistence in the Seventeenth Century”, p. 237. Ruestow adds that Swammerdam’s pre-existing design `bore within it not only the blueprint for the construction of the animal, but the pattern for the unfolding of both the behaviour and the physical changes of its specific life cycle as well.“ ”Swammerdam on Generation“, p. 241.
Hence Malebranche: “all the bodies of Men and of Beasts, which should be born or produced till the End of the World, were possibly created from the Beginning of it.” Search After Truth, I vi. 3 (p. 14 ).
Augustine, De Genesi ad litteram, V. iv. 9–11; V-vii.20; VI. vi.10. Also see Ettiene Gilson The Christian Philosophy of Saint Augustine (London, 1961) 197–209; Michael McKough, The Meaning of the Rationes Seminales in St Augustine (Washington: Catholic University of America, 1926). Contemporary discussions of instantaneous creation, or creation of seminal forms, can be found in d’Espagnet, Enchyridion physicae restitutae, p. 109; Henry More, Antidote against Atheism, pp. 53,79f; Anon, Two Remarkable Paradoxes (London, 1681); Seder Olam (London, 1694 ), pp. 15f; John Ray, Three Physico Theological Discourses, pp. 46–60; Thomas Robinson, The Anatomy of the Earth, p. 2
Robert Grant states that for Augustine miracles were “due to the semina seminum implanted in the world at creation. The `seeds’ ultimately produce the miracle in nature.” Miracle and Natural Law in Graeco-Roman and Early Christian Thought (Amsterdam, 1952), p. 217. This assertion of Augustine’s naturalism has been challenged by John Hardon, “The Concept of Miracle from St. Augustine to Modem Apologetics”, Theological Studies 15 (1954) 229–257.
Vaughan, Magia Adamica (1650), in Works, p. 185.
Pluche, Spectacle de la Nature: or Nature Display’d, (7 vols., London, 1770 ), 1, p. 21.
n terms of the older Aristolelian categories of causation, we have examined the efficient causes of living things. For scientists of the seventeenth century, complete explanation required reference to final causes. Early modem proponents of static views of nature spoke of set designs in nature. John Ray is typical of this physico-theological tendency. See The Wisdom of God Manifested in the Works of Creation (London, 1691 ), p. 330. See also Margaret J. Osier, “From Immanent Natures to Nature as Artifice: The Reinterpretation of Final Causes in Seventeenth-Century Natural Philosophy”, The Monist 79 (1996), 388–407; Harrison, Rise of Natural Science, pp. 169–72. The less numerous proponents of a more dynamic view of nature referred to theodicy to provide such an explanation of mutations in nature in terms of final causes. Post-Darwinian theories, by way of contrast, differ in considering efficient causes alone to provide a complete explanation of organic change.
For a general account of King’s thesis and its position in eighteenth-century discussions of the problem of evil, see John Hick, Evil and the God of Love (London, 1968) ch.7.
King, Essay, pp. 90f, n.
Augustine, On Free Will, III, ix, 24 in Augustine: Earlier Writings, tr. John Burleigh, ( London, 1953 ), p. 185.
King Essay p.84n. Cf. also Glanvill, Lux Orientalis, p. 9; More, Annotations upon Lux Orientalis (London, 1682 ), pp. 5f.
See, e.g. Henry Vaughan, “The Book”, Silex Scintillans, II; Thomas Vaughan, Magia Adamia (1650) in Works p. 158f; Godfrey Goodman, The Creatures Praysing God (London, 1622), p. 29; Richard Overton, Mans Monallitie (Amsterdam [London], 1643 ), p. 50.
Those who are to live among all these“, observed Guy Holland, ”are likely to have a gallant time of it“, The Grand Prerogative of Humane Nature (London 1653), p. 110. 66.John Swan, Speculum Mundi (London, 1665), p. 464.
Those who are to live among all these“, observed Guy Holland, ”are likely to have a gallant time of it“, The Grand Prerogative of Humane Nature (London 1653), p. 110. 66.John Swan, Speculum Mundi (London, 1665), p. 464.
John Wesley, “The Grand Deliverance”, in Works, 11th edn., (London, 1856), VI Sermon lx 234, Whiston, New Theory, p. 170.
Bishop Joseph Butler, in his majestic Analogy, again raised the issue in the mid-eighteenth century. Since we do not know what “latent powers and capacities” animals are endued with, it is not impossible that they might “arrive at great attainments and become rational and moral agents”. The Analogy of Religion Natural and Revealed to the Constitution and Course of Nature (1736), I.i. i, (London, n.d.), p.28.
See Peter Harrison, Religion and the Religions in the English Enlightenment ( Cambridge: CUP, 1991 ) pp. 55f.
Glanvill, Lux Orientalis, p.24; Charles Mullett “A Letter by Joseph Glanvill on the Future Sate”, Huntington Library Quarterly, 1 (1937), 447–56: 24: Ralph Cudworth, True Intellectual System of the Universe, ed. John Harrison, (3 vols, London, 1845), III, p. 90.
F.M. van Helmont, The Paradoxal Discourses, p. 107; Two Hundred Queries Moderately Propounded Concerning the Doctrine of the Revolution of Humane Souls (London 1684) pp. 3f, 15, 134 and passim. Anon, Seder Olam, passim; N.N., A Letter to a Gentleman Touching the Treatisechrw(133)concerning the Revolution of Humane Souls (London, 1690 ), p. 16.
Glanvill, quoted in Charles Mullen, “A Letter by Joseph Glanvill”, pp. 447–56 (my italics).
Van Helmont, The Paradoxal Discourses, p. 132.
Ibid.
Seder Olam, pp. 12f.
Anne Conway, The Principles of the Most Ancient and Modern Philosophy (London, 1692 ). We find a similar scheme, though with a dualist ontology, in Bulstrode Whitelock Bulstrode, An Essay of Transmigration in Defence of Pythagoras, (London, 1693). Whitelock argued that if we are to relieve God of the tedium of perpetual creation, it must happen that `Things pass and are changed into one another, by an continual Circulation “ (p. 5) The spirits of living things, at the death of their bodies, are re-cycled into new ones (p.26) The chain of being, for Bulstrode had become a ladder, along which creatures could progress (p. 46 ).
Principles, p. 152.
Ibid., p.96, cf. pp. 59, 74.
Ibid., p. 61f.
bid., p.59.
Ibid., pp. 60f.
Ibid., pp. 60f. Such transmutations, according to Conway, actually take place in all things. Air can be changed into fire or aether; one metal can be changed into another; barley and wheat are convertible one into the other; worms change into flies; the corrupted earth will bring forth animals without seed. Ibid., pp. 64f.
Conway argued that the difference between bodies and spirits is `gradual’ that spirit and matter were merely different `modes’ of reality (Principles, VII). She explicitly opposed her ontology to the materialism of Hobbes, the dualism of Descartes, and the pantheism of Spinoza. (Principles, IX). For Conway’s `monadology’, see Principles, III.9 (pp.24–9). Conway seems to have an implicit theory of emanation. On this point she refers her reader to the emanationist ontology of the Kabbala Denudata. Principles, 111.9 (p.28). This ontology was shared by van Helmont, A Cabbalistic Dialogue (London, 1682), pp. 4, 8; and the author of Seder Olam (p.11).
Indeed, so alike are the theories of transmutation of Leibniz and Conway that some degree of mutual influence seems likely. There is, however, no direct evidence of such influence, and in any case, given the circle in which both thinkers moved — a circle which included both More and van Helmont — it is not surprising that in working upon similar problems from similar premises that they would have converging views. It remains possible that Conway exerted some influence on the thought of Liebniz through the medium of F.M. van Helmont but again there is no direct evidence. It is clear from his correspondence with Arnauld that Leibniz was developing his ideas about animal transformation in the 1680s. For discussions of the influence of the More/Conway/van Helmont circle on Leibniz, see: Stuart Brown, “Leibniz and More’s Cabbalistic Circle”; Marjorie Nicholson, Conway Letters, (New Haven, 1930), pp. 454–5; Caroline Merchant, The Death of Nature, ( New York, 1989 ), pp. 253–68.
There exists a `harmony’ between “the physical realm of nature and the moral realm of gracechrw(133).” Monadology, §87.
Leibniz to Amauld, Oct. 6, 1687, in Discourse on Metaphysics, Correspondence with Arnauld and Monadology, tr. G. Montgomery, ( Chicago, 1902 ), p. 234.
Leibniz to Arnauld, Oct, 6, 1687, (Montgomery edn., p. 231).
The Origination of Things, in Philosophical Writings, (London, 1973), p. 41.
Monadology, §88, in Ibid. (my italics).
Leibniz to Arnauld, March 1690, (Montgomery edn., p. 244).
bid., pp. 229f.
Leibniz to Arnauld, April 30, 1687, (Montgomery edn., p. 195). Also see n. 48 above. Leibniz believed that the microscope provides us with glimpses of what conceivably could happen after the `death’ of animals — viz. that they continue in this world in another form.
Principles, pp. 30–1 (my italics). Cf Augustine, De Genesi ad litteram., V. iv. 9–11; V. vii.20; VI.vi.10 Cf. n. 53 supra.
Principles, p.81.
Ibid., pp. 19f.
It must be acknowledged that Conway also believed in spontaneous generation, possibly thinking that germs were present in all matter.
Discourse on Metaphysics, XIII.
Oeuvres d’Histoire naturelle et de philosophie, (18 vols., Neuchatel, 1779–83), XV-XVI. Bonnet’s `palingenesis’ is derived from the Greek paliggenesia—rebirth, regeneration, resurrection. “.Palingenesie, VI. 5.
Oeuvres d’Histoire naturelle et de philosophie, (18 vols., Neuchatel, 1779–83), XV-XVI. Bonnet’s `palingenesis’ is derived from the Greek paliggenesia—rebirth, regeneration, resurrection. “.Palingenesie, VI. 5.
Ibid, I.1. In Contemplation de la nature (1764), Bonnet wrote that in future worlds humans would be able to travel from place to place with a speed equal to the speed of lightchrw(133) to be immune from every sort of alteration; to possess the capacity to move celestial bodies, or alter the course of naturechrw(133) to have distinct perceptions of all the attributes of matter and all its modifications; to discern effects in their causes, and so on. Contemplation, 24f., in Oeuvres, V II.
Palingenesie, III.3.
It is not entirely clear, however, that Bonnet accepted the fully-blown theory of emboîtement. Faced with the example of Trembley’s budding polyp, he was to speak of a `preordination’ or `the primordial foundation’ which formed the basis of the new creature. Palingenesie, VIII. 4.
Palingenesie, II1.3.
Essai sur la liberte, X.lii, qu. in Lorin Anderson, Charles Bonnet and the Order of the Known (Dordrecht, 1982 ), p. 26.
Michel Foucault, for example, states that Bonnet’s evolutionism did not `overthrow the old dogma of fixism’. The Order of Things (London, 1989), p. 152. Bentley Glass and C.O. Whitman have offered similar interpretations. See Glass, “Heredity and Variation in the Eighteenth Century Concept of the Species”, Forerunners of Darwin, pp.164f.
Bonnet’s debt to Leibniz is acknowledged in his Memoirs. Here he tells us that he first read Theodicée in 1748, at which time it opened up for him “another universe, whose view appeared to me as an enchanted, I would say almost magical, perspective”. Memoirs autobiographies de Charles Bonnet de Geneve, ed. Raymond Savioz, (Paris, 1948) p. 100, qu. in Virginia Dawson, Nature’s Enigma: The Problem of the Polyp in the Letters of Bonnet, Trembley, and Reamur (Philadelphia, 1987 ), p. 82. See also Anderson, Charles Bonnet, p.12. Reading the Theodicy, Bonnet went on to say, “gave new life to my speculations”. The Palingenesis bears the stamp of Leibniz’s doctrines, and a separate section is devoted to a discussion of his ideas. (La palingenesie, IIl.iii. 6.). It seems likely that Bonnet was also influenced by Pope’s Essay on Man to which he makes several references in the Preface of Insectologie. See Anderson, Charles Bonnet, pp. 7f.
J.B. Robinet, for instance, proposed a theory of development pre-existence similar in important respects to Bonnet’s. See his De la nature, (Amsterdam, 1761–66).
Chambers, for example, writes in Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation, (London, 1844 ): “The Eternal One has arranged for everything beforehand and trusted all to the operations of the law of his appointment, himself being present in all things” (p. 184f.) He insists upon “the original divine conception of all the forms of being” (p. 231) “The inorganic has one final and comprehensive law–Gravitation. The organic, the other great department of mundane things, rests in like manner on one law, and that is–Development.” (p. 360).
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Harrison, P. (2001). Scaling the Ladder of Being: Theology and Early Theories of Evolution. In: Crocker, R. (eds) Religion, Reason and Nature in Early Modern Europe. Archives Internationales d’histoire des Idées / International Archives of the History of Ideas, vol 180. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-015-9777-7_11
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