Darwin Contemplates a Revolution · revolution in natural history.” —Charles Darwin, Origin of...

“When the views entertained in this volume on the origin of species, or

when analogous views are generally admitted, we can dimly foresee that

there will be a considerable revolution in natural history.”

—Charles Darwin, Origin of Species

Darwin Contemplates a Revolution

A very popular

portrait of Darwin

James Watson asked his sister type of the manuscript of his and Crick’s famous 1953 paper announcing the discovery of the double helix. “We told her that she was participating in perhaps the most famous event in biology since Darwin’s book.”

“Picked it up at Waterloo Station. It’s by this bloke named Darwin. Something about pigeons, apparently.”

A Prediction Becomes (Sadly) True

“I shall get more kicks than half-

pennies”

“I have lately had many ‘more kicks than half-

pence’”—Charles Darwin to Joseph Hooker

10 September 1845— Charles Darwin to Asa Gray

8 June 1860

Hooker Darwin Gray

“If I did not think you a good tempered & truth loving man I should not tell you that, (spite of the great knowledge; store of facts; capital views of the correlation of the various parts of organic nature; admirable hints about the diffusions, thro’wide regions, of nearly related organic beings; &c &c) I have read your book with more pain than pleasure. Parts of it I admired greatly; parts I laughed at till my sides were almost sore; other parts I read with absolute sorrow; because I think them utterly false & grievously mischievous”

— Adam Sedgwick to Charles Darwin, 24 November 1859

Darwin “is doing admirable work in South America, and has already sent home a collection above all price. … If God spares his life he will have a great name among the Naturalists of Europe.”

—Adam Sedgwick to Samuel Butler, 7 November 1835

“I can perfectly understand Sedgwick or any one saying that nat. selection does not explain large classes of facts; but that is very different from saying that I depart from right principles of scientific investigation.”

— Charles Darwin to John Stevens Henslow, 8 May 1860

RichardOwen

Richard Owen attacks

Darwin’s credibility as a

naturalistEdinburgh Review

April 1860vol. 111, pp. 487-532

Darwin was not among those

naturalists “who trouble the

intellectual world little with their

beliefs, but enrich it greatly with their proofs.”

Charles Darwin and the Rule of Law:

“We can allow satellites, planets, suns, universe, nay

whole systems of universe[s], to be governed

by laws, but the smallest insect, we wish to be created

at once by special agent.”

“With respect to the theological view of the question; this is always painful to me.—I am bewildered.—I had no intention to write atheistically. But I own that I cannot see, as plainly as others do, & as I shd wish to do, evidence of design & beneficence on all sides of us. There seems to me too much misery in the world. I cannot persuade myself that a beneficent & omnipotent God would have designedly created the Ichneumonidæ with the express intention of their feeding within the living bodies of caterpillars, or that a cat should play with mice. Not believing this, I see no necessity in the belief that the eye was expressly designed. On the other hand I cannot anyhow be contented to view this wonderful universe & especially the nature of man, & to conclude that everything is the result of brute force. I am inclined to look at everything as resulting from designed laws, with the details, whether good or bad, left to the working out what we may call chance. Not that this notion at all satisfies me. I feel most deeply that the whole subject is too profound for human intellect. A dog might as well speculate on the mind of Newton.—Let each man hope & believe what he can.—”

Charles Darwin to Asa Gray22 May 1860

“The Darwinian hypothesis ... is

clamorously rejected by the conservative minds, because it is

thought to be revolutionary, and not less eagerly accepted by insurgent minds, because it is thought

destructive of old doctrines.”

—George Henry Lewes

Charles Darwin

On the Various Contrivances by

Which British and Foreign Orchids Are Fertilised by Insects,

and on the Good Effect of Intercrossing

First edition published by John Murray, 15 May 1862

“No one else has perceived that my chief interest in my orchid book, has been that it was a ‘flank movement’ on the enemy.”

— Charles Darwin to Asa Gray, 23-4 July 1862

Reading Orchids “would dispel many notions which had been wrongly entertained with regard to the tendency of [Darwin’s] writings.”

“Even its most determined opponents ought to entertain an indulgent feeling towards a theory which has guided its author into a train of discoveries, both as to the vegetable and animal kingdom, any one of which would be sufficient to establish the reputation of an ordinary observer.”

Charles Daubeny, Professor of Botany at the University of Oxfordand skeptic of evolution, on Charles Darwin’s botanical research:

Oxford Museum in the 1860s

Darwin’s Young Cavalry

Fritz Müller (b. 1822)Lydia Becker (b.1827)

Johann Müller (b. 1828)Daniel Oliver (b. 1830)

Alfred William Bennett (b. 1833)Federico Delpino (b. 1833)

George Henslow (b. 1835)Friedrich Hildebrand (b. 1835)

John Scott (b. 1836)John Moggridge (b. 1842)Roland Trimen (b. 1843)Severin Axell (b. 1843)

Darwin to Hooker 14 November 1859

“We shall soon be a good body of working men & shall have, I am convinced, all young & rising naturalists on our side.”

1863

“I do not believe there are above half-a-dozen real down-right believers in modification of Species in all England: certainly not more, who dare speak out.”

Charles Darwin to Joseph Hooker9 May 1863

1868

“This now almost universalbelief on the evolution (somehow) of species I think may be fairly attributed in large part to the ‘Origin.’”

Charles Darwin to Joseph Hooker28 July 1868

A Qualified Victory“This now almost universal belief on the evolution (somehow) of species I think may be fairly attributed in large part to the ‘Origin.’” Charles Darwin to Joseph Hooker, 28 July 1868

“At the present day almost all naturalists admit evolution under some form.” Charles Darwin, Origin of Species(6th ed.; 1872), p. 201

Karl Ernst von Baer (1792-1876)

Biology, Blind Forces and DevelopmentI too am convinced that everything that exists and continues to exist in nature

arose and will continue to arise through natural forces and material substances.

But these natural forces must be coordinated or directed. Forces which

are not directed – so-called blind forces –can never, as far as I can see, produce

order.

Above all we must combat Darwin’s view that the entire history of

organisms is only the success of material influences rather than a

development.

“Absolutely no human reason …can hope to understand the production of even a blade of grass by mere mechanical causes.”—Immanuel Kant

Teleology / n. Explanation of phenomena by the purpose they serve.

Charles Darwin’s Funeral in Westminster Abbey

Reverend Henry Parry Liddon

“When Professor Darwin’s books on the ‘Origin of Species’ and on the ‘Descent of Man’ first appeared they were largely regarded by religious men as containing a theory necessarily hostile to religion. A closer study had greatly modified any such impression.”

Rev. Henry Parry Liddon

The Church of England Makes Its Peace With Evolution

The Persistence in Biology of …

Teleology God

“There cannot be design without a designer; contrivance without a contriver; order without choice; arrangement, without anything capable of arranging; sub-serviency and relation to a purpose, without that which could intend a purpose; … Arrange-ment, disposition of parts, subserviency of means to an end, relation of instrument to use, imply the presence of intelligence and mind.”

—William Paley

“Absolutely no human reason … can hope to understand the production of even a blade of grass by mere mechanical causes.”

—Immanuel Kant

Francis Galton

(1822-1911)

“Eugenics” =Good Breeding