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Young finds the anthropomorphism and voluntarism throughout “On the Origin of Species” remarkable Seventeenth century science already has “banished purpose, intentions, and anthropomorphic expressions [and so] it is surprising to fine such rank anthropomorphism at the heart of most celebrated unifying theory of biology” The chapter on “Natural Selection,” for example, makes natural selection a strict, timeless, benevolent person: :natural selection is daily and hourly scrutinizing, throughout the world, every variation, even the slightest; rejecting that which is bad, preserving and adding up all that is good; silently and insensibly working, whenever and wherever opportunity offers, as the improvement of each organic being.” Elsewhere Darwin repeatedly refers to nature’s “unerring skill” and calls nature a “powerful agent always ready to act and select.”
. . . . Darwin defended his anthropomorphism with a standard response: It was a shorthand, not meant literally.
The defence ultimately is unnecessary, for Darwin really depends on chance operating on a large scale, not on nature’s “scrutiny.” Darwin was so well received, however, precisely because inconsistencies and ambiguities in his language allowed theists still to see design and intent at work in the universe, albeit with God at greater remove. Wallace himself, for example, objected to the anthropomorphism but later came to think guidance by a “superior intelligence” necessary for human evolution. ~ Page 173/174
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