Darwin and Lincoln

Sometimes all the focus on the general theory of evolution distracts from what I find to be the most important aspects of Charles Darwin's contributions to mankind.

This from Scientific American:

February 12th [wa]s the 200th birthday of Charles Darwin and Abraham Lincoln. But they’re linked by something else, too.

Before Darwin, natural philosophers held to a point of view called typology, or essentialism. Members of a particular class were all the same. For example, all triangles have the same fundamental characteristic: three sides.

This way of thinking, however, extended to the biological world, including humans.

As the great evolutionary biologist Ernst Mayr wrote in an essay in the July, 2000, issue of Scientific American, “For the typologist, Caucasians, Africans, Asians or Inuits are types that conspicuously differ from other human ethnic groups. This mode of thinking leads to racism.”

But Darwin replaced typology with the new concept of populations.

Groupings of organisms are populations of unique individuals—who vary. Typology offered a philosophical justification for a slave being worth three fifths of a white person in the Constitution. But now science insisted that all people, regardless of race, were fully human. A viewpoint that finally began to be put in practice in the U.S. by Lincoln.

Happy Thanksgiving

President Abraham Lincoln had always expressed the quandary of God’s presence during the Civil War.

In September 1862 Lincoln was increasingly concerned by the tremendous growth of causalities. Following the disastrous loss at the second battle of Bull Run he wrote a Meditation on the Divine Will.

“The will of God prevails. In great contests each party claims to act in accordance with the will of God. Both may be, and one must be, wrong. God can not be for and against the same thing at the same time,” Lincoln wrote.

But to most Americans - north or south - God was on their side. Union and Confederate soldiers both prayed to the same God. Both read the same Bible. Both invoked the same God to aid him in battle against the other side.

Lincoln’s thoughts read like an ancient philosopher’s argument. “By his mere quiet power on the minds of new contestants, He could have either saved or destroyed the Union without a human contest. Yet the contest began. And having begun He could give the final victory to either side any day. Yet the contest proceeds.”

In a country split and ravaged by war - truth, for Lincoln, had begun to dawn. God was not at America’s beckoned call. America was at his.

In October 1863, with the Union victory in the Civil War all but assured, President Abraham Lincoln was looking for ways to reunite the country. He proclaimed a national holiday to be spent in reflection – a day of thanksgiving.

The proclamation, written by his Secretary of State William Seward, called upon each citizen to regard America’s vigorous growth despite the long war. “No human counsel hath devised nor hath any mortal hand worked out these great things. They are the gracious gifts of the Most High God, who, while dealing with us in anger for our sins, hath nevertheless remembered mercy. It has seemed to me fit and proper that they should be solemnly, reverently and gratefully acknowledged as with one heart and one voice by the whole American people.”

Once again, America finds itself in a war – not a civil war but one that divides us spiritually nonetheless.

As we pause to celebrate Thanksgiving 2007, and acknowledge our blessings, let us also remember our disobedience and “commend to His tender care those who have become widows, orphans, mourners or sufferers” in our present conflict.