Biologist Edwin Grant Conklin and the idea of the religious direction of human evolution in the early 1920s

SUMMARY

Edwin Grant Conklin, renowned US embryologist and evolutionary popularizer, publicly advocated a social vision of evolution that intertwined science and modernist Protestant theology in the early 1920s. The moral prestige of professional science in American culture — along with Conklin’s own elite scientific status — diverted attention from the frequency with which his work crossed boundaries between natural science, religion and philosophy. Writing for broad audiences, Conklin was one of the most significant of the religious and modernist biological scientists whose rhetoric went well beyond simply claiming that certain kinds of religion were amenable to evolutionary science; he instead incorporated religion itself into evolution's broadest workings. A sampling of Conklin's widely-resonant discourse suggests that there was substantially more to the religion-evolution story in the 1920s US than many creationist-centred narratives of the era imply.

Acknowledgements

I thank the anonymous peer reviewers for valuable critiques that improved the paper's framing and presentation. My appreciation also goes to the editors of Annals of Science, especially David Miller and his keen editorial eye. Daniel Gioffre read and helpfully commented on an earlier draft.

ORCID

Alexander Pavuk http://orcid.org/0000-0002-5453-5196

Notes

1 'Science: Old-Fashioned', Time, 3 July 1939, 1. http://www.time.com/time/printout/0,8816,761607,00.html [accessed 18 May 2010].

2 Note 1, p. 6.

3 Note 1, p. 5.

4 On this tendency toward overlap by some of the most prominent scientists writing for lay audiences in the interwar era, see Constance Areson Clark, God or gorilla: images of evolution in the Jazz Age (Baltimore, 2008), pp. 53, 58, 71–74, 82–83, 107–108. Clark particularly focuses on Henry Fairfield Osborn.

5 Henry Fairfield Osborn, 'Credo of a Naturalist', The Forum, 73, January 1925, pp. 486–94 (p. 486).

6 Frederick Lewis Allen, Only Yesterday: An Informal History of the 1920s, quoted in Daniel Patrick Thurs, Science Talk: Changing Notions of Science in American Popular Culture (New Brunswick, NJ, 2007), p. 1.

7 See, for example, John Hedley Brooke and Ronald L. Numbers, eds., Science and Religion around the world (Oxford, 2011). On the turn to geographic and political-rhetorical contexts, see David N. Livingstone, Dealing with Darwin: Place, Politics, and Rhetoric in Religious Engagements with Evolution (Baltimore, 2014).

8 A sound discussion of this is found in Peter Harrison, ‘“Science” and “Religion”: constructing the boundaries’, in Science and Religion: New Historical Perspectives, ed. by Thomas Dixon, Geoffrey Cantor and Stephen Pumphrey (Cambridge, 2010), pp. 23–49. Harrison's recent book, grounded in his 2011 Gifford Lectures at the University of Edinburgh, offers a deep and cogent longue durée view of the intertwined growth and metamorphoses of the concepts of ‘science’ and ‘religion’. See Peter Harrison, The Territories of Science and Religion (Chicago, 2015). See also Clark, (note 4), pp. 56, 88, 130, 192.

9 On warfare thesis proponents, see John William Draper, History of the conflict between religion and science (London, 1874) and Andrew Dickson White, A History of the warfare of science with theology in Christendom, 2 vols. (New York, 1896). See also James Y. Simpson, Landmarks in the struggle between science and religion (London, 1925). Draper and White, in particular, enjoyed a resurgence of interest in the 1920s (Clark, (note 4), pp. 44, 65, 88). The untenable nature of the warfare/conflict thesis was most notably demonstrated in Brooke, Science and religion: some historical perspectives (Cambridge, 1991).

10 For a perceptive inquiry into this broader question, see Brooke, 'Religious belief and the content of the sciences’, Osiris, 16 (2001), 3–28.

11 J.W. Atkinson, ‘E.G. Conklin on evolution: The popular writings of an embryologist’, Journal of the History of Biology, 18 (1985), 31–50 (p. 33). On Woods Hole's early influence, see K.J. Cooke, 'A Gospel of social evolution: religion, biology, and education in the thought of Edwin Grant Conklin' (unpublished PhD thesis, University of Chicago, 1994), pp. 56–57, 107. On Conklin's particular work in embryology, see Edwin Grant Conklin, 'The Embryology of Crepidula: a contribution to the cell lineage and early development of some marine gastropods’, Journal of Morphology, 13 (1897), 1–226. See also Cooke, pp. 79–82.

12 Atkinson (note 11), pp. 33, 34.

13 Atkinson (note 11), p. 33.

14 Late in life Conklin claimed '[T]he unreasoning attitude of anti-evolutionists rather than the scientific evidences in its favor first made me one of its advocates.' See E.G. Conklin, 'Edwin Grant Conklin', in Thirteen Americans: their Spiritual Autobiographies, ed. by Louis Finkelstein (New York and London, 1952), pp. 47–76 (p. 60).

15 On the Scopes Trial, see Edward J. Larson, Summer for the gods: The Scopes trial and America's continuing debate over science and religion (New York, 1997, 2006). On the ubiquity of evolution's invocation in science-religion boundary discussions, see Thurs (note 6), especially chapters two and five.

16 The most publicly-influential author who has constructed the matter this way is Richard Dawkins, in books like The God delusion (2006) and The greatest show on Earth (2010). General forums aimed at scholars still tend to feature the bifurcated view. See, for example, allusions to the stakes in the Scopes trial in Mano Singham, 'The new war between science and religion', The Chronicle of Higher Education (The Chronicle Review), 9 May 2010 http://chronicle.com/article/The-New-War-Between-Science/65400/ [accessed 28 September 2014].

17 See Conklin (note 14).

18 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 (Cambridge, UK, 1979), pp. 279–345 on pro-evolution Christians in the sciences. See esp. pp. 273–275 on renowned theistic evolutionist Asa Gray's attempts in the US to reconcile his friend Darwin's evolutionary ideas with his own Presbyterian theism while at Harvard University. Moore termed Gray 'a devout and orthodox believer'; his public reconciliation efforts were on full display in 1860 in the periodical Atlantic Monthly, which featured his series of articles on natural selection's ability to coexist with natural theology (270).

19 Peter J. Bowler, Reconciling science and religion: The debate in early twentieth-century Britain (Chicago, 2001); Peter J. Bowler, Monkey trials and gorilla sermons: Evolution and Christianity from Darwinism to Intelligent Design (Cambridge, MA, 2007), Peter J. Bowler, Science for all: The popularization of science in early twentieth-century Britain (Chicago, 2009). As to non-biologists, in Monkey trials and Reconciling science and religion, Bowler emphasized psychologist Conway Lloyd Morgan and one-time Cambridge mathematical physicist Ernest William Barnes. On Morgan, see Bowler, Reconciling, pp. 140–41. On Barnes, see pp. 260–70. For these figures see also Peter J. Bowler, Monkey trials, pp. 167–72. Along with Bowler, Michael Ruse addressed Ronald A. Fisher. A biostatistician, Fisher helped establish the field of population genetics. Ruse characterized him as an 'ardent' cultural and biological progressivist (and eugenicist) who believed God 'creat[ed] human beings … through the fundamental force of natural selection.' See Michael Ruse, The evolution-creation struggle (Cambridge, 2005), p. 177. Fisher did not write publicly about his Anglican modernist religion until later in life, but did emphasize teleology in evolution in his interwar writings. See Bowler, Reconciling, pp. 40–41, 153–56. In Science for All, Bowler dealt with the religious components of physicist Oliver Lodge's work, though the spiritualist Lodge does not fall into the category of Protestant modernists.

20 Bowler (note 19, Reconciling), pp. 39–40. Needham emphasized his belief in progress, seen especially in his edited collection, Science, Religion, and Reality (New York, 1925).

21 See Bowler (note 19, Science for All), pp. 24, 44–45, 233–40. Two of Thomson's most influential books in the 1920s featuring these themes were Everyday Biology (London, 1923) and Science and Religion (New York, 1925). Bowler also mentioned in this volume biologists E.W. MacBride and J. Graham Kerr's popular science tying evolution to progressive teleology (p. 45) and how even Julian Huxley maintained a role for progress in his public work on evolution (p. 24).

22 On Wright, see Michael Ruse, The Evolution-Creation struggle (Cambridge MA, 2005), pp. 174–79. Ruse characterized Wright as 'intensely, obsessively interested in philosophical issues of a metaphysical kind', calling Wright's view 'panpsychic monism' (p. 179). Ruse also addressed biologist Theodosius Dobzhansky's religion and progressive evolutionism, though Dobzhansky was not Protestant but rather Eastern Orthodox (184).

23 Livingstone (note 7).

24 See Henry Fairfield Osborn, 'Orthogenesis as Observed from Palaeontological Evidence Beginning in the Year 1899', The American Naturalist 56 (Mar–Apr 1922), 134–43. Osborn's orthogenesis was a process of biomechanical 'adaption reaction' which was, he said, not itself the 'internal perfecting tendency' (p. 140). Osborn argued the mutation process in adaptive evolution was 'gradual, direct, definite in the direction of future adaptation' but that no one knew scientifically what its causes were (ibid). In non-technical writings he indicated belief in a divinity immanent in evolution; this principle of divinity could itself have been subject to evolution. See Osborn, 'Evolution and Religion', New York Times (5 March 1922), p. 91. For more on Osborn's modernism, see Brian Regal, Henry Fairfield Osborn: Race and the Search for Man (Aldershot, UK/Burlington, VT, 2002), pp. 158–59. On the concept of immanence in twentieth century philosophy, including philosophy of science, see Marc Rolli, 'Immanence and transcendence', Bulletin de la societe Americaine de philosophie de langue Francais, 14 (Fall 2004), 50–74 (pp. 50–52).

25 Livingstone (note 7) deals with Guyot (pp. 174–76) and with Scott and Osborn (pp. 181–83). For more on Scott and Guyot, see Bradley Gundlach, Process and Providence: The Evolution Question and Princeton, 1845–1929 (Grand Rapids, MI, 2013), chapter five, esp. pp. 151–60. Gundlach dealt with Osborn at some length in light of Princeton's continuing influence after Osborn matriculated there as an undergraduate. On Osborn's use of science to promote his theological liberalism, see Gundlach, pp. 273, 295–97. Osborn has had two monographs written on him in recent years. One, Regal (note 24), frames Osborn as having been significantly influenced by the theosophy of Madame Helena Blavatsky and by Ernst Haeckel's Romanticism (pp. 15–19). The other is Ronald Rainger, An Agenda for Antiquity: Henry Fairfield Osborn and Vertebrate Paleontology at the American Museum of Natural History (Tuscaloosa, AL, 2004).

26 See Edward B. Davis, ' Robert Andrews Millikan: Religion, Science, and Modernity', in Eminent Lives in Twentieth-Century Science and Religion, second revised and much expanded edition, ed. by Nicolaas Rupke (Frankfurt am Main, 2009), pp. 253–73; Davis, 'Prophet of Science—Arthur Holly Compton on Science, Freedom, Religion, and Morality' (in three parts) Perspectives on Science and Christian Faith, 61 (2009), 73–83, 175–90, 240–53; and Davis 'Altruism and the Administration of the Universe: Kirtley Fletcher Mather on Science and Values’, Zygon, 46 (September 2011), 517­–35.

27 For mention of Conklin, see: Edward B. Davis, ‘Fundamentalist Cartoons, Modernist Pamphlets, and the Religious Image of Science in the Scopes Era’, in Religion and the Culture of Print in Modern America, ed. by C.L. Cohen and P.S. Boyer (Madison, WI, 2008), pp. 175–98 (pp. 185–86); Livingstone (note 7), p. 177; Bowler (note 19, Monkey Trials), p. 177. As Conklin spent the majority of his teaching career at Princeton, Gundlach spends some time on him. See Grundlach (note 25), pp. 273, 294–303, 313. The thesis is Cooke (note 11). Though this is a solid and useful work, the picture of Conklin's science intertwined with modernism is uneven. More uneven still is the depiction of Conklin's place in the eugenics movement. There and in Cooke's article 'Duty or Dream? Edwin G. Conklin's Critique of Eugenics and Support for American Individualism' Journal of the History of Biology, 35 (2), (2002), 365–84, Conklin is questionably characterized as a voice protecting individual liberty in the face of plans for group-based eugenics. Other published works on Conklin include Miriam Reumann and Anne Faustino-Sterling, 'Notions of Heredity in the Correspondence of Edwin Grant Conklin', Perspectives in Biology and Medicine, 44 (Summer 2001), 414–25. The latter short article uses the full text of five short letters in the Conklin papers at Princeton from 1920 and 1947 as a window into inconsistency in Conklin's use of words like heredity and inheritance.

28 On Modernism in the Church of England, see Bowler (note 19 Reconciling), pp. 208–09, 244–86.

29 'modernism, 3'. Oxford English Dictionary (online) http://www.oed.com/view/Entry/120622?redirectedFrom=modernism& [accessed 26 September 2016].

30 See Christine Rosen, Preaching Eugenics: Religious Leaders and the Eugenics Movement (Oxford, 2004), p.17. Rosen differentiated between liberals and modernists by saying liberals were more concerned with reformulating theologies while modernists were 'more intoxicated by the process of smashing idols’. To both liberals and modernists, 'conservative [Protestants] were the intellectual equivalent of canopic jars: full of the desiccated remains of their elders’ views of culture and science, they were incapable of speaking to the concerns of modern believers’ (ibid).

31 William R. Hutchison, The Modernist impulse in American protestantism (Cambridge, MA, 1976), pp. 2–4. Hutchison identified the German (Prussian) theologian Friedrich Shleiermacher (1768–1834) as 'the father of modern Protestant theology' who 'embodied the new attitude toward culture' (p. 5).

32 Conklin's view of religious evolution is clearly displayed in his The Direction of Human Evolution (New York, 1921), for example on p. 169.

33 See Conklin (note 32), pp. 172–73. Conklin also appealed directly to Comte and Spencer in asserting that religion's appeal is essentially to human emotion (pp. 161–62).

34 Bowler (note 19, Reconciling), p. 245.

35 In the US, the latter grew out of a process starting with Romantic era figures like Orestes Brownson and other New England Unitarians (Hutchison (note 31), pp. 24–27).

36 Kathryn Lofton, 'The Methodology of the Modernists: Process in American Protestantism', Church History, 75 (June 2006), 374–402 (p. 379).

37 For veteran historian of Christianity Martin E. Marty's comments on Mathews, Fosdick, and Modernism itself in the interwar era, see Modern American Religion vol. 2, the Noise of Conflict (Chicago and London, 1991), pp. 198–205.

38 Hutchison (note 31), p. 253; Fosdick quoted in Lofton (note 36), p. 390.

39 For postmillenialists, it was only after this current age that the spirit of Christ would re-appear in some sense, though not to be understood literally in any way. On Postmillenialism in American Protestantism see Catherine A. Albanese, America: Religion and religions 5th ed. (Boston, 2012), pp. 96, 99–121, 133–34. The word 'premillenian' in this sense first appeared in G.S. Faber, Sacred calendar prophecy III. VI. viii (1828), 449, as shown in The Compact Oxford English dictionary, New Edition (Oxford, 1992), p. 1416. The word 'postmillenial' first appeared with this usage in G.S. Faber, Many Mansions (1851), p. 196. (OED, 1398). Another early use of 'premillenian' was in the same book by Faber (OED, 1416), p. 205.

40 For connections between modernism, postmillennialism, and eugenics in the US, see Rosen (note 30), pp. 5–7, 16–18, 111–37. On Fosdick, in particular, see pp. 116–17. On modernist-eugenics connections in the UK, see Bowler (note 19, Reconciling), pp. 234–35, 270–71.

41 Edwin Grant Conklin to Harry Emerson Fosdick, 6 February 1928, Edwin Grant Conklin Papers, Department of Rare Books and Special Collections, Princeton University Library (hereafter Conklin Papers, PUL), box 11, Folder 'Harry Emerson Fosdick'.

42 On nineteenth century Methodism in the US and its social controversies, see C.L. Heyrman, Southern Cross: the beginnings of the Bible belt (Chapel Hill, 1997), pp.113–16, 135–60.

43 Conklin (note 14), p. 58.

44 Conklin (note 14), p. 58.

45 A. Richards, 'Edwin Grant Conklin', Bios, 6 (March, 1935), 187. On his lay preacher's license and reasons for getting it, see Conklin (note 14), p. 52. For Conklin's later intellectual conflicts with Methodism, see Cooke (note 11), pp. 72–78, 91–110, 219–29.

46 On the particular influence of Brooks on Conklin, see Cooke (note 11), pp. 41–44, 50–61. Before graduate school, Conklin had served as a teacher of Latin and Greek at the Methodist church's Freedman's Association school for freed slaves, Rust University, in Holly Springs, Mississippi. See Conklin (note 14), p. 53. See also Cooke (note 11), pp. 35–41.

47 Richard Nash, 'William Keith Brooks and the naturalist's defense of Darwinism in the late nineteenth-century', History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences, 37 (2) p. 159. See also Cooke (note 11), p. 44.

48 Brooks characterized himself as a firm Darwinian (in the late nineteenth-century sense). See Edwin G. Conklin, 'William Keith Brooks’, Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, 47 (Sep–Dec 1908), v.

49 See William K. Brooks, The Oyster (Baltimore, 1891).

50 Richards (note 45), p. 193.

51 Nash (note 47), p. 9.

52 Conklin (note 48), p. vii.

53 Conklin (note 48). For an example of Conklin directly attributing this view of his to Brooks, see Edwin Grant Conklin to Reverend John Plumer, 15 April 1924, Conklin Papers, PUL, Carton 1, Folder ‘Philosophy and Theology’. See also Conklin (note 32), p. 208, 211–12. Conklin tended to quote Brooks as an authority for this position through the end of his life. See Conklin (note 14), p. 72.

54 Conklin (note 32), pp. 212–13. For more on Conklin's views of a historical conflict between science and theological-dogmatic Christianity, see p. 178. Conklin's conflict language on conflict shows the influence of Andrew Dickson White's aforementioned conflict thesis. Conklin had read and was influenced by both Draper and White (Atkinson (note 11), p. 40).

55 For an example of a scientist in the US who embodied these trends and the religious networks that facilitated them, see Davis (note 26, ‘Millikan’).

56 Jon H. Roberts, Darwinism and the Divine in America: Protestant Intellectuals and Organic Evolution, 1859–1900 (Madison, WI, 1988), p. 140.

57 Modernists’ inconsistency with definitions is discussed in Lofton.

58 Conklin to W.J. Barrett, 2 January 1924, Conklin Papers, PUL, Carton 1, Folder ‘Philosophy and Theology.

59 Note 58.

60 Edwin Grant Conklin to Arthur Watham, 28 February 1924, Conklin Papers, PUL, Carton 1, Folder ‘Philosophy and Theology'.

61 Note 60.

62 Note 60.

63 On defining the soul as ‘emotions and morals’, see Conklin (note 32), p. 162. On miracles as moral metaphors, see p. 199.

64 Conklin (note 32), p. 181.

65 Conklin to Barrett, 8 January 1924), Conklin Papers, PUL.

66 See Clark (note 4), pp. 53–54, 83.

67 Gundlach (note 25), p. 217. On other well-known US scientists’ support of linear or quasi-linear teleology in evolution at the time, see Davis (note 26, ‘Millikan’), p. 268. See also Clark (note 4), pp. 45, 58.

68 In a six-part Scientific Monthly series on evolution published from 1919 to 1920, Conklin did not focus on natural selection. See Edwin Grant Conklin, ‘The Mechanism of Evolution in the Light of Heredity and Development', Scientific Monthly, 9:12–10:5 (December 1919–May 1920), pp. 52–62; 170–81; 269–91; 388–403; 481–515. See also Atkinson's comment on this topic in (note 11), p. 45. In the section discussing physical evolution in his 1921 book The Direction of Human Evolution discussed at some length below, Conklin affirmed that Darwin's natural selection was the only sure mechanism of evolution known, but it was not the only mechanism (pp. 9–13). Even in 1952, Conklin wrote ‘[w]hen we consider the whole course of evolution does the mechanism of natural selection seem a useful but wholly inadequate explanation of the remarkable fitnesses that are everywhere evident' (Conklin (note 14), p. 71). Conklin affirmed cell division was directed from within (Cooke (note 11), pp. 85–86).

69 Conklin indicated that in interactions between cytoplasm and cell nuclei the progressive differentiation of the cytoplasm caused changes in the nuclei, leading to new cytoplasmic substances in evolutionary change. His description of the creative synthesis in evolution, the workings of epigenesis, was as follows: ‘[B]y the interaction with one another of substances or parts originally present and by their reactions to external stimuli new substances and parts appear which had no previous existence just as new substances result from chemical reactions.' Edwin Grant Conklin, Heredity and Environment in the Development of Man, revised second edition (Princeton, 1917), p. 187. See also p. 189.

70 On US scientists, evolution, and modernism, see Clark (note 4), pp. 15–16, 22, 52–54. The two most prominent modernist Protestant clergymen whose social reform visions appealed to scientific authority and notions of progress were Shailer Mathews and Walter Rauschenbusch. On Mathews’ social-theological views as tied to progress and science, see Gary J. Dorrien, The Making of American Liberal Theology, vol. 2 idealism, realism, and modernity, 1900–1950 (Louisville, 2003), pp. 184–187, 201–203. On Rauschenbusch's social gospel, connected to science and expertise, see Rosen (note 30), p. 10 and Eugene McCarraher, Christian Critics: Religion and the Impasse in Modern American Social Thought (Ithaca, NY, 2000), pp. 10–20. In Britain, the progressivist social views of modernists like R.A. Fisher and Bishop E.W. Barnes have been addressed to a fair extent. Ruse touched on Fisher's social views in Ruse (note 22), pp. 178–79, 182–84; and From Monad to man: the concept of progress in evolutionary biology (Cambridge MA, 2009), pp. 301–03. Bowler dealt with the same aspects of Fisher's ideas in (note 19, Reconciling), pp. 154–57) and with Barnes’ modernist social progressivism (pp. 266–69).

71 Ross, in particular, reflected a position where professionalized, purportedly disinterested study remained tied to the reform impulse at the heart of sociology's origins. On Ross in this vein, see Gillis Harp, Positivist Republic: August Comte and the reconstruction of American liberalism, 1865–1920 (University Park, PA, 1995), pp. 155­–56, 174–81.

72 See James A. Nuechterlein, ‘The Dream of Scientific Liberalism: the New Republic and American progressive thought: 1914–1920’, The Review of Politics, 42 (1980), 176.

73 Harp (note 71), p. 199.

74 Harp (note 71), pp. 187, 199. For modernist Josiah Royce's influence on Croly, see ibid., p. 189.

75 Harp traced the vision's transformation through nineteenth-century sociologist Lester Ward, whose view of applied science saw human control of evolution coming through state-guided, expert-consulted, social policy (Harp (note 71), pp. 133–34.

76 The World's Most Famous Court Trial, State of Tennessee v. John Thomas Scopes: complete stenographic report of the court test of the Tennessee anti-evolution act at Dayton, July 10 to 12, 1925, including speeches and arguments of attorneys (New York, 1971), p. 247. It is not clear whether Mather meant by this usage the vitalism associated with Henri Bergson, though Bergson's influence on him in other senses is known. See, for example, Davis (note 26, ‘Altruism'), p. 526. Conklin eschewed such vitalism.

77 Note 76, p. 250.

78 Mather quoted in Davis (note 26, ‘Altruism’), p. 528.

79 Harp (note 71), p. 203.

80 D.K. Pickens, ‘The Sterilization Movement: The Search for Purity in Mind and State’, Phylon, 28 (1967), 78–94 (pp. 82–83).

81 Pickens (note 80), pp. 82–83.

82 See Dr. R. A. Millikan, ‘A Joint statement upon the relations of science and religion', Science, 57 (June 1, 1923), 630–31. For background on the Joint Statement and the fact that all signatories were at least Protestants in name (except the Eastern Orthodox Michael Pupin), see Davis (note 26, ‘Millikan’), pp. 260–62. Davis points out that Millikan's portion of the document relied on a ‘heavily revised … draft written by a Protestant minister … ' (p. 261).

83 H.F. Osborn, preface in M. Grant, Passing of the great race, or the racial basis of European history (New York, 1916), pp. viii–ix. On Osborn and eugenics, see Clark (note 4), pp. 17, 116–17, 152, and Alexander Pavuk, ‘The A.A.A.S. Committee on Evolution around the Scopes trial: race, eugenics, and public science in the U.S.', Historical Research (forthcoming 2017). As seen by the fact that Osborn's preface supported the infamous racist Grant's book, mainline eugenics had a definite racialist tinge in the US. Its scientist participants, including Mather, Conklin, Osborn, and others revealed their racialist thinking in numerous instances, especially when writing about eugenics (ibid). Mather, in his above-mentioned 1925 Scopes statement, compared Neanderthal bone structure to various contemporary human populations, referring to both the negro and ‘the white race of today' while averring to the latter's place at the pinnacle of development. See (note 76, The World's most famous), p. 245.

84 Elements of Osborn's social vision are discussed at various points throughout Clark (note 4), for example, pp. 31–33, 107, 116–17.

85 Rosen (note 30), pp. 16, 18.

86 Rosen (note 30), p. 38.

87 Quoted in Rosen (note 30), p. 39.

88 Rosen (note 30), p. 38. Rosen informs us that Hall also exerted a large influence on eugenicist Henry Goddard (200, n. 61).

89 See the discussion of Wiggam in Rosen (note 30), pp. 128–34.

90 Batten quoted in Rosen (note 30), p. 31.

91 Samuel Z. Batten, ‘The Redemption of the unfit', American Journal of Sociology, 14 (1908), 233–260 (p. 259).

92 Batten (note 91), p. 259.

93 Rosen (note 30), pp. 125–26.

94 The book consisted of the John Calvin McNair lectures Conklin had delivered at the University of North Carolina in May 1920 and revised for publication.

95 Conklin (note 32), pp. vi–vii.

96 Conklin (note 32), pp. 110.

97 Conklin (note 32), p. 93.

98 Conklin (note 32), pp. 86, 68–69.

99 Conklin (note 32), p. 245.

100 Conklin (note 32), p. 76. On Charles Darwin's understanding of altruism for human social evolution, see Darwin, Descent of man and selection in relation to sex (New York, 1871, 2004), esp. pp. 103–04, 109–12, 554–55.

101 Conklin (note 32), pp. 124–25.

102 Conklin (note 32), p. 122. On some similarities in Darwin, see Darwin (note 100), pp. 103–04, 109–12, 554–55. In Conklin, there is a connection between this political vision, altruism, and postmillenialism in the broader context of the book.

103 See, for example, Conklin (note 14), pp. 51–52, 74.

104 Conklin (note 14), p. 239.

105 Conklin (note 14), pp. 238–239.

106 Conklin (note 14), p. 241.

107 Conklin (note 32), pp. 194, 7. The word eternal here referred to the uniformity of nature doctrine. Conklin invoked it by quoting Buffon and calling it ‘the Doctrine of Uniformity,' which he termed the first principle of evolution (p. 7).

108 Conklin (note 32), p.186.

109 Conklin (note 32), p.184. On supernature, see also pp. 194, 212. Conklin expressed faith that the natural laws behind what have generally been called ‘supernatural' will eventually be discovered, just as ‘Many things which were once supposed to be due to supernatural causes are now known to be wholly natural,' such as primitive societies’ views of the winds or other phenemona as actions of unpredictable deities. (p. 186).

110 Conklin (note 32), pp. 185, 196.

111 Conklin (note 32), p. 225.

112 Conklin (note 32), p. 223.

113 Conklin (note 32), p. 133.

114 Conklin (note 32), p. 104.

115 Conklin (note 32), p. 80.

116 Conklin was contradictory on race at different points in the book. In one section, he seemed to chide reactionary racism (note 32, pp. 139–40). But as one reads on, it seems more that he chided irrational racism seemingly in favour of what one can imagine him calling ‘rational racism', as described above.

117 Conklin (note 32), p. 34. Conklin's racism tied in to his views on eugenics. On Conklin's eugenics, see Pavuk (note 83).

118 Conklin (note 32), p. 53.

119 Conklin (note 32), p. 45. For Stoddard, see p. 49.

120 Conklin (note 32), p. 105. For Conklin's larger excursus on the need for evolution in American democracy, see pp. 115–27.

121 Conklin (note 32), p. 114.

122 Conklin (note 32), p. 115.

123 Conklin (note 32), p. 105.

124 Conklin (note 32), p. 116.

125 Conklin (note 32), p. 115

126 Conklin (note 32), pp. 240–41.

127 Conklin (note 32), pp. 239–40.

128 Conklin (note 32), p. 246.

129 Conklin (note 32), pp. 245–246. Quotation from p. 247.

130 Conklin (note 32), p. 240. The Biblical quote was Romans 8:22.

131 Conklin (note 32), p. 240.

132 Edwin Grant Conklin to Bishop William Montgomery Brown, 23 May 1924, and Brown to Conklin, 21 May 1924, Conklin Papers, PUL, Carton 1, Folder ‘Philosophy and Theology’. Conklin went on to say in his letter of May 23, ‘I have read your statements which have appeared in the newspapers and have been in hearty sympathy with you in the great fight which you have been making for liberalism in the church'.

133 Brown to Conklin, 21 May 1924, Conklin Papers, PUL, Carton 1, Folder ‘Philosophy and Theology’.

134 Conklin had discussed in Direction the fact that ‘the world no longer looks to the church, as it once did, for intellectual leadership.' It instead looked to the authority of the scientific method. (Conklin (note 32), pp. 181–82).

135 Brown to Conklin, 21 May 1924, Conklin Papers, PUL, Carton 1, Folder ‘Philosophy and Theology.

136 Ron Carden, ‘The Trial and Deposal of Bishop William Montgomery Brown, 1921–1925’, Ohio History, 114 (2007), 132–150 (pp. 139, 134).

137 Arthur Watham to Edwin Grant Conklin, 23 February 1924, Conklin Papers, PUL, Carton 1, Folder ‘Philosophy and Theology’. Watham cited page 197 in Brown's book as the source of his quote.

138 Watham to Conklin (note 137). Watham cited page 14 in Brown's book as the source of that quote.

139 Watham to Conklin (note 137). Watham averred that Brown felt comfortable calling himself an atheist because of his unbelief in the supernatural God traditionally invoked by Christianity while accepting the natural one he saw Conklin as describing. Carden argued that Brown was substantially influenced by Ernst Haeckel (Carden (note 136), p. 134, n.16).

140 Conklin to Arthur Watham, 28 February 1924, Conklin Papers, PUL, Carton 1, Folder ‘Philosophy and Theology'. When the trial finally took place, it got front page coverage in The New York Times from 27 to 31 May 1924 See Carden (note 136), p. 190.

141 Conklin to Watham, 28 February 1924 (note 140). Brown was ultimately found guilty by the church court and deposed. He left the Methodist Episcopal communion thinking he had been received into the Old Catholic Church. However, the bishop who formally accepted Brown and ordained him to the Old Catholic episcopate had himself been previously stripped of his authority to create new bishops by that church's hierarchy. Of this fact Brown was ‘blissfully unaware' (Carden (note 136), pp. 148–49).

142 See Clark (note 4), pp. 32–33, 35, 36.

143 See Gundlach, (note 25), pp. 302–03.

144 See William B. Jensen, ‘Critiquing Einstein and Darwin: The humanism of Louis Trenchard More’, pp. 3–4. http://www.che.uc.edu/jensen/W.%20B.%20Jensen/Reprints/230.%20L.T.%20More.pdf [accessed 26 September 2016]. More did achieve notoriety for what were considered fine historical biographies of Isaac Newton and Robert Boyle, published in 1934 and 1944 by Scribner's and Oxford University Press, respectively. See Louis Trenchard More, Isaac Newton: a Biography (New York and London, 1934) and More, The Life and works of the Honourable Robert Boyle (New York and London, 1944).

145 Jensen (note 144), pp. 6–7. The New Humanism began as a literary movement and developed into a broader cultural critique based in a reemphasis on classical Greek and Roman ideals and critique of modern literary, artistic, and cultural forms. For more on Babbit and the movement, see J. David Hoeveler, Jr., The New Humanism: A critique of modern America, 1900–1940 (Charlottesville, VA, 1977).

146 More had already laid out his case about the boundaries and limits of empirical science in his book The Limitations of Science (New York, 1915). Limitations centred on distinguishing between empirical fact, theory, and hypothesis, proposing realism, not romanticism, as a necessary corollary to true science. More defined legitimate science in this book as ‘discovery of natural phenomena and their classification into general laws,' adding that these laws must be ‘derived from logical mathematical processes’ (p. 31). It is worth mentioning that More was willing to discard Einstein's then-recently announced theory of relativity as failing to fulfill these criteria. More claimed Einstein was too speculative.

147 Louis Trenchard More, The Dogma of evolution (Princeton, 1925), p. 24.

148 More (note 147), p. 24.

149 More (note 147), pp. 24, 384. Conklin did admit in Direction that he was ‘dealing with subjects which are generally regarded as quite outside the field of biology' but was ‘convinced that nothing which concerns man is wholly foreign to the fundamental principles of life and evolution, and … the future progress of mankind depends upon a rational application of the principles of science to all human affairs (Conklin (note 32), p. vii).

150 More (note 147), p. 364.

151 More (note 147), pp. 31–32.

152 More (note 147), p. 32

153 More (note 147), p. 384.

154 More (note 147), p. 24.