Darwin\'s Influence on Modern Thought,

¶ … Darwin's Influence on Modern Thought," by evolutionary biologist Ernst Mayr, argues the case that no biologist has been more responsible for changes in the way the 'average person' views the world than Charles Darwin. The article further focuses on the history of natural science and the ideas that Darwin's theories laid to rest. Written as a sort of overview of Darwin's findings and how they affected the perceptions of both scientists and the 'average' human alike, Mayr's article takes a distinct evolutionary, scientific, and educated standpoint.

Mayr asserts that Darwin made major contributions in three areas: evolutionary biology, the philosophy of science, and the modern zeitgeist. Of evolutionary biology, Mayr claims that Darwin contributed four "especially important" concepts: evolution, common descent, evolution as having no discontinuities, and natural selection. Of the philosophy of science, our author purports that Darwinism, by its retroactive nature, has influenced biology, over the past 150 years, to modify its methodology to include not only experimentation but observation, comparison, classification, and testing of competing historical narratives. In other words, findings in this new branch of science -- evolutionary biology -- could not be verified by experimentation, as what was being studied took place in the past. New scientific methods had to be formed in response, and this, Mayr says, is Darwin's great contribution to the philosophy of science.

Darwin's contributions to the third field, "the Darwinian Zeitgeist," are what Mayr hones in on. Darwin rejected all forms of the supernatural, and offered, instead, a simple, justifiable means of understanding the natural world: natural selection. In contrast, his peers -- up until Darwin's time -- had been promoting teleological concepts. Most notably, there existed a belief that there was some teleological force that steered species toward perfection. This was known as the "final cause." In reality, this was a 'non-explanation,' similar to answering the question "Why?" with "Because." Instead, Darwin offered natural selection, a relatively simple explanation that was verifiable through observation of the natural world.

This, of all Darwin's contributions, was the most significant, Mayr reports. "The Living world," he says, "can [now] be explained without recourse to supernaturalism." An underlying implication of this situation was a kind of democratization of natural science -- a distribution of scientific knowledge that could be tested, verified, and explained by unscientific people. At the end of the article, Mayr asserts that "almost every component in modern man's belief system is somehow affected by Darwinian principals."

While Mayr's article offered a well-rounded review of Darwin's most important contributions to natural science, it was not without its pitfalls. The most notable pitfall was that it didn't seem to reach out to 'the other side.' It felt similar to a press release for Darwinism -- a "puff-piece." This is illustrated by Mayr's language: "No educated person any longer questions the validity of the so-called theory of evolution." Indeed if Mayr wrote to affect change among those 'on the other side,' he most certainly alienated them with this sentence. One should question the purpose of the article, then. Has the article been written to tell like-minded individuals what they already know? Has it been written to reaffirm a particular worldview, much like a hymn is sung, or a manifesto is published?