St. George Jackson Mivart

St. George Jackson Mivart (30 November 1827 – 1 April 1900) was an English biologist. He is famous for starting as an ardent believer in natural selection and later becoming one of its fiercest critics. Mivart attempted to reconcile the theory of evolution as propounded by Charles Darwin with the beliefs of the Catholic Church but was condemned by both Darwin and the Church (although his condemnation by the Church was not because of his scientific ideas, but due to his theological ones). His belief in a soul created by God and insistence that evolutionism was not incompatible with the existence of such a God brought him into conflict with other evolutionists, while his theological theories on hell led him to clash with the Church.

Early life Mivart was born in London. His parents were Evangelicals, and his father was the wealthy owner of Mivart's Hotel (now Claridge's). His education started at the Clapham Grammar School and continued at Harrow School and King's College London. Following his conversion to Catholicism, he was instructed at St. Mary's, Oscott (1844–1846), and was confirmed there on 11 May 1845. His conversion automatically excluded him from the University of Oxford, then open only to members of the Anglican faith. His mother followed him into the Catholic Church in 1846.

Appointments

In 1851 he was called to the bar at Lincoln's Inn, but he devoted himself to medical and biological studies. In 1862 he was appointed to the chair in zoology at St. Mary's Hospital medical school. In 1869 he became a fellow of the Zoological Society of London, and in 1874 he was appointed by Thomas John Capel as Professor of Biology at the short-lived Catholic University College, Kensington, a post he held until 1877.

He was vice-president of the Zoological Society twice (1869 and 1882); Fellow of the Linnean Society from 1862, secretary from 1874 to 1880, and vice-president in 1892. In 1867 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society for his work "On the Appendicular skeleton of the Primates". This work was communicated to the society by Thomas Henry Huxley. Mivart was a member of the Metaphysical Society from 1874. He received the degrees of Doctor of Philosophy from Pope Pius IX in 1876, and of Doctor of Medicine from the University of Louvain in 1884.

Controversy Mivart and Huxley Mivart met Thomas Henry Huxley in 1859, and was initially a close follower and a believer in natural selection. "Even as a professor he continued to attending Huxley's lectures ... they became close friends, dining together and arranging family visits." Huxley, Ray Lankester, and William Henry Flower had come out against his ideas, although O'Leary (2007) reports that "their initial reaction to Genesis of Species was tolerant and impersonal".

Though admitting evolution in general, Mivart denied its applicability to the human intellect (a view also taken by Alfred Russell Wallace). His views as to the relationship between human nature and intellect and animal nature in general were given in his books Nature and Thought and Origin of Human Reason.

Mivart was someone Charles Darwin took seriously; Darwin prepared a point-by-point refutation which appeared in the sixth edition of Origin of Species. One of Mivart's criticisms to which Darwin responded was a perceived failure of natural selection to explain the incipient stages of useful structures. Taking the eye as an example, Darwin was able to show many stages of light sensitivity and eye development in the animal kingdom as proof of the utility of less-than-perfect sight (argument by intermediate stages). Another was the supposed inability of natural selection to explain cases of parallel evolution, to which Huxley responded that the effect of natural selection in places with the same environment would tend to be similar.

Mivart's hostile review of the Descent of Man in the Quarterly Review aroused fury from his former intimates, including Darwin himself, who described it as "grossly unfair". Mivart had quoted Darwin by shortening sentences and omitting words, causing Darwin to write: "Though he means to be honourable, he is so bigoted that he cannot act fairly." Relationships between the two men were near breaking point. In response, Darwin arranged for the reprinting of a pamphlet by Chauncey Wright, previously issued in the US, which severely criticised Genesis of Species. Wright had, under Darwin's guidance, clarified what was, and was not, "Darwinism". Huxley blackballed Mivart's attempt to join the Athenaeum Club. Mivart proposed that the punishments of hell were not eternal, and that hell is compatible with some kind of happiness.

These articles were placed on the Index Expurgatorius. This was the first official action of the Catholic Church against Mivart but it "had nothing to do either with evolution or science". His remains were finally transferred to St. Mary's Catholic Cemetery, Kensal Green, on 16 January 1904, for burial there on 18 January 1904.

Legacy Mivart's name is commemorated in the scientific name of a species of lizard, Emoia mivarti.