Creation, Evolution, and “The New Cosmic Philosophy”: William Todd Martin's Critique of Herbert Spencer

This article explores the religious response of one neglected writer to the evolutionary philosophy of Herbert Spencer. William Todd Martin was a minister of the Presbyterian Church in Ireland and in 1887 published The Evolution Hypothesis: A Criticism of the New Cosmic Philosophy. The work demonstrates the essentially contested nature of “evolution” and “creation” by showing how a self-confessed creationist could affirm an evolutionary understanding of the natural world and species transformation. Martin's approach reflected a transatlantic Presbyterian worldview that saw the harmony of science and religion on the basis of Calvinism, Baconianism and Scottish Common Sense philosophy. Martin's critique is also relevant to issues that continue to animate philosophers of science and religion, including the connections between mind and matter, morality and consciousness in a Darwinian framework, and the relationship between subjective conscious experience and evolutionary physicalism. Martin was able to anticipate these debates because his critique was essentially philosophical and theological rather than biological and biblicist.

‘I am greatly obliged to the Dutch’: James Beattie's Dutch Connection

In the second half of the 18th century, Scottish Enlightenment philosophy spread to the Dutch Republic, where it found a favourable reception. The most popular Scottish philosopher among Dutch intellectuals arguably was James Beattie of Aberdeen. Almost all of his prose works were translated into Dutch, and the Zeeland Society of Sciences elected him a foreign honorary member. It made Beattie remark that he was ‘greatly obliged to the Dutch’, and a Dutch learned journal that he had ‘in a sense become a native’. This article discusses why precisely the Dutch got interested in Beattie and what made his common sense philosophy appealing to a Dutch audience. It argues that it was the moderate and non-speculative nature of Beattie's moral philosophy that fitted well with the eclecticism of the Dutch Enlightenment.