Winterton Curtis and the spirit of science

The Spring 2020 semester of Pandemic University is approaching its final weeks. This week in both CoPhi and A&P we've been concerned with Darwin and evolution (and Michael Ruse's "Darwinian Existentialism"), among other things. That, and the pending recurrence of my summer MALA course "Evolution in America," gives me all the pretext I need to return to the subject of my oft-mentioned "first landlord," one Winterton C. Curtis.



At our first meeting I'll probably mention for the first but not the last time my personal connection to evolution in America, the gentleman I call my first landlord, Dr. Winterton C. Curtis of the University of Missouri. He was in Dayton in the summer of '25 (though not allowed to testify, like all the other scientific witnesses on hand), I was in his home in the late '50's, he was in my home pulling dollar bills "from my ear" in the mid-'60s... My late father Dr. James C. Oliver (MU, DVM '60), in other respects the opposite of a mystic, was convinced that Dr. C. somehow implanted in me my lifelong fascination with evolution. I don't know about that, but I do know that Dr. C.'s neglected classic Science and Human Affairs From the Viewpoint of Biology (1922) is a real gem. I particularly like his thoughts on "the humanistic philosophy of life"...

Dr. Curtis wrote, in 1921,

The humanistic philosophy of life, which flowered in Greece and which has blossomed again, is not the crude materialistic desire to eat, drink, and be merry.  It is a spiritual joy in living and a confidence in the future, which makes this life a thing worthwhile. The otherworldliness of the Middle Ages does not satisfy the spiritual demands of modern times. Science and Human Affairs From the Viewpoint of Biology

Of the Scopes Trial itself, he wrote of the 1925 Dayton Tennessee spectacle:

The courtroom audience impressed me as honest country folk in jeans and calico. “Boobs" perhaps, as judged by Mencken, and holding all the prejudices of backwoods Christian orthodoxy, but nevertheless a significant section of the backbone of democracy in the U.S.A. They came to see their idol “the Great Commoner” and champion of the people meet the challenge to their faith. They left bewildered but with their beliefs unchanged despite the manhandling of their idol by the “Infidel” from Chicago.... A Defense Expert's Impressions of the Scopes Trial from D-Days at Dayton: Fundamentalism vs Evolution at Dayton, Tennessee by Winterton C. Curtis (1956)

And Curtis wrote:

Young New Englander Comes To Little Dixie Area in 1901 "In May of 1901, after I had completed all the requirements except my oral examination, for my doctor's degree at the Johns Hopkins, I received a letter from Professor George Lefevre, of the University of Missouri. We had taught together at the Marine Biological Laboratory before he went to Missouri in the fall of '99, and now he was writing me about an instructor being added to his staff. He invited me to visit Columbia at the University's expense, so that I might be looked over and look the place over for myself. With my Van Dyke beard and pince-nez, I thought I would make a good impression and hoped that I should like the University of Missouri as much as I liked Lefevre..." (continues, A Damned-Yankee Professor in Little Dixie: abstract from the autobiographical notes of Winterton C. Curtis:Winterton C. Curtis (1957)... Damned Yankee in Columbia... Westmount... Westmount pic 2017 (504, formerly 210)

Here's a slideshow of last year's Dayton MALA fieldtrip...

Winterton Curtis anticipated "everybody's story" and Daniel Dennett's Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon when he wrote that "religion of whatever sort is a product of human evolution..."

And in saying that "science feeds the spiritual as well as the material man," (312) Curtis anticipated Carl Sagan's cosmic spirituality-his sense (as summarized by Ann Druyan) that "Darwin's insight that life evolved over the eons through natural selection was not just better science than Genesis, it also afforded a deeper, more satisfying spiritual experience." (Carl Sagan, The Varieties of Scientific Experience: A Personal View of the Search for God)

How gratified Carl Sagan would be, to read his daughter Sasha's new book exploring the meanings implicit in our natural evolutionary heritage. For Small Creatures Such as We: Rituals for Finding Meaning in Our Unlikely World is a lovely example of secular spirituality. 

“Growing up in our home, there was no conflict between science and spirituality. My parents taught me that nature as revealed by science was a source of great, stirring pleasure. Logic, evidence, and proof did not detract from the feeling that something was transcendent—quite the opposite. It was the source of its magnificence.” 

“Days and weeks go by and the regularity of existing eclipses the miraculousness of it. But there are certain moments when we manage to be viscerally aware of being alive. Sometimes those are terrifying moments, like narrowly avoiding a car accident. Sometimes they are beautiful, like holding your newborn in your arms. And then there are the quiet moments in between when all the joy and sorrow seem profound only to you.”

― Sasha Sagan, For Small Creatures Such as We: Rituals for Finding Meaning in Our Unlikely World g'r

Above all, this secular and thoroughly naturalized form of spirituality insists, human meaning is an achievement. As Sasha's Dad used to say, if you want life to mean something, don't just sit there; do something meaningful. Make a difference.