Oscar Riddle
From Philosopedia
Riddle, Oscar (27 September 1877 - 29 November 1968)
Riddle was a biologist and author of a major work on the conflict of science and religion, The Unleashing of Evolutionary Thought (1954).
He earned his doctorate at the University of Chicago in 1907, then taught biology and physiology in Puerto Rico and Saint Louis, Missouri, and zoology at the University of Chicago. He conducted research in the fields of evolution, natural history, endocrinology, and reproduction in the United States and Europe and participated in natural history expeditions in Cuba and up the Orinoco River in South America.
Riddle was a distinguished member of biological societies in England, France, India, South America, and the United States. in 1932 he and his coworkers were the first to isolate the "pregnancy hormone" prolactin which, due to the difficulty of distinguishing and separating it from growth hormone, wasn't fully isolated until 1971. The next year he earned a degree in law. During the New York World's Fair in 1939 Riddle, a leader in the popularization effort among biologists, openly condemned the fair's commercialism and neglect of serious science. He made the cover of Time magazine that same year.
As a member of the staff of the Carnegie Institution Station for Experimental Evolution, Riddle wrote extensively, contributing papers on the physiology and chemical bases of sex, heredity, and endocrinology. He won many honors, including two first prizes in 1955 for his book, Unleashing the Evolutionary Thought. The American Humanist Association named him Humanist of the Year in 1958.
Riddle was president of the American Rationalist Federation in 1959 and 1960. In his later years he lived in Florida where he died in 1968 at the age of ninety-one. Riddle is recognized today not only for his scientific accomplishments but also for his conviction that religion poses a serious threat to scientific advancements - a conviction that is particularly relevant to controversies raging today.
Asked about humanism, Riddle replied to Warren Allen Smith:
- After fifty years spent in biological research I can have no doubt that this research, above all else, led to the naturalistic humanism described below.
- Naturalistic humanism sees the truly admirable in the already attained form and functioning of the human being; and finds the truly hopeful in the near certainty that the same or like impulses to growth or change will persist indefinitely. It seeks perfection and absolutes neither in humankind nor elsewhere in a universe of flow and flux. It rejects the view that all ages are alike in fortune or other respects, though it grants that crucial problems of personal and mental freedom have faced man in every age. Man’s severest tests probably lie ahead.
- The changing framework and essence of society—above all else that exists—are surely, solely, and securely in human hands. In this newest and most involved sphere of reality neither the inevitable nor the Providential can intrude. Here—in emerging majesty well mixed with latent cruelty and bulging desire—man is both builder and creator.
- This form of humanism can come only as a halting, step-wise growth to each person that acquires it. Its roots seem to rest in inquiry, atheism, and experience; its purely personal fruits clearly range from the calms of comprehension to the revels of the mind. Eventually it puts leadership above instinct, logic and test above too-free emotion, and fellowship above faith. It channels the prized distillates of human brains toward undivided service to human beings.
