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Evolutionary Biology
New Perspectives on Its Development 3

Richard G. Delisle Editor

Natural
Selection
Revisiting its Explanatory Role in
Evolutionary Biology
Evolutionary Biology – New Perspectives on Its
Development

Volume 3

Series Editor
Richard G. Delisle, Department of Philosophy and School of Liberal Education,
University of Lethbridge, Lethbridge, AB, Canada

Editorial Board Members

Richard Bellon, Lyman Briggs Coll, Rm E35, Michigan State University, East
Lansing, MI, USA
Daniel R. Brooks, Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of
Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada
Joe Cain, Department of Science and Tech Studies, University College London,
London, UK
David Ceccarelli, University of Rome Tor Vergata, Department of History, Cultural
Heritage, Education and Society, ROMA, Roma, Italy
Thomas E. Dickins, Middlesex University, Department of Psychology, Faculty of
Science and Technology, London, UK
Rui Diogo, Howard University, Washington, DC, USA
Maurizio Esposito, University of Lisbon, Interuniversity Center for the History of
Science and Technology, LISBOA, Portugal
Ulrich Kutschera, Institute of Biology, University of Kassel, Kassel, Hessen,
Germany
Georgy S. Levit, Institute of Biology, University of Kassel, Kassel, Hessen,
Germany
Laurent Loison, Institute for the History and Philosophy of Science and Technology
(IHPST), Paris, France
Jeffrey H. Schwartz, Department of Anthropology, University of Pittsburgh, Pitts-
burgh, PA, USA
Ian Tattersall, Division of Anthropology, American Museum of Natural History,
New York, NY, USA
Derek D. Turner, Department of Philosophy, Connecticut College, New London,
CT, USA
Jitse M. van den Meer, Department of Biology, Redeemer University College,
Ancaster, Canada
Evolutionary biology has been a remarkably dynamic area since its foundation. Its
true complexity, however, has been concealed in the last 50 years under an assumed
opposition between the “Extended Evolutionary Synthesis” and an “Alternative to
the Evolutionary Synthesis”. This multidisciplinary book series aims to move
beyond the notion that the development of evolutionary biology is structured around
a lasting tension between a Darwinian tradition and a non-Darwinian tradition, once
dominated by categories like Darwinian Revolution, Eclipse of Darwinism, Evolu-
tionary Synthesis, and Post-Synthetic Developments.
The monographs and edited volumes of the series propose an alternative to this
traditional outlook with the explicit aim of fostering new thinking habits about
evolutionary biology, a multifaceted area composed of changing and interacting
research entities and explanatory levels. Contributions by biologists and historians/
philosophers are welcomed. Topics covered in the series span from (among many
other possibilities):
• An Overview of Neutralist Theories in Evolutionary Biology
• Developmental Biology: From Reductionism to Holism and Back
• Selection Theories Beyond Hard and Soft Inheritance
• Divergent, Parallel, and Reticulate Evolution: Competing or Complementary
Research Programs?
• The Rise of Molecular Biology: Between Darwinian and Non-Darwinian
• Biologizing Paleontology: A Tradition with Deep Historical Roots
• The Darwinian Revolution and the Eclipse of Darwinism: Blurring the Historio-
graphical Lines
• Darwinism, Lamarckism, Orthogenesis: Can We Really Define Them by Their
Hard Explanatory Cores?
• The Evolutionary Synthesis: A Fabricated Concept?
• The Opposition to the Evolutionary Synthesis: Criticizing a Phantom?
• A Reversed Perspective: Approaching Charles Darwin from the Pre-1859 Period
• The Long Development of the Multilevel Paradigm in Evolutionary Biology
• Self-Organization: A Research Tradition from Morphology to Cosmology
• Human Evolution: Sociobiological or Sociocultural?

More information about this series at http://www.springer.com/series/16175

Richard G. Delisle
Editor

Natural Selection
Revisiting its Explanatory Role
in Evolutionary Biology
Editor
Richard G. Delisle
School of Liberal Education
and Department of Philosophy
University of Lethbridge
Lethbridge, Alberta, Canada

ISSN 2524-7751 ISSN 2524-776X (electronic)

Evolutionary Biology – New Perspectives on Its Development
ISBN 978-3-030-65535-8 ISBN 978-3-030-65536-5 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-65536-5

© Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021

This work is subject to copyright. All rights are reserved by the Publisher, whether the whole or part
of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations,
recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or
information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar
methodology now known or hereafter developed.
The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this
publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt
from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use.
The publisher, the authors, and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book
are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the
editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any
errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional
claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

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This Springer imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG.
The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland
Contents

1 Introduction: In Search of a New Paradigm for the Development

of Evolutionary Biology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
Richard G. Delisle

Part I Crossing Perspectives About Evolution: Historians Versus

Biologists
2 Cathedrals, Corals and Mycelia: Three Analogies for the History
of Evolutionary Biology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
Maurizio Esposito

Part II Different Views of Charles Darwin

3 Guiding a Train of Discoveries: Charles Darwin, Charles
Daubeny, and the Reception of Natural Selection, 1859–1865 . . . . . 39
Richard Bellon
4 Natural Selection as a Mere Auxiliary Hypothesis (Sensu Stricto
I. Lakatos) in Charles Darwin’s Origin of Species . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73
Richard G. Delisle
5 Natural Selection in Ernst Haeckel’s Legacy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 105
Georgy S. Levit and Uwe Hossfeld

Part III Rethinking a So-Called Intermediary Period

6 The Origins of Theoretical Developmental Genetics: Reinterpreting
William Bateson’s Role in the History of Evolutionary Thought . . . 137
Carlos Ochoa

v
vi Contents

7 Recasting Natural Selection: Osborn and the Pluralistic View

of Life . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 171
David Ceccarelli

Part IV Other Evolutionary Syntheses

8 Little Evolution, BIG Evolution: Rethinking the History of
Darwinism, Population Genetics, and the “Synthesis” . . . . . . . . . . . 195
Mark B. Adams
9 When Panpsychism Met Monism: Why Did the Philosopher
Theodor Ziehen Become a Crucial Figure for the Evolutionary
Biologist Bernhard Rensch? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 231
Georgy S. Levit and Uwe Hossfeld
10 Inertia, Trend, and Momentum Reconsidered: G. G. Simpson—An
Orthogeneticist? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 261
Carlos Ochoa
11 The Concept of Natural Selection in Theodosius Dobzhansky:
Its Development and Interpretation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 291
Jitse M. van der Meer

Part V New Lights on Recent Developments

12 What’s Natural About Natural Selection? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 329
Jeffrey H. Schwartz
13 Natural Selection, Morphoprocess and a Logical Field
of Evolutionary Concepts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 391
A. I. Granovitch
14 Natural Selection as Agent of Evolutionary Change:
A View from Paleoanthropology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 419
Ian Tattersall
15 Darwinism Without Selection? A Lesson from Cultural
Evolutionary Theory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 441
Lorenzo Baravalle

Part VI Teaching Evolution

16 Beyond Survival of the Fittest: A Look at Students’
Misconceptions About Natural Selection and Evolutionary
Theory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 465
Elizabeth Marie Watts
Chapter 1
Introduction: In Search of a New Paradigm
for the Development of Evolutionary
Biology

Richard G. Delisle

Abstract This Introduction raises a number of interpretative difficulties facing the

standard view of the development of evolutionary biology. It challenges the central
tenet of this view, the claim that the field has largely been organized around a
fundamental divide, comprising, on the one hand, theories focusing on a strong
selective approach and, on the other, theories embracing a weak selective one. It is
argued that the main historiographic labels—Darwinism, Darwinian Revolution,
Eclipse of Darwinism, Modern Synthesis, Extended Evolutionary Synthesis,
Non-Darwinian Synthesis—are increasingly less clearly supported by historical,
epistemological, theoretical, and empirical analyses. The co-optation of historians
and philosophers under the rhetorical discourses of a limited number of influential
evolutionists has, apparently, played a key role in the persistence of a static and
uncritical historiography. This Introduction calls for a new and more consistent
paradigm that would make sense of the overall development of evolutionary biology,
one based on a realignment of the alliance between all partners pursuing research in
this area.

Keywords Darwinism · Darwinian revolution · Eclipse of Darwinism · Modern

synthesis · Extended evolutionary synthesis · Non-Darwinian synthesis · Selective
theories · Rhetorical arguments · Co-optation

For several decades now, the field of evolutionary biology has been envisioned as
organized around a profound and fundamental divide: theories relying on strong
selective factors and those appealing to weak ones only. Of course, it is also believed
that the first ones are in keeping with the true Darwinian spirit, unlike the other
theories. On closer analyses—empirical, theoretical, epistemological, and

R. G. Delisle (*)
School of Liberal Education, University of Lethbridge, Lethbridge, AB, Canada
Department of Philosophy, University of Lethbridge, Lethbridge, AB, Canada
e-mail: [email protected]

© Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 1

R. G. Delisle (ed.), Natural Selection, Evolutionary Biology – New Perspectives on
Its Development 3, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-65536-5_1
2 R. G. Delisle

historical—this divide proves to be largely illusory and is collapsing at a rapid pace,

opening up an era devoted to the search of a new paradigm for the understanding of
the development of evolutionary biology.1 Theories favouring the agenda of strong
selective factors are unquestionably legitimate (Alcock 2001, 2017; Dawkins 1976,
1996; Dennett 1995; Mayr 1983; Wilson 1975; Wray et al. 2014) but are both mainly
the product of fairly recent developments and part of a minority view. The widely
held assumption that the adaptationist programme (or “pan-selectionism”) finds its
intellectual roots in Charles Darwin’s Origin of Species is not supported by recent
analyses (Delisle 2014, 2017a, 2019).
As shown by several contributions in this volume,2 “Darwinism” as a historio-
graphic category is rapidly approaching a definition crisis.3 The concept of natural
selection does not clearly mark out a distinction between most evolutionists from the
nineteenth century onwards, even for so-called Darwinians, no matter how acrimo-
nious debates might be today among evolutionists. For instance, Richard Delisle
(Chap. 4) holds that Darwin could not have put natural selection in the driver’s seat
of evolution as a core explanatory element, for the simple reason that Darwin
severely restricted its action under a pre-established overall divergent view of life,
reducing it to the explanatory role of an auxiliary hypothesis. Carlos Ochoa
(Chap. 10) shows how George Gaylord Simpson reintroduced the notion of ortho-
genesis by the back door—although he officially opposed it in the name of a
contingent evolution driven by natural selection—through the concept of parallel-
ism. Georgy Levit and Uwe Hossfeld (Chap. 9) establish strong ties between
Theodor Ziehen and Bernhard Rensch, both working under a monistic and
law-like universe reducing, in the case of Rensch, natural selection to an important
yet subordinate role (see also Levit et al. 2008). Mark Adams (Chap. 8) analyses how
a score of scholars declined to commit themselves to a basic assumption presumably
at the heart of the Modern Synthesis—the microevolution/macroevolution equa-
tion—depriving natural selection of its creativity for macroevolutionary events.
They avoided making this assumption in various ways: (1) some scholars denied
this equation (DeVries, Johannsen, Filipchenko, Goldschmidt, Guyénot, and
J.S. Huxley); (2) others failed to take the question seriously (Fisher and Wright);
(3) while the others recognized the lack of evidence for it (Severtsov and Rensch). In
fact, scholars who supported such an equation often did it on the basis of a
programmatic principle only, using various rhetorical strategies to hide their reser-
vations (Haldane, Simpson, and Dobzhansky). Jitse van der Meer (Chap. 11) throws

1
The word “paradigm” in this chapter is used in its ordinary and non-technical sense.
2
Of course, the opinions expressed here are only mine. The readers are urged to review all the
chapters contained in this volume and judge for themselves. It would be impossible for me to do
justice here to the many stimulating insights each author brings to it.
3
I have argued elsewhere that the time has perhaps come to dispose of the label “Darwinism”
altogether (Delisle 2017a: 157). It seems to me that this move is warranted, if only because at our
current state of understanding, such a label conflates major issues rather than revealing them. For a
similar conclusion, but based on a different argument, see also the comment of Mark Adams
(Chap. 8, footnote 14).
1 Introduction: In Search of a New Paradigm for the Development of Evolutionary. . . 3

more light on this state of affairs as it appears in Dobzhansky, finely analysing the
various explanatory levels and mechanisms he jostled with, thus depriving natural
selection of its sole and dominant role in evolution. Given these considerations, it is
less and less clear what the Modern Synthesis really is.
If the views of Charles Darwin and of a number of so-called proponents of the
Modern Synthesis are not quite as presented in the traditional historiography (see
also Cain 2009a; Delisle 2008, 2009a, b), then what is “Darwinism” all about? The
question raised by Lorenzo Baravalle (Chap. 15) in this volume seems to me most
relevant: “Darwinism Without Selection?”. The intellectual space seems quite lim-
ited (Delisle 2017b), if non-existent, between, on the one hand, “Darwinians” who
would deny the centrality of natural selection in evolutionary explanations and, on
the other, “non-Darwinians” who use it in company with a number of other evolu-
tionary mechanisms, as in the case of Henry Fairfield Osborn’s efforts to build a
synthetic biology (Ceccarelli, Chap. 7). Have we been far astray in our understand-
ing of the development of evolutionary biology? “Co-opting” historians of biology
in the service of evolutionary biologists seems to have been part of the problem, in
addition to the fact that scientists have actively engaged in self-promotional argu-
ments (Adams, Chap. 8 and Schwartz, Chap. 12).4

1.1 The Domino Effect

The professionalization of the fields of history and philosophy of biology arose at the
time when the “Modern Synthesis” was widely thought to have achieved a unifica-
tion of evolutionary disciplines. Ernst Mayr (1980) and Stephen Jay Gould (1980a),
for instance, characterized this synthesis as organized around two main explanatory
components: (1) gradual evolution is explained by small genetic changes (variations)
oriented by natural selection, a process leading to adaptation; (2) evolutionary trends
and speciational events are macroevolutionary phenomena explainable solely in
terms of the extension of processes and mechanisms occurring at the preceding
microevolutionary level. On this view, natural selection holds a central explanatory
role in evolutionary theory. Strangely enough, historians and philosophers uncriti-
cally bought into this self-serving narrative (Adams, Chap. 8), perhaps for reasons
more sociological than scientific, under the implicit desire for a wider recognition of
their newly acquired status among scientific disciplines.5 Thus was the historio-
graphic category “Modern Synthesis” canonized, externally and artificially
reinforced in the context of post-World War II ideological and religious pressures

4
For years I was myself entirely co-opted under labels, such as “Darwinian Revolution” and
“Modern Synthesis”. See also a somewhat similar admission by Mark Adams (Chap. 8).
5
The co-optation of historians and philosophers by evolutionary biologists promoting the “Modern
Synthesis” constitutes an essential research topic for future “critical” historians and philosophers.
4 R. G. Delisle

in favour of a pro-science agenda in the United States (Adams, Chap. 8; Smocovitis

1999).
It would appear that, from this unassailable citadel, the other labels created to
organize the development of evolutionary biology were either interpolated or
extrapolated. The Modern Synthesis needed historical roots for both prestige and
credibility, so Charles Darwin was placed in command of a “Darwinian Revolution”.
Clearly, the argument went, natural selection was the core of Darwin’s theory. From
there, it was easy enough to imagine a label for recalcitrant scholars who lived in a
no-man’s land somewhere in between, called the “Eclipse of Darwinism”. The logic
was pushed to its ultimate conclusion through the creation of a category for post-
synthetic developments, defined more or less in opposition to the one incarnated by
the Modern Synthesis. Depending on whether or not one sees himself or herself as
departing radically from this older label, one might belong either to the “Extended
Evolutionary Synthesis” or the “Non-Darwinian Synthesis”.
It is only in hindsight that one can tell how fragile this historiographic edifice was,
having only the Modern Synthesis as a foundation. The issue being raised here is not
merely whether or not the category “Modern Synthesis” should be kept intact,
expanded, or replaced. The question might be more gripping, even existential:
does history show us there ever really was a Modern Synthesis, as traditionally
defined? Whatever happened between 1930 and 1960 in evolutionary biology, and
once one goes beyond the rhetorical discourses, what is left at the conceptual level
doesn’t appear quite as originally advertised. It remains to be investigated how to fill
the void created by a reconceptualization of that time period. And this can only be
achieved at the expense of rethinking the entire development of evolutionary
biology. Keeping in mind that all the labels listed above originated from the starting
point of the “Modern Synthesis”, one sees why removing such a central piece
instigates in its wake a redefinition of others. Indeed, what would an “Extended
Evolutionary Synthesis” look like if there had been no Modern Synthesis to extend
in the first place? If Darwin’s image is the product of looking through the distorting
lens of the Modern Synthesis, then what were Darwin’s real achievements? Finally,
if the “Eclipse of Darwinism” was invented merely to fill the void between the
“Darwinian Revolution” and the “Modern Synthesis”, what was such an interstitial
moment really about?
It may be tempting to argue that it does not matter whether or not the “Modern
Synthesis” had (or has) a historical reality, provided that the perception was (is) that
it did (does) exist and that scholars behave(d) accordingly. Fair enough, as long as
the issue is the analysis of the impact of rhetorical argument on science. Parenthet-
ically, Ernst Mayr (1993: 32) had this to say of the Modern Synthesis in retrospect:
“Historians (perhaps even Mayr and Provine) have overemphasized the unity
achieved by the synthesis”. It does matter, however, whether or not the Modern
Synthesis did exist for both historians and evolutionists currently thinking about the
field. For the latter, there would be little point asking for greater diversity and
tolerance of views if a part of that pluralism already existed in the past. One must
be careful not to make a straw man of the “Modern Synthesis” and thus engage in a
self-promotional narrative stressing the so-called novelties of recent views. In my
1 Introduction: In Search of a New Paradigm for the Development of Evolutionary. . . 5

understanding, pluralism has prevailed throughout the history of the field to a degree
sufficient to allow us to give credit to scholars of the past.

1.2 A New Alliance

As strange as it seems, the future of evolutionary biology may in part belong to a

re-discovery of its past. The richness of the area since its inception—both in scholars
and ideas—is plainly overwhelming and largely understudied (e.g. Amundson 2005;
Esposito 2013, 2017; Gissis and Jablonska 2011; Laubichler and Maienschein 2007;
Levit and Hossfeld 2017). The inspiration sought by contemporary biologists in
pursuit of greater explanatory pluralism can be accelerated, I would argue, by the
rediscovery of older ideas capable of reformulation. Just as no one can legitimately
claim that solutions to all current and future problems are to be found in past
proposals, neither can it be denied that re-engaging with them may lead to some
fruitful inspirations.
There is something admirable about Ernst Mayr’s (1982) and Stephen Jay
Gould’s (2002) way of doing science: they realized the necessity of also engaging
with the past of their discipline. Of course, this comes with the inevitable risk of self-
serving strategies. This is exactly what has happened. For instance, Mayr’s (1982:
45–47; 1991: 40–42) attempt to read the development of evolutionary biology
through the lens of “population thinking” is markedly tendentious (Greene 1992,
1999; see also Sepkoski 2019), as is Gould’s (1980b) notion of a so-called constric-
tion of the Modern Synthesis (Adams, Chap. 8 and van der Meer, Chap. 11; Cain
2009b; Sepkoski 2019). And things only get worse when historians and philosophers
become co-opted by such arguments. Maurizio Esposito (Chap. 2) provides us with a
long-overdue reflection on the conflicting and complementary agendas of the two
camps involved (scientists and historians/philosophers).
Whereas historians and philosophers have been slow at questioning the tradi-
tional historiography, practicing biologists had to go through it alone when rereading
the development of evolutionary biology, busy as they were undermining the
traditional narrative and uncovering a concealed pluralism. Jeffrey Schwartz
(1999; Chap. 12) does this for evolutionary biology in general. Ian Tattersall
(1995; Chap. 14) is engaged in a similar quest with respect to the field of human
evolution. Some of these studies take up the specific angle of reinterpreting the
contribution of past scholars, as is done by Carlos Ochoa (Chaps. 6 and 10) with
respect to William Bateson and George Gaylord Simpson (see also Ochoa 2017). For
his part, Andrei Granovitch (Chap. 13) requires more intellectual space to account
for other evolutionary processes. Perhaps the issue of a mythical Darwin created by
recent scholars should be raised, a question that impinges on how and what should
be taught about natural selection where wider audiences are concerned (Watts,
Chap. 16). Indeed, natural selection’s epistemological role in science was not
equally agreed upon even among Darwin’s contemporaries (Bellon, Chap. 3).
6 R. G. Delisle

Just as Maurizio Esposito (Chap. 2) rightly stresses that scientists and historians-
philosophers do not have identical agendas, it is hoped that a new alliance will be
forged that will generate an overall narrative that is, at least, consistent throughout.
Avoiding the co-optation problem raised above, a new motto might be “no submis-
sion, no contradiction”. We should not be naive about the difficulty of the task, but
the aim of working our way toward a coherent and unified narrative by “moving
across the aisle” seems to me a desirable goal.

1.3 A New Paradigm: Seeking New Historiographic Labels

More and more studies show that the development of evolutionary biology was
never organized around a central and dominant narrative called Darwinism, as
currently defined. Considering that natural selection was not a discriminatory factor
between most scholars, it seems difficult to believe that the labels created from
within the traditional historiography can justifiably remain unmodified. It may even
be necessary to eventually replace them entirely:
The Darwinian revolution: Far from being a scholar who subscribed to modern
evolutionism, Charles Darwin shared many uniformitarian commitments (steady-
statism, to name but one) with contemporaries, such as Charles Lyell, Thomas
H. Huxley, and Richard Owen, making him a less-than-ideal candidate for a
torchbearer (Delisle 2019; Chap. 4). In addition, Darwin’s eclecticism with
respect to evolutionary mechanisms matches those encountered among Darwin’s
contemporaries and immediate successors (Levit and Hossfeld 2011; Chap. 5).
The eclipse of Darwinism: The eclecticism just mentioned spills over into later
decades, with natural selection now being taken seriously by most evolutionists
but only as one factor among others (Ochoa, Chap. 6 and Ceccarelli, Chap. 7;
Delisle 2017a; Largent 2009; Levit and Hossfeld 2006).
The modern synthesis: Serious doubts have been raised about both the internal/
conceptual coherence of such a synthesis and its external/contextual isolation
from the rest of the evolutionary field, the label also serving strong sociological
ends (Adams, Chap. 8; Ceccarelli, Chap. 7; Cain 2009b; Delisle 2008, 2009a, b,
2011; Levit et al. 2008; Smocovitis 1999; Sepkoski 2019).
Extended evolutionary synthesis or non-Darwinian synthesis: In light of the
profound reassessment of the pre-1960 period currently underway, it is unclear
to me what content should be attributed to these recent labels. It seems that only
the piecing together of the emerging views concerning the pre- and post-1960
periods will allow us to give them any meaning.
The “mechanism-centered” approach exploited thus far as a way of organizing
the development of evolutionary biology has proven far too restrictive to capture its
essential features. This approach is also closely tied to a view that consists in
reducing the complexity of the scientific enterprise to mere “theories” (see Chap. 3
by Bellon, who finds supports for his view in the analyses of Jane Maienschein
1 Introduction: In Search of a New Paradigm for the Development of Evolutionary. . . 7

(1991) and Philip Pauly (2000)). It seems that we will have to cast our empirical,
theoretical, epistemological, and ontological net wider. The next step in our collec-
tive inquiry, I suggest, lies in finding a new paradigm to make sense of that
complexity.

Acknowledgements I thank James Tierney (Yale University) for assistance in improving the
quality of my English.

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Alcock J (2017) The behavioral sciences and sociobiology: a Darwinian approach. In: Delisle RG
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Cham, pp 37–59
Amundson R (2005) The changing role of the embryo in evolutionary thought. Cambridge
University Press, Cambridge
Cain J (2009a) Rethinking the synthesis period in evolutionary studies. J Hist Biol 42:621–648
Cain J (2009b) Ritual patricide: why Stephen Jay Gould Assassinated George Gaylord Simpson. In:
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 Part I
Crossing Perspectives About Evolution:
Historians Versus Biologists
Chapter 2
Cathedrals, Corals and Mycelia: Three
Analogies for the History of Evolutionary
Biology

Maurizio Esposito

Abstract In The Structure of Evolutionary Theory, Stephen Jay Gould argued that
the history and structure of the evolutionary theory could be represented as a
fossilized coral constituted by a central branch representing the mechanism of
natural selection. In analysing Gould’s analogy—and some of the assumptions
informing the traditional historiography of evolutionary biology—I defend three
related points. First, while hierarchical analogies might be adequate for biologists
outlining the current structure of evolutionary biology, they are not fit for histo-
rians reconstructing the history of evolutionary biology. Second, the historical
reconstructions of evolutionary biology have been shaped by different approaches,
purposes and questions. On that account, I distinguish between scientist and
humanist historiographies of evolutionary biology, whereby the concept of “nat-
ural selection” obtains diverse connotations. Third, beyond Gould’s static histo-
riographic analogies, I propose an alternative, more flexible, analogy for the
humanist historiography of evolutionary biology: the mycelium. In fact, contrary
to hierarchical analogies employed by Gould—which emphasize the search for
foundations and essences—the metaphorical mycelium inspires a different kind of
historical understanding.

Keywords Darwinism · Evolutionary biology · Historiography of science · Natural

selection · Philosophy of history

2.1 Introduction

At the beginning of his monumental monograph published in 2002, Stephen Jay

Gould recalled the correspondence between Darwin and the Scottish surgeon and
paleontologist Hugh Falconer. The two naturalists discussed about the alleged
structure of the theory of evolution. Falconer observed that the theory had to be

M. Esposito (*)
Department of History and Philosophy of Sciences, University of Lisbon, Lisbon, Portugal

© Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2021 11

R. G. Delisle (ed.), Natural Selection, Evolutionary Biology – New Perspectives on
Its Development 3, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-65536-5_2
12 M. Esposito

conceived as the Cathedral of Milan: a solid structure with very firm foundations
rooted in the principle of a common ancestor and the mechanism of natural selection.
Darwin was less inclined to consider the structure of his theory as being as solid as
the robust bricks of a Gothic dome. He suggested instead that the structure of his
theory was best understood as a broad framework that could undergo major revisions
without questioning its general outlines, i.e. descent with modification and adapta-
tion. While for Falconer the metaphorical “founding stones” constrained and ori-
ented all future theoretical developments, for Darwin the identity of the entire
structure was condensed in its “style” enduring significant historical changes (like
the Gothic style for Milan’s cathedral). As Gould explained: “Consider the different
predictions that flow from the disparate analogies chosen by each author for the
Duomo of Milan—Falconer’s ‘foundation’ vs. Darwin’s ‘framework.’ After all, a
foundation is an invisible system of support, sunk into the ground, and intended as
protection against sinking or toppling of the overlying public structure. A frame-
work, on the other hand, defines the basic form and outline of the public structure
itself” (Gould 2002, 2). And again: “Darwin’s version remains Gothic, and basically
unchanged beyond the visual equivalent of lip service. Falconer’s version retains the
Gothic base as a positive constraint and director, but then branches out into novel
forms that mesh with the base but convert the growing structure into a new entity,
largely defined by the outlines of its history” (Gould 2002, 6).
From Falconer and Darwin’s correspondence, Gould drew a very interesting
conclusion. There are two ways of considering the structure and history of evolu-
tionary theory: a Falconerian foundational view and a Darwinian non-foundational
view. If we prefer the former, then we need to pinpoint the few essential elements
that sustain the entire theoretical structure. If, on the contrary, we opt for the latter,
then our task is to figure out in what such a general framework really consists. In
both cases we need to decide which concepts are central, peripheral, fundamental,
subordinate, typical, or atypical. While Gould preferred the Falconerian approach, he
believed that the structure of evolutionary theory was a blend of both models and
could be represented as a fossil coral with three branches: basic, revising and
subsidiary ones. Gould thought that the evolutionary theory had foundations
(a basic branch) and a framework (revising and subsidiary boughs). There was a
Darwinian logic at the heart of evolutionary theory and this logic had permeated
evolutionary biology since the beginning. Whether we agree or disagree with Gould,
his analysis touches very important points that anyone interested in the history of
evolutionary biology, and the place of natural selection within it, should address.
In this chapter, in revising Gould’s analogies and historiography, I defend three
related points. First, while architectural (and hierarchical) analogies might be ade-
quate for biologists outlining the modern structure of evolutionary biology, these
analogies are not fit for historians reconstructing the history of evolutionary biol-
ogy.1 The reasons for shaping and justifying the structural content of a theory are

1
Although I am aware that, for many contemporary biologists, Gould’s hierarchical analogies
would be equally inappropriate for describing the present structure of evolutionary biology. Yet, this
does not change the substance of my argument.
2 Cathedrals, Corals and Mycelia: Three Analogies for the History of. . . 13

different from the reasons leading historians for reconstructing the history of evolu-
tionary biology. We can certainly endorse the idea that any contemporary synthesis
of evolutionary biology should have at its centre the concept of natural selection, but
this does not imply that the history of evolutionary biology has at its centre such a
concept. For the evolutionary biologist, Darwin might stand as the founding father of
evolutionary biology: for the historian of biology, Darwin (and his theory) is part of
a larger, more complex and convoluted, narrative. In short, we need to distinguish
between the synchronic structure of evolutionary theory (contemporary structure)
and its diachronic development, and we should not expect an obvious and consistent
overlapping between the two.
Second, the historical (diachronic) reconstructions of evolutionary biology
have been shaped by different purposes and questions. In that sense, I distinguish
between scientist and humanist historiographies of evolutionary biology (SH and
HH onwards). The former has frequently used history for underpinning particular
scientific options (i.e. Mayr’s or Gould’s historiographies) and is based on a linear
narrative emphasizing great figures, core concepts and foundations. It usually
identifies the current structure of evolutionary theory (SET onwards) with its
history. The HH, instead, has no explicit interest in supporting specific research
traditions and tends to question linear narratives in favour of more twisted ones.
Unlike the SH, the HH is more inclined to sever synchronic questions (What is the
SET or what should it be?) from diachronic ones (How did the SET arise and
develop?). As a consequence, we should expect that the significance of natural
selection within the history of evolutionary biology changes whether we assume a
scientist or humanist historiography. While we can learn from both kinds of
historiographic approaches, we should be aware that both have their own speci-
ficities and agendas.
In the third section of this chapter, I propose an alternative analogy for the
humanist-historian of evolutionary biology: the mycelium. In fact, beyond the
architectonic or hierarchical analogies employed by Gould—which emphasize the
search for granitic foundations and fossilized essences—the analogy of the myce-
lium, with its ramifying hyphae, inspires a different kind of order. If we look at the
structure of a developing mycelium, we observe that there is a ramifying network of
filaments without central branches. The history of evolutionary theory could there-
fore be compared to a complex and dynamic network of hyphae, where new off-
shoots emerge and old ones dry out. Accordingly, unlike Gould’s view, Darwin’s
mechanism of natural selection would represent only one conceptual “filament”,
which thrived within a broader and overarching structure of a dynamic developing
“mycelium”.
14 M. Esposito

2.2 The Historiography of Evolutionary Biology

and the Place of Natural Selection Within It

Gould believed that evolutionary biology was essentially Darwinian and that the
reason for such a conclusion was mainly conceptual. His argument for defending this
position is as interesting as it is typical for many biologists with historical sensibil-
ities, and therefore, it is an excellent starting point for exploring the relation between
the current (synchronic) SET and its historical (diachronic) development.2 Gould’s
argument is based on two fundamental and connected premises: first, the evolution-
ary theory has a hierarchical structure, and second, such a structure is underpinned
by a fundamental conceptual core. The premises are supported by Gould’s convic-
tion that if we want to preserve some form of intelligibility of the evolutionary
theory, then we cannot refrain from identifying a specific structure in concert with
some basic elements that resist historical change:
In order to enter such a discourse about “the structure of evolutionary theory” at all, we must
accept the validity, or at least the intellectual coherence and potential definability, of some
key postulates and assumptions that are often not spelled out at all, and are, moreover, not
always granted this form of intelligibility by philosophers and social critics who do engage
such questions explicitly. Most importantly, I must be able to describe a construct like
“evolutionary theory” as a genuine “thing”—an entity with discrete boundaries and a
definable history—especially if I want to “cash out”, as more than a confusingly poetic
image, an analogy to the indubitable bricks and mortar of a cathedral. (2002, 6)

Gould assumes that if the evolutionary theory is a “genuine thing”, then it has a
structure. And if it has a structure, then it also has an order. And if it has an order,
then we should define its hierarchical order and, therefore, its basic core. In that
sense, Gould’s argument is a kind of transcendental argument: the very condition for
starting our conversation about the SET and its history is that we are talking about
“something”—a genuine thing which, for definition, has an order that can be
expressed hierarchically. The argument is quite sound so far and places all of the
burden of proof on those who want to deny it. After all, a scientific theory supposes
the existence of a given structure, even though the experts might disagree about its
“real” structure. Conversely, if we argue that the theory has neither a structure nor an
order, how can we talk about the evolutionary theory at all? Yet, Gould does
something more than just expressing some general conditions of historical and
conceptual intelligibility: from individuating the “transcendental” conditions of the
SET, he abruptly applies the same argument to Darwinism itself. He does this
through an effective (although weak) syllogism: the evolutionary theory must have
a structure and a core. Darwinism must have a structure and a core. The core of
evolutionary theory is Darwinism, and the core of Darwinism is natural selection.
The reason why I consider the syllogism both effective and weak is because,
while it might sound persuasive, it implicitly assumes (without demonstrating) that
the core of the evolutionary theory must be Darwinism, both conceptually and

2
For a very thoughtful review of Gould’s last monograph, see Radick (2012).
2 Cathedrals, Corals and Mycelia: Three Analogies for the History of. . . 15

historically. The entire argument overlooks the fact that for many historians, this
assumption would be far from obvious. Gould insisted that to discuss about the SET,
we need to suppose the existence of some kind of order, and to discuss about
Darwinism, we need to presuppose the existence of some basic concepts. But
nowhere he supported the argument that the history of the SET must be rooted in
some fundamental Darwinian concepts. Of course, Gould’s solution killed two birds
with one stone: we have a SET that is stable enough to be a “discrete” object of study
but also flexible enough to be able to integrate new findings and developments. We
can have both Falconer and Darwin, although the former wins on the structure and
the latter on the content. Yet, what is left unclear is whether Gould’s argument
referred to the history of the SET or to how the SET should be understood today. If
the SET is understood in its diachronic development, then the centrality of Darwin
should be demostrated historically, not only assumed. We can all agree that Darwin
is a crucial figure in the history of biology. But to recognize the relevance of a
historical figure does not automatically imply placing them at the centre of a
historical account. To say that Copernicus was a really important astronomer does
not imply that the history of astronomy has a Copernican core. Astronomy has a
much larger history that cannot be reduced to Copernicanism, and we can assume
something similar as regards evolutionary biology. Thus, far from disparaging
Darwin’s fundamental contributions, I want to emphasize an inclination that is
very typical among various important historically minded biologists, i.e. to confuse
diachronic (historical) studies with synchronic (scientific) arguments.3 The confu-
sion gets even worse if we delve deeper into Gould’s analysis. In fact, in his
both diachronic and synchronic enquiry, Gould conceived the nucleus of Darwinism
as being composed of three fundamental concepts: agency, efficacy and scope. By
agency he means the fact that organisms are the agents of natural selection. By
efficacy, he intends the fact that the selection is a creative force. And by scope
he refers to the fact that small changes (adaptations) produce, over very long
geological times, all the diversity we can observe today. These three concepts define
the nucleus of Darwinism and are represented by Gould as a tripod coral:
. . .the image of a tripod suits my major claim particularly well—for I have argued, just
above, that we should define the “essence” of a theory by an absolutely minimal set of truly
necessary propositions. No structure, either of human building or of abstract form, captures
this principle better than a tripod, based on its absolute minimum of three points for fully
stable support in the dimensional world of our physical experience. (Gould 2002, 15)

Gould uses a plate by the artist and paleontologist Agostino Scilla representing a
fossilized coral (Fig. 2.1). The central trunk represents the theory of natural selection
as instantiated by the aforementioned three concepts. Its roots are well embedded
into the ground (experience). If we cut off the main trunks, the Ks (killing) sections,

3
The confusion is related to the following questions: does Darwin stand at the centre of the SET
because history shows this to be the case? Or is it because science shows this to be the case? In other
words, does the reason for putting Darwin at the centre of the SET depend on diachronic (historical)
arguments or synchronic (scientific) evidence?
16 M. Esposito

Fig. 2.1 Agostino Scilla’s

picture of a fossilized coral
used by Gould for
illustrating the logic of
Darwin’s theory. In Gould
(2002), p. 18

we destroy the whole structure. But if we cut the secondary branches—the Rs

(revising) and Ss (subsidiary) sections—we only obtain a reinforcement of the
central structure (similar to the pruning of a tree). In short, in the course of history,
the structure suffered periodic alterations that strengthened the basic logic of Dar-
winism. In this way, Gould provides a modern version of a Falconerian structure
stressing both the firmness of the core structure and its more flexible parts situated in
its periphery. We might condense Gould’s model as follows: the SET has two parts,
a basic structure and a superstructure. The former is Darwinian and its pulsing heart
is the mechanism of natural selection. The latter is a complex and ramified set of
non-Darwinian hypotheses, although they are not in contradiction to Darwinism
(and, therefore, natural selection).
But, again, is the coral a diachronic or synchronic representation of the SET?
What kind of relation exists between the synchronic structure (what biologists
suppose it is or should be today) and the diachronic development (how the structure
itself came to be)? Gould seems to imply that there is a profound connection between
the two: the historical reconstruction grounds or justifies the contemporary structure.
The “fossilized coral”, as the current representation of the SET, reveals its long
history. The structure we see today is the outcome of many historical adjustments
and changes, whereby the central trunk—Darwinism–resisted innumerable strains
2 Cathedrals, Corals and Mycelia: Three Analogies for the History of. . . 17

and shocks. Interestingly, Gould contrasted his view about the subordination of the
diachronic reconstruction to the synchronic structure with David Hull’s analogical
argument assimilating the history of science with biological evolution. In Science as
a Process (1988), Hull argued that science advances through a selective process akin
to the biological process of species formation. Ideas, like organisms, change over
time, producing lineages. These lineages split over time, thrive, or become extinct.
Like modifying organisms, cognitive systems are open to all sorts of mutations and,
as a consequence, have no essence. The cognitive system we call Darwinism would
be whatever Darwinians think it is within a given timeframe. The SET would be
whatever biologists believe it is in a given epoch. For Hull, if you want to understand
a cognitive system like Darwinism, you must look at its lineage, not its ethereal
essence. Thus, as Hullian scholars, we should not chase solid cores behind superfi-
cial changes; we can only observe how the entire Darwinian cognitive system
changes over time. Of course, for Gould this was unacceptable:
Hull correctly defines theories as historical entities, properly subject to all the principles of
narrative explanation—and I shall so treat Darwinian logic and its substantial improvements
and changes throughout this book. But theories of range and power also feature inherent
“essences,” implicit in their logical structure, and operationally definable as minimal sets of
propositions so crucial to the basic function of a system that their falsification must
undermine the entire structure, and also so necessary as an ensemble of mutual implication
that all essential components must work in concert to set the theory’s mechanism into
smooth operation as a generator and explanation of nature’s order. (2002, 11)

We can resume Gould’s counterargument as follows: without essences, we have

no Darwinism and no SET. The lineage has produced both, and the historian’s task is
to understand how such essences have resisted historical idiosyncrasies and changes.
Therefore, the important questions for Gould cannot be: is Darwinism the main
subject in the history of evolutionary biology? Or, is natural selection central in that
history? But instead: how did Darwinism persist throughout all historical and
theoretical challenges becoming the heart of the SET? And, accordingly, how did
natural selection endure as a core concept of evolutionary biology? Both sets of
questions are really different because the latter two suppose that the former have
been already conclusively answered (at least Gould supposes so). Once again, I am
not suggesting that Gould was necessarily wrong and that natural selection cannot be
conceived as central in the SET. I am only suggesting that we have a problematic
overlapping between synchronic and diachronic perspective of SET.
But is Hull’s diachronic view any better? Many arguments have been
advanced against it and would not be easy to defend it today (see Bradie 1986;
Koertge 1990; Dupré 1990 among others). I only want to stress one thing: the
discussion between Gould and Hull hides the contentious belief that the understand-
ing of the contemporary structure of evolutionary biology relies on the reconstruc-
tion of its history. Gould might be right in pretending that a Darwinian biologist
needs something more than lineage of similar ideas to structure her theory. Hull
might be right in stressing the historical and contingent nature of ideas and cognitive
systems. I think that, in very general terms, they might be both right provided that
Gould and Hull were considering different sorts of questions. The first is essentially
18 M. Esposito

asking: how does the SET need to be understood today in the light of its history? The
latter is asking: how do cognitive entities, such as scientific theories, evolve? In other
words, the former is primarily interested in the synchronic morphology of evolu-
tionary biology, while the latter is more interested in its diachronic becoming. My
argument is that the two questions, although they might be related, do induce to give
very different, and possibly even contradictory, answers. The reasons for structuring
a contemporary theory, and the aims of doing so, are not the same as those for
organizing its history. In short, when we analyse a structure like Gould’s coral, we
are naturally led to individuate central and peripheral elements and therefore to
pinpoint what is really essential and what is accessory. But when we approach
evolutionary biology from a diachronic view—and therefore ask how it evolved in
all its complexity—any hierarchical model will hinder the heterogeneity of the
evolving cognitive systems.
I have lingered on Gould’s proposal because it represents one of the most cogent
examples of what I call the scientist historiography of evolutionary biology (SH).
This includes most of the modern architects of synthesis, as well as some of their
descendants: the so called extenders of the modern synthesis (Pigliucci and Müller
2010). Providing a better definition of the SH will be the task of the next section, but
as a first approximation, I see one basic element that characterizes it: the presupposed
coincidence between the effort to concoct a modern structure of evolutionary
biology and the attempts to reconstruct its history. Gould assumed that thinking
about the structure of evolutionary biology has to go hand in hand with thinking
about its historical reconstruction. His great 2002 monograph is indeed a mixture of
history, philosophy and contemporary biology, and this was not something new.
Ever since he published his first book, Ontogeny and Phylogeny, Gould has masterly
intermingled scientific contents with fascinating historical narratives.4 Yet, Gould is
not alone in doing this. An important part of the historiography of evolutionary
biology has been written by biologists with a historical interest, and Ernst Mayr is
probably one of the most significant examples (see Mayr and Provine 1980). Mayr is
particularly interesting for the purposes of this chapter because he was one of the few
biologist-historians who felt the need to think about how to write history. Mayr

4
So far as I know, Gould’s most insightful reflections on the philosophy of history were devoted to
clarify the explanatory use of history in evolutionary biology. In several occasions, he remarked
how important history was for understanding evolution (on the relation between evolutionary
biology and history in Gould, see Blaser 1999). He declared that evolutionary biology “...embodies
one theme even more inclusive than evolution—the nature and meaning of history. History employs
evolution to structure biological events in time” (Gould 1985, 15). In the address for the Scientific
Research Honor Society Sigma Xi, Gould even argued that Darwin was a “historical methodolo-
gist” (Gould 1987). At that time Gould did not wrap evolutionary biology around the mechanism of
natural selection, but linked it to a series of epistemic strategies for inferring the past from the
present world provided that Evolution was a deeply contingent process which could be represented
as “. . .a bush, not a ladder” (1987, 69). Strikingly, Gould’s conception of history as applied to
evolutionary biology was much more flexible and “historicist” than his historiography of evolu-
tionary biology. He granted much more contingency to evolution than to the conceptual history of
evolutionary biology.
2 Cathedrals, Corals and Mycelia: Three Analogies for the History of. . . 19

introduced his well-known book The Growth of Biological Thought (1982) with a
short historiographic section titled “How to write history of biology”. There he listed
different kinds of possible narratives: lexicographic, chronological, biographical,
cultural, sociological and problematic history. Drawing on Robin Collingwood’s
posthumously published essay, The Idea of History, Mayr saw his approach as a
strategic blend between chronological and problematic history (see Mayr 1982, 6).
The latter was particularly congenial to him because he conceived of the history of
science as a history of problems and of the different attempts to solve them.
In the next section, I will contextualize Collingwood’s influence on Mayr’s
historical thought. Yet, what I would like to stress now is a specific aspect of
Mayr’s historiographic approach: his distinctive awareness that he was writing
history from the viewpoint of a scientist. As he warned at the beginning of his
1982 book: “The reader should be aware of the fact that this is not a traditional
history of science. . .Since I am a biologist, I am better qualified to write a history of
the problems and concepts of biology than a biographical or sociological history”
(1982, 7). The view of the scientist is not the view of the professional historian. “A
scientist tends to select for analysis and discussion rather different problems from a
historian or sociologist” (1982, 13). Although Mayr was not entirely explicit on the
matter, he repeated in different occasions that the importance of the history of
science for scientists lies in clarifying contemporary issues. “. . .most scientific
problems are far better understood by studying their history than their logic”
(1982, 6). History should show how “erroneous beliefs” are gradually replaced by
better beliefs and: “The historical demonstration of the gradual replacement of these
prescientific or early scientific beliefs by better scientific theories and concepts
greatly assists in explaining the current framework of biological theories” (1982,
19). History has a fundamental scientific role for Mayr: it helps us to clarify
contemporary problems. But in order to engage in this task, the scientist-historian
needs to begin his/her analysis from a clear understanding of what the structure of
biology is: “It is my conviction that one cannot understand the growth of biological
thought unless one understands the thought-structure of biology” (1982, 8). In other
words, a monograph on the history of biology resembles a biology textbook that is
organized historically and, as Mayr himself declared: “Perhaps this is what a
problematical history of biology ought to be” (1982, 8). The difference that Mayr
recognized between the historiography of biologists and the historiography of
professional historians is similar to the distinction I draw between scientist and
humanist historiographies, but with some important additions, which will be the
object of the next section.5
Like Gould and Mayr, many self-taught historians of evolutionary biology have
been biologists who see history as a strategic ally. However, as we have seen, while

5
As Mayr put it: “Two groups of scholars with entirely different viewpoints and backgrounds—
historians and scientists—have claimed the history of science as their own. Their respective
contributions are somewhat different, dictated by differences in their interests and competence”
(Mayr 1982, 13).
20 M. Esposito

it is safe to assume that the contemporary structure of evolutionary biology has

something to do with its long history, it is much more problematic to assimilate such
history with contemporary evolutionary biology. Back in 1953, the French historian
Marc Bloch clearly expressed this issue in his celebrated Historian’s Craft. In
criticizing the myth of “origins” in history, Bloch warned that the past does not
necessarily account for the present (and it frequently does not).6 I think that it would
be wise to keep in mind Bloch’s insight and apply it to our case: the history of
evolutionary biology does not necessarily justify or explain the current SET, while
the latter cannot serve as a reliable guide for reconstructing its past (and the place of
natural selection within it).7

2.3 Scientist and Humanist Historiographies

of Evolutionary Biology

Let us be a bit over-schematic and assume, on the basis of previous analysis, that
there are at least two ways to interpret the history of evolutionary biology.8 On the
one hand, we have Gould’s and Mayr’s approaches, which are the typical models of
many biologists looking at the history of their discipline. This is what I call the SH
and can be applied to a large part of modern synthesis historiography (see Mayr and
Provine 1980). Some usual questions driving the SH have been: how did Darwinism
(broadly understood) triumph in spite of all of the internal and external challenges?
How was the consensus that natural selection is the central mechanism in evolution
reached despite intellectual and social resistance? How did the neo-Darwinian
agenda win against neo-Lamarckians and other sorts of “cranks”? On the other
hand, we have an alternative approach that I call the HH of evolutionary biology.
Unlike SH, the HH considers different sort of questions. For instance, were Dar-
winism and Neo-Darwinism coherent and unitary projects (Delisle 2009a, b, 2017;
Cain 2009)? In what did internal and external challenges to those projects really
consist (Reif et al. 2000)? And furthermore, why and how were the alternatives to

6
See Bloch (1992), pp. 26–27.
7
Bloch’s argument is a variant of what Morris Cohen and E. Nagel called “genetic fallacy” in their
1934 book Logic and Scientific Method. Simply stated, the fallacy states that the origins or history
of x cannot account for the current meaning, use and merits of x. The argument I defend in this
chapter makes a much broader use of the genetic fallacy. In my view, the main issue is not that the
history of the SET is irrelevant for understanding its current organization. Rather, I am arguing that
the reasons for justifying the current SET are different from the reasons that might lead historians to
reconstruct the history of evolutionary biology (and the place of natural selection within).
8
I am aware that I am proposing a very schematic and simplified map of the historiography of
evolutionary biology, but, as the Polish philosopher Alfred Korzybski famously declared: “A map is
not the territory it represents, but, if correct, it has a similar structure to the territory, which accounts
for its usefulness” (Science and Sanity, 1933, p. 58). I do think that my general scheme is an
interesting approximation of the “territory” of the historiography of evolutionary biology and can be
useful for revealing some of the presuppositions that inform different practices of historical craft.
2 Cathedrals, Corals and Mycelia: Three Analogies for the History of. . . 21

natural selection eventually sidelined (Esposito 2017)? Is the concept of “natural

selection” a historically stable and coherent notion (Schwartz 2021)? While
scientist-historians frequently see resistance (deviant and “unscientific” ideas) as
obstacles to be shunned and then consigned to the dustbin of history (until we get to
Gould’s solid tripod coral), HH often sees those “resistances” as objects of accurate
and focused investigation, which, at the same time, attest to the complexity and
idiosyncrasies of the history of evolutionary biology. In the light of this still-vague
distinction, we should not be surprised to notice that the historical significance of the
concept of natural selection will change depending on whether we uphold SH or HH
perspectives. We have different questions producing different historical landscapes
in which the concept finds different places.9
But before exploring further the continuities and differences between the two
historiographies, I need to warn the reader against a possible alluring argument,
namely, that SH accounts are inexorably “Whiggish,” while new accounts largely
avoid such a sin. I think that to consider the SH as simply “presentist” would be
inaccurate and unfair toward Gould, Mayr and many of those biologists who have
written seminal works on the history of evolutionary biology. Ever since Herbert
Butterfield wrote the Whig Interpretation of History in 1931, the epithet of “Whig”
history or “presentism” has become one of most derogatory for historians. Especially
from the 1970s onward, as Nick Jardine (2003) reminds us, writing the history of
science in terms of one’s present outlook is considered the hallmark of intellectual
unsophistication. As Butterfield himself observed back in the 1930s: “It is part and
parcel of the Whig interpretation of history that it studies the past with reference to
the present. . .the total result of this method is to impose a certain form upon the
whole historical story, and to produce a scheme of general history which is bound to
converge beautifully upon the present. . .” (1965, 12). And “The Whig historian
stands on the summit of the 20th century, and organizes his scheme of history from
the point of view of his own day. . .” (1965, 13). Hence, the Whig historian arranges
historical materials according to his/her present prejudices, domesticating, at the
same time, the past in terms of the more familiar categories of the present. Of course,
it would be easy to point the finger at Gould, Mayr and many other historically
minded protagonists of the modern and extended synthesis, in this regard. Their
narratives seem to mirror present interests and successful ideas. Their history of
evolutionary biology might look like an odyssey of Darwinists struggling against
anti-Darwinian and/or Lamarckian deviations.

9
It is important to clarify that the distinction I am proposing here between scientist-historians and
humanist-historians is not absolute but relative. The distinction refers to two “ideal types” of
historical methodology and understanding which are much messier in reality. For example,
excellent historians such as Peter Bowler, Jon Hodge, Janet Browne and few others would not
easily fit in those categories. In fact, many historical narratives might be classified as a mixture
between those types. Accordingly, the distinction does not describe two communities of real
historians, but denotes very general historiographic approaches over the contentious relation
between science (Biology) and its history.
22 M. Esposito

Yet, it would be inappropriate to accuse Gould, Mayr, Provine and other tradi-
tional biologist-historians of Whiggism, because the specific form of presentism that
Butterfield argued for does not really apply to them. Butterfield reproached “pres-
entists” for the fact that they assemble historical evidence according to their present
viewpoint, as if history was teleological and determined to reach one particular end.
For Butterfield, the real perniciousness of Whiggism was that historians read past
events as an inevitable progression toward liberal democracy. Although we might
find here and there examples that fit with this form of presentism in SH, overall I
resist the idea that Gould, Mayr and many other first-rate biologists-historians have
committed such crass mistakes. In order to justify my unwillingness to accuse SH of
Whiggism, it might be useful to distinguish between two kinds of presentism: an
unsophisticated and a sophisticated one.10 The unsophisticated version would cor-
respond to Butterfield’s Whiggism, which is impregnated with teleologism and,
therefore, anachronisms (reconstructing the past with present categories). After all,
the concept of “Whig history” is a different—more refined—version of Voltaire’s
philosophy of history, which famously preached the idea that history is always
modern. Voltaire believed that history was modern because before modernity,
there was nothing interesting to talk about unless it contributed to the formation of
the modern world. In that sense, history is interesting insofar as it illuminates how
our present “enlightened” ideas came about (Collingwood 1946; Force 2009).
The sophisticated version of presentism was very well outlined by certain idealist
philosophers at the beginning of the twentieth century.11 In fact, one of the foremost
philosophers of history in the twentieth century, the Italian philosopher Benedetto
Croce, who would later deeply inspire Robin Collingwood (who, in turn, influenced
Ernst Mayr and his historiography), observed that history is always present. But his
notion of “present” has nothing in common with Voltaire’s presentism or
Butterfield’s “Whiggism”. For Croce, Collingwood and his fellow idealists, history
was always contemporary for the simple fact that historians are always situated in
some present time in relation to their object of inquiry. Even the history of the most
remote past is written from the perspective of a particular present, and there is no
escape from this conclusion unless we endorse a very simplistic form of positivism
and unrealistic objectivity (like Leopold von Ranke’s positivist view according to
which history “. . .wants only to show what actually happened”). Croce stressed the
obvious point that historians make choices. From the set of virtually infinite histor-
ical facts, historians only select those facts that are meaningful to them. And what
“meaningful” or “meaningless” depends on the interests of historians in the present.

10
In a paper published in 1979, David Hull argued that some form of presentism is not only
justifiable but also necessary. Although his defence of “presentism” was not entirely different from
Croce’s and other idealist historiographers, he emphasized the fact that historians cannot avoid
using some form of present knowledge for reconstructing past knowledge. Historians need to do
that for communicating their results to their contemporary fellows (see Hull 1979).
11
For more recent discussions on the Philosophy of History, see Ankersmit and Kellner (1995),
Bentley (1997), Koselleck (2002), among others. Yet, I think that the philosophical acumen reached
by Croce, Collingwood or E. H. Carr remains unsurpassed, and many of the problems they presented
are far from being resolved today.
2 Cathedrals, Corals and Mycelia: Three Analogies for the History of. . . 23

Therefore, historical research consists in a constant reconsideration of particular

facts, events and figures, so that we have a continuous reinterpretation of the past in
the present. Our comprehension of the historical past changes with our presents. This
also explains why every century has its diverse histories of Greek philosophy,
Portuguese colonialism, or French revolution (and, we might add, diverse Darwins,
as well as diverse histories of evolutionary biology). As Croce observed: “. . .for it is
evident that only an interest in the life of the present can move one to investigate past
fact. Therefore, this past does not answer to past interest, but to present interest, in so
far as it is unified with an interest in the present life (1921, 12)”.
In short, with Butterfield, Croce might have agreed that history should not
be teleological, but unlike Butterfield, Croce would have maintained that historians
cannot write history in abstraction from their present curiosities and issues. In the
face of the sheer quantity of historical events, historians can only select and order
those events that fit their own contemporary interests. Of course, Croce, as later
Collingwood, did not make free concessions to historical relativism. Not all kinds of
narratives are good historical accounts. In that sense, Croce distinguished between
real history and chronicles (or philosophical history versus philological histories),
the former referring to the capacity of the historian to meaningfully orchestrate
documents and evidence supporting a coherent and convincing narrative, while the
latter points to a collection of unarticulated facts and events which have neither
structure nor causal order. Following Croce, Collingwood argued that good history,
what he called problematic history (Mayr’s idea of history), had to be a concrete and
coherent reenactment of the past in the mind of the historian.12
I will not enter further into the intricacies of the different philosophical concep-
tions of history of Croce, Collingwood, or Butterfield (for more details, see
Ankersmit and Kellner 1995; Bentley 1997; Jardine 2003). This short digression
serves only one purpose: to show that “Whig history” itself is not a useful conceptual
category for distinguishing SH from HH. For example, Mayr was aware of the
pitfalls of what I call “unsophisticated presentism”. In the abovementioned Growth
of Biological Thought, Mayr lamented that “The history of biology is rich in such
biased Whig interpretation” (1982, 12). The historian, for Mayr, should avoid at all
costs the evaluation of past theories in terms of contemporary ones. Indeed, Mayr’s
presentism was not that of Butterfield, but that of Collingwood (and Croce). For
Mayr, history was always present insofar as histories: “. . .depend on how the author
interpreted the current zeitgeist of biology and his own conceptual framework and
background” (1982, 19). And yet: “Subjectivity enters at every stage of history
writing, especially when one is seeking explanations and asks why, as is necessary in
problematic history. One cannot arrive at explanations without using one’s own

12
As Collingwood explained: “We shall never know how the flowers smelt in the garden of
Epicurus, or how Nietzsche felt the wind on his hair as he walked on the mountains; we cannot
relive the triumph or Archimedes or the bitterness of Marius; but the evidence of what these men
thought is in our hands; and re-creating these thoughts in our minds by interpretation of that
evidence we can know, so far as there is any knowledge, that the thoughts we create were theirs”
(1946, 296).
Another random document with
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not very well just then, was not in favour at first of the suggested
visit, and afterwards lost interest in the matter. Since we had moved
into our new flat, Mme. de Villeparisis had several times asked my
grandmother to call upon her. And invariably my grandmother had
replied that she was not going out just at present, in one of those
letters which, by a new habit of hers which we did not understand,
she no longer sealed herself, but employed Françoise to lick the
envelopes for her. As for myself, without any very clear picture in my
mind of this School of Wit, I should not have been greatly surprised
to find the old lady from Balbec installed behind a desk, as, for that
matter, I eventually did.
My father would have been glad to know, into the bargain, whether
the Ambassador’s support would be worth many votes to him at the
Institute, for which he had thoughts of standing as an independent
candidate. To tell the truth, while he did not venture to doubt that he
would have M. de Norpois’s support, he was by no means certain of
it. He had thought it merely malicious gossip when they assured him
at the Ministry that M. de Norpois, wishing to be himself the only
representative there of the Institute, would put every possible
obstacle in the way of my father’s candidature, which besides would
be particularly awkward for him at that moment, since he was
supporting another candidate already. And yet, when M. Leroy-
Beaulieu had first advised him to stand, and had reckoned up his
chances, my father had been struck by the fact that, among the
colleagues upon whom he could count for support, the eminent
economist had not mentioned M. de Norpois. He dared not ask the
Ambassador point-blank, but hoped that I should return from my call
on Mme. de Villeparisis with his election as good as secured. This
call was now imminent. That M. de Norpois would carry on
propaganda calculated to assure my father the votes of at least two
thirds of the Academy seemed to him all the more probable since the
Ambassador’s willingness to oblige was proverbial, those who liked
him least admitting that no one else took such pleasure in being of
service. And besides, at the Ministry, his protective influence was
extended over my father far more markedly than over any other
official.
 My father had also another encounter about this time, but one at
which his extreme surprise ended in equal indignation. In the street
one day he ran into Mme. Sazerat, whose life in Paris her
comparative poverty restricted to occasional visits to a friend. There
was no one who bored my father quite so intensely as did Mme.
Sazerat, so much so that Mamma was obliged, once a year, to
intercede with him in sweet and suppliant tones: “My dear, I really
must invite Mme. Sazerat to the house, just once; she won’t stay
long;” and even: “Listen, dear, I am going to ask you to make a great
sacrifice; do go and call upon Mme. Sazerat. You know I hate
bothering you, but it would be so nice of you.” He would laugh, raise
various objections, and go to pay the call. And so, for all that Mme.
Sazerat did not appeal to him, on catching sight of her in the street
my father went towards her, hat in hand; but to his profound
astonishment Mme. Sazerat confined her greeting to the frigid bow
enforced by politeness towards a person who is guilty of some
disgraceful action or has been condemned to live, for the future, in
another hemisphere. My father had come home speechless with
rage. Next day my mother met Mme. Sazerat in some one’s house.
She did not offer my mother her hand, but only smiled at her with a
vague and melancholy air as one smiles at a person with whom one
used to play as a child, but with whom one has since severed all
one’s relations because she has led an abandoned life, has married
a convict or (what is worse still) a co-respondent. Now, from all time
my parents had accorded to Mme. Sazerat, and inspired in her, the
most profound respect. But (and of this my mother was ignorant)
Mme. Sazerat, alone of her kind at Combray, was a Dreyfusard. My
father, a friend of M. Méline, was convinced that Dreyfus was guilty.
He had flatly refused to listen to some of his colleagues who had
asked him to sign a petition demanding a fresh trial. He never spoke
to me for a week, after learning that I had chosen to take a different
line. His opinions were well known. He came near to being looked
upon as a Nationalist. As for my grandmother, in whom alone of the
family a generous doubt was likely to be kindled, whenever anyone
spoke to her of the possible innocence of Dreyfus, she gave a shake
of her head, the meaning of which we did not at the time understand,
but which was like the gesture of a person who has been interrupted
while thinking of more serious things. My mother, torn between her
love for my father and her hope that I might turn out to have brains,
preserved an impartiality which she expressed by silence. Finally my
grandfather, who adored the Army (albeit his duties with the National
Guard had been the bugbear of his riper years), could never, at
Combray, see a regiment go by the garden railings without baring his
head as the colonel and the colours passed. All this was quite
enough to make Mme. Sazerat, who knew every incident of the
disinterested and honourable careers of my father and grandfather,
regard them as pillars of Injustice. We pardon the crimes of
individuals, but not their participation in a collective crime. As soon
as she knew my father to be an anti-Dreyfusard she set between him
and herself continents and centuries. Which explains why, across
such an interval of time and space, her bow had been imperceptible
to my father, and why it had not occurred to her to hold out her hand,
or to say a few words which would never have carried across the
worlds that lay between.
Saint-Loup, who was coming anyhow to Paris, had promised to
take me to Mme. de Villeparisis’s, where I hoped, though I had not
said so to him, that we might meet Mme. de Guermantes. He invited
me to luncheon in a restaurant with his mistress, whom we were
afterwards to accompany to a rehearsal. We were to go out in the
morning and call for her at her home on the outskirts of Paris.
I had asked Saint-Loup that the restaurant to which we went for
luncheon (in the lives of young noblemen with money to spend the
restaurant plays as important a part as do bales of merchandise in
Arabian stories), might, if possible, be that to which Aimé had told
me that he would be going as head waiter until the Balbec season
started. It was a great attraction to me who dreamed of so many
expeditions and made so few to see again some one who formed
part not merely of my memories of Balbec but of Balbec itself, who
went there year after year, who when ill health or my studies
compelled me to stay in Paris would be watching, just the same,
through the long July afternoons while he waited for the guests to
come in to dinner, the sun creep down the sky and set in the sea,
through the glass panels of the great dining-room, behind which, at
the hour when the light died, the motionless wings of vessels, smoky
blue in the distance, looked like exotic and nocturnal moths in a
show-case. Himself magnetised by his contact with the strong
lodestone of Balbec, this head waiter became in turn a magnet
attracting me. I hoped by talking to him to get at once into
communication with Balbec, to have realised here in Paris something
of the delights of travel.
I left the house early, with Françoise complaining bitterly because
the footman who was engaged to be married had once again been
prevented, the evening before, from going to see his girl. Françoise
had found him in tears; he had been itching to go and strike the
porter, but had restrained himself, for he valued his place.
Before reaching Saint-Loup’s, where he was to be waiting for me
at the door, I ran into Legrandin, of whom we had lost sight since our
Combray days, and who, though now grown quite grey, had
preserved his air of youthful candour. Seeing me, he stopped:
“Ah! So it’s you,” he exclaimed, “a man of fashion, and in a frock
coat too! That is a livery in which my independent spirit would be ill
at ease. It is true that you are a man of the world, I suppose, and go
out paying calls! To go and dream, as I do, before some half ruined
tomb, my flowing tie and jacket are not out of place. You know how I
admire the charming quality of your soul; that is why I tell you how
deeply I regret that you should go forth and deny it among the
Gentiles. By being capable of remaining for a moment in the
nauseating atmosphere—which I am unable to breathe—of a
drawing-room, you pronounce on your own future the condemnation,
the damnation of the Prophet. I can see it all, you frequent the ‘light
hearts’, the houses of the great, that is the vice of our middle class
to-day. Ah! Those aristocrats! The Terror was greatly to blame for not
cutting the heads off every one of them. They are all sinister
debauchees, when they are not simply dreary idiots. Still, my poor
boy, if that sort of thing amuses you! While you are on your way to
your tea-party your old friend will be more fortunate than you, for
alone in an outlying suburb he will be watching the pink moon rise in
a violet sky. The truth is that I scarcely belong to this Earth upon
which I feel myself such an exile; it takes all the force of the law of
gravity to hold me here, to keep me from escaping into another
sphere. I belong to a different planet. Good-bye; do not take amiss
the old-time frankness of the peasant of the Vivonne, who has also
remained a peasant of the Danube. To prove to you that I am your
sincere well-wisher, I am going to send you my last novel. But you
will not care for it; it is not deliquescent enough, not fin de siècle
enough for you; it is too frank, too honest; what you want is Bergotte,
you have confessed it, high game for the jaded palates of pleasure-
seeking epicures. I suppose I am looked upon, in your set, as an old
campaigner; I do wrong to put my heart into what I write, that is no
longer done; besides, the life of the people is not distinguished
enough to interest your little snobbicules. Go, get you gone, try to
recall at times the words of Christ: ‘Do this and ye shall live.’
Farewell, Friend.”
It was not with any particular resentment against Legrandin that I
parted from him. Certain memories are like friends in common, they
can bring about reconciliations; set down amid fields starred with
buttercups, upon which were piled the ruins of feudal greatness, the
little wooden bridge still joined us, Legrandin and me, as it joined the
two banks of the Vivonne.
After coming out of a Paris in which, although spring had begun,
the trees on the boulevards had hardly put on their first leaves, it was
a marvel to Saint-Loup and myself, when the circle train had set us
down at the suburban village in which his mistress was living, to see
every cottage garden gay with huge festal altars of fruit trees in
blossom. It was like one of those peculiar, poetical, ephemeral, local
festivals which people travel long distances to attend on certain fixed
occasions, only this one was held by Nature. The bloom of the
cherry tree is stuck so close to its branches, like a white sheath, that
from a distance, among the other trees that shewed as yet scarcely
a flower or leaf, one might have taken it, on this day of sunshine that
was still so cold, for snow, melted everywhere else, which still clung
to the bushes. But the tall pear trees enveloped each house, each
modest courtyard in a whiteness more vast, more uniform, more
dazzling, as if all the dwellings, all the enclosed spaces in the village
were on their way to make, on one solemn date, their first
communion.
It had been a country village, and had kept its old mayor’s office
sunburned and brown, in front of which, in the place of maypoles and
streamers, three tall pear trees were, as though for some civic and
local festival, gallantly beflagged with white satin. These villages in
the environs of Paris still have at their gates parks of the
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries which were the “follies” of the
stewards and favourites of the great. A fruit-grower had utilised one
of these which was sunk below the road for his trees, or had simply,
perhaps, preserved the plan of an immense orchard of former days.
Laid out in quincunxes, these pear trees, less crowded and not so far
on as those that I had seen, formed great quadrilaterals—separated
by low walls—of snowy blossom, on each side of which the light fell
differently, so that all these airy roofless chambers seemed to belong
to a Palace of the Sun, such as one might unearth in Crete or
somewhere; and made one think also of the different ponds of a
reservoir, or of those parts of the sea which man, for some fishery, or
to plant oyster-beds has subdivided, when one saw, varying with the
orientation of the boughs, the light fall and play upon their trained
arms as upon water warm with spring, and coax into unfolding here
and there, gleaming amid the open, azure-panelled trellis of the
branches, the foaming whiteness of a creamy, sunlit flower.
Never had Robert spoken to me so tenderly of his friend as he did
during this walk. She alone had taken root in his heart; his future
career in the Army, his position in society, his family, he was not, of
course, indifferent altogether to these, but they were of no account
compared with the veriest trifle that concerned his mistress. That
alone had any importance in his eyes, infinitely more importance
than the Guermantes and all the kings of the earth put together. I do
not know whether he had formulated the doctrine that she was of a
superior quality to anyone else, but I do know that he considered,
took trouble only about what affected her. Through her and for her he
was capable of suffering, of being happy, perhaps of doing murder.
There was really nothing that interested, that could excite him except
what his mistress wished, was going to do, what was going on,
discernible at most in fleeting changes of expression, in the narrow
expanse of her face and behind her privileged brow. So nice-minded
in all else, he looked forward to the prospect of a brilliant marriage,
solely in order to be able to continue to maintain her, to keep her
always. If one had asked oneself what was the value that he set on
her, I doubt whether one could ever have imagined a figure high
enough. If he did not marry her, it was because a practical instinct
warned him that as soon as she had nothing more to expect from
him she would leave him, or would at least live as she chose, and
that he must retain his hold on her by keeping her in suspense from
day to day. For he admitted the possibility that she did not love him.
No doubt the general affection called love must have forced him—as
it forces all men—to believe at times that she did. But in his heart of
hearts he felt that this love which she felt for him did not exhaust the
possibility of her remaining with him only on account of his money,
and that on the day when she had nothing more to expect from him
she would make haste (the dupe of her friends and their literary
theories, and loving him all the time, really—he thought) to leave
him. “If she is nice to me to-day,” he confided to me, “I am going to
give her something that she’ll like. It’s a necklace she saw at
Boucheron’s. It’s rather too much for me just at present—thirty
thousand francs. But, poor puss, she gets so little pleasure out of
life. She will be jolly pleased with it, I know. She mentioned it to me
and told me she knew somebody who would perhaps give it to her. I
don’t believe that is true, really, but I wasn’t taking any risks, so I’ve
arranged with Boucheron, who is our family jeweller, to keep it for
me. I am glad to think that you’re going to meet her; she’s nothing so
very wonderful to look at, you know,” (I could see that he thought just
the opposite and had said this only so as to make me, when I did
see her, admire her all the more) “what she has got is a marvellous
judgment; she’ll perhaps be afraid to talk much before you, but, by
Jove! the things she’ll say to me about you afterwards, you know she
says things one can go on thinking about for hours; there’s really
something about her that’s quite Pythian.”
On our way to her house we passed by a row of little gardens, and
I was obliged to stop, for they were all aflower with pear and cherry
blossom; as empty, no doubt, and lifeless only yesterday as a house
that no tenant has taken, they were suddenly peopled and adorned
by these newcomers, arrived during the night, whose lovely white
garments we could see through the railings along the garden paths.
“Listen; I can see you’ld rather stop and look at that stuff, and grow
poetical about it,” said Robert, “so just wait for me here, will you; my
friend’s house is quite close, I will go and fetch her.”
While I waited I strolled up and down the road, past these modest
gardens. If I raised my head I could see, now and then, girls sitting in
the windows, but outside, in the open air, and at the height of a half-
landing, here and there, light and pliant, in their fresh pink gowns,
hanging among the leaves, young lilac-clusters were letting
themselves be swung by the breeze without heeding the passer-by
who was turning his eyes towards their green mansions. I
recognised in them the platoons in violet uniform posted at the
entrance to M. Swann’s park, past the little white fence, in the warm
afternoons of spring, like an enchanting rustic tapestry. I took a path
which led me into a meadow. A cold wind blew keenly along it, as at
Combray, but from the midst of the rich, moist, country soil, which
might have been on the bank of the Vivonne, there had nevertheless
arisen, punctual at the trysting place like all its band of brothers, a
great white pear tree which waved smilingly in the sun’s face, like a
curtain of light materialised and made palpable, its flowers shaken by
the breeze but polished and frosted with silver by the sun’s rays.
Suddenly Saint-Loup appeared, accompanied by his mistress, and
then, in this woman who was for him all the love, every possible
delight in life, whose personality, mysteriously enshrined in a body as
in a Tabernacle, was the object that still occupied incessantly the
toiling imagination of my friend, whom he felt that he would never
really know, as to whom he was perpetually asking himself what
could be her secret self, behind the veil of eyes and flesh, in this
woman I recognised at once “Rachel when from the Lord”, her who,
but a few years since—women change their position so rapidly in
that world, when they do change—used to say to the procuress: “To-
morrow evening, then, if you want me for anyone, you will send
round, won’t you?”
And when they had “come round” for her, and she found herself
alone in the room with the “anyone”, she had known so well what
was required of her that after locking the door, as a prudent woman’s
precaution or a ritual gesture, she would begin to take off all her
things, as one does before the doctor who is going to sound one’s
chest, never stopping in the process unless the “some one”, not
caring for nudity, told her that she might keep on her shift, as
specialists do sometimes who, having an extremely fine ear and
being afraid of their patient’s catching a chill, are satisfied with
listening to his breathing and the beating of his heart through his
shirt. On this woman whose whole life, all her thoughts, all her past,
all the men who at one time or another had had her were to me so
utterly unimportant that if she had begun to tell me about them I
should have listened to her only out of politeness, and should barely
have heard what she said, I felt that the anxiety, the torment, the love
of Saint-Loup had been concentrated in such a way as to make—out
of what was for me a mechanical toy, nothing more—the cause of
endless suffering, the very object and reward of existence. Seeing
these two elements separately (because I had known “Rachel when
from the Lord” in a house of ill fame), I realised that many women for
the sake of whom men live, suffer, take their lives, may be in
themselves or for other people what Rachel was for me. The idea
that any one could be tormented by curiosity with regard to her life
stupefied me. I could have told Robert of any number of her
unchastities, which seemed to me the most uninteresting things in
the world. And how they would have pained him! And what had he
not given to learn them, without avail!
I realised also then all that the human imagination can put behind
a little scrap of face, such as this girl’s face was, if it is the
imagination that was the first to know it; and conversely into what
wretched elements, crudely material and utterly without value, might
be decomposed what had been the inspiration of countless dreams
if, on the contrary, it should be so to speak controverted by the
slightest actual acquaintance. I saw that what had appeared to me to
be not worth twenty francs when it had been offered to me for twenty
francs in the house of ill fame, where it was then for me simply a
woman desirous of earning twenty francs, might be worth more than
a million, more than one’s family, more than all the most coveted
positions in life if one had begun by imagining her to embody a
strange creature, interesting to know, difficult to seize and to hold.
No doubt it was the same thin and narrow face that we saw, Robert
and I. But we had arrived at it by two opposite ways, between which
there was no communication, and we should never both see it from
the same side. That face, with its stares, its smiles, the movements
of its lips, I had known from outside as being simply that of a woman
of the sort who for twenty francs would do anything that I asked. And
so her stares, her smiles, the movements of her lips had seemed to
me significant merely of the general actions of a class without any
distinctive quality. And beneath them I should not have had the
curiosity to look for a person. But what to me had in a sense been
offered at the start, that consenting face, had been for Robert an
ultimate goal towards which he had made his way through endless
hopes and doubts, suspicions, dreams. He gave more than a million
francs in order to have for himself, in order that there might not be
offered to others what had been offered to me, as to all and sundry,
for a score. That he too should not have enjoyed it at the lower price
may have been due to the chance of a moment, the instant in which
she who seemed ready to yield herself makes off, having perhaps an
assignation elsewhere, some reason which makes her more difficult
of access that day. Should the man be a sentimentalist, then, even if
she has not observed it, but infinitely more if she has, the direst
game begins. Unable to swallow his disappointment, to make himself
forget about the woman, he starts afresh in pursuit, she flies him,
until a mere smile for which he no longer ventured to hope is bought
at a thousand times what should have been the price of the last, the
most intimate favours. It happens even at times in such a case,
when one has been led by a mixture of simplicity in one’s judgment
and cowardice in the face of suffering to commit the crowning folly of
making an inaccessible idol of a girl, that these last favours, or even
the first kiss one is fated never to obtain, one no longer even
ventures to ask for them for fear of destroying one’s chances of
Platonic love. And it is then a bitter anguish to leave the world
without having ever known what were the embraces of the woman
one has most passionately loved. As for Rachel’s favours, however,
Saint-Loup had by mere accident succeeded in winning them all.
Certainly if he had now learned that they had been offered to all the
world for a louis, he would have suffered, of course, acutely, but
would still have given a million francs for the right to keep them, for
nothing that he might have learned could have made him emerge—
since that is beyond human control and can be brought to pass only
in spite of it by the action of some great natural law—from the path
he was treading, from which that face could appear to him only
through the web of the dreams that he had already spun. The
immobility of that thin face, like that of a sheet of paper subjected to
the colossal pressure of two atmospheres, seemed to me to be
being maintained by two infinities which abutted on her without
meeting, for she held them apart. And indeed, when Robert and I
were both looking at her we did not both see her from the same side
of the mystery.
It was not “Rachel when from the Lord”—who seemed to me a
small matter—it was the power of the human imagination, the illusion
on which were based the pains of love; these I felt to be vast. Robert
noticed that I appeared moved. I turned my eyes to the pear and
cherry trees of the garden opposite, so that he might think that it was
their beauty that had touched me. And it did touch me in somewhat
the same way; it also brought close to me things of the kind which
we not only see with our eyes but feel also in our hearts. These trees
that I had seen in the garden, likening them in my mind to strange
deities, had not my mistake been like the Magdalene’s when, in
another garden, she saw a human form and “thought it was the
gardener”. Treasurers of our memories of the age of gold, keepers of
the promise that reality is not what we suppose, that the splendour of
poetry, the wonderful radiance of innocence may shine in it and may
be the recompense which we strive to earn, these great white
creatures, bowed in a marvellous fashion above the shade propitious
for rest, for angling or for reading, were they not rather angels? I
exchanged a few words with Saint-Loup’s mistress. We cut across
the village. Its houses were sordid. But by each of the most
wretched, of those that looked as though they had been scorched
and branded by a rain of brimstone, a mysterious traveller, halting for
a day in the accursed city, a resplendent angel stood erect,
extending broadly over it the dazzling protection of the wings of
flowering innocence: it was a pear tree. Saint-Loup drew me a little
way in front to explain:
“I should have liked if you and I could have been alone together, in
fact I would much rather have had luncheon just with you, and
stayed with you until it was time to go to my aunt’s. But this poor girl
of mine here, it is such a pleasure to her, and she is so decent to me,
don’t you know, I hadn’t the heart to refuse her. You’ll like her,
however, she’s literary, you know, a most sensitive nature, and
besides it’s such a pleasure to be with her in a restaurant, she is so
charming, so simple, always delighted with everything.”
I fancy nevertheless that, on this same morning, and then probably
for the first and last time, Robert did detach himself for a moment
from the woman whom out of successive layers of affection he had
gradually created, and beheld suddenly at some distance from
himself another Rachel, outwardly the double of his but entirely
different, who was nothing more or less than a little light of love. We
had left the blossoming orchard and were making for the train which
was to take us to Paris when, at the station, Rachel, who was
walking by herself, was recognised and accosted by a pair of
common little “tarts” like herself, who first of all, thinking that she was
alone, called out: “Hello, Rachel, you come with us; Lucienne and
Germaine are in the train, and there’s room for one more. Come on.
We’re all going to the rink,” and were just going to introduce to her
two counter-jumpers, their lovers, who were escorting them, when,
noticing that she seemed a little uneasy, they looked up and beyond
her, caught sight of us, and with apologies bade her a good-bye to
which she responded in a somewhat embarrassed, but still friendly
tone. They were two poor little “tarts” with collars of sham otter skin,
looking more or less as Rachel must have looked when Saint-Loup
first met her. He did not know them, or their names even, and seeing
that they appeared to be extremely intimate with his mistress he
could not help wondering whether she too might not once have had,
had not still perhaps her place in a life of which he had never
dreamed, utterly different from the life she led with him, a life in
which one had women for a louis apiece, whereas he was giving
more than a hundred thousand francs a year to Rachel. He caught
only a fleeting glimpse of that life, but saw also in the thick of it a
Rachel other than her whom he knew, a Rachel like the two little
“tarts” in the train, a twenty-franc Rachel. In short, Rachel had for the
moment duplicated herself in his eyes, he had seen, at some
distance from his own Rachel, the little “tart” Rachel, the real Rachel,
assuming that Rachel the “tart” was more real than the other. It may
then have occurred to Robert that from the hell in which he was
living, with the prospect of a rich marriage, of the sale of his name, to
enable him to go on giving Rachel a hundred thousand francs every
year, he might easily perhaps have escaped, and have enjoyed the
favours of his mistress, as the two counter-jumpers enjoyed those of
their girls, for next to nothing. But how was it to be done? She had
done nothing to forfeit his regard. Less generously rewarded she
would be less kind to him, would stop saying and writing the things
that so deeply moved him, things which he would quote, with a touch
of ostentation, to his friends, taking care to point out how nice it was
of her to say them, but omitting to mention that he was maintaining
her in the most lavish fashion, or even that he ever gave her
anything at all, that these inscriptions on photographs, or greetings
at the end of telegrams were but the conversion into the most
exiguous, the most precious of currencies of a hundred thousand
francs. If he took care not to admit that these rare kindnesses on
Rachel’s part were handsomely paid for by himself, it would be
wrong to say—and yet, by a crude piece of reasoning, we do say it,
absurdly, of every lover who pays in cash for his pleasure, and of a
great many husbands—that this was from self-esteem or vanity.
Saint-Loup had enough sense to perceive that all the pleasures
which appeal to vanity he could have found easily and without cost
to himself in society, on the strength of his historic name and
handsome face, and that his connexion with Rachel had rather, if
anything, tended to ostracise him, led to his being less sought after.
No; this self-esteem which seeks to appear to be receiving
gratuitously the outward signs of the affection of her whom one loves
is simply a consequence of love, the need to figure in one’s own
eyes and in other people’s as loved in return by the person whom
one loves so well. Rachel rejoined us, leaving the two “tarts” to get
into their compartment; but, no less than their sham otter skins and
the self-conscious appearance of their young men, the names
Lucienne and Germaine kept the new Rachel alive for a moment
longer. For a moment Robert imagined a Place Pigalle existence
with unknown associates, sordid love affairs, afternoons spent in
simple amusements, excursions or pleasure-parties, in that Paris in
which the sunny brightness of the streets from the Boulevard de
Clichy onwards did not seem the same as the solar radiance in
which he himself strolled with his mistress, but must be something
different, for love, and suffering which is one with love have, like
intoxication, the power to alter for us inanimate things. It was almost
an unknown Paris in the heart of Paris itself that he suspected, his
connexion appeared to him like the exploration of a strange form of
life, for if when with him Rachel was somewhat similar to himself, it
was nevertheless a part of her real life that she lived with him,
indeed the most precious part, in view of his reckless expenditure on
her, the part that made her so greatly envied by her friends and
would enable her one day to retire to the country or to establish
herself in the leading theatres, when she had made her pile. Robert
longed to ask her who Lucienne and Germaine were, what they
would have said to her if she had joined them in their compartment,
how they would all have spent a day which would have perhaps
ended, as a supreme diversion, after the pleasures of the rink, at the
Olympia Tavern, if Robert and I had not been there. For a moment
the purlieus of the Olympia, which until then had seemed to him
merely deadly dull, aroused curiosity in him and pain, and the
sunshine of this spring day beating upon the Rue Caumartin where,
possibly, if she had not known Robert, Rachel might have gone in
the course of the evening and have earned a louis, filled him with a
vague longing. But what use was it to ply Rachel with questions
when he already knew that her answer would be merely silence, or a
lie, or something extremely painful for him to hear, which would yet
explain nothing. The porters were shutting the doors; we jumped into
a first-class carriage; Rachel’s magnificent pearls reminded Robert
that she was a woman of great price, he caressed her, restored her
to her place in his heart where he could contemplate her,
internalised, as he had always done hitherto—save during this brief
instant in which he had seen her in the Place Pigalle of an
impressionist painter—and the train began to move.
It was, by the way, quite true that she was “literary”. She never
stopped talking to me about books, new art and Tolstoyism except to
rebuke Saint-Loup for drinking so much wine:
“Ah! If you could live with me for a year, we’ld see a fine change. I
should keep you on water and you’ld be ever so much better.”
“Right you are. Let’s begin now.”
 “But you know quite well I have to work all day!” For she took her
art very seriously. “Besides, what would your people say?”
And she began to abuse his family to me in terms which for that
matter seemed to me highly reasonable, and with which Saint-Loup,
while disobeying her orders in the matter of champagne, entirely
concurred. I, who was so much afraid of the effect of wine on him,
and felt the good influence of his mistress, was quite prepared to
advise him to let his family go hang. Tears sprang to the young
woman’s eyes; I had been rash enough to refer to Dreyfus.
“The poor martyr!” she almost sobbed; “it will be the death of him
in that dreadful place.”
“Don’t upset yourself, Zézette, he will come back, he will be
acquitted all right, they will admit they’ve made a mistake.”
“But long before then he’ll be dead! Oh, well at any rate his
children will bear a stainless name. But just think of the agony he
must be going through; that’s what makes my heart bleed. And
would you believe that Robert’s mother, a pious woman, says that he
ought to be left on the Devil’s Isle, even if he is innocent; isn’t it
appalling?”
“Yes, it’s absolutely true, she does say that,” Robert assured me.
“She’s my mother, I’ve no fault to find with her, but it’s quite clear she
hasn’t got a sensitive nature, like Zézette.”
As a matter of fact these luncheons which were said to be “such a
pleasure” always ended in trouble. For as soon as Saint-Loup found
himself in a public place with his mistress, he would imagine that she
was looking at every other man in the room, and his brow would
darken; she would remark his ill-humour, which she may have
thought it amusing to encourage, or, as was more probable, by a
foolish piece of conceit preferred, feeling wounded by his tone, not to
appear to be seeking to disarm; and would make a show of being
unable to take her eyes off some man or other, not that this was
always a mere pretence. In fact, the gentleman who, in theatre or
café, happened to sit next to them, or, to go no farther, the driver of
the cab they had engaged need only have something attractive
about him, no matter what, and Robert, his perception quickened by
jealousy, would have noticed it before his mistress; he would see in
him immediately one of those foul creatures whom he had
denounced to me at Balbec, who corrupted and dishonoured women
for their own amusement, would beg his mistress to take her eyes off
the man, thereby drawing her attention to him. And sometimes she
found that Robert had shewn such good judgment in his suspicion
that after a little she even left off teasing him in order that he might
calm down and consent to go off by himself on some errand which
would give her time to begin conversation with the stranger, often to
make an assignation, sometimes even to bring matters quickly to a
head. I could see as soon as we entered the restaurant that Robert
was looking troubled. The fact of the matter was that he had at once
remarked, what had escaped our notice at Balbec, namely that,
standing among his coarser colleagues, Aimé, with a modest
brilliance, emitted, quite unconsciously of course, that air of romance
which emanates until a certain period in life from fine hair and a
grecian nose, features thanks to which he was distinguishable
among the crowd of waiters. The others, almost all of them well on in
years, presented a series of types, extraordinarily ugly and criminal,
of hypocritical priests, sanctimonious confessors, more numerously
of comic actors of the old school, whose sugar-loaf foreheads are
scarcely to be seen nowadays outside the collections of portraits that
hang in the humbly historic green-rooms of little, out of date theatres,
where they are represented in the parts of servants or high priests,
though this restaurant seemed, thanks to a selective method of
recruiting and perhaps to some system of hereditary nomination, to
have preserved their solemn type in a sort of College of Augurs. As
ill luck would have it, Aimé having recognised us, it was he who
came to take our order, while the procession of operatic high priests
swept past us to other tables. Aimé inquired after my grandmother’s
health; I asked for news of his wife and children. He gave it with
emotion, being a family man. He had an intelligent, vigorous, but
respectful air. Robert’s mistress began to gaze at him with a strange
attentiveness. But Aimé’s sunken eyes, in which a slight short-
sightedness gave one the impression of veiled depths, shewed no
sign of consciousness in his still face. In the provincial hotel in which
he had served for many years before coming to Balbec, the
charming sketch, now a trifle discoloured and faded, which was his
face, and which, for all those years, like some engraved portrait of
Prince Eugène, had been visible always at the same place, at the far
end of a dining-room that was almost always empty, could not have
attracted any very curious gaze. He had thus for long remained,
doubtless for want of sympathetic admirers, in ignorance of the
artistic value of his face, and but little inclined for that matter to draw
attention to it, for he was temperamentally cold. At the most, some
passing Parisian, stopping for some reason in the town, had raised
her eyes to his, had asked him perhaps to bring something to her in
her room before she left for the station, and in the pellucid,
monotonous, deep void of this existence of a faithful husband and
servant in a country town had hidden the secret of a caprice without
sequel which no one would ever bring to light. And yet Aimé must
have been conscious of the insistent emphasis with which the eyes
of the young actress were fastened upon him now. Anyhow, it did not
escape Robert beneath whose skin I saw gathering a flush, not vivid
like that which burned his cheeks when he felt any sudden emotion,
but faint, diffused.
“Anything specially interesting about that waiter, Zézette?” he
inquired, after sharply dismissing Aimé. “One would think you were
studying the part.”
“There you are, beginning again; I knew it was coming.”
“Beginning what again, my dear girl? I may have been mistaken; I
haven’t said anything, I’m sure. But I have at least the right to warn
you against the fellow, seeing that I knew him at Balbec (otherwise I
shouldn’t give a damn), and a bigger scoundrel doesn’t walk the face
of the earth.”
She seemed anxious to pacify Robert and began to engage me in
a literary conversation in which he joined. I found that it did not bore
me to talk to her, for she had a thorough knowledge of the books that
I most admired, and her opinion of them agreed more or less with my
own; but as I had heard Mme. de Villeparisis declare that she had no
talent, I attached but little importance to this evidence of culture. She
discoursed wittily on all manner of topics, and would have been
genuinely entertaining had she not affected to an irritating extent the
jargon of the sets and studios. She applied this, moreover, to
everything under the sun; for instance, having acquired the habit of
saying of a picture, if it were impressionist, or an opera, if
Wagnerian, “Ah! That is good!” one day when a young man had
kissed her on the ear, and, touched by her pretence of being thrilled,
had affected modesty, she said: “Yes, as a sensation I call it distinctly
good.” But what most surprised me was that the expressions
peculiar to Robert (which, moreover, had come to him, perhaps, from
literary men whom she knew) were used by her to him and by him to
her as though they had been a necessary form of speech, and
without any conception of the pointlessness of an originality that is
universal.
In eating, she managed her hands so clumsily that one assumed
that she must appear extremely awkward upon the stage. She
recovered her dexterity only when making love, with that touching
prescience latent in women who love the male body so intensely that
they immediately guess what will give most pleasure to that body,
which is yet so different from their own.
I ceased to take part in the conversation when it turned upon the
theatre, for on that topic Rachel was too malicious for my liking. She
did, it was true, take up in a tone of commiseration—against Saint-
Loup, which proved that he was accustomed to hearing Rachel
attack her—the defence of Berma, saying: “Oh, no, she’s a
wonderful person, really. Of course, the things she does no longer
appeal to us, they don’t correspond quite to what we are looking for,
but one must think of her at the period to which she belongs; we owe
her a great deal. She has done good work, you know. And besides
she’s such a fine woman, she has such a good heart; naturally she
doesn’t care about the things that interest us, but she has had in her
time, with a rather impressive face, a charming quality of mind.” (Our
fingers, by the way, do not play the same accompaniment to all our
aesthetic judgments. If it is a picture that is under discussion, to
shew that it is a fine work with plenty of paint, it is enough to stick out
one’s thumb. But the “charming quality of mind” is more exacting. It
requires two fingers, or rather two finger-nails, as though one were
trying to flick off a particle of dust.) But, with this single exception,
Saint-Loup’s mistress referred to the best-known actresses in a tone
of ironical superiority which annoyed me because I believed—quite
mistakenly, as it happened—that it was she who was inferior to
them. She was clearly aware that I must regard her as an indifferent
actress, and on the other hand have a great regard for those she
despised. But she shewed no resentment, because there is in all
great talent while it is still, as hers was then, unrecognised, however
sure it may be of itself, a vein of humility, and because we make the
consideration that we expect from others proportionate not to our
latent powers but to the position to which we have attained. (I was,
an hour or so later, at the theatre, to see Saint-Loup’s mistress shew
great deference towards those very artists against whom she was
now bringing so harsh a judgment to bear.) And so, in however little
doubt my silence may have left her, she insisted nevertheless on our
dining together that evening, assuring me that never had anyone’s
conversation delighted her so much as mine. If we were not yet in
the theatre, to which we were to go after luncheon, we had the sense
of being in a green-room hung with portraits of old members of the
company, so markedly were the waiters’ faces those which, one
thought, had perished with a whole generation of obscure actors of
the Palais-Royal; they had a look, also, of Academicians; stopping
before a side table one of them was examining a dish of pears with
the expression of detached curiosity that M. de Jussieu might have
worn. Others, on either side of him, were casting about the room that
gaze instinct with curiosity and coldness which Members of the
Institute, who have arrived early, throw at the public, while they
exchange a few murmured words which one fails to catch. They
were faces well known to all the regular guests. One of them,
however, was being pointed out, a newcomer with distended nostrils
and a smug upper lip, who looked like a cleric; he was entering upon
his duties there for the first time, and everyone gazed with interest at
this newly elected candidate. But presently, perhaps to drive Robert
away so that she might be alone with Aimé, Rachel began to make
eyes at a young student, who was feeding with another man at a
neighbouring table.
“Zézette, let me beg you not to look at that young man like that,”
said Saint-Loup, on whose face the hesitating flush of a moment ago
had been gathered now into a scarlet tide which dilated and
darkened his swollen features, “if you must make a scene here, I
shall simply finish eating by myself and join you at the theatre
afterwards.”
 At this point a messenger came up to tell Aimé that he was wanted
to speak to a gentleman in a carriage outside. Saint-Loup, ever
uneasy, and afraid now that it might be some message of an
amorous nature that was to be conveyed to his mistress, looked out
of the window and saw there, sitting up in his brougham, his hands
tightly buttoned in white gloves with black seams, a flower in his
buttonhole, M. de Charlus.
“There; you see!” he said to me in a low voice, “my family hunt me
down even here. Will you, please—I can’t very well do it myself, but
you can, as you know the head waiter so well and he’s certain to
give us away—ask him not to go to the carriage. He can always
send some other waiter who doesn’t know me. I know my uncle; if
they tell him that I’m not known here, he’ll never come inside to look
for me, he loathes this sort of place. Really, it’s pretty disgusting that
an old petticoat-chaser like him, who is still at it, too, should be
perpetually lecturing me and coming to spy on me!”
Aimé on receiving my instructions sent one of his underlings to
explain that he was busy and could not come out at the moment, and
(should the gentleman ask for the Marquis de Saint-Loup) that they
did not know any such person. But Saint-Loup’s mistress, who had
failed to catch our whispered conversation and thought that it was
still about the young man at whom Robert had been finding fault with
her for making eyes, broke out in a torrent of rage.
“Oh, indeed! So it’s the young man over there, now, is it? Thank
you for telling me; it’s a real pleasure to have this sort of thing with
one’s meals! Don’t listen to him, please; he’s rather cross to-day,
and, you know,” she went on, turning to me, “he just says it because
he thinks it smart, that it’s the gentlemanly thing to appear jealous
always.”
And she began with feet and fingers to shew signs of nervous
irritation.
“But, Zézette, it is I who find it unpleasant. You are making us all
ridiculous before that gentleman, who will begin to imagine you’re
making overtures to him, and an impossible bounder he looks, too.”
“Oh, no, I think he’s charming; for one thing, he’s got the most
adorable eyes, and a way of looking at women—you can feel he
must love them.”