ption of change in nature inevitably diminished reliance on a world determined by supernatural design. A theory of evolution through natural selection not only discredits the idea of a special act of creation, it undermines the concept that the world exists and moves with respect to a "divine plan." The absence of purposeis precisely what separates the Darwinian concept of evolution from the vitalistic notions that competed with it in the scientific realm and from the spiritualistic notions set against it in the religious realm.
The theory of evolution through natural selection is a mechanistic theory. It describes the interaction of components within a given domain assigning none of those components an exclusively causal role. Mechanistic explanation has become the familiar form of twentieth century science, but in 1859 and for years afterward scientific mechanism had not arrived at the state of predominance that it enjoys at present. Because of their spiritual and intellectual commitments many observers at that time still clung to spiritu
...