Darwin’s Day: 4 Snapshots from the Evolution of Evolution

2: A Visionary with an Evolutionary Blind Spot

Already a renowned scientist, Darwin knew he had to carefully hone his explosive theories–and as importantly, his defenses of them–to the last detail. The opprobrium heaped upon the hugely popular and much-vilified Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation, which was published fifteen years before Of the Origin of Species, inspired Darwin to redouble his efforts to study the fine nuances of natural selection.

But what Darwin didn’t have to establish was the fact of extinction. Ironically, the man responsible for the rapid acceptance of extinction theory was also an implacable foe of the idea of evolution: Georges Cuvier.

Known as the father of paleontology, Cuvier was not in fact a conventional Christian. Indeed, when Napoleon’s conquests brought him a trove of fossilized booty, the scientist in Cuvier was able to look past conventional Christian doctrine to recognize that he was looking at the remains of animals which no longer roamed the earth.

Until then, the idea that God’s creatures could vanish from His creation was unthinkable. But the concept of transmutation–as it was known in France–was equally inconceivable to Cuvier. This visionary founder of extinction theory couldn’t allow himself to see beyond his own ingrained biases.

Read more: Glimpsing Truth through the Blinders of Religion.