In broad Aristotelian terms, this is how it happened:
Aristotle articulated four types of causes — material, efficient (mechanism), formal (design), and final (purpose) — with the final cause as the most important. His biology tried to find these causes but he had to speculate about final causes and his biology failed.
Fast-forward to Francil Bacon who separated material and efficient causes, which science would investigate, vs. formal and final causes, which were left to philosophy and religion. From the Enlightenment on the material and efficient causes were deemed sufficient to explain phenomena. Occam’s razor was a tool in this reductionistic and scientistic move. The formal and final causes were left as superfluous, something for poets and stripped-down theologians.
This happened before Darwin. With Darwin this scientistic understanding was incorporated into mainstream science. Those who wanted to include formal and final causes were banished from the scientific community. The Prussian model of the university consolidated this move in Europe and later elsewhere.
Even if evolution were superseded, something just as reductionistic would replace it without a broader cultural and intellectual shift.
June 2011