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The Confrontation Between Reason and Imagination: the Example of Darwin

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 July 2024

Erling Eng
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Extract

The theme of Darwin's struggle between reason and imagination is perhaps most clearly shown in his efforts in the Origin to conceive of how the eye of the body might have developed through natural selection. Thus he wrote:

To arrive, however, at a just conclusion regarding the formation of the eye, with all its marvellous yet not absolutely perfect characters, it is indispensable that the reason * should conquer the imagination; but I have felt the difficulty far too keenly to be surprised at others hesitating to extend the principle of natural selection to so startling a length.

Type
Research Article
Information
Diogenes , Volume 24 , Issue 95 , September 1976 , pp. 58 - 67
Copyright
Copyright © 1976 Fédération Internationale des Sociétés de Philosophie / International Federation of Philosophical Societies (FISP)

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References

* For reason, it is clear that Darwin intends the imagination corrected by observation.

1 I. Newton, Optics, Bk III: pt. 1, Qu. 16.

2 C. Darwin, Origin of the Species, Ch. 6, " Organs of extreme complication and perfection. "

3 Nora Barlow, (ed.) Darwin and Henslow, The Growth of an Idea, Letters 1831-1860, University of California, 1967. Letter of July 16, 1860, p. 209.

4 Ibid., p. 210.

5 Darwin, loc. cit.

6 Ibid.

7 This evolutionary logic also underlies Hughlings Jackson's conception of the central nervous system. Jackson, who was the first to establish neurology on a scientific basis, attributed his notions of " evolution and dissolution, " however, to Herbert Spencer.

8 Life and Letters of Chas. Darwin, ed. by Francis Darwin, II, p. 67, Basic Books, 1959.

9 Ibid., p. 90.

10 Ibid., p. 67.

11 Life and Letters, II, p. 25.

12 Life and Letters, II, p. 367.

13 Joseph Agassi, Faraday as a Natural Philosopher, Univ. of Chicago, 1971.

14 M. T. Ghiselin, " Darwin and Evolutionary Psychology, " Science, No. 179, 1973, p. 966.

15 H. E. Gruber, Darwin on Man, Dutton, 1974, p. 342.

16 C. Darwin, Origin of the Species, " Sexual Selection. "

17 Julian Huxley, The Courtship Habits of the Great Crested Grebe, Jonathan Cape, 1968.

19 C. Darwin, Voyage of the Beagle, April 12, 1836.

18 Quoted by Philip C. Ritterbush, in Organic Form, ed. by G. S. Rousseau, Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1972, p. 58.