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Darwin in Russian Thought
Darwin in Russian
Thought

Alexander Vucinich

UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS

Berkeley • Los Angeles • London
University of California Press
Berkeley and Los Angeles, California

University of California Press, Ltd.

London, England

© 1988 by
T h e Regents of the University of California

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Vucinich, Alexander, 1914—

Darwin in Russian t h o u g h t / Alexander Vucinich.
p. cm.
Bibliography: p.
Includes index.
ISBN 0 - 5 2 0 - 0 6 2 8 3 - 3 (alk. paper)
1. D a r w i n , Charles, 1 8 0 9 - 1 8 8 2 — I n f l u e n c e . 2. Philosophy, R u s s i a n — 1 9 t h cen-
tury. 3. Philosophy, R u s s i a n — 2 0 t h century.
1. Title.
B1623.V83 1988
001'.0947—del 9 88-2054
CIP

Printed in the United States of America

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
To Dorothy
Contents

Preface ix

Introduction 1

1. Reception 8
2. New Horizons 50
3. Waves of Criticism 92
4. N. Ia. Danilevskii: Codification of
Anti-Darwinism 118
5. Mechanism and Vitalism 151
6. Orthodoxy 196
7. Rejection 240
8. Strategies for Retrenchment 272
9. Darwinian Anniversaries 308
10. Darwinism and the Radical Intelligentsia 330

Conclusion 370

Abbreviations 389

Notes 391

Works Consulted 425

Index 455

vii
Preface

This study examines the role of Darwin's theory in the development of

Russian thought from the early 1860s to the October Revolution. It de-
scribes both the diversity and the unity of Russian responses to the
Darwinian revolution in biological thought and in the modern world
outlook. In a more general perspective, it attempts to explain the place
of Darwinism in the growth of a modern rationalist tradition in imperial
Russia. My hope is that it will encourage a continued effort to fill in one
of the more critical gaps in the historical study of Russian intellectual
culture in general and of Russian science in particular.
The book is organized chronologically and by topic. Chapter 1 deals
with the turbulent and exciting decade of the 1860s, the period of the
initial reception of the new evolutionary thought. The next two chapters
cover the period from 1871—the year of the publication of The Descent
of Man—to the middle of the 1880s: Chapter 2 treating the spread of
Darwin's ideas over an ever-widening realm of science, and Chapter 3
tracing the onrushing waves of criticism directed at the basic principles
of Darwin's theory. Chapter 4, covering the short period from 1885
to 1889, analyzes N. Ia. Danilevskii's monumental synthesis of anti-
Darwinian arguments and the heated debate it provoked. Chapter 5
stays close to the 1890s, a decade clearly dominated by the full triumph
of Darwin's ideas in Russia and by the rise of a new wave of challenges
to Darwinian supremacy in evolutionary thought, represented most typi-
cally by neovitalism, neo-Darwinism, and neo-Lamarckism.
Chapters 6—9 consider different topics within the same general pe-

ix
X Preface

riod, the first seventeen years of the twentieth century. Chapter 6 sur-
veys the guiding ideas of the main defenders of Darwinian orthodoxy.
The distinct forms of anti-Darwinism generated by the separate com-
munities of theologians, philosophers, and scientists are the main con-
cern of Chapter 7. Chapter 8 examines the key strategies of deliberate
efforts t o blend Darwinism with new developments in experimental bi-
ology. Chapter 9 takes the Russian celebrations of the one-hundredth
anniversary of Darwin's birth and the fiftieth anniversary of the publica-
tion of the Origin of Species as a convenient vantage point for a pan-
oramic view of the distinctive features of Russian Darwinism.
Chapter 10 digresses from the chronological sequence of the preced-
ing chapters to survey the views of the radical intelligentsia on Darwin's
theory and world outlook, from the early 1870s to the October Revolu-
tion. This digression makes possible a comparative analysis of the views
of the populists, anarchists, Marxists, and Marxist revisionists, the
most articulate ideological formations a m o n g the intelligentsia.

I am much indebted to the Guggenheim Foundation, the American

Council of Learned Societies, and the Russian Research Center at Har-
vard University for financial grants that helped me bring this study to a
conclusion. I am thankful to the Department of the History of Science at
Harvard University for a precious opportunity to offer a course on the
history of Russian science, to share my thoughts on Russian Darwinism
with a delightful group of alert students, and to use the fabulous re-
sources of Widener Library. To Hoover Library I owe gratitude for the
richness of documentary resources, the efficiency and kindness of the
staff, and the superb working conditions. I am much indebted to the Li-
brary of the University of Illinois in Urbana, whose resources in the his-
tory of Russian scientific thought are a m o n g the richest in the world.
1 cannot thank enough Professor Laurence H. Miller for valuable
substantive suggestions, fertile bibliographical hints, and cogent in-
sights into the historical flux of Russian thought. To Sheila Levine, edi-
tor at the University of California Press, I am grateful for astute criti-
cism and warm encouragement. For valuable editorial suggestions 1 am
much in debt to Mary Stuart.
I am also thankful to my wife, Dorothy, for enthusiastic, dedicated,
and tireless help.
Introduction

The 1850s were the age of a true revolution in science. In a rapid succes-
sion of brilliant achievements in scientific thought, the foundations were
laid for thermodynamics, the theory of electromagnetism, structural
chemistry, spectroscopy, cellular pathology, biochemistry, bacteriology,
and experimental physiology. The methodology of medical research be-
came an integral part of natural science. Such giants of science as Clau-
sius and W. Thomson, Kirchhoff and Bunsen, Virchow and Pasteur,
Helmholtz and Bernard added new power and luster to the Newtonian
edifice of scientific ideas and, at the same time, created an enclave of criti-
cal thought that represented the first harbingers of post-Newtonianism.
The Origin of Species, Charles Darwin's immortal work, appeared at
the very end of the decade, in November 1859. It gave biology a new
central and integrating idea, fresh domains of research, and original
methods of scientific analysis. Although dominated by antitransform-
ism, the pre-Darwinian scientific community produced a mass of em-
pirical data and theoretical insights that became integral parts of Dar-
winian thought. Charles Lyell, Adolphe de Candolle, J. D. Hooker,
Richard Owen, Asa Gray, F. J. Pictet, Karl von Baer, Etienne and Isidore
Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire, and scores of other scientists produced rapidly
expanding reservoirs of pertinent material that helped make the Darwin-
ian revolution a logical and inevitable step in the history of nineteenth-
century biological thought.
Darwin made three general contributions to biology. First, he gave a
broader and firmer footing to the genealogical approach to the living

1
2 Introduction

world suggested by Lamarck and Goethe and based on the idea that all
species are descendants from one or a very few primordial forms of life.
Second, he created a new theory that recognized only natural causes of
organic evolution, notably the struggle for existence and natural selec-
tion. Third, he placed the weight of empirical evidence behind the idea
of organic evolution as an infinite process—a process not limited by
predetermined goals. "The Origin," according to Ernst Mayr, "is re-
markably free of any teleological language.'" Darwin's contributions
made biology an inductive science and its laws empirical generaliza-
tions. By effecting a clear and irrevocable separation of biology from
metaphysics and theology, he revolutionized both scientific thought and
the world outlook.
Darwin made biology a history—a discipline concerned with ran-
dom events, the "raw material" of the transformation process. In his
view, only history can reveal the true meaning of life. It alone can reach
the depths of the infinite complexity of vital processes. While making
biology a history, Darwin helped stimulate a lively and persistent mod-
ern interest in making history a science, ever in search of harmonies and
regularities in specific universes of inquiry. With its combined interest in
the grand history of human society and in the universal laws of social
structure and dynamics, sociology received its main inspiration from
Darwin's biological ideas. Maksim Kovalevskii was not far off the mark
when he stated in 1910 that every sociologist of his generation was
much indebted to Darwin, his forerunners, and his successors.2 J. B.
Bury was thinking of the intellectual effects of Darwin's theory of the
origin of man when he wrote: "As one of the objects of biology is to find
the exact stages in the genealogy of man from the lowest organic form, so
the scope of history is to determine the stages in the unique causal series
from the most rudimentary to the present state of human civilization.'"
Darwinism recognized no rigid academic boundaries. It quietly ex-
tended its sway beyond the limits of evolutionary biology and of biology
in general. It emerged as a theoretical orientation firmly rooted in phi-
losophy and history, philology and jurisprudence, ethics and aesthetics,
psychology and sociology, anthropology and political science, com-
parative anatomy and ethology. The naturalist William Crookes went
even further: he tried to make chemistry an evolutionary discipline.
Boltzmann, an illustrious harbinger of post-Newtonian science, was so
deeply moved by the idea of transformism that he recommended the
creation of a special science concerned with the evolution of matter.
Vladimir Vernadskii worked assiduously to make mineralogy and bio-
Introduction 3

chemistry evolutionary disciplines. Einstein's general theory of relativity

laid the foundations for an evolutionary view of the universe. Darwin
helped elevate individual disciplines to higher positions in the hierarchy
of sciences; for example, he transformed paleontology from an "auxil-
iary" of geology to a full-blown science—"paleobiology"—expected to
answer some of the most basic questions of general biology.
T h e history of Darwin's theory was part of the general transition of
science from the age of mechanistic supremacy to the age of quantum
and relativity theories. In the beginning, Darwin's ideas helped biolo-
gists strengthen their discipline by presenting it as an integral compo-
nent of Newtonian science, based on mechanical models of the universe,
the principle of natural causality as the sine qua non of scientific expla-
nation, and the notion of continuity as an adequate description of the
flow of natural processes. As M . J. S. Hodge has stated, Darwin's theo-
rizing stayed close to "the causal, lawful, deterministic Newtonian uni-
verse," and it made natural selection akin " t o gravitational force in ce-
lestial mechanics." 4 At the end of the nineteenth century a typical
biologist brought up on Darwin's theory believed that his discipline
must reach far beyond the methodological and epistemological limits of
Newtonian science to create a basis for a theoretical integration of
newly accumulated experimental data. In the twentieth century,
Darwin's principle of random variation has assumed the same position
in evolutionary biology as Heisenberg's uncertainty principle in quan-
tum mechanics. At no time did Darwinism, or biology in general, veer
away from increasing dependence on physics and chemistry. Physics and
chemistry, however, found a way out of a total dependence on mecha-
nistic views, models, and metaphors. Jacques Monod had this new de-
velopment in mind when he said that Darwin's "selective theory of evo-
lution" did not take on its full significance until the advent of molecular
biology. 5
The Darwinian debate reached far beyond the frontiers of science. In
philosophy it helped make scientific cognition a topic of primary em-
phasis. In theology it encouraged a novel and more comprehensive
effort to assess the fundamental challenges of Darwinian heterodoxy. In
belles lettres the influence of Darwinism helped open the gates for a
broader and richer use of naturalist metaphors and also for new forms
of social criticism. In the domain of ideology—the articulation of politi-
cal beliefs and social goals—Darwinian debates echoed some of the
most critical intellectual dilemmas of the day.
Darwin's theory exercised a powerful influence on every branch of
4 Introduction

philosophy from metaphysics and epistemology to logic and moralistic

discourses. Whether it evoked praise or negative criticism, it presented
philosophers with the most astute challenges in the reinvigorated search
for the cosmic proportions of the flow of history. In the words of Josiah
Royce, "with the exception of Newton's Principia," no single scientific
volume had affected philosophy more profoundly than the Origin of
SpeciesCharles S. Peirce agreed: Darwin "has stirred science and phi-
losophy as no man since Newton had done." 7 Darwin's theory encour-
aged the growth of a special branch of philosophy interested primarily
in a critical synthesis of modern scientific knowledge.
Darwinism precipitated a significant turn in the evolution of modern
theological thought. In the mounting effort to purify the domains of sci-
ence open to the influence of heretical thought, a typical theological
scholar concentrated on Darwinism as a major threat to the moral under-
pinnings of Christian civilization. In Russia the systematic search for re-
ligious answers to the "threat" of Darwinism contributed to the emer-
gence of "theoretical theology" at the end of the nineteenth century, a
rather accomplished effort to elucidate the critical areas of contact be-
tween scientific and religious thought.
In literature Darwinism became a topic of direct concern or a target
of endless allusions. References to the letter or the spirit of Darwinian
thought, sometimes of the most subtle nature, became an infallible way
of depicting the world outlook and ideological proclivities of the heroes
of literary masterpieces. Individual heroes of Dostoevsky's and Tolstoy's
literary works provided graphic examples of the myriads of prisms re-
fracting Darwinian science and showing the multiple strands of its im-
pact on current thought and attitudes. More often than not, these he-
roes were alter egos of their literary creators, giving added scope to
Darwinism as an intellectual and social phenomenon. A literary figure
took note of Darwinian evolutionism not only by commenting on its
scientific principles but also by making use of its metaphors.
On September 22, 1877, Rudolf Virchow, the founder of cellular pa-
thology and an active anti-Darwinist, spoke at the fiftieth national Con-
gress of German Naturalists and Physicians in Munich about the theory
of organic evolution and contemporary politics. The speech represented
the first major invitation to scientists to discuss the ideological roots
and ties of Darwin's biological theory. Virchow warned his listeners that
to work for the diffusion of Darwinian ideas was tantamount to work-
ing for the cause of "social democracy," which he viewed as a serious
threat to the most sacred values of modern culture and social order. He
Introduction 5

said that Darwin's views had reached every corner of intellectual Eu-
rope, giving new strength and encouragement to radical ideologies that
allied their political programs with developments in the substance and
in the spirit of natural science. Ernst Haeckel, the main target of Vir-
chow's attack, answered the charges by defending the basic principles of
Darwin's theory and by outlining the materialistic principles of his per-
sonal philosophy, which he identified as monism, an ideology backed up
by a combination of scientific and metaphysical propositions. He suc-
ceeded only in giving the struggle over organic evolution a sharper ideo-
logical focus and a more pronounced political affiliation.
Professional ideologues, whether they accepted or rejected Darwin-
ism, found it necessary to express their views on the avowed merits of
the new evolutionary theory as a world outlook, a body of positive
knowledge, a scientific theory, and a source of designs for a better social
existence. Ideological appraisal—and acceptance or rejection—of
Darwinism came also from theologians, literary figures, and scholars
working in the humanities. Ideology, as the case of Russia clearly illus-
trated, pervaded all categories of Darwinian thought.
The relations between science and ideology are not fixed; they are
subject to modification caused by changes in either one or the other, or
in both. Modifications may also come from changes in the general po-
litical climate in the country. As a rule, a Russian scientist of the 1870s
was sympathetic to the liberal stirrings in the country; this, however,
was not necessarily true during the 1890s and the first decade of the
twentieth century, when the sight of a university professor w h o was both
liberal in political convictions and actions and unmistakably critical of
Darwin's theory was not uncommon.
At the turn of the century, a typical biologist was neither a pure
Darwinist nor a confirmed anti-Darwinist: he occupied a position
somewhere between the two extremes. The biologists w h o considered
Darwin one of the true giants of modern science did so for a variety of
reasons. Some thought that Darwin's main contribution was in making
evolution a central and integrating notion of biology, rather than in pre-
senting a meaningful and acceptable explanation of the mechanisms of
the evolutionary process. William Bateson saw Darwin's true victory
not in the conceptual triad of natural selection, heredity, and variation
but in epochal contributions to the triumph of the evolutionary view in
biology." Similar views found a strong expression in philosophical lit-
erature. "All modern naturalists of note," wrote the philosopher Josiah
Royce, are in a sense "followers of Darwin, not that they all hold his
6 Introduction

view about natural selection, but that they all teach the doctrine of
transformation." 9
The biologists who criticized Darwin also relied on a variety of argu-
ments. Some critics did not like the mechanistic—or Newtonian—
underpinnings of Darwinian science. Others did not like the physico-
chemical reductionism with which, they thought, Darwinism was allied.
A typical critic thought that the theory of natural selection treated organ-
isms as passive participants in the evolutionary process. He resented the
widespread tendency in and outside the scientific community to place
natural selection in the same category of the laws of nature with Coper-
nicus's heliocentrism and Newton's gravitation. Most critics argued that
Darwin's major claims did not receive adequate empirical support.
National differences in the reception of Darwin's ideas have long
been recognized. These differences found a particularly strong expres-
sion in the distinctive ways in which individual nations treated the inevi-
table confrontation of Darwin's theory of selection and Lamarck's em-
phasis on direct environmental influence on the transformation process
and on an inherent tendency within living beings to progress. In the
United States, thanks largely to the powerful influence of E. D. Cope's
Lamarckian inclinations, the Darwinian emphasis on the evolutionary
primacy of natural selection was exceedingly slow in receiving serious
recognition. In Great Britain, by contrast, the Lamarckian share of a
general evolutionary theory was never of much consequence. In France,
at the end of the nineteenth century, a strong group of biologists—led
by E. Perrier, A. Giard, and F. Le Dantec—paid homage to Darwin's
epochal contributions to evolutionary biology but, at the same time,
never failed to regard Lamarck's contributions as more basic and richer
in theoretical perspective. Lamarck's theoretical views, they thought,
were more firmly lodged in the mainstream science of the nineteenth
century. In Russia the situation was just the opposite. Although La-
marck was popular and highly respected, his ideas were usually treated
as part of a larger—Darwinian—evolutionary framework.
No nation has shown more diversity and involvement in the treat-
ment of the Darwin-Lamarck confrontation than Germany. In this en-
deavor one orientation stood out as a uniquely German phenomenon:
psychological Lamarckism. Psycho-Lamarckians—as they were often
called—were the twentieth-century heirs of the era of Naturphiloso-
phie. Their most active leaders were the botanists A. Pauly and R.
France. They did not hide their high respect for Darwin's achievement,
but this did not stop them from building their evolutionary theory on
Introduction 7

Lamarck's idea of an inherent tendency of organisms to progress, which

helped them restore the metaphysics of teleology as a key explanatory
principle of organic transformation and infuse evolutionary thought
with the ideas of revived vitalism.
National differences in the reception of Darwinian thought are en-
twined in the crisscrossing developments in intellectual climate, social
dynamics, and politics. To disentangle these forces is an involved task
hampered by tortuous detours and dim signals. In Russia, perhaps more
clearly than in most other countries, to understand the flow of and the
reaction to Darwinian scientific ideas and philosophical elaborations is
to understand the main issues and battles on the ideological front and
the major dilemmas in the growth of secular wisdom. To study the com-
plexity and dynamics of reactions to Darwin's ideas is to gain pertinent
insights into the modernization of what N. A. Berdiaev had called "the
Russian idea."
To understand Darwinism as a factor shaping the thought of a mod-
ern nation it is necessary to analyze the two major systems of ideas that
gave it a distinct intellectual profile. On the one hand, it is necessary
to single out and examine the connections of Darwin's evolutionary
thought with the general national development in science and with the
emergence of a modern scientific community. It is essential to trace the
national history of science inasmuch as it responded to the challenges of
Darwinian thought. The national scientific communities not only ab-
sorb new ideas but also refashion them in such a way as to facilitate
their integration into the reigning intellectual traditions. On the other
hand, it is necessary to examine the extrascientific reactions to Darwin-
ian thought, particularly those that came from philosophers, religious
thinkers, and representatives of secular ideologies. In addition to dis-
cussing scientific and nonscientific approaches as distinct categories, it
is necessary to take a close look at the multiple forms of their interac-
tion. Religious scholars, for example, may use scientific arguments to
discredit Darwin's theory, just as scientists may appeal to religious senti-
ment to achieve the same goal—and both religious scholars and scien-
tists may be guided by easily discernible ideological precepts.
CHAPTER ONE

Reception

Reforms and the Spirit of Science

After the Crimean War Russia entered a period of national awaken-

ing that invited a critical reassessment of dominant values and social
bonds and engendered a strong sentiment in favor of sweeping political
and social reforms. The reigning ideologies of the time favored natural
science as the most reliable source of guideposts for social and cultural
progress. A. I. Herzen spoke for the age when he noted that "without
natural science there can be no salvation for modern man; without that
healthy nourishment, that vigorous elevation of thought based on facts,
and that proximity to the realities of life . . . our soul would continue to
be a monastery cell, veiled in mysticism spreading darkness over our
thoughts." 1
Another writer saw in the 1 8 6 0 s an accelerated growth of secular in-
terpretations of the universe, both physical and social. This was the
time, he said, of the search for " a substitution of anthropology for reli-
gion, inductive method for deductive method, materialistic monism for
idealistic dualism, empirical aesthetics for abstract aesthetics, and the
theory of rational egotism for morality based on supersensory prin-
ciples." 2 In a reference to university education, a famous embryologist,
educated in the 1860s, noted that the students were particularly at-
tracted to scientific articles published in general journals and to transla-
tions of popular scientific works. The younger generation showed a par-
ticularly strong interest in the new theories of nature and in their close
links with positivist and materialist philosophy. 1
The preoccupation with scientific ideas, and with philosophical views

8
Reception 9

on the cultural preeminence of science, appeared in many forms and

came from many sources. The initial outburst came from the rapidly
rising popularity of the scientific-philosophical writings of the new
breed of German materialists represented by Ludwig Büchner, Karl
Vogt, and Jacob Moleschott. The Russian intelligentsia favored the
criticism of metaphysical idealism which these studies supplied in great
abundance; but they also favored the profuse and laudatory comments
on science as a source of models for a radical transformation of society
and culture. When Bazarov, the hero of Turgenev's Fathers and Sons,
suggested that reading Büchner was much more profitable than reciting
Pushkin's poetry, he acted as a true spokesman for nihilism, the most
radical philosophy of the epoch. Vogt, Büchner, and Moleschott re-
inforced two guiding ideological principles of the restive intelligentsia:
positivist faith in the limitless power of science, and historicism. Their
tight interweaving of natural science facts and theories with the precepts
of an ideology that opposed the social and cultural status quo found a
particularly strong Russian following.
The growth of the popular appeal of science during the 1860s was
closely related to the rising popularity of French positivism, as pre-
sented by Auguste Comte and his French disciples and as interpreted by
John Stuart Mill. Positivism presented science as a new intellectual force
that grew on the ruins of religious and metaphysical thought. It pro-
duced a separation of sociology from eighteenth-century metaphysics.
To give his defense of positivism more weight, a Russian commentator
assured his readers in 1865 that the leading minds in western Europe
had accepted Comte's designs for a scientific study of society. When
G. M. Vyrubov became coeditor of the Paris Revue de philosophie posi-
tive in 1867 his countrymen went far afield in commenting on the rich
promise of the Gomtian philosophical legacy. Eager to encourage and to
justify this endeavor, A. P. Shchapov noted in 1870 that "French, Ital-
ian, English, and German literature is being rapidly enriched by the new
books written in the spirit of positive philosophy." 4 P. L. Lavrov in-
formed his readers that positivism was a philosophy built on scientific
foundations and that in France "physicians and graduates of the Poly-
technical School are in a majority among the followers of positivism." s
A contemporary scholar described Lavrov's philosophical stance as a
blend of Young Hegelianism, Comte's positivism, and Darwin's and
Spencer's evolutionism. 6
Buckle attracted more attention in Russia than anywhere else on the
European continent. 7 The intelligentsia favored the History of Civiliza-
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