Kindred fatalisms: debating science, Islam, and free will in the Darwinian era

ABSTRACT

An important aspect of the nineteenth century debate on the relationship between science and religion concerned the popularity of deterministic views among scientists. An integral part of Comte's positivism, the idea of immutable laws that determined natural and social phenomena became an increasingly prevalent component of scientific perspectives in the Darwinian era. Referring to this tendency as ‘scientific fatalism,’ critics likened it to Calvinist predestination, which transformed the debate into one involving polemics about different branches of Christianity as well. This paper focuses on a neglected aspect of this debate, namely, the role that references to Islam and Turks played in it. ‘Mohammedan fatalism,’ already a common theme in justifications of colonialism, promptly became a tool with which to condemn new scientific views. Comparing French, British, and American writings on the topic, the paper illustrates that while there emerged approaches that praised the fatalism of Muslims while making a case for scientific determinism, most scientists and thinkers resorted to condemning the fatalism of Muslims in order to distinguish their views from it. In this respect, the paper demonstrates how political and religious discourses played a significant part in the shaping of scientific discourse in the Victorian era.

KEYWORDS:

• Fatalism
• determinism
• Islam
• calvinism
• darwinism

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 John Tyndall, ‘Science and Man’ in Fragments of Science Vol. 2. (New York: D. Appleton & Co., 1897), pp. 335–72 (pp. 362-3).

2 Credo, Professor Tyndall’s Denial of the Soul and Assumption of Fatalism. (London: Simpkin, Marshall and Co., 1883). While it was published six years after Tyndall’s address, the author states that the poem was written at that time, and it had only got more pertinent since then.

3 Bernard Lightman, ‘Scientists as Materialists in the Periodical Press: Tyndall's Belfast Address’ in Geoffrey Cantor and Sally Shuttleworth, eds. Science Serialized: Representation of the Sciences in Nineteenth Century Periodicals (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2004), pp. 199-238.

4 See Lisa Rodensky, The Crime in Mind: Criminal Responsibility and the Victorian Novel (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003); Joel Peter Eigen, Unconscious Crime: Mental Absence and Criminal Responsibility in Victorian London. (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2004).

5 The literature on this issue has been growing consistently. See Peter Harrison. The Territories of Science and Religion. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2015); Bernard Lightman. ‘Victorian sciences and religions: Discordant harmonies.’ Osiris 16 (2001), pp. 343-366; Gary B. Ferngren, ed. Science and religion: A historical introduction. (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2017); Jeff Hardin, Ronald L. Numbers, and Ronald A. Binzley, eds. The Warfare between Science and Religion: The Idea That Wouldn't Die. (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2018); James C. Ungureanu, Science, Religion, and the Protestant Tradition: Retracing the Origins of Conflict (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2019); Bernard Lightman, ed. Rethinking History, Science, and Religion: An Exploration of Conflict and the Complexity Principle (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2019); Frank M. Turner, ‘The Victorian Conflict Between Science and Religion: A Professional Dimension.’ Isis 69, 3 (1978), pp. 356-376; Thomas F. Gieryn. ‘Boundary-work and the demarcation of science from non-science: Strains and interests in professional ideologies of scientists.’ American Sociological Review 6 (1983), pp. 781-795. For global aspects of these transformations, see Michael Fuller. ‘Science and religion in a global context.’ Routledge International Handbook of Religion in Global Society (Oxon: Routledge, 2021): 478-487. On the changing conceptualizations of religion in the nineteenth century, see Tomoko Masuzawa. The Invention of World Religions: Or, How European Universalism Was Preserved in The Language Of Pluralism. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005); Arie L. Molendijk and Peter Pels, eds. Religion in the Making: The Emergence of the Sciences of Religion. Leiden: Brill, 1998).

6 See James R. Moore, The Post-Darwinian Controversies: A Study of the Protestant Struggle to Come to Terms with Darwin in Great Britain and America, 1870-1900. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981); David N. Livingstone, ‘Darwinism and Calvinism: The Belfast-Princeton Connection.’ Isis 83 (1992), pp. 408–28.

7 G. F. Leibniz. Theodicy: Essays on the Goodness of God, the Freedom of Man and the Origin of Evil. (Eugene OR: Wipf and Stock, 2001 [1710]), pp. 54-55. Fatum Stoicum, a third type of understanding of fate, did not prevent action, but also did not entail the faith in the goodness of providence. See Andrea Poma The Impossibility and Necessity of Theodicy: The ‘Essais’ of Leibniz (Dordrecht: Springer, 2008), pp. 145-56. On the complexity of Leibniz’s representations of Islam, See Ian Almond ‘Leibniz, Historicism, and the ‘Plague of Islam’’ Eighteenth Century Studies 39 (2006), pp. 463–83.

8 Laurent Loty, ‘Chance and Necessity,’ Encyclopedia of the Enlightenment Vol. I. (London: Routledge, 2001), pp. 231–32.

9 Marij van Strien, ‘On the Origins and Foundations of Laplacian Determinism,’ Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part A 45, (2014), pp. 24-31.

10 Humberto Garcia, Islam and the English Enlightenment, 1670–1840 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2012), pp. 167-170.

11 T. M. Parssinen, ‘Popular Science and Society: The Phrenology Movement in Early Victorian Britain,’ Journal of Social History 8, 1 (1974), pp. 1–20 (p. 19 n.49). For a criticism of the fatalistic implications of phrenology, see James Perchard Tupper, An inquiry into Dr.Gall's system (London: Longman etc., 1839), pp. 99-125.

12 Auguste Comte, A General View of Positivism. Translated by J.H.Bridges. (London: George Routledge and Sons, 1908 [1848]), pp. 59-60.

13 John van Whye, Phrenology and the Origins of Victorian Scientific Naturalism. (London: Routledge, 2017).

14 Charles Bray, Philosophy of Necessity Vol. 1. (London: Longman, 1841), p. 7. Also see George Levine, ‘Determinism And Responsibility In The Works Of George Eliot,’ PMLA 77 (1962), pp. 268–79.

15 See Johannes Feichtinger, Franz L. Fillafer, Jan Surman, eds. The Worlds of Positivism: A Global Intellectual History, 1770–1930. (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2018).

16 Silvan S. Schweber, ‘The Origin of the ‘Origin’ Revisited’ Journal of the History of Biology 10 (1977), pp. 229-316.

17 Ian Hesketh, The Science of History in Victorian Britain: Making the Past Speak. (London: Routledge, 2015), esp. Chapter 1.

18 ‘Buckle’s History of Civilization in England,’ The North American Review 93, 193 (October, 1861), pp. 519–59, (p. 521). Also see Christopher Parker, ‘English Historians and the Opposition to Positivism,’ History and Theory 22 (1983), pp. 120–45.

19 ‘Professor Tyndall's Address.’ Journal of Speculative Philosophy 8 (1874), pp. 370–73 (p.372).

20 Credo, Professor Tyndall’s Denial of the Soul and Assumption of Fatalism.

21 William James, ‘Great Men and their Environment,’ in The Will to Believe and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy (New York, London and Bombay: Longmans Green and Co., 1897), pp. 216-254, 245; William James, ‘Rationality, Activity, and Faith,’ The Princeton Review, 2 (July 1882), pp. 58–86 (p. 77 n1).

22 John Robert Seeley, Natural Religion. (London: MacMillan and Co., 1882), p. 31. On Seeley see Ian Hesketh ‘John Robert Seeley, Natural Religion, and the Victorian Conflict between Science and Religion,’ Journal of the History of Ideas, 79 (2018), pp. 309–29.

23 Edward S. Morse, ‘Address of Professor Edward S. Morse, Vice President, Section B.,’ Proceedings of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, 1876 (25th) (Salem, MA: Frederic W. Putnam, 1877), pp. 137–176 (p.176).

24 Frank M. Turner ‘John Tyndall and Victorian Scientific Naturalism’ in William H. Brock, N. D. McMillan, and R. C. Mollan, eds. John Tyndall: Essays on a natural philosopher (Dublin: Royal Dublin Society, 1981), pp. 169–80; Ursula DeYoung A Vision of Modern Science: John Tyndall and the Role of the Scientist in Victorian Culture (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011).

25 On these developments see, among many, Marjorie Wheeler-Barclay, The Science of Religion in Britain, 1860-1915. (Charlottsville, VA: University of Virginia Press, 2010); Timothy Larsen, Crisis of Doubt: Honest Faith in Nineteenth-Century England. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006); Frank M. Turner Contesting Cultural Authority: Essays in Victorian Intellectual Life. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993).

26 Ian Hacking, The Taming of Chance (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990), p. 123.

27 Matthew Stanley, ‘The Pointsman: Maxwell’s Demon, Victorian Free Will, and the Boundaries of Science’ Journal of the History of Ideas, 69 (2008), pp. 467–91.

28 Mary Jo Nye ‘The Moral Freedom of Man and the Determinism of Nature: The Catholic Synthesis of Science and History in the ‘Revue des questions scientifiques’’ The British Journal for the History of Science 9 (1976), pp. 274–92.

29 On Edwards see Ann Lee Bressler, The Universalist Movement in America, 1770-1880. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001).

30 William Jewett Tucker ‘Theories of Skepticism, Necessity in Philosophy--Fatalism in Science.’ The Universalist Quarterly and General Review 19 (1882), pp 33–45 (p.33).

31 Quoted in Ron Amundson ‘John T. Gulick and the Active Organism: Adaptation, Isolation, and the Politics of Evolution’ in Roy Macleod and Philip Rehbock eds. Darwin’s Laboratory: Evolutionary Theory and Natural History in the Pacific (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1994) pp. 110–140 (p.123).

32 Michael Ruse, The Evolution Wars: A Guide to the Debates (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2002), p 77.

33 George Frederick Wright ‘Some Analogies Between Calvinism and Darwinism,’ in Studies in Science and Religion (Andover: Warren F. Draper, 1882), pp. 212–55 (p. 255).

34 Ibid., 217-20. On Wright see David N. Livingstone, Darwin's Forgotten Defenders: The Encounter Between Evangelical Theology and Evolutionary Thought (Vancouver: Regent College Publishing, 1997), pp. 65-70; Ronald L. Numbers, ‘George Frederick Wright: From Christian Darwinist to Fundamentalist’ Isis 79 (1988), pp. 624-645. Moore’s Post-Darwinian Controversies dwells in detail on Calvinists’ arguments on Darwinism and represents Calvinism as a tradition that did have the potential to truly come to terms with Darwin’s ideas. On this also see David A. Hollinger’s review of Moore’s work, ‘What is Darwinism? It is Calvinism!’ Reviews in American History 8 (1980), pp. 80-85.

35 Nükhet Varlık Plague and Empire in the Early Modern Mediterranean World: The Ottoman Experience, 1347–1600 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2015), pp. 73-89.

36 Ivan Kalmar Early Orientalism: Imagined Islam and the Notion of Sublime Power (London: Routledge, 2013), p. 132. It is worth noting though that the trope was also deployed in romanticized ways by critics of the individualism that capitalism fostered in Europe. See Gerard Cohen-Vrignaud Radical Orientalism: Rights, Reform and Romanticism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015).

37 A multi-faceted issue, the Eastern Question concerned questions such as the control of the Balkans, the straits connecting the Black Sea to the Mediterranean, and the routes extending from the Levant to India – questions on which France, Britain and Russia adopted a variety of strategies over the nineteenth century. On the role the ‘Eastern Question’ played in the construction of the categories ‘Europe’, ‘the Orient’, and the ‘Middle East’, see Leslie Rogne Schumacher ‘The Eastern Question as a Europe question: Viewing the ascent of “Europe” through the lens of Ottoman decline.’ Journal of European Studies 1 (2014), pp. 64-80; Hüseyin Yılmaz “The Eastern Question and the Ottoman Empire: The Genesis of the Near and Middle East in the Nineteenth Century” in Is There a Middle East? The Evolution of a Geopolitical Concept Edited by Michael E. Bonine, Abbas Amanat, and Michael Ezekiel Gasper (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2012), pp. 11-35.

38 For a critique of the view that orientalism amounts to inaccurate and negative representations, see Daniel Martin Varisco. Reading Orientalism: Said and the Unsaid, 2nd ed. (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 2007). For an analysis of the diversity of the representations of Islam, see Clifford Bennett. Victorian Images of Islam. (Piscataway, NJ: Gorgias Press, 2014).

39 W. H. B. ‘A Day in Constantinople’ Sharpe’s London Journal 10 (1849), pp. 340–44 (p. 343).

40 ‘The prospects of the Ottoman Empire,’ The Illustrated London News 612, 12 March 1853, 1.

41 ‘The Ottoman Turks in Europe’ Westminster Review 123 (1885), pp. 303–28 (p. 325).

42 William Ewart Gladstone Bulgarian Horrors and the Question of the East (London: John Murray, 1876), p. 13.

43 ‘Book Review: Lightning Conductors, Their History, Nature, and Mode of Application.’ The Journal of Science 2 (April 1880), p. 265.

44 Charles Cuvier Cours d'études historiques au point de vue philosophique et chrétien. Série 2. (Paris: Vve Berger-Levrault, 1863), p. 220.

45 ‘Fatalism and the Massacres: By A Resident In Turkey.’ New York Evangelist 67 (April 29, 1897), pp. 4-5.

46 Cyrus Hamlin Among The Turks (New York: Robert Carter and Brothers, 1878), pp. 23, 348

47 Peter Marshall ‘John Calvin and The English Catholics, c. 1565-1640’ The Historical Journal 53, 4 (December 2010), pp. 849–70 (p. 853). Also see Jan Loop Johann Heinrich Hottinger: Arabic and Islamic Studies in the Seventeenth Century (New York: Oxford University Press, 2013), pp. 221–23, and Christopher Highley, Catholics Writing the Nation in Early Modern Britain and Ireland (New York: Oxford University Press, 2008), Chapter 3.

48 Augustus Toplady ‘The Charge of Mahometism Refuted’ in Historic Proof of the Doctrinal Calvinism of the Church of England Volume 1 (London: George Keith, 1774), pp. 229-37. Also see Daniel E. White Early Romanticism and Religious Dissent (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007).

49 ‘Mahometan Calvinism’ The Monthly Repository of Theology and General Literature, 8 (October 1813), p. 658.

50 Hamlin, Among the Turks, p. 346.

51 Samuel M. Zwemer Islam: A Challenge to Faith (New York: Student Volunteer Movement For Foreign Missions, 1907), p. 95.

52 For a detailed analysis of the anti-Calvinist trend, see Peter J. Thuesen Predestination: The American Career of a Contentious Doctrine (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009).

53 ‘Mind and Matter’ The Rambler 1 (1 January 1848), p.10. The book under review was The Passions: Or, Mind and Matter by the medical doctor J.G. Millingen who argued that the mental capacities and temperaments of women and men differed due to physiological differences.

54 Oliver Wendell Holmes Mechanism in thought and morals: An Address Delivered Before the Phi Beta Kappa Society of Harvard University, June 29, 1870 (Boston: James R. Osgood & Co, 1871). Note that Harvard had in the early nineteenth century become a bastion of anti-Calvinist theology. See Daniel Walker Howe ‘The Decline of Calvinism: An Approach to Its Study’ Comparative Studies in Society and History 3 (1972), pp. 306–27.

55 Raised in a Calvinist family, Holmes gradually adopted liberal views and abandoned Calvinism, like many others in his generation, including his friend and distant relative Harriet Beecher Stowe. See Joan D. Hedrick, Harriet Beecher Stowe: A Life. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995), passim.

56 Henry Collin Minton ‘Calvin the Theologian,’ The Homiletic Review. 58, 1 (1909), pp. 69–71 (p. 71).

57 David L. McMahan, ‘Modernity and the Early Discourse of Scientific Buddhism.’ Journal of the American Academy of Religion 72, 4 (2004), pp. 897-933; Peter Harrison. ‘A Scientific Buddhism?.’ Zygon 4 (2010), pp. 861–69.

58 S[amuel]. E. Dawson. ‘Prayer and Modern Science’ The Canadian Monthly and National Review 8 (1875), pp. 512–22 (p. 512). Dawson’s was a contribution to the debate about Tyndall’s challenge to measure the efficacy of prayer on hospitalized patients. On this controversy see Robert Bruce Mullin, ‘Science, Miracles, and the Prayer-Gauge Debate,’ in David Lindberg and Ronald Numbers, eds. When Science and Christianity Meet (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003), pp. 203–24.

59 Edmund Montgomery ‘The Monism of the ‘Open Court’ Critically Examined,’ Open Court 4, 156 (August 21, 1890), pp. 2461–65 (p. 2465).

60 John Maddock ‘Fatalism and Determinism’ The Open Court, A Quarterly Magazine [Devoted To The Science Of Religion, The Religion Of Science 4, 161 (Sep. 25, 1890), p. 2539. Carus’s comments follow Maddock’s letter.

61 Vasile Conta, Théorie du fatalisme. (Brussels: G. Mayolez, 1877), pp. 303-5. My translation. Note that despite his views, Conta also objected in this section to the notion that ‘oriental fatalism’ was the reason behind the backward state of the orient, due to his materialist theory of ‘universal undulation.’

62 Grant Allen, ‘The Two Carnegies’ in The Beckoning Hand and Other Stories (London: Chatto and Windus, 1887), pp. 128–63 (p.130).

63 John Fiske, Outlines of Cosmic Philosophy Vol. II. (London: MacMillan and Co., 1874), p. 185

64 J. Peter Lesley, Man's Origin and Destiny 2nd ed. (Boston: Geo. H. Ellis, 1881), pp. 303–4

65 On Lesley’s views on religion and adoption of pantheism see Ronald L. Numbers, Science and Christianity in Pulpit and Pew (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007), pp. 80-83.

66 Auguste Comte Cours De Philosophie Positive, Volume 5 (Paris: Bachelier, 1841), pp. 455-56.

67 Quoted in Mary Pickering, Auguste Comte: An Intellectual Biography Vol.III. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), p. 81

68 Henry Thomas Buckle History of Civilization in England Vol.1 (New York: D. Appleton and Company, 1849), p. 572 n73.

69 On the formation of Draper’s religious and intellectual views, and his subsequent work on science and religion, see Ungureanu, Science, Religion, and the Protestant Tradition.

70 For an early characterization of Draper in this fashion, see ‘Draper's Philosophy of European History’ The New York Times, August 18 1863, p. 2.

71 John William Draper History of The Conflict Between Religion and Science. (New York: D. Appleton & Co., 1875), pp. 107-108.

72 John William Draper ‘Evolution,’ The Unitarian Review and Religious Magazine 8, 5 (November 1877), pp. 536–59 (pp. 541-2).

73 On the reception of Draper by Muslim readers, see M. Alper Yalcinkaya, ‘Science as an Ally of Religion: a Muslim Appropriation of the ‘Conflict Thesis’’ The British Journal for the History of Science 44, 2 (2011), pp. 161–81.

74 Emile Littré ‘Science et religion,’ La philosophie positive 19 (Nov.- Dec. 1877), pp. 321-38, (p. 331).

75 Ibid., 335.

76 Johan Heilbron ‘Sociologie et positivisme en France au XIXe siècle: les vicissitudes de la Société de sociologie (1872-1874)’ Revue française de sociologie, 48 (Apr. - Jun. 2007), pp. 307–31

77 Charles Mismer Soirées de Constantinople (Paris: Librairie Internationale, 1870), p. 167. This and the following translations are mine unless otherwise noted.

78 Ibid., 173.

79 Charles Mismer Le credo du XXe siècle: Principes de la reconstruction sociale (Paris: Librarie Internationale, 1872), p. 33.

80 Charles Mismer Principes sociologiques (Paris: Librairie G. Fischbacher, 1882), pp. 15-16. Despite the title, this book is a Comtean analysis of what Mismer saw as the main issues of the day, rather than a treatise on sociology itself. On the ways in which the term sociology operated in late nineteenth century French intellectual life, see Sébastien Mosbah-Natanson ‘La Sociologie Comme ‘Mode’? Usages éditoriaux du label ‘sociologie’ en France à la fin du XIXe siècle’ Revue française de sociologie 52 (2011), pp. 103–132.

81 Ibid., 273. These are ideas Mismer directly adopted from Comte. See note 11.

82 Compare, for instance, Mismer Principes, 23–24 with Draper Les conflits de la science et de la religion (Paris: Germer Baillière, 1875), pp. 72, 77.

83 On Renan’s speech, see B. Harun Küçük ‘Islam, Christianity and the Conflict Thesis,’ in Thomas Dixon et al., eds., Science and Religion: New Historical Perspectives (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), pp. 111-130.

84 Charles Mismer ‘La regeneration de l’islam’ La Philosophie positive 31 (Sept - Oct 1883), pp. 274–87 (p.277).

85 Douglas A. Sweeney ‘“Falling away from the General Faith of the Reformation?” The Contest over Calvinism in Nineteenth Century America’ in Thomas J. Davis., ed. John Calvin's American Legacy (New York: Oxford University Press, 2010), pp. 111–46; David D. Hall ‘Calvin and Calvinism within Congregational and Unitarian Discourse in Nineteenth Century America’ Ibid., 147–64; George M. Marsden The Soul of the American University Revisited: From Protestant to Postsecular (New York: Oxford University Press, 2021), esp. 101-108. For a study that attributes the decline of Calvinism in the northern states to the rising prosperity and living standards in the region, see Daniel Walker Howe “The Decline of Calvinism: An Approach to Its Study” Comparative Studies in Society and History, 3(1972), pp. 306–27

86 On connections between positivism and politics in France in this period, see Johan Heilbron ‘Sociologie et positivisme en France au XIXe siècle: les vicissitudes de la Société de sociologie (1872-1874)’ Revue Française de Sociologie 2 (2007), pp. 307–31; Philip A. Bertocci. Jules Simon: Republican anticlericalism and cultural politics in France, 1848-1886. University of Missouri Press, 1978.

87 ‘The Conflict Between Religion and Science’ Scribner’s Monthly 9 (1874), pp. 635–37 (p. 636). For more examples on reviewers’ comments on Draper’s narrative on Islam, see Yalcinkaya, ‘Science as an Ally of Islam.’ Pp. 179–80.

88 John Tyndall “The Belfast Address,” in Fragments of Science 5th ed. (New York: Appleton, 1886), pp. 472–37, on p. 488.

89 Michael O'Ferrall, S. J. ‘The New Koran’ The Irish Monthly, 2 (1874), pp. 649-661, and ‘The New Koran (Refuted.) Part II’ The Irish Monthly, 3 (1875), pp. 29-43.

90 ‘Professor Tyndall’s Address,’ Brownson’s Quarterly Review 3, 1 (January 1875), pp. 1–19 (p.16). For another extensive criticism of Tyndall, including his reliance on Draper’s views on Mohammedans, see [John Tulloch] ‘Modern Scientific Materialism,’ Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine 116 (1874), pp. 519-539. On this topic, see Bernard Lightman ‘Tyndall, Draper, and “Eastern Religions”’ https://scienceandbeliefinsociety.org/2021/10/26/tyndall-draper-and-eastern-religions/

91 C[harles] Hertz, ‘La société musulmane: son passe et son avenir’ Révue Contemporaine 74 (1870) pp. 160–75 (p. 161).

92 Mismer Soirées de Constantinople, p. 220. Hertz, ‘La société musulmane,’ p. 170.

93 A[rminius] Vambery ‘Soirées de Constantinople’ The Athenaum 2210, (March 5, 1870), p. 323.