Wittgenstein and Darwin 1

Was Ludwig an evolution denier?

This is an interregnum to the holism series. Normal services will return in due course.

In their unceasing search for authorities to disagree with Darwin, and by rhetorical implication, shore up their own theology (spot the logical mistake), creationists sometimes raise some interesting points. Recently on Bluesky, Murat Gülsaçan (by no means a creationist), an STS graduate student, asked what Wittgenstein’s view on evolution was. So down the rabbit hole I went. Here are my results.

First of all, creationists claim that Wittgenstein was opposed to Darwin and therefore was a creationist. This is based upon a cursory knowledge of Wittgenstein’s philosophy and development, but mostly upon a passing comment in the Tractatus (4.1122):

Darwin's theory has no more to do with philosophy than any other hypothesis in natural science.

They also claim support from numerous other “proof texts” from the Wittgensteinian corpus. However, one problem with proof texts, in theology or philosophy, is that they are chosen by confirmation bias and without regard for context, and philosophy is not like that. Philosophy is all about context – of the passages, of the arguments of the day, and of the presumptions shared (or not) by the disputants.

In this post (or, given the word limits, series of posts) I will present the texts with some commentary. If you want a less textual and more philosophical approach, see Silvia de Cesare’s blog post from 2011, “Wittgenstein's non-Darwinian naturalism” (or, since it is in French, “Le naturalisme non-darwinien de Wittgenstein”).

Tractarian views

The context of the Tractatus itself is that it was written mostly during The First World War, when Wittgenstein was a soldier. Until that point, western philosophy was replete with positivist progressivism; the sentiment that progress was inevitable due to science and moral improvement. The “war to end all wars” showed how mistaken that notion was. Worse, the progress was often mistakenly based on some vague notion of evolution (usually from Haeckel). And the war itself had been partly¹ based upon industrialists and militarists presuming that Germany would be fitter than other nations and win out.

Now Wittgenstein had many irons in the fire when writing the Tractatus, but one of them was to mark out clear territories for philosophical problems from the scientific. In section 4.112, he makes this point:

4.11) The totality of true propositions is the total natural science (or the totality of the natural sciences).

4.111) Philosophy is not one of the natural sciences.

(The word "philosophy" must mean something which stands above or below, but not beside the natural sciences.)

4.112) The object of philosophy is the logical clarification of thoughts.

Philosophy is not a theory but an activity.

A philosophical work consists essentially of elucidations.

The result of philosophy is not a number of "philosophical propositions", but to make propositions clear.

Philosophy should make clear and delimit sharply the thoughts which otherwise are, as it were, opaque and blurred.

4.1121) Psychology is no nearer related to philosophy, than is any other natural science.

The theory of knowledge is the philosophy of psychology.

Does not my study of sign-language correspond to the study of thought processes which philosophers held to be so essential to the philosophy of logic? Only they got entangled for the most part in unessential psychological investigations, and there is an analogous danger for my method.

4.1122) The Darwinian theory has no more to do with philosophy than has any other hypothesis of natural science.

4.113) Philosophy limits the disputable sphere of natural science.

4.114) It should limit the thinkable and thereby the unthinkable.

It should limit the unthinkable from within through the thinkable.

4.115) It will mean the unspeakable by clearly displaying the speakable.

4.116) Everything that can be thought at all can be thought clearly. Everything that can be said can be said clearly.

In context, it is clear that Wittgenstein thinks that “the Darwinian theory” is a scientific hypothesis, but not philosophy. That is no a rejection of evolution at all. However, he did not think Darwin’s view was the whole story. When collaborating with Friedrich Waismann around 1932, Wittgenstein dictated to Waismann a number of passages until it became clear that Wittgenstein was not a logical positivist and they stopped. In passing, he said:

Our thought here marches with certain views of Goethe's which he expressed in the Metamorphosis of Plants. We are in the habit, whenever we perceive similarities, of seeking some common origin for them. The urge to follow such phenomena back to their origin in the past expresses itself in a certain style of thinking. This recognizes, so to speak, only a single scheme for such similarities, namely the arrangement as a series in time. (And that is presumably bound up with the uniqueness of the causal schema). But Goethe's view shows that this is not the only possible form of conception. His conception of the original plant implies no hypothesis about the temporal development of the vegetable kingdom such as Darwin's. What then is the problem solved by this idea? It is the problem of synoptic presentation. Goethe's aphorism ‘All the organs of plants are leaves transformed’ offers us a plan in which we may group the organs of plants according to their similarities as if around some natural center. We see the original form of the leaf changing into similar and cognate forms, into the leaves of the calyx, the leaves of the petal, into organs that are half petals, half stamens, and so on. We follow this sensuous transformation of the type by linking up the leaf through intermediate forms with the other organs of the plant.

That is precisely what we are doing here. We are collating one form of language with its environment, or transforming it in imagination so as to gain a view of the whole of space in which the structure of our language has its beginning.²

In his May 1933 lectures at Cambridge, he stated (according to student notes):

Goethe in Metamorphose der Pflanzen, suggests that all plants are variations on a theme. What is the theme?

Goethe says “They all point to a hidden law”. But you wouldn’t ask: What is the law? That they point, is all there is to it.

Darwin made a hypothesis to account for this.

But you might treat it quite differently. You might say what is satisfactory in Darwin is not the hypothesis, but the putting the facts in a system – helping us to overlook³ them.

…

Cf. Darwin’s explanation of expression of emotions: Why do we shew our teeth when angry? because our ancestors wanted to bite. Why does our hair stand up when frightened? because our ancestors, like other animals, frightened their enemy by looking bigger. Why do lacrimal glands produce tears, when we’re in grief?

You can find out what nerves act on glands, & what makes nerves act.

But to give a reason why it was useful to cry, is something quite different: e.g. that there was a custom to throw sand, & tears were useful to wash it away.

And what makes one want an explanation of this sort? Why does Darwin think that without it what we do would be unintelligible?

Suppose one said, it’s unintelligible that tables should be combustible. But it may be intelligible that they should be made of wood, & it just be an accident that wood is.

Now Darwin wouldn’t have thought an explanation of this sort required for every detail about our bodies. He thinks expressions of emotion need it, because he finds expressions are very important, & then thinks they can be important only if useful.

The charm of the argument is that it reduces something that’s important to utility. (Important in sense that it impresses us.)

Again, caveats, but he’s using Darwin’s ideas as a foil for the point he wants to make, which is that we set the terms of what is important in a science or domain. On this point I wholly agree.

In another set of lectures and conversations in subsequent years (c.1938),⁴ W. writes:

32. Cf. The Darwin upheaval. One circle of admirers who said : “Of course”, and another circle who said : “Of course not”. Why in the Hell should a man say ‘of course’? (The idea was that of monocellular organisms becoming more and more complicated until they became mammals, men, etc. ) Did anyone see this process happening? No. Has anyone seen it happening now? No. The evidence of breeding is just a drop in the bucket. But there were thousands of books in which this was said to be the obvious solution. People were certain on grounds which were extremely thin. Couldn't there have been an attitude which said: “I don't know. It is an interesting hypothesis which may eventually be well confirmed”? This shows how you can be persuaded of a certain thing. In the end you forget entirely every question of verification, you are just sure it must have been like that.

Now what is significant about this passage is that it is about, or targets, how people acquire beliefs (especially in the context of the logical positivists’ claim that knowing is the result of verifying a statement).

Part 2 next

1. In history everything contributes. The “selection of nations” idea preceded Darwin, and Haeckel’s revision of it. See Gregory Moore. “Darwinism and National Identity, 1870–1918.” In The First World War as a Clash of Cultures, edited by Fred Bridgham, 167–82. Boydell & Brewer, 2006. http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.7722/j.ctt81nkj.10.

2. From Ray Monk's biography of Wittgenstein, Ludwig Wittgenstein: The duty of genius, London: Vintage Books, 1990, page 305f.

3

Überblick. I think this means “survey” – JSW

4. Wittgenstein, Ludwig. Lectures and Conversations on Aesthetics, Psychology, and Religious Belief (LA), Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1967, 26f.