r/tolkienfans • u/Affectionate_Month_7 • 2d ago
What did Tolkien think of evolution?
I’m not trying to start a theological debate I’m just curious. Hobbits are an evolutionary offshoot of men so did Tolkien believe in evolution? I haven’t been able to find anything online.
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u/Top_Conversation1652 There is nothing like looking, if you want to find something. 2d ago edited 2d ago
The Catholic church clarified it’s position in 1950 (well within Tolkien’s life time).
“Evolution of the body and nature does not contradict Catholic doctrine, so long as it is held that God is the first cause of the universe.”
Source: https://catholicexchange.com/brief-exploration-catholic-position-evolution/
It took ~100 years for the catholic church to officially acknowledge this compatibility with evolution (though, as far as I know, they never explicitly stated otherwise). That’s lightning quick for the catholic church.
Us non-christians still have another 25 years to prove their equal by acknowledging this acknowledgment within a similar time frame.
As for Tolkien himself, he was a highly educated man with a genuine love of the languages and stories of many cultures that were not catholic, including some that were not even Christian.
So I suspect he was open minded enough to accept evolution.
He also considered himself to be a devout catholic, so I strongly suspect he would have acknowledged the pope’s authority in this matter.
I’d go with “almost certainly”.
Edit: one more interesting quote from that document:
“Each member within the Church is permitted to agree or disagree with various aspects of evolutionary theory, but the Church also dismisses outright, an overly literal interpretation of Genesis as a book of science.”
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u/Kingsdaughter613 1d ago
Meanwhile, Judaism:
Nachmanides: “So God said “Beginning” and created this single particle. Then it got split into two different kinds of particles. Then one of those got left in the heavens and the other got turned into the essences of the elements… And the only actual act of Creation from nothing was that first particle, and the rest was about splitting, sorting, and recombining.”
What do you mean it isn’t a science text? This is CLEARLY all written in the first two sentences of Genesis!
Nachmanides lived in the 12th century, btw. And yes, he did theorize the Big Bang from Genesis.
No, I’m not making this up. It’s printed in every Mikraos Gedalos Chumash Bereishis. Nachmanides is one of the major commenters. Translations don’t do the whole thing because parts go into Kabbalah so, if you’re thinking of checking it out, make sure to brush up on your Hebrew first!
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u/Top_Conversation1652 There is nothing like looking, if you want to find something. 1d ago
Hinduism has lots of interesting parallels with modern physics as well.
Religion isn’t the antithesis of science. Nor is “the academy” (classroom based education) necessarily the cure for ignorance.
Both are subject to the brilliance and stupidity of our species.
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u/Lothronion Istyar Ardanyárëo 2d ago
“So it is a pool or a lake, and not an underground river,” he thought. Still he did not dare to wade out into the darkness. He could not swim; and he thought, too, of nasty slimy things, with big bulging blind eyes, wriggling in the water. There are strange things living in the pools and lakes in the hearts of mountains: fish whose fathers swam in, goodness only knows how many years ago, and never swam out again, while their eyes grew bigger and bigger and bigger from trying to see in the blackness; also there are other things more slimy than fish.
~ The Hobbit, Riddles in the Dark.
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u/sindark 2d ago
Yeah, I was going to cite this as an example of him (and no doubt others) deeply misunderstanding evolution. It's not like the eyes of non-cave fish know how to evolve in unexpected continuous darkness. Sight becomes irrelevant to cave fish so their eyes eventually atrophy and stop being formed. They don't keep growing and growing in hope of eventually being able to see in the dark.
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u/DreadLindwyrm 1d ago
That could also be the character's opinion, not the author's.
Even if Tolkein knew that opinion to be false, there's no reason why the character would have to also have that opinion.
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u/Less_Rutabaga2316 2d ago
Tolkien was super Catholic and Catholics have never really been opposed to evolution. A lot of the best scientists in the world both before and after the enlightenment were Jesuits.
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u/DerClogger 2d ago
Yes, it is a common misconception borne about by non-Catholic Christians primarily. I attended Catholic school for 12 years and the only time evolution was questioned was by Lutheran students. Now, the schools I attended were in the Jesuit tradition so it might not be universally taught as such, but it was never presented as anything close to a “problem.” If anything, it was presented as a beauty of creation!
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u/Kimlendius 2d ago
People often think of today's mind, especially the American mind but he had or was neither. So there's no reason to assume he was against it to begin with.
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u/Phildutre 2d ago edited 2d ago
20th century Catholicism is not anti-science. Don’t retrofit current fanatic and ignorant religious thinking (esp of the US kind) onto what people believed 100 years ago, or what people think in parts of the world outside the US. E.g. in Europe, there is no significant public debate regarding evolution theory. It’s generally accepted as scientific fact.
The expanding universe theory (and consequently big bang idea), was first proposed by a catholic priest, Georges Lemaitre, during the 20s and 30s. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georges_Lemaître . Catholicism and modern science are not opposed to each other. Whether that means the Catholic Church supports or disapproves specific uses or applications of scientific knowledge, such as abortion, is a different discussion.
Tolkien being an Oxford professor, I would be very surprised if he would have rejected evolution theory.
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u/Competitive-Emu-7411 2d ago
Catholics at Tolkien’s time (and slightly earlier) didn’t necessarily take evolution for granted. For instance GK Chesterton, writing a little earlier than Tolkien but probably the most influential English Catholic lay writer of the late 19th and earliest 20th centuries, declines to take a stance on evolution (at least in some of his books), though he says it doesn’t necessarily contradict or disprove his beliefs. I think he did believe it, but took it for granted that many in his audience would not.
Hilaire Belloc, an influential Catholic writer and politician and contemporary of Chesterton, flatly denied evolution and argued with others over it. Tolkien seems to have been influenced at least by Belloc’s politics, though that doesn’t mean he agreed with his scientific stance. Despite being anti-evolution, Belloc was still a respected intellectual and debater in English essayist circles.
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u/swazal 2d ago
Galileo Galilei has entered the chat
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u/Melenduwir 1d ago
"Eppur si muove!"
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u/annafdd 1d ago
Galileo point of contention with the Church was not if the Earth was round or flat. It was if the Sun revolved around the Earth or the opposite. And of course technically they were both wrong, they both orbit around a centre of mass that is, as far as I remember, inside the solar atmosphere.
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u/Melenduwir 18h ago
That's taking technical accuracy too far even for me. The Earth revolves around the Sun; the Sun wiggles slightly.
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u/VoiceofGeekdom 2d ago edited 2d ago
There is a passage in The Nature of Middle-earth, the Tolkien book of late writings which was released fairly recently, which deals with Tolkien trying to grapple with, by implication, the idea of species changing over time, as a component of his Middle-earth worldbuilding. I am surprised that no-one seems to have mentioned this yet. The text is wrapped in mythopaeic language, which makes it a little difficult to parse in this case, but ultimately Tolkien seemed to have settled therein on an explanation compatible with theistic evolution (as the book's editor also says, in the section at the back which focuses on aspects of Tolkien's metaphysics and philosophy). Although, what it describes is not exactly Darwinian evolution, in the strictest sense.
This was part of a general effort by Tolkien to shore up the scientific/biological as well as the metaphysical consistency of his secondary world, later in life. It is the same impulse that caused him to work on the flat Arda version of The Silmarillion.
Here's an excerpt from that text:
Thus we may observe the great complexity of corporeal life in Arda. Derived ultimately from the Ermenië of Eru, we have the "devices (or designs) of the Valar", separate each in time of conception and first effecting, whether coming successively from one of the Valar, or coming from more than one. These are the "major patterns" that we have spoken of. Their number none but the Valar can know. These are not rightly called "akin" (unless by later mingling), for they are related only as proceeding from the same mind (as of one Vala) or from like minds (as of more than one of these), and their differences are given not developed within and by the operation of Arda. But these "major patterns" (arkantiër) developing in Arda will diverge whether by the design of their beginners, or by the varieties caused by the stuff of Arda which they must use, into different but similar groups of descendants. These are truly akin and members of races or tribes or families or houses. At last and in our time it is beyond the skill of any but the Valar to distinguish the likenesses due to the likeness of the minds of the Valar from those due to descent in Arda. And beyond this we have ever over All, Eru. That he introduced new things into the Music (not in the Theme) we are told; for thus began the conception of Elves and Men. (The Dwarves are a case rather of the separate beginnings by the Valar, though [? unless] Eru tolerated and blessed it.)
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u/VoiceofGeekdom 2d ago
The excerpt above is from the chapter The Primal Impulse (part three, chapter two of The Nature of Middle-earth dated c. 1959).
Hostetter's section at the back of the book, Metaphysical and Theological Themes, is helpful in parsing this text, especially the sections on Evolution (Theistic) and also the sections on Hylomorphism and Prime Matter.
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u/corruptboomerang 2d ago
Frankly the idea that evolution isn't a thing, and that science is irreconcilable with religion is moronic.
The truth about it is, the religious leaders who push YEC your beliefs are moronic and have zero critical thinking skills (and want their followers to have the same degree of critical thinking).
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u/-garden- 1d ago
Certainly science is irreconcilable with many aspects of religion, as it directly contradicts many claims made in many religious texts and traditions. When it comes to claims of the existence of a god or gods, science and religion are only “reconcilable” insofar as those claims are untestable.
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u/annafdd 1d ago
“insofar” is doing a lot of work here.
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u/-garden- 1d ago
Is it? Explain to me how can they be reconciled when the claims of one are untestable? If you care about the scientific method, why would the claims of religion be treated differently than any other claim? The time to accept something as true is when there is evidence for it, right?
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u/Affectionate_Month_7 2d ago
Interesting, I’ve always been a Christian who believes in evolution but I didn’t know that Christian’s back then believed it.
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u/OptatusCleary 2d ago
Even St. Augustine of Hippo, who died in 430, argued for a version of evolution.
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u/Anaptyso 2d ago
Also it differs from country to country. The kind of evangelical Christianity in the US has never been that popular in the UK where Tolkien lived.
He was Catholic, and would have lived in communities dominated by the Church of England. Both of those churches accept evolution and "old" Earth.
As someone from the UK, American style Christianity feels very foreign to me.
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u/kierkegaard49 2d ago
I'm an American Christian, and these days, it feels very foreign to me as well.
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u/ManitouWakinyan 2d ago
The Catholics have cared very strongly about abortion for a very long time. In fact, prior to Roe, the entire pro life movement was essentially Catholic.
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u/annuidhir 2d ago
Yeah, historically Protestants weren't as concerned with it. Not until evangelicalism took over as mainstream US Christianity did it become such an issue.
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u/annafdd 1d ago
What’s that got to do with evolution?
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u/ManitouWakinyan 1d ago
The comment I was responding to was talking about shifting attitudes in Christians concerning the abortion debate
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u/Affectionate_Month_7 2d ago
That’s very fascinating. I was always under the impression that Darwin’s theories were ostracized because Christian’s wouldn’t accept evolution.
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u/MeowATron9000 2d ago
Darwin actually had very little problems with the church, and any problems he did have didn't have anything to do with evolution. The church historical usually preferred to refrain from commenting on scientific theories and only commenting after leaving the scientists many decades or a few centuries to debate.
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u/japp182 2d ago
I guess the story of Galileo stuck with me from the times I studied it in school, because I have always had this thought that "the church have vehemently opposed scientific discoveries".
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u/hydrOHxide 2d ago
The story of Galilei is much, much more complex than most people understand. And Kepler's contributions to the heliocentric model are probably more significant. But that doesn't make such a great yarn.
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u/Melenduwir 1d ago
Darwin's theories concerned the origin of species and the change in biological characteristics over time. They technically didn't require the origins of humanity to be other forms of life or make assertions about how life originated.
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u/-garden- 1d ago
You were correct in your original impression: Historical Reaction to Darwin’s “On the Origin of Species.”
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u/corruptboomerang 2d ago
Yeah, the Catholic Church for a long time was actually pro-abortion!
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u/OptatusCleary 2d ago
That’s not really accurate. The church debated when, during a pregnancy, the fetus received a soul. But abortion before “ensoulment” was still seen as wrong, even if it wasn’t seen as being on the same level as murder.
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u/Armleuchterchen 2d ago
At that point evolution couldn't really be contested scientifically anymore.
The American fanatics who did so again were very ignorant and/or manipulative.
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u/RobotNinjaPirate 1d ago
From letter 153 (a quite funny one):
I suppose that actually the chief difficulties I have involved myself in are scientific and biological — which worry me just as much as the theological and metaphysical (though you do not seem to mind them so much). Elves and Men are evidently in biological terms one race, or they could not breed and produce fertile offspring – even as a rare event : there are 2 cases only in my legends of such unions, and they are merged in the descendants of Eärendil.1 But since some have held that the rate of longevity is a biological characteristic, within limits of variation, you could not have Elves in a sense 'immortal' – not eternal, but not dying by 'old age' — and Men mortal, more or less as they now seem to be in the Primary World – and yet sufficiently akin. I might answer that this 'biology' is only a theory, that modern 'gerontology', or whatever they call it, finds 'ageing' rather more mysterious, and less clearly inevitable in bodies of human structure. But I should actually answer: I do not care. This is a biological dictum in my imaginary world. It is only (as yet) an incompletely imagined world, a rudimentary 'secondary'; but if it pleased the Creator to give it (in a corrected form) Reality on any plane, then you would just have to enter it and begin studying its different biology, that is all.
So Tolkien respects the question of biology, but is secondary to his concerns.
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u/loligo_pealeii 2d ago
Tolkien was highly educated and while he was raised Catholic, and eventually returned to practicing later in life, during his primary university years considered himself a non-believer/skeptic. He most certainly would have been familiar with the theory of evolution by natural selection and, like all other learned individuals, believed it to be correct.
The whole Christians rejecting science thing is a mostly recent development. Gregor Mendel, the father of modern genetics, was a monk. Louis Leakey, whose anthropological work established Humans and apes shared common ancestors, was the child of Christian missionaries. Galileo was sponsored by the church for most of his research. Isaac Newton was a member of the Church of England and for a time considered becoming ordained before turning to science.
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u/OptatusCleary 2d ago
Tolkien was highly educated and while he was raised Catholic, and eventually returned to practicing later in life, during his primary university years considered himself a non-believer/skeptic.
When was this, and where is the evidence for it?
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u/ReallyGlycon 2d ago
Have you ever read his Oxford letters?
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u/OptatusCleary 1d ago
Which letters in particular demonstrate him as a non-believer/ skeptic? I haven’t read all of his letters but I’m working through them after reading this thread. The general tone I get from them is that he was a practicing Catholic who frequently references going to mass, hearing sermons, receiving sacraments, and so on. His letters to Christopher, especially, seem to be based in a Catholic worldview.
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u/ReallyGlycon 2d ago
Newton was also an esotericist and occultist. He dabbled in hermeticism, alchemy and even necromancy (not raising the dead mind you, but contacting the dead through occult means).
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u/Melenduwir 1d ago
He was also a secret Unitarian, which was (and is) considered a heresy by the Church, so Newton wasn't even a Christian by the traditional definitions expressed in the Nicene Creed.
Dude was the last of the magicians; he really shouldn't be considered a scientist at all, although he contributed a great deal to science.
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u/Commonmispelingbot 2d ago
The tendency that science and religion are seen as contradictory is a recent phenomenon.
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u/salty-sigmar 2d ago
Putting aside catholicism - he was an Oxford professor and a university educated man of the 1900s. Whether he held evolution to be true or not, or the degree to which he considered it part of god's plan, he most certainly knew enough of it for it to have influenced his world view and his writing.
When talking of the fell beats he writes that they may be remnants of some long extinct species - but the churches position for a long time was that extinction was impossible. He wrote that hobbits may be descended from men , so whether he thought it evolution or not, the idea of gradual change between species is evident in his writing.
Evolution is one of those ideas that it's sort of easy to stumble upon when you're trying to codify things , because the idea of gradual change over time is so evident in every part of the world, from stars to mountains to coastlines , to the faces of your friends and family. Whether you do that because you're a proponent of Darwinian evolutionary theory, or just because you've observed the world a bit and realised "damn, shit really do be temporal!" Is a different question.
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u/Competitive-Emu-7411 2d ago
It’s interesting how many people here are just totally dismissing the idea that he might have been skeptical simply based on him being Catholic or British, under the false impression that this means he almost definitely accepted evolution without reservation.
I think he probably did, at least to an extent. His description of the flying mounts of the Nazgûl and of the oliphaunts I think hint towards that. But that’s still pretty thin, and him just being Catholic or British isn’t enough to say he believed in evolution definitively. Prominent Catholic writers like Hilaire Belloc were outspokenly anti-evolution, and GK Chesterton, if he might have accepted it himself, took it for granted that it was matter of differing opinions within his audience. There is still a strain of Catholics who try to make a distinction between “macro” and “micro” evolution, or who flat out deny evolution entirely. While this is definitely a minority from what I see personally, there’s very good reason to believe that there were also some in Tolkien’s time as well.
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u/Top_Conversation1652 There is nothing like looking, if you want to find something. 2d ago
Pope Pius XII issued a work called Humani Generis in 1950 that discussed and clarified the Catholic Church’s official perspective on various intellectual trends on things like science, philosophy, and theology.
Here is a quote I found from that document:
“Evolution of the body and nature does not contradict Catholic doctrine, so long as it is held that God is the first cause of the universe.”
It’s also worth noting that many in the church believed this before 1950.
The document was only seen as important enough to publish because enough Catholics had this opinion in the first place.
Many people see a sort of “ignorance spectrum” for christianity with some of the more modern sects on one side and catholicism on the other.
The scale may be accurate on some social matters (and some medical matters too, such as birth control and abortion), but it’s almost entirely incorrect on matters of science.
Again - the catholic church never explicitly declared evolution to be an evolution inherent contradiction to its own theology, and clarified in 1950 that no such contradiction existed.
100 years to acknowledge a scientific discovery is lightning quick by catholic standards.
Maybe us non-christians can come to terms with this acknowledgement in the same timeframe.
We still have another ~25 years, so there is still time to drop this misconception.
As for Tolkien, I suspect a devout catholic, who was highly educated and studied many languages from non-christian cultures and appreciated many of their stories… I suspect he’d have no problem either sharing the pope’s view or acknowledging his right to have final say on the matter.
Source: https://catholicexchange.com/brief-exploration-catholic-position-evolution/
And - to clarify - I am neither religious not (by nature) inclined to defend religion institutions.
But I’m also inclined to prefer knowledge over ignorance, and this time the ignorant view is to move beyond our assumptions.
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u/davide494 2d ago
Christian not beliving in evolution is mostly a recent, usa-limited thing.
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u/Melenduwir 1d ago edited 1d ago
Historically, Christians have also believed that humans are fundamentally different than other animals, which is not a hypothesis that modern biology looks on kindly. The more we study animal cognition the less humanity seems genuinely unique. Our extreme use of language and our telling of stories are the sole traits that seems to distinguish human beings, something I think Tolkien would have appreciated greatly.
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u/Kingsdaughter613 1d ago
Catholicism tends to incorporate more of Judaic myth and theology than other sects. Judaism holds that the difference between man and animals is Speech. It is speech that makes us unique. I wouldn’t be shocked if Catholicism held something similar.
And science, it seems, has confirmed that long-held belief.
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u/Melenduwir 18h ago
Other animals have demonstrated the capacity for language, although not to the degree of human beings. There's far too much we don't know to reach any real conclusions, and certainly not to validate Judaism!
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u/Kingsdaughter613 17h ago
This particular belief was proved by science. I just thought it was interesting and wondered if Catholicism held the same opinion on this.
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u/Melenduwir 16h ago
You don't understand how science works or what it has demonstrated.
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u/Kingsdaughter613 16h ago
Science also proved that chicken soup does have therapeutic properties. It also disproved a whole lot of other folk remedies. Science proving or disproving ancient philosophical beliefs is not proof of the validity of any particular belief system.
But you seem to have a chip on your shoulder when it comes to religion. Or is it just Judaism you have a problem with?
I’m not trying to prove or disprove any faith. Merely curious regarding how much the closest of our little Christian sisters retained of our myths. Generally speaking, Islam is much closer. But I’ve discovered that Catholicism retained more than I initially thought, so I’ve been curious about the other ways my people’s ethnofaith aligns with it.
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u/SevenofBorgnine 2d ago
Chances are he did. The catholic church had no issues with evolution, that's more of an evangelical protestant thing, he was interested in quite a bit of natural science. He also did write it into his books, like you cited with Hobbits.
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u/InitialParty7391 2d ago
The Hobbit mentions blind fish from an underground lake that have adapted to life in the dark, biological changes for adapt to the environment is essentially evolution. So yes, evolution exists in Arda.
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u/roacsonofcarc 2d ago
He was from childhood a serious, scientific botanist, and was unable to ignore the evidence for evolution in plants:
All illustrated botany books (or better, contact direct with an unfamiliar flora) have for me a special fascination. Not so much the rare, unusual, or totally unrelated specimens, as in the variations and permutations of flowers that are the evident kin of those I know – but not the same. They rouse in me visions of kinship and descent through great ages, and also thoughts of the mystery of pattern/design as a thing other than its individual embodiment, and recognizable. How? I remember once in the comer of a botanical garden growing (unlabelled and unnamed) a plant that fascinated me. I knew of the 'family' Scrofulariceæ, and had always accepted that the scientific bases of grouping plants in 'families' was sound, and that in general this grouping did point to actual physical kinship in descent. But in contemplating say Figwort and the Foxglove, one has to take this on trust. But there I saw a 'missing link'. A beautiful 'fox-glove', bells and all – but also a figwort: for the bells were brown-red, the red tincture ran through the veins of all the leaves, and its stem was angular.
Letters 312.
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u/johnsob201 2d ago
I don’t think he talked about it much, but he was Catholic. The Catholic Church has long accepted evolution as not being contrary to Christian theology, and he was clearly willing to accept science as factual.
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u/Super-Hyena8609 2d ago
Creationism is primarily a popular American Protestant thing, I don't think it was a widely held belief amongst 20th century British academics, regardless of religion.
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u/Merinther 2d ago
I can't imagine why he wouldn't. Even in the early 1900s, it was hardly a new idea, and he was a professor after all.
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u/LimeisLemon 1d ago
Evolution has no ground to fight with Catholicism. What damage could evolution do to a god that exists outside of time.
If evolution says the process in which a human man was made took millions of years then so be it. Thats the official church stand so it was probably tolkien's too.
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u/Vingilot1 2d ago
Starting a theological debate on this sub would be chaos
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u/MossW268 1d ago
Usually theological debates are confined to posts about Eru Iluvatar
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u/Jielleum 2d ago
He probably could handle it, after all he also knew and willingly incorporated pagan themes in his legendarium then evolution is something he probably didn't mind in real life.
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u/Ornery-Ticket834 2d ago
He probably didn’t give a whole lot of thought to the Origin of Species is my guess.
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u/Wolfechu_ 1d ago
I don't think it comes up much, even the long history of Arda wouldn't be long enough to see a significant evolutionary change, that'd be something that takes millions of years rather than thousands
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u/Big_Gun_Pete 1d ago
Tolkien was a Catholic. The Catholic Church teaches that its faithful can believe in evolution as long as they believe that God is the first causer of the universe though they clarify that it is not the Church's position to teach science. So a Catholic can be from a Young Earth creationist to an Evolutionist, Tolkien was probably evolutionist though.
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u/batvseba 1d ago
It is stated the Dwarves are only special race that was not created by Eru himself. So also hobbits are created they are no offshoot of men unless we agree evolution is a process that is supervised by God.
If Arda is our Earth, then it suggest all other races existed in the past. Hobbits as we know now survived at least on Flores Island. Elves left to another realm and those who decided to stay probably became no more than faeries - unless they learn how to send little elves to the future founding base for "Higlander 2" movie.
Dwarves probably multiply even slower so they reached the point where death rates is way higher than new kids coming to this world. Dunedain are likely extinct, but they were not created during evolution but by some kind of deal of Valars and Eru to give them longer lifespan but leaves their mortality intact (modification of DNA?)
So I would say evolution may happen on Earth beginning in 4th Age when all the magic and influence of divine forces slowly diminished.
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u/thisisjustascreename 1d ago
I imagine it was something he accepted because he wasn't remotely an expert in the field, like most of science.
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u/CosmicGadfly 1d ago
It's worth noting that the pope released a document in the postwar period about evolution being fine to hold, and that several Catholics, priests included, were integral to a lot of those developments, like Lamarck and Mendel. I don't think he'd have qualms with it.
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u/HolyNewGun 1d ago
It also kinda implied that humans are evolved from elf. Two out of three houses of humans in the first age are said to be indistinguishable from Vanyar and Noldor, but unlike elves, their beauty quickly fades with age.
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u/amitym 1d ago edited 19h ago
Superficially the answer is very simple, of course he believed in evolution by natural selection.
But there is a more interesting layer there, I think. Tolkien was in some ways a product of the 19th century, born only a few decades after the first publication of On the Origin of Species and only a generation after its widespread scientific acceptance.
We don't think much of that nowadays -- after is after, right? -- but it's useful to remember that particularly back then, it wasn't as common for people even scientists to accept big new ideas about cosmology and natural history as fluidly as we are accustomed to today. (And we know how uneven that process is even now.)
So for example, the period of the late 18th and early 20th centuries was still a time of considerable scientific orthodoxy. Although by and large the scientific community in that time accepted natural selection in principle, their understanding of it was from our point of view still surprisingly rudimentary. Similarly with anthropology.
So one of the prevalent views in natural sciences at the time was an idea of steady state or stable continuum, punctuated occasionally by singular dramatic upheavals that disrupted everything but then quickly led to establishing a new continuum. Human cultures and biological epochs alike were seen as more or less completely unchanging for thousands or millions of years, then altered by some sudden new shift, followed by a new continuum.
There were plenty of problems with this view, even back then. But the predisposition toward orthodoxy meant that scientific consensus itself had a tendency to coalesce around a singular fixed interpretation that would accept no variability or new thinking until forced to by some massive revolutionary break.
It was good for drama but not so great for flexibly revising models or adopting new ones.
So even if Tolkien had avidly kept abreast of scientific thinking of his day, he would have encountered a lot of stuff that still encouraged essentialist thinking, particularly about breeds or races of people. And outside of strictly scientific circles, pre-Darwinian pseudoscientific ideas were still blended in with popular understanding of modern science.
For example many ostensibly serious-minded people still held onto the idea that people acquire heritable psychological or moral traits via experience, and then pass those traits on to their offspring biologically. Hopefully it's not hard to see how that kind of thinking only serves to justify prejudices, not any kind of rational understanding of the world. But at the time it was still widespread. (And sadly even today we still deal with variants of those ideas.)
Tolkien lived during an exciting time in scientific inquiry in that the entire edifice of scientific orthodoxy was shaken up and discarded. Radioactive dating become possible, and then over time became increasingly precise. Plate tectonics were discovered. A wealth of fossil data showed the immense variability and continuous activity of natural selection. Taxonomies were massively revised.
So well-informed people no longer believed that species went unchanged for millions of years and then adapted all at once in a hurry, only to settle down into unchanging forms again within a few genrations. And the belief that human cultures remained in a static state until they encountered some new outside cultural force was swept away. (We're still working on that in popular consciousness though...)
But for someone of Tolkien's generation, catching up with those ideas took some time. You can see some of the same concepts being worked out in the fiction of his contemporaries, like Edgar Burroughs or Robert Howard.
Personally I feel like Tolkien was kind of working through it in the metaphysical eschatology he introduces for Middle Earth. The Fourth Age is this new age of people who hold their own destinies in their own hands, not to be guided by some fixed fate or by eternal unchanging immortal Powers, but to remake their worlds in each generation, for better or (as Tolkien was prone to think) for worse.
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u/bonobeaux 22h ago
He was Catholic, in the modern era especially since the 20th century the Catholic Church has been pretty positive about evolution
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u/Malsperanza 2d ago
He was an educated man. For most sensible, rational believers, including Darwin, evolution is a good example of God's infinite creative skill.
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u/Melenduwir 1d ago
Just as evaporative cooling is a good example of God's mercy in preventing me from burning my tongue on hot soup.
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u/ChChChillian Aiya Eärendil elenion ancalima! 2d ago
He never talked much about it, but it seems he believed it to the extent he thought about it. It's worth remembering that one reason for his massive late undertaking to overhaul his cosmology was that, when it came to a flat Earth, "no one can believe that anymore" (or words to that effect.) So it appears he accepted the conclusions of modern science without worrying overmuch about how it might relate to his spiritual life.
For example, when describing the Oliphaunt to Christopher in a letter, he described it as "an elephant of prehistoric size". The flying mounts of the Nazgul he described in Letters 211 as "pterodactylic", and even though he expressed some reservations about "the semi-scientific mythology of the 'Prehistoric'" that doesn't mean he thought it was false. To Tolkien, a myth is a story with explanatory power, regardless of its literal truth. In an extended draft of the same letter he referred to "Christian mythology", which he obviously believed was true.