Creationism - National Center for Science Education

Neal Gillespie in Charles Darwin and the Problem of Creation (1979), was a central
figure in the process by which science was transformed into a wholly positivistic
enterprise, and by which religion in turn came to be accepted—except, significantly, by
fundamentalists—as something existing apart from science.
The struggle between Darwinian theory and the creationism advocated by most
scientists of the time was not so much a war between religion and science as between two
different views of science: the traditional one, which retained a religious basis, and the
new positivist one championed by Darwin, which removed religion from the domain of
science. Gillespie, inspired by Foucault, calls these rival views of science “epistemes”
(similar to Kuhn’s notion of paradigms): “communal presuppositions about knowledge
and its nature and limits.”
Gillespie argues that Darwin played a key role in the replacement of one scientific
episteme with another. In Darwin’s time the two epistemes co-existed in uneasy tension,
and many scientists sought intermediate positions, moving in the direction of the new
positivist episteme, but unable to make a complete break due to the strong tradition of the
theologically-based episteme.
The advent of evolution in natural history was the consequence of a change in the way in which science
was thought about and practiced. The old scientific episteme, creationism, which mixed the Newtonian
nomothetic and the Baconian inductivist traditions from the physical sciences with biblical theology and a
type of philosophical idealism, had sanctioned, in the idea of special creation, or so it appeared from the
new positive perspective, a pseudo-paradigm that was not a research governing theory (since its power to
explain was only verbal) but an antitheory, a void that had the function of knowledge but, as naturalists
increasingly came to feel, conveyed none. This discontent with special creation was the result of a subtle
and gradual shift in the epistemic foundations of natural history toward positivism. (1979:8)
Many scientists in Darwin’s time were becoming skeptical or dissatisfied with
aspects of the old episteme of science in which religion was an integral and necessary
part of science. The special care Darwin took to refute special creation was due to his
realization that it was the foundation of the old episteme. Although many scientists had
already abandoned miraculous (strict) creationism, they were unable to move all the way
to the positivist view, since they still retained basic elements of the old episteme. This is
why, says Gillespie, Darwin used theological arguments in the Origin as well as scientific
arguments, and why he attacked the idea of special creation so tenaciously. Shortly
before publication of the Origin, Darwin said to Lyell: “I am deeply convinced that it is
absolutely necessary to go the whole vast length, or stick to the creation of each separate
species” (quoted in Gillespie 1979:155).
Most scientists, even if they had taken steps towards the positivist view, were still
more or less influenced by the traditional biblical conceptions and the imagery of the old
religiously-based episteme. They didn’t interpret Genesis literally, but they nevertheless
assumed that the Flood, in some form, was real, that man was somehow a unique and
separate creation, and that the six creation days could somehow be reconciled with the
scientific record (1979:47). Many of these scientists condemned biblical literalism but
could not relinquish the belief that the biblical account could still be squared with
science: that they both somehow spoke of the same things.
Special creation was the direct involvement by God with creation of new forms: it
could either be direct and miraculous (strict creationism), or—an intermediate view
favored by many scientists in Darwin’s time—it could result from some unknown but