Charles Darwin should be accepted as a colleague of scientists who disagree with him, and one who made significant contributions to the progress of science. Whatever disagreements there are with what he wrote should not blind people to what he was: a scientist among scientists.
As Newton’s name was used by the so-called Enlightenment to add prestige to a mechanistic and materialistic agenda, so Darwin’s name has been used to promote the ideology of naturalism. Darwin does not seem to have been the ideologue that Huxley and his followers today are. Instead Darwin seems to have been a modest scientist who was surprised by his fame. As we would not criticize Newton for the things the Newtonians said about a mechanistic universe, so we should not blame Darwin for the ideology of Darwinism.
I agree this is complicated by the use of the term “evolution” by both the scientific literature and the ideological literature. Perhaps we could distinguish “scientific evolution” from “ideological evolution”. Evolution is an “ideological fact,” not a scientific fact. Historians and others recognize the difference.
December 2013