As arrogant as I may be in general, I am not sufficiently doltish or vainglorious to imagine that I can meaningfully address the deep philosophical q… - Stephen Jay Gould

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As arrogant as I may be in general, I am not sufficiently doltish or vainglorious to imagine that I can meaningfully address the deep philosophical questions embedded within this general inquiry of our intellectual ages — that is, fruitful modes of analysis for the history of human thought. I shall therefore take refuge in an escape route that has traditionally been granted to scientists: the liberty to act as a practical philistine. Instead of suggesting a principled and general solution, I shall ask whether I can specify an operational way to define “Darwinism” (and other intellectual entities) in a manner specific enough to win shared agreement and understanding among readers, but broad enough to avoid the doctrinal quarrels about membership and allegiance that always seem to arise when we define intellectual commitments as pledges of fealty to lists of dogmata (not to mention initiation rites, secret handshakes and membership cards — in short, the intellectual paraphernalia that led Karl Marx to make his famous comment to a French journalist: “je ne suis pas marxiste”).