Corresponding author: Aldemaro Romero Jr. (
Academic editor:
Part of the conventional wisdom in scientific circles dominated by reductionist views of research is that science is or can be both value-free and ahistorical. However, there has been mounting criticism to this position, i.e., that ideology has intruded and will continue to intrude into science (For a discussion on these issues see
The idea of predestination defined as the doctrine that contends that God predestines from eternity the salvation of certain souls, has been debated for a long time in theological circles (For earlier discussions on this issue see Weizsäcker (1859), Das Dogma von der göttlichen Vorherbestimmung im 9. Jahrhundert in Jahrbücher für deutsche Theologie; Dieckhoff (1883), Zur Lehre von der Bekehrung und von der Prädestination; Dieckhoff (1885), Der missourische Prädestinianismus und die Concordienformel; Scheibe (1897), Calvins Prädestinationslehre; Köstlin (1901), Luthers Theologie; Müller (1903), Die Bekenntnisschriften der reformierten Kirchen, s. v. Erwählung; Jacquin (1904), La question de La prédestination au Ve et VIe siècle in Revue de l'histoire ecclésiastique; van Oppenraaij (1906), La prédestination de l'église réformée des Pays-Bas.) A survey of the WorldCat database on books that are catalogued in (mostly) academic libraries around the world up to January 2016 shows that there are more than 7000 entries that deal with this idea. Yet, only recently scholars from non-theological fields have started to take a look of the possible influence of the notion of predestination in their own area of knowledge. Economists (
In the natural sciences, the phrase ‘biochemical predestination’ was coined by
In this paper I will argue that the notion of predestination has had a strong influence in the evolutionary ideas developed in the western world, particularly when it comes to explanations relative to the loss of phenotypic (morphological, behavioral, and physiological) features during evolution as epitomized by organisms living in caves and other light-deprived environments. I will further argue that such ideas have hampered and continue to hamper our understanding of the phenomenon of evolutionary loss of features.
My approach will be, first, to show how predestination has had very deep roots in all monotheistic religions since their inception. Then I will show how that idea was adopted –in some cases very explicitly- by evolutionary biologists as late as the Twentieth Century and continues to dominate the conversation when it comes with the explanation of some evolutionary processes, particularly in the realm of biospeleology. I will conclude by showing that we need to understand the influence of those ideas if we really want to assert the scientific process as one that is really objective and free of superfluous influences.
Between the twelve and fifteen century, Spain lived through a unique convergence of ideas for a single country in Western Europe:
We can find good examples of the preoccupation with predestination among Spanish writers such as Diego de Valencia (
These views about predestination somehow expanded and became more universal due to three historical facts that took place in 1492:
The defeat of the moors in Spain imbedded a sense of fatalism in the psyche of Muslims setting the basis for rancor toward the western world that is still present today;
The expulsion of the Jews from Spain (or their forced conversion into Christianity), impregnating them with further messianic hopes and eschatology, furthering Kabbalism;
and the notion that if Spain had been the one discovering America, it was because of predestination and that they had to take place their religious fervor under which both atrocities and humanitarian feats would be carried out (see
The new impetus and discussion on the issue of predestination in the sixteenth century comes by the hand of John Calvin. Calvin generated the concept of “double predestination” (
Further discussion on how the concept of predestination continued to evolve can be found in
Although national pride has surfaced in many countries at many times, only two western countries can claim that the sense of being a predestined nation has become part of their psyche. They are the United States of America and France.
Unlike the colonization process that took place elsewhere in the American continent, the colonization of what is today the Unites States had little to do with the search of riches and rather had political and religious overtones. Ideologically speaking, the main actors were the Puritans. They were made up of an assortment of groups united by some common themes:
an ideology of religious reformation that originated within the Church of England during the middle of the sixteenth century;
their common Calvinist theology; and,
the same critical stance toward the Anglican Church in particular and the English society and government in general.
After their ascent to power in the person of Oliver Cromwell as a result of the English Civil War (1642-1651), their influence declined steadily as a result of the restoration of the Stuart monarchy in 1660. Because they were identified with radicalism and the autocratic Cromwell and his government, many moved to British North America (a phenomenon that actually started in the 1620s as a result of religious intolerance in England), Scotland, and Northern Ireland. In North America they formed two main communities: The Congregationalists, settled in Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Rhode Island, and The Presbyterians, who settled mostly in New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania during the late seventeenth century and throughout the eighteenth century.
As the Pelagians and Semi-Pelagians, Puritans were concerned with what they considered social and moral corruption and developed a series of rules that governed many aspects of individual behavior, from dress codes to religious observances. As they continue to break away from the Church of England, they also wanted to make sure that there were no vestiges of rituals and practices that may resemble those of the Roman Catholic Church. Thus, their worship services were simple, austere, and centered on long, learned sermons in which their clergy expounded on passages from the Bible. The parishioners were expected to live an exemplary life dominated by temperance and restrain. They were possessed by a sense of predestination and that America was the Promised Land where they could act according to their own beliefs and with very little outside interference.
By the eighteenth century most of these conceptions of life had given away to a more competitive, individualistic, and secular society as a result of the growth in commercial capitalism and the intellectual challenges of the Age of Enlightening (
The idea of predestination would resurface at least twice as a major component of the American social and political scene. One was during the American Revolution. Although the idea of religious predestination was severely criticized by Thomas Paine (see
There is a long history of the idea of predestination in France as a national ideology that includes emphasizing the teaching of nationalistic topics throughout the curriculum in schools (see, for example,
Within the scientific realm the lasting influence of the idea of predestination is quite apparent by French or French-based researchers on the intellectual influence on biological evolution in general and biospeleological ideas in particular to the point that their way of thinking and terminology has been pervasive in cave biology since Lamarck until the 1950s. To understand why this is so, we must (1) review the political and intellectual environment in France previous to the publication of Darwin’s
Ideas on evolution (biological and otherwise) in pre-
He described a metaphysical ‘power of life’ (
Two Lamarck contemporaries would also make their own contributions to the notion of increasing complexity in nature. Jean Léopold Nicolas Frédéric (Georges) Cuvier, for example, although a creationist, noticed some ‘progression’ in the succession of the geologic record. Geoffroy Saint-Hillaire, was a believer in evolution, progressionism, and the Great Chain of Being, always looking for transitional forms (
At the same time French philosophers were thinking along the same lines. For example, Marie-Jean-Antoine-Nicolas de Caritat, Marquis de Condorcet, a brilliant mathematician, philosopher, and political activist, infused the idea of progress into virtually all of his historical interpretations. He adopted the concept of inheritance of acquired characters in constructing his vision for the social and organic progressive improvement of humankind, an idea also espoused by other philosophers such as Herbert Spencer, Friedrich Engels, and Lester Ward (
Thus, the intellectual environment in pre-
With the advice of the French zoologist and early Darwinian enthusiast René-Edouard Claparède, who had also enthusiastically reviewed Darwin’s book, she translated the third edition of
The title of Darwin’s book in French was
For years to come, Royer continued publishing and lecturing about Lamarck, her personal hero. She, who was probably the first European woman recognized as a professional anthropologist, was also an enthusiastic caver.
Royer’s translation of
Were this improper translation and the current intellectual climate the only reasons for the poor reception of Darwin’s ideas in France? Not really. Just before the publication of
Other political and social events further cemented the French view of evolution as a mystical idea. One experience that generated a nationwide feeling of disgrace was the political and military humiliation of the French by the Prussians during the 1870-1871 War (
It was in this intellectual atmosphere that the seeds for French Neo-Lamarckism were planted, and these seeds were sown in abundance by French biospeleologists. The father of these neo-Lamarckian ideas in France was Henri Louis Bergson. Bergson was a philosopher and a mathematician whose ideas on evolution were largely anti-materialistic and sustained that organic evolution was just part of a larger, universal cosmic evolution. A Lamarckian follower regarding the canon of use and disuse and principle that evolution was directed by an internal force which he called
Bergson was familiar with the ideas of Cope and Theodor Gustav Heinrich Eimer, a disciple of Rudolf Albert Kölliker, who championed the idea of and popularized the term orthogenesis (
According to Bergson, both Darwinian evolution and finalism (the idea that evolution has a sense of directedness toward an end and that such a path has already been laid) could coexist. And what is the unifying force behind such a possibility? It cannot be natural selection, of course, since that is based on apparent randomness, but rather it must be a mystical force,
In summary, Bergson was a progressionist but he did not believe that there was a necessarily pre-designed goal; rather that final progression would lead to a less predictable result trying, thus, to taint Darwinism with the very popular idea of progression.
All of these new philosophies of life were developed at the time when speleology in general and biospeleology in particular were becoming sciences in their own right, and all their foundations were being laid by French or France-based naturalists. Such was the case of the French lawyer Édouard-Alfred Martel. Martel was a lawyer and a geographer by training. He was known for his pioneer work in 1894 on the physiography and accessibility of caves, and he coined the term speleology (in both French and English) in the 1890s. He explored the limestone caves of Cévennes and, with others, made descents into previously unknown caves of Europe, Asia, and America. In 1895 he founded the
However, the two figures that would ultimately consolidate biospeleology as a science and give it many of the distinctive features that it has today were Emil G. Racovitza and René Gabriel Jeannel. Racovitza, a Rumanian-born, French-educated naturalist, started exploring caves in the Pyrenees in 1905 together with his protégé Jeannel. Racovitza initiated an extensive international research program under the umbrella of
Rocovitza’s two main publications dealing with biospeleological theory were his 1907
all cave organisms were ‘preadapted’ to the cave environment;
function (or lack thereof) creates the organ (or generates its disappearance). He was a strong supported of the use vs. disuse concept;
natural selection is of little importance because natural variation is virtually non-existent (he was a staunch typologist);
evolution is directional as evidenced by ‘phyletic lines.’
Similar views were endorsed by his student Jeannel (
Although all this can be presented as a great accomplishment for the French in terms of initiating and developing the systematic study of caves, none of these figures ever embraced any form of Darwinism, but rather different shades of Neo-Lamarckism first and different forms of finalism such as orthogenesis and organicism later. Thus, the French biologists who embraced transformism beginning in 1880 did so via Neo-Lamarckism while strongly opposing the idea of natural selection (
Therefore, the utilization of cave organisms as perfect examples for demonstrating the legitimacy of the French version of Neo-Lamarckism seemed to be inevitable, and this is exactly what happened. The main points in common of these French intellectuals were:
acceptance of evolution as a linear phenomenon (orthogenesis) leading to a perfecting complexity in nature;
rejection of natural selection as a phenomenon of any relevance;
development of finalism, vitalism, organicism, and other expressions of essentialism in biology;
utilization of cave organisms as ‘perfect’ examples of these views of life;
mutual reinforcement of ideas concerning biospeleological paradigms (blind, depigmented animals) and philosophical notions of progress within the same country: France.
These ideas were very much espoused by American biospeleologists who not only followed early directional and deterministic views of evolution (
There is abundant pre-New Testament material such as select apocalypses[1] wisdom books, and the Qumran (Dead Sea scrolls) documents that attest for a sense of predestination in the understanding of life, destiny, and relationship with God. The firm belief on predestination of the Jewish faith would cool off from the deuteronomic (faithfulness to Yahweh and obedience to his commands bring blessings) approach to Israel's salvation to the spiritual wisdom (sapiential) tradition. This may have been as a response to persecution among Jews which may have compelled the wisdom teachers to adopt a new eschatological dualism, according to which salvation was ultimately determined not just on the basis of covenantal election, but also on the basis of fidelity to the law (
However, by the twelfth century, Judaism would turn into a more mystical conception of life through the Kabbala (Hebrew for tradition) with the publication of Sefer ha-bahir or ‘Book of Brightness.’ Kabbalism has its roots in first century Palestine and was a form of esoteric Jewish mysticism whose initiation into its doctrines and practices was conducted by a personal guide that included the knowledge of some ‘secret wisdom’ of the unwritten Torah that was communicated by God to Moses and Adam. Although observance to the law remained a pillar of Judaism, the Kabbala gave means to approach God directly and introduced the notion of transmigration of souls (gilgul).
However, the major influence on non-Judean thought in terms of predestination would come from two other works: Sefer ha-temuna or ‘Book of the Image’ and Sefer ha-zohar or ‘Book of Splendor.’ They deal with the notion of cosmic cycles and speculations about soul and salvation. They are important not only because they recapture in part the original ideas about predestination rooted in ancient Judaism but also because they were published in late Medieval Spain, a point we will return later.
This notion of predestination has its roots in a number of pre-Christian religious documents whose prime example is the Qumran. There we can find the notion of predestination together with eschatological/apocalyptic concepts (
In your wisdom you es[tablished] eternal [...]; before creating them you know all their deeds for ever and ever. [...] [Without you] nothing is done and nothing is known without your will” (
The first Christian author to suggest the notion of predestination was Paul the Apostle. Originally a Jew and a fervent antichristian, he converted into the new religion shortly after the death of Jesus and went on to become one of the leading figures of early Christianity. He wrote:
For those whom he [God] foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, in order that he might be the first-born among many brethren. And those whom he predestined he also called; and those whom he called he also justified; and those whom he justified he also glorified (
However, the idea of predestination was not fully articulated until the writings of St. Augustine. His influence on Christian thought derives from both his synthesis of Platonism, Roman, and early Christian ideas that developed into a theological system that later made its mark on both Catholicism and Protestantism. St. Augustine’s notion of predestination was that human beings could not attain righteousness by their own efforts and were totally dependent upon the grace of God. In other words, the actions of God were the ones that foreordain the future lot and fate of all mankind in this life and after death, including their salvation or perdition.
St. Augustine did not propose these ideas in an intellectual vacuum but was rather responding to the ideas of Pelagius. He and his followers stated that humans were essentially good and that their fate depended entirely on their will. Concerned about the lowering of moral standards among Christians, he hoped that by stressing personal responsibility their moral behavior would improve. St. Augustine attacked these ideas on philosophical grounds while the Christian church felt threatened largely because Pelagius and his followers rejected any claims of original sin by insisting that God created humans free to choose between good and evil, making sin an act of individual responsibility. Therefore, the baptism of the infant was unnecessary. This led to the labeling of Pelagianism as heresy and the excommunication of Pelagius and some of his followers.
Despite St. Augustine’s theological attacks and the Church’s political actions, the controversy was far from over. Others like Julian of Eclanum continued their support for Pelagianism despite the Church’s threats and actions against them. At the end, a new ideology was developed. What was later called Semi-Pelagianism, can be defined as a movement that in some ways tried to reconcile both Pelagian and Augustinian thoughts. On one hand they agreed with St. Augustine that the original sin was a corruptive force among humans and that without God's grace this corruptive force could not be overcome, and they therefore agreed that Baptism of the infant was necessary; on the other hand, they agree with the Pelagians in that humans’ will was very powerful. Therefore, they concluded, the innate corruption of humans was not too great as not to be overcome through the powers of individual determination.
The Semi-Pelagians were led by Johannes Cassian. He was an ascetic monk and theologian whose writings gave rise to the Western idea of monasticism as a result of his experiences in the hermits of Egypt. This influenced his beliefs on the importance of individual determination. Because in the final analysis Semi-Pelagians were asserting that there was no need for God's supernatural intervention for the empowering of man's will for saving action, their ideas were also considered heresy, but Cassian and his followers were not personally persecuted by the Church.
During Medieval Europe, the idea of predestination continued to be discussed by Christian theologians. Godescalc or Gottschalk of Orbais was a monk and theologian who believed that Christ's salvation was limited and that his power of redemption extended only to the elect, thus the elect went to eternal glory and the reprobate went to damnation. This was considered heresy and Godescalc was imprisoned.
The continuation of ideas of predestination would be carried well into Medieval Europe by Thomas Aquinas and, particularly, by Gregory of Rimini. For Aquinas, God wills the salvation of all souls although certain souls are granted special grace that in effect foreordains their salvation; thus, the damned are sent to hell only in the sense that God foresees their resistance to the grace given them. Gregory, on the other hand, believed that goodwill was insufficient to acquire the perfect love necessary for the vision of God to which Christians aspire. He reaffirmed the Church teachings on Baptism by stating that children dying without Baptism would suffer eternal punishment.
Peter Auriol a philosopher and critical thinker (he was a forerunner to William of Ockham) criticized St. Thomas Aquinas' theory of (scholastic) knowledge by emphasizing the part played by experience in knowledge against that played by reasoning. He wrote on predestination in
Since the advent of Modern Synthesis we have a pretty consistent set of evidence that evolution is not linear, that there is not such a thing as direction for evolutionary processes, and that nothing is predetermined since natural selection, the main evolutionary mechanism, is a process that is not moved by any mystical force nor directs beings toward a particular end. Yet, biospeleologists continue seeing “preadaptations” and “regressive evolution” (which implies direction) anywhere when it comes to cave fauna (
Therefore, I hope this paper serves as a warning to scientists that no matter what reductionist view they have in the way they practice their research, if they do not understand the historical roots and the philosophical framework of their research they are doomed at presenting only a very partial (and many times biased) view of nature.
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The idea of exploring the influence of of predestination in science originated in a conversation on this topic I had with Phil Regan. I thank Brian J. O’Neill who read an earlier version of this paper and made valuable suggestions.