Erich Wasmann, SJ, was born in 1859, in Tyrol, Austria, the same year Charles Darwin published his seminal work, “On the Origin of Species.” Wasmann is renowned for his efforts to reconcile the Catholic faith with Darwin’s theory of evolution, advocating the idea that the two were compatible.
In 1883, Wasmann was asked to contribute articles on eusocial insects to the Jesuit periodical “Stimmen aus Maria Laach,” later called “Stimmen der Zeit”. In 1884, he began studying ants, both in their natural habitat and by constructing artificial ant colonies. Over his lifetime (he died in 1931), Wasmann assembled a unique collection comprising over 1,000 ant species, 200 termite species, and 2,000 species of myrmecophiles, ultimately describing 933 new species.
Wasmann accepted the theory of evolution within certain limits, specifically in the context of human origins: the human body may be the subject of evolution, but the soul, as a “divine spark” created directly by God, is constitutive to our nature. However, his ideas were not universally accepted. The prominent biologist Ernst Haeckel took issue with Wasmann’s compatibilist views on the theory of evolution and the Christian faith. As part of his intense battles with proponents of Christian belief, Haeckel gave three lectures that directly addressed Erich Wasmann, seeing in his person and work an attack on his own monistic ideas about the theory of evolution. In continuation, Wasmann was invited in 1907 to a lecture series in Berlin, which made him known not only in German-speaking communities but well beyond.
On this occasion, he used the term “theistic evolution”. The German expression “theistische Entwicklungslehre” was translated in the 1910 English version as “theistic doctrine of evolution,” but “theistic evolution” is a more accurate translation. (In theological usage, “Lehre” can mean authoritative “doctrine,” but in science it simply means “teaching.” So that “Entwicklungslehre” was the term for evolution in use at that time, in the same way that “Wärme-lehre” or “teaching on heat” is used for thermodynamics.)
This is a brief summary. Read more in my article “Fr. Erich Wasmann, SJ: Ants, Evolution and the Catholic Faith”, published in November 2021, on the website of the Society of Catholic Scientists.
Science meets Faith 