Dealing with Darwin: Place, Politics, and Rhetoric in Religious Engagements with Evolution

Medicine, Science, and Religion in Historical Context

by David N. Livingstone

How was Darwin’s work discussed and debated among the same religious denomination in different locations? Using place, politics, and rhetoric as analytical tools, historical geographer David N. Livingstone investigates how religious communities sharing a Scots Presbyterian heritage engaged with Darwin and Darwinism at the turn of the twentieth century. His findings, presented as the prestigious Gifford Lectures, transform our understandings of the relationship between science and religion. The particulars of place―whether in Edinburgh, Belfast, Toronto, Princeton, or Columbia, South Carolina―shaped the response to Darwin’s theories. Were they tolerated, repudiated, or welcomed? Livingstone shows how Darwin was read in different ways, with meaning distilled from Darwin's texts depending on readers' own histories―their literary genealogies and cultural preoccupations. That the theory of evolution fared differently in different places, Livingstone writes, is "exactly what Darwin might have predicted. As the theory diffused, it diverged." Dealing with Darwin shows the profound extent to which theological debates about evolution were rooted in such matters as anxieties over control of education, the politics of race relations, the nature of local scientific traditions, and challenges to traditional cultural identity. In some settings, conciliation with the new theory, even endorsement, was possible―demonstrating that attending to the specific nature of individual communities subverts an inclination to assume a single relationship between science and religion in general, evolution and Christianity in particular. Livingstone concludes with contemporary examples to remind us that what scientists can say and what others can hear in different venues differ today just as much as they did in the past.

Genres: Science, History

280 pages, Hardcover

First published April 15, 2014

About the author

David Noel Livingstone is a Northern Ireland-born geographer, historian, and academic. He is Professor of Geography and Intellectual History at Queen's University Belfast.

Educated at Banbridge Academy and Queen's University Belfast (B.A., Ph.D.). Following graduation, he continued at Queen's as a Research Officer and Lecturer, becoming Reader and then full Professor. He has held visiting professorships at Calvin College, Michigan, University of British Columbia, University of Notre Dame, and Baylor University.

Reviews

[Paul · Rating 3 out of 5]

As with most collections of essays, this is a bit uneven with some really good and useful scholarship. In this case, Livingstone concentrates on the geographic contingency of Darwinian evolution's acceptance among religious folks. So the likelihood that nineteenth century evangelicals would accept Darwinism differed based on where and when they were, and what else was going on at the time.

In particular, two chapters – one on the Columbia Seminary controversy in South Carolina, and another on a virulent rejection of Darwinism in Belfast – show how important other, less obvious contextual factors played into the ultimate outcomes of these engagements. In the first case, questions about race and unresolved issues from the Civil War influenced perspectives on evolution and its relationship to the biblical narrative. In the second, particularly aggressive anti-theist rhetoric from scientists led to a religious backlash not found in other Irish cities.

Overall, a good collection of perspectives, even if some tread over by-now familiar ground in the science-and-religion scholarship.