Download The Day The Universe Changed

The Day The Universe Changed
A Personal View by James Burke
Darwin’s Revolution: Fit To Rule
This program shows the development of one of our central cultural attitudes: that change is a part of
nature, and that we can manipulate it to our own uses. Burke traces this attitude to Darwin and his
predecessors, and then shows how it influenced the development of Nazism throughout Germany, social
Darwinism in the U.S., and Marxism in the Soviet Union.
At the beginning of the 18th century, the world was perceived to be an orderly universe governed by
strict mathematical laws. There was a precise place for everything; nothing had changed since the Creation.
Burke shows how scholars and thinkers found themselves gradually dismantling the Biblical story of Creation.
After reviewing the classification system of Linneaus, Buffon and others, all of whom built their systems on the
belief that God created everything exactly as it was, Burke takes us to an English canal builder in the 1790’s
who noticed fossil remains in geologic strata. Different strata had different fossils which seemed to indicate
that things had changed over time. Around the same time in Paris, Georges Cuvier, learning how to reconstruct
an animal from a single bone, came up against the problem of dinosaurs which clearly had once existed and no
longer did.
The Biblical Flood was the obvious answer to the extinction of dinosaurs, but couldn’t account for
extinct fish nor for different layers of fossils.
In the 1820’s, Charles Lyell observed that fossil shellfish in a stratum that went under Mount Etna were
identical to today’s shellfish; since he had earlier established that Etna was itself millions of years old, this
meant that geologic change occurred much more slowly than previously thought.
In the 1850’s, an English entomologist named Wallace, investigating beetles in Malaysia, arrived at the
conclusion that beetles varied in species according to how they lived.
Charles Darwin, like Wallace, had also arrived at the conclusion that a species becomes differentiated in
order to find an ecological niche in which to survive. He argued that if breeders could breed unrecognizably
different varieties of pigeons over just a few pigeon generations, then nature could do the same thing over the
course of millions of years.
A second part of the program shows how aspects of Darwin’s theory were expropriated by Nazis,
American Social Darwinists and the Bolsheviks, and how each used it to justify and build up modern political
systems.
A German named Haeckel adapted Darwin to say that, since, struggle was inevitable, war was
inevitable; since only the fittest survived, then the victors must be preserved from racial inferiority by a program
of racial hygiene.
In the United States, Social Darwinism was used to make very similar sounding arguments: the struggle
for survival weeded out the weak; the best equipped to emerge successful from the struggle, the American
businessman, was by definition the superior.
Karl Marx also saw Darwin as providing justification for his arguments; since there is no supernatural
design in nature, control belongs to ordinary people; as evolution leads to a perfect form, so you can design a
new society free from oppression and superstition; change is inevitable, so social transformation is inevitable.
Burke argues in closing that, though Nazism, Social Darwinism and Communism are very different,
they share a common underpinning, that people and societies change and can be changed. With the demise of
the idea that the world is a perfect, unchanging Creation with a God-given purpose, we have come to believe
that we can manipulate nature to whatever purpose we devise.
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Questions for Discussion
1. Did Linneaus see the world as static or dynamic? Why does Burke discuss the style of architecture and
music of Linneaus’s time? What conclusions can you draw about our perception of the world from our
music and architecture?
2. What did the geological investigations of Hutton and Lyell suggest about the age of the earth?
3. Buffon and Wallace both saw that the numerous varieties of certain animals, such as dogs, all possessed a
common type. What accounts for their different views on the question of the evolution of species? Does it
matter that Wallace studied species in their natural habitat?
4. Discuss how the work of Malthus helped Darwin see a mechanism for natural selection. Does the “struggle
for existence” happen mostly within species or between different species? Do you think that “struggle” is
the most basic fact of nature? Why?
5. What do you think of Darwin’s mental leap from pigeon breeding to natural selection? Did he use pigeon
breeding only as an analogy? Is it a convincing way of reasoning?
6. Nazis, American Capitalists and Marxists all made very different social interpretations of the principle of
natural selection. What does this tell us about the social implications of Darwin’s theory? Can the theory
be used to justify any social system?
7. Burke begins the story in Lapland and ends there too. How does he tie the beginning to the end? (Linneaus
went to Lapland in search of proof for his belief that nature was unchangeable and classifiable, exactly as
created by God; Lenin went to Lapland and back to cross back into Russia from exile with the ideas of
Marx.)
8. Today, we generally accept the fact of social mobility, of progress, of change in every facet of our lives.
Burke says this is a reflection of our belief that the natural world is also subject to change, such a geological
and biological change. Do you agree? How might young people in the 1700’s have viewed society? Would
young people expect to do better than their parents? Would they expect to move to a different place?
Would a servant expect to end up as a noble or vice versa? Why are there so many fairy tales about servants
who end up as royalty (such as Cinderella)?
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