Darwin teleologist? Design in the Orchids

Abstract

Focusing on "The Orchids," this article aims at disentangling the concepts of teleology, design and natural theology. It refers to several contemporary critics of Darwin (Kölliker, Argyll, Royer, Candolle, Delpino) to challenge Huxley's interpretation that Darwin's system was "a deathblow" to teleology. "The Orchids" seems rather to be a "flank-movement" (Gray): it departs from the Romantic theories of transmutation and the "imaginary examples" of the Origin; it focuses on empirical data and on teleological structures. Although Darwin refers to natural selection, his readers mock him for his fascination for delicate morphological contrivances and co-adaptations - a sign that he was inescapably lured to finality. Some even suggested that his system was a "theodicy". In the history of Darwinism, "The Orchids" reveals "another" quite unexpected and heterodox Darwin: freed from the hypothetical fancies of the Origin, and even suggesting a new kind of physico-theology.

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