The Darwinian Revolution: Science Red in Tooth and Claw By Michael Ruse (review)

cratic machine of the state, which thus becomes the slave state." Orwell's 1984 is then invoked (p. 237). In sum, Eccles's argument seems to be (1) that his brain-mind theory is closer to the truth than any other; (2) that ifit is true, then there is evidence from which one might make at least a plausible inference to a supernatural creation of the soul; and (3) these two provide backing for a view of human life which will be a bulwark against statism. One wonders what happens to (2) and (3) if(1) turns out to be false, or the extent to which the defense of (1) is colored by convictions about (2) and (3). For a theologian this book is worthy of study even if Eccles's argument (by anticipation) is not persuasive. The religious effect of the book is caused not so much by its argument as by the story it tells of the development of life. This leaves a sensitive reader with a sense of awe, wonder, and gratitude, and with a sense of the mystery of life (not mystery as the unknown, but as the marvel of what is known). That sense of awe, wonder, and gratitude might be a more important datum for theology than the dualist-interactionist hypothesis about brain-mind. James M. Gustafson Divinity School University of Chicago The Darwinian Revolution: Science Red in Tooth and Claw. By Michael Ruse. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1979. Pp. xv+320. $20.00. The last decade has seen the growth of a veritable Darwin industry producing one book after the other on the man, his correspondence and notebooks, his intellectual circle, his critics, and the short-term and long-range impact of his ideas on science and society. With over a century having elapsed since publication of The Origin ofSpecies, one wonders at this sudden heightening ofinterest in its author and thesis, which admittedly looms large in the history of biology. In part, no doubt, analysis of Darwinism has been stimulated by the recent discoveries of genetic polymorphisms in natural populations of diverse animal and plant species, which have caused evolutionists to reexamine the importance of selection in maintaining the widespread genotypic heterogeneity they observe. In short, Darwinism is no longer taken for granted, a dead issue in biology. To a greater extent, perhaps, the appearance of sociobiology with its Darwinian interpretations of evolving moral behavior in man has regenerated concern about the meaning of Darwinism for human evolution. Finally, however, in the past quarter of a century the nature of scientific change has reemerged as a fundamental problem bringing excitement and controversy to the fields of philosophy and history. Of utmost interest are those major conceptual reorganizations that we call "scientific revolutions," the most notable example of which in biology is surely the Darwinian revolution. Little disagreement is expressed about the effects of scientific revolutions: they fundamentally and sweepingly alter the ways in which we think about and subsequently study certain classes of phenomena. Darwinism is no exception; the 662 I Book Reviews remarkably adaptive structures and functions of living things, as well as the degrees of relatedness we recognize among them, are "seen" today in ways utterly alien to minds prior to the mid-nineteenth century. The really difficult question about revolutions like Darwinism concerns their origins: To what extent do they represent intellectual novelties entirely discontinuous with the past? If, on the contrary, they are the results of a progression—or at least a continuity—of ideas, what accounts for the sharpness with which we demarcate them in the history of science? These questions are not entirely settled by Michael Ruse's The Darwinian Revolution , and perhaps no book dealing with a particular scientific revolution is likely to provide a general solution. There may be something unique about each case. Ruse does an excellent job in this regard, however, for the emergence of Darwinism. While restricting himself largely to England and the intellectual milieu in which Darwin's theory was gestated and came to birth, Ruse reveals to us the significance which English thinkers were overtly attaching to the problem Darwin was later to address. The issue concerned what...