Richard Owen’s Deconstruction of Darwinian Natural Selection

From Darwin’s Origin of Species to Richard Dawkins’ The Greatest Show on Earth, the efficacy of natural selection in evolution has been overrated. The central strategy of the two men and their allies, in coping with the inadequacy of their evolutionary views, has been to typecast their critics as creationists. Misrepresentation, even vilification, has been repeatedly used. The most prominent victim of this argumentation strategy has been Darwin’s contemporary Richard Owen who was a public proponent of evolution theory well before Darwin. As a scientist, Owen was Darwin’s superior. He cautiously and tactfully promoted a structuralist approach to evolution, as developed by several German contemporaries and predecessors. When Darwin, in his Origin of Species, misrepresented Owen as a creationist, the latter defended himself in a(n) (in)famous critical essay, published in Edinburgh Review. Subsequently, Owen clarified his views in a booklet entitled The Derivative Hypothesis, comparing and contrasting his belief in “natural rejection” to/with Darwin’s “natural selection,” and using the Malagasy lemurs as examples to demonstrate pre-adaptational logic in evolutionary development. All the while, Owen managed to establish the greatest cathedral of natural history ever, the BM(NH) in South Kensington, a project that Darwin and his allies tried to subvert. In this chapter, Owen’s critique of the Darwinian arguments is presented and contextualized.