Ian Ramsey Centre
for science and religion in the University of Oxford

The scientific pattern described by Darwin in his Origin of Species , grounded itself on a specifical philosophical background. The philosophical root of Darwin's vision was indeed represented by Positivism. We can describe the contemporary oppositions to Darwin's scientific pattern, as a deep crisis of the theoretical model of Positivism.

With a different sight on life-evolution question the essential scientific fault of Positivist Philosophy is today indicated in the rejection of Mystery as a part of reality (a fundamental cultural heritage of Medieval philosophy). This “fault” is assumed in Darwin's conception, through an oversimplification of the complex structure of life-development.

As many scientist with an initial Darwinian setting acknowledge today, a Positivistic pattern is not applicable for a scientific life-evolution theory. As we can observed through an analytic examination of the work Origin of Species , the principal philosophical problems of this essay (first of all, the question of “transitional species”) are not unfolded by the author.

The first section of the present paper intends to examines the philosophical roots of Origin of Species , in order to show the various unresolved question in the book, and the consequent weakness of Positivistic scientific pattern. The second section intends to show the possible agreement between a Medieval Philosophical perspective (rejected by Positivism) and the idea of “evolution”. Specifically, I intend to take in exam the concept of “life-evolution” in Christian Neo-Platonism of Middle Age, as a philosophical response to Darwinism.