Jacques Barzun on Science, Facts, and Darwin’s Influence

Jacques Martin Barzun (born November 30, 1907) is a French-born American historian of ideas and culture. He has written on a wide range of topics, but is perhaps best known as a philosopher of education, his Teacher in America (1945) being a strong influence on post-WWII training of schoolteachers in the United States. In 2000 he wrote his popular book From Dawn to Decadence: 500 Years of Western Cultural Life, 1500 to the Present.

In 1941 he wrote Darwin, Marx, Wagner: Critique of a Heritage. Below are a few worthwhile quotes from the book:

On Science:

Science as a Delphic oracle exists only in the popular imagination and the silent assumptions of certain scientists. At any given time there are only searchers who agree or disagree. The March of Science is not an orderly army or parade, but rather a land rush for the free spaces ahead. This means a degree of anarchy. Besides, fogeyism, faddism, love of stability, self-seeking, personal likes and dislikes, and all other infirmities of mind, play as decisive a part in science as in any other cultural enterprise.

—Darwin, Marx, Wagner, Jacques Barzun, p. 336

Natural Selection and Divine Providence According to St. Nikolai Velimirovich

How the Sheep Survived

By St. Nikolai Velimirovich

When we think about Darwin’s theory, we often wonder how the sheep managed to survive. Darwin maintains that in the “harsh struggle for survival” over long periods of time only those animals survived that were stronger and more agile than their neighbors, while the weaker and the less skillful disappeared. Having listened carefully to this theory, we ask ourselves: how did the sheep manage to survive? How did it happen that they were not completely exterminated by their mortal enemies – the wolves? After all, a she-wolf produces a litter of five or six cubs every year, while in the same period of time a ewe produces one single lamb. So every year there are five against one.