`External Factors' and `Ideology' in the Earliest Drafts of Darwin's Theory

Abstract

Darwin's textual representation of the theory of the transmutation of species is a web of evidence, logic, figurative discourse and artful rhetoric addressing the highly diverse philosophical presuppositions of his audience. His metaphors served multiple functions which must be analyzed before his argument can be accurately interpreted. Published versions slyly present a theory in docile and complete conformity to the methodological ideology dominating and legitimating early nineteenth-century British natural and human science. Their ironic rhetorical strategy creates an appearance of conformity to an ideology he opposed to the point of causing the `whole fabric to totter and fall'. This is true, not only of his methodological views, but also of his positions on larger metaphysical issues: materialism and the relation of the social instincts to the moral sentiments. The cultural circle to whose work Darwin responded included individuals whose opposed positions concerning the cultural and methodological issues raised by his theory freed him from slavish attachment to any school and enabled him to construct a flexible foundation for the human sciences. The terms `external factors' and `ideology' here refer only to particular sorts of information used in the construction of a scientific text but not subject to consensual methodological and interpretative criteria. Darwin had to form a new field of inquiry and assemble a new community from competent investigators who did not share a common technical form of discourse: the earliest drafts of his theory were therefore heavily influenced by such factors.