On his return to England, all the facts and specimens he had accumulated on the Beagle began to contribute to a beautiful theory. In 1837, Darwin was drawn to London, where there was a ferment of intellectual change. The natural sciences had become increasingly politica
l following the repercussions of the French Revolution, and in some quarters there was a desire to overthrow organised religion. That same year, Darwin drew a small sketch of an evolutionary tree, in which all the myriad species on Earth descended from a common ancestor. According to his theory, not only were all humans connected but also animal species in general, as evidenced for Darwin by the foetus of a fin whale being similar to a human foetus. At last came the major breakthrough and this idea went on to form the grammar of modern biology. Natural selection relates to the differences that organisms inherit, and how these play a role in the organism’s chances of reproduction and survival. In addition, this idea of the unity and interconnectedness of life, especially human life, had huge racial implications and was crucial to the anti-slavery and equality movement.
Sadly, Darwin also began to have palpitations in 1837 and this was the start of a lifetime of illness. However, on a positive note that same year he hooked up with his cousin Emma Wedgwood and, after meticulously weighing up all the pros and cons of marriage, he was finally persuaded by the idea of a “nice soft wife on a sofa”. So, in 1839, he finally bit the bullet and married, immediately starting a family (he would have 10 children in total) and found a cocoon in Down House in Kent. At this time, he also became a fellow of the Royal Society, published his Beagle journals, which found a wide audience, and finished his transmutation notebooks. But why did he wait so long (until 1859) to publish the Origin of Species? Not only did Darwin prefer to accumulate facts, but he also had his respectability and family to defend. He told his father, brother and wife, causing much upset to the latter, and this family problem was almost like a microcosm of the shock and unrest the theory of evolution would cause in wider society.
In that era, London was the Silicon Valley of gentlemanly science. Darwin belonged to several clubs, including the Linnaen society, where he read “Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation” in 1844, a book that shocked Victorian society. In the same year Darwin completed his first draft of On the Origin of Species, but waited and used Vestiges as an example of what not to write, especially avoiding the polemic on the origins of the universe; he disliked any form of supposition and instead concentrated on accumulating facts. Astonishingly, Darwin spent 8 of the interim years between the first draft (1844) and final publication (1859) of On the Origin of Species studying barnacles, amassing more evidence for his key evolutionary theory of descent from a common ancestor. These books remain the authority on barnacles today, even if they are spectacularly boring.
Only when fellow naturalist, Alfred Russell Wallace, began sending papers to Darwin at Down House, including one sent in 1858 on the indefinite divergence of species, was Darwin’s hand forced. In July 1858, separate papers by both Darwin and Wallace were read at the Linnaen society, however their initial reception was muted. A year later, On the Origin of Species was published. The book was a sensation, with the First Edition sold out in a day, thanks in part to its controversial subject matter. Soon after came the Oxford debate in 1860, when Darwin’s bulldog Thomas Huxley attacked Bishop Wilberforce in his own diocese, although Huxley was too angry to have the poise to clearly win the debate. However, this was a watershed moment marking a new confidence among Darwinists to stand up against the established Church.
Despite all the controversy, man is not mentioned in any detail in On the Origin of Species. Instead, Darwin preferred to just present his arguments and facts, and allowed readers to make their own conclusions about the implications. At that time, there were also no human fossil records, so Darwin would not have had the solid, scientific basis to make such assertions. As he says in his correspondence, “my mind is like a machine for grinding general laws out of collections of facts”, with no room for supposition. As a pure scientist, Darwin did not share the view that the Origin was a textbook for atheists to bring down the Church, but did feel guilty about the obvious implications his theory of evolution would have for religion, which he said was “like confessing a murder”.
To be a gentleman scientist, one needs a private income, and Darwin had a substantial one, allowing him to build a sanctuary at Down House. The previous owner was a country parson, ironic given it was his initial career trajectory and given the terrible burden he carried in the form of evolution. In his later years, nausea, palpitations and fainting fits plagued him, causing him to lead an increasingly solitary life. Despite this, he performed his gentlemanly duties by becoming an active member in local society, including his role as a magistrate, in which he revealed his liberal politics. Moreover, his own garden became his laboratory, with one certain experiment highlighting how just small variations can provide an evolutionary advantage, passed on to future generations. Darwin also discovered hormones – by shining lights on tips of plants and noticing how some kind of molecule (a growth hormone) must be passed from the tip to the stem, causing the plant to grow in that direction.
In 1871, he published The Descent Of Man, a disjointed but important book in need of a good editor, that threw more light on the implications of evolution for humans. He believed passionately in the equality of races, and was against slavery, and this cultural inheritance helped him see more clearly the facts of human evolution. He wrote 8 to 10 letters a day, and correspondence was crucial to his science, establishing a scientific support and discussion group around the world, with figures like Joseph Hooker especially important to furthering his understanding. In 1882, illness got the better of him and after a severe bout of nausea at midnight, he lay bedbound through the night until another heart attack struck him dead the next afternoon. He did not make a last minute conversion, as some suggested.
Darwin’s legacy is the enduring power of evolutionary theory, which has survived and supported subsequent biological breakthroughs, such as Mendelian laws, chromosomes and DNA. Darwin also believed in gradualism and progressive, infinitesimal changes and this view prevails even today, with the “evolution by creeps” theory winning out against “evolution by jerks”. More important than Darwin the man is Darwinism itself, a science that is still alive and kicking today. Karl Marx was a keen Darwinist, as were Hitler and Thatcher too, so his theories also had immense political implications (good or bad). But Darwin was always committed to how science concerns itself with trifles, the minor details feeding into a larger reality. Indeed, his last book was about earthworms, detailing how they ploughed fields long before humans, a suggestion of Darwin’s humility as a human being in the face of the vast, sprawling cosmos.
l following the repercussions of the French Revolution, and in some quarters there was a desire to overthrow organised religion. That same year, Darwin drew a small sketch of an evolutionary tree, in which all the myriad species on Earth descended from a common ancestor. According to his theory, not only were all humans connected but also animal species in general, as evidenced for Darwin by the foetus of a fin whale being similar to a human foetus. At last came the major breakthrough and this idea went on to form the grammar of modern biology. Natural selection relates to the differences that organisms inherit, and how these play a role in the organism’s chances of reproduction and survival. In addition, this idea of the unity and interconnectedness of life, especially human life, had huge racial implications and was crucial to the anti-slavery and equality movement.Sadly, Darwin also began to have palpitations in 1837 and this was the start of a lifetime of illness. However, on a positive note that same year he hooked up with his cousin Emma Wedgwood and, after meticulously weighing up all the pros and cons of marriage, he was finally persuaded by the idea of a “nice soft wife on a sofa”. So, in 1839, he finally bit the bullet and married, immediately starting a family (he would have 10 children in total) and found a cocoon in Down House in Kent. At this time, he also became a fellow of the Royal Society, published his Beagle journals, which found a wide audience, and finished his transmutation notebooks. But why did he wait so long (until 1859) to publish the Origin of Species? Not only did Darwin prefer to accumulate facts, but he also had his respectability and family to defend. He told his father, brother and wife, causing much upset to the latter, and this family problem was almost like a microcosm of the shock and unrest the theory of evolution would cause in wider society.
In that era, London was the Silicon Valley of gentlemanly science. Darwin belonged to several clubs, including the Linnaen society, where he read “Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation” in 1844, a book that shocked Victorian society. In the same year Darwin completed his first draft of On the Origin of Species, but waited and used Vestiges as an example of what not to write, especially avoiding the polemic on the origins of the universe; he disliked any form of supposition and instead concentrated on accumulating facts. Astonishingly, Darwin spent 8 of the interim years between the first draft (1844) and final publication (1859) of On the Origin of Species studying barnacles, amassing more evidence for his key evolutionary theory of descent from a common ancestor. These books remain the authority on barnacles today, even if they are spectacularly boring.
Only when fellow naturalist, Alfred Russell Wallace, began sending papers to Darwin at Down House, including one sent in 1858 on the indefinite divergence of species, was Darwin’s hand forced. In July 1858, separate papers by both Darwin and Wallace were read at the Linnaen society, however their initial reception was muted. A year later, On the Origin of Species was published. The book was a sensation, with the First Edition sold out in a day, thanks in part to its controversial subject matter. Soon after came the Oxford debate in 1860, when Darwin’s bulldog Thomas Huxley attacked Bishop Wilberforce in his own diocese, although Huxley was too angry to have the poise to clearly win the debate. However, this was a watershed moment marking a new confidence among Darwinists to stand up against the established Church.
Despite all the controversy, man is not mentioned in any detail in On the Origin of Species. Instead, Darwin preferred to just present his arguments and facts, and allowed readers to make their own conclusions about the implications. At that time, there were also no human fossil records, so Darwin would not have had the solid, scientific basis to make such assertions. As he says in his correspondence, “my mind is like a machine for grinding general laws out of collections of facts”, with no room for supposition. As a pure scientist, Darwin did not share the view that the Origin was a textbook for atheists to bring down the Church, but did feel guilty about the obvious implications his theory of evolution would have for religion, which he said was “like confessing a murder”.
To be a gentleman scientist, one needs a private income, and Darwin had a substantial one, allowing him to build a sanctuary at Down House. The previous owner was a country parson, ironic given it was his initial career trajectory and given the terrible burden he carried in the form of evolution. In his later years, nausea, palpitations and fainting fits plagued him, causing him to lead an increasingly solitary life. Despite this, he performed his gentlemanly duties by becoming an active member in local society, including his role as a magistrate, in which he revealed his liberal politics. Moreover, his own garden became his laboratory, with one certain experiment highlighting how just small variations can provide an evolutionary advantage, passed on to future generations. Darwin also discovered hormones – by shining lights on tips of plants and noticing how some kind of molecule (a growth hormone) must be passed from the tip to the stem, causing the plant to grow in that direction.
In 1871, he published The Descent Of Man, a disjointed but important book in need of a good editor, that threw more light on the implications of evolution for humans. He believed passionately in the equality of races, and was against slavery, and this cultural inheritance helped him see more clearly the facts of human evolution. He wrote 8 to 10 letters a day, and correspondence was crucial to his science, establishing a scientific support and discussion group around the world, with figures like Joseph Hooker especially important to furthering his understanding. In 1882, illness got the better of him and after a severe bout of nausea at midnight, he lay bedbound through the night until another heart attack struck him dead the next afternoon. He did not make a last minute conversion, as some suggested.
Darwin’s legacy is the enduring power of evolutionary theory, which has survived and supported subsequent biological breakthroughs, such as Mendelian laws, chromosomes and DNA. Darwin also believed in gradualism and progressive, infinitesimal changes and this view prevails even today, with the “evolution by creeps” theory winning out against “evolution by jerks”. More important than Darwin the man is Darwinism itself, a science that is still alive and kicking today. Karl Marx was a keen Darwinist, as were Hitler and Thatcher too, so his theories also had immense political implications (good or bad). But Darwin was always committed to how science concerns itself with trifles, the minor details feeding into a larger reality. Indeed, his last book was about earthworms, detailing how they ploughed fields long before humans, a suggestion of Darwin’s humility as a human being in the face of the vast, sprawling cosmos.
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