Romuald Swierzbieński’s two critiques of the theory of evolution

After Charles Darwin published On the Origin of Species, a lot of people started to be uncertain whether the proposed theory of evolution is compatible with their religious beliefs. It is, therefore, hardly surprising that in the second part of the 19th century we see quite a big number of scientists choose some radical solutions such as becoming a monist or an atheist.

On the other hand, there are people who reject the new biological theory in favour of tradition and some archetypical picture of the world with a human as the crowning achievement of God’s creation. In 1871 the Polish doctor of medicine, Romuald Swierzbieński, published the work Do humans originate from apes? in which he strongly criticised the theory of evolution. Two years later, in 1873, he continued his attack but in a more polite and methodologically correct tone in the work How much truth is there in Darwin’s work ‘On the Origin of Species’?

In our paper we will analyze and comment on both works of Romuald Swierzbieński. We will also present a hypothesis that there is a noticeable evolution in his criticism. As in his first publication, he mainly used anthropocentric world-view arguments, whereas in the second he preferred to refer to contemporary knowledge from biology and geology. We could even say that he turned from irrational philosophy to methodological naturalism. However, a particular argument can be found in both works. According to it, if a theory could not explain some facts, it means that it is wrong and therefore the opposite theory is better.

Keywords: evolutionary theory, science and religion, Romuald Swierzbieński, Charles Darwin, Ernst Haeckel, methodological naturalism