Tristero makes a few points that are exactly what I’ve been trying to get across in my introductory biology class this week, where we’re covering Charles Darwin and the evidence for evolution. The first is that we do not rely on Darwin’s authority; there is no cult of personality, no reliance on the master’s word, no simple trust of anything or anyone. The other, though, is that Darwin is still a fascinating and important figure, and it’s not just that he was an old guy with a white beard who lectured the law.
Darwin’s not a stuff-shirted Nigel Bruce pip-pipping his way across the Empire. He is a young kid on a ship who once had the gall to grab a sailor’s dinner from his plate because he (the sailor) was about to eat a very rare ostrich Darwin had been searching for in vain for months. He’s a fellow who, when learning to use the bolas from Argentinian gauchos, managed to lasso his own horse, and he’s willing to write about it. Later, as he worked through his theory, which took him over 20 years to announce, he was tormented by the implications if it was misconstrued (as it was, right from the beginning). He developed a cautious style that is a model of arguing and inferring from the evidence. And, by all accounts, Darwin was a man devoted to his family and friends, deeply considerate and generous.
Yes, Darwin had his faults. But anyone with ten times his faults and one tenth of his talent would easily win a Nobel or Macarthur. That kids don’t have a chance to learn who this guy was – that’s a real crime.
One thing I tried to get across to my students was how much he was like them. He went off to Cambridge when he was about their age, and on graduation, a position they’ll all be in in a few years, had to wheedle his father into letting him go on this exotic sea voyage instead of settling down. Darwin really was a young fellow when he went off on the Beagle, in his early twenties.
Despite his charming youth, though, I still have to explain the list of things he got right and the list of things he got wrong. It’s the evidence and the ideas that matter, not the lovely personality behind them.
Darwin was the devil, as is Dawkins now!
Was the young PZ adventurous and charming?
My favorite piece of Darwin lore: apparently, while on The Beagle, he was deathly scared of being consumed by cannibals.
It’s good to understand that science is a product of the coordinated efforts of actual human beings. It makes its success that much more satisfying.
Get them to read Janet Browne’s two volume biography. She gives a wonderful background feel to the cultural background he was working and living in. She also emphasizes that the ideas of “natural selection” were inevitable, even without Darwin. If he hadn’t been there one of his contemporaries would have eventually come out with it.
And what lovely evidence it is!
Darwin first studied at Edinburgh University (which is my alma mater). There is now a building there named after him. I wonder if this is the only example of a university honouring one of its drop-outs this way.
John van Whye, master of the Darwin Archive, has shown that Darwin did not delay publication, but was working through a plan of research he drew up very early. See here.
Why don’t you post the list of what Darwin got right and what he got wrong here?
One of my favorite Darwin stories isn’t even about Charles Darwin. In the book “Evolution’s Captain,” by Peter Nichols, there’s a story about missionaries to Tierra del Fuego.
This is from memory, so I’m not sure I’ve gotten every detail right. But, broadly:
Good Christians from England mounted a soul-saving mission to Tierra del Fuego, to enlighten the wayward Fuegan savages.
After sailing there in a larger ship, three smaller boats carrying the missionaries and all their supplies were let off to make their way to shore. Two of the boats, carrying almost all of their food and most of their other supplies, sank in rough weather. The missionaries were left stranded on a beach.
They instantly decided God was testing their faith, so they sat down to endure and await God’s deliverance.
One of their number kept a written diary of their travails. The idea of seeking food and building shelter was seen as a betrayal of God’s test, so they sat on the beach and prayed … and over the next couple of weeks, every single one of them died of starvation and exposure.
About this same time, a group of sailors were shipwrecked and stranded on an island in that same general area, where they stayed for more than a year before rescuers discovered them.
After their stranding, they rousted about, fished, hunted, built shelters, and just generally took care of themselves as best they could.
When they were finally found, they were in better physical condition than the sailors on the ship that rescued them.
To me, this is the definitive example of the difference between prayer and action. There’s no doubt in my mind that the missionaries died because of the completely false beliefs they held.
Anyway, cool book, cool story. It’s a “Darwin story” for me because the captain mentioned in the title is Robert FitzRoy, captain of the Beagle with whom Darwin later sailed.
dc writes: “Darwin first studied at Edinburgh University (which is my alma mater). There is now a building there named after him. I wonder if this is the only example of a university honouring one of its drop-outs this way.”
Um, no … Bill Gates finally got an honorary degree handed him from the Crimson crowd. And Bill is elated. “I’ll be changing my job next year … and it will be nice to finally have a college degree on my resume.”
I wonder where he’ll apply. I understand Google in Tempe AZ is looking for geeks …
http://www.news.harvard.edu/gazette/2007/06.14/99-gates.html
Correction: Actually, they’re naming the new Computer Science/ Electrical Engineering Center being built after Gates’ and Balmer’s moms. Still an honor.
But anyone with ten times his faults and one tenth of his talent would easily win a Nobel or Macarthur
Does any IDiot have 1% of his experience in nature, or 1% of his meticulousness?
You don’t want to idolize the guy, but it’s fair to point out that he very much had his feet on the ground, as opposed to cubicled nutjobs who work desperately to derive equations that prove than DNA can never mutate to produce “new information”.
Students also like the part about Darwin not being that diligent a student. They seem to relate well to “Darwin the Slacker”.
They also like the part about him slipping away on his wedding night to put a note in one of his notebooks about turnips, I think it was.
To be specific, Wallace did indeed come up with essentially the same idea. The first public presentation of the theory of natural selection consisted of both Wallace’s letter on the subject and a selection from Darwin’s writings. So yes, someone undoubtedly would have come up with the idea if Darwin hadn’t, as is true of pretty much every good idea in science. But you were a theory, you could not ask for a more admirable discoverer than Darwin.
The way I like to put it is that ‘We don’t think evolution by natural selection is true because Darwin was a great scientist. We think Darwin was a great scientist because evolution by natural selection is true.’
Hell, I don’t know why they call us “Darwinists”. Wouldn’t “Wallacists” or “Dobzhanksyists” (?) be just as apt? I mean, I do like Darwin, but it does rather minimize the work that everyone else did…
Something to consider …
I would *really* love to attend your ‘Introduction to Biology’ class, but I can’t, because I’m way too old to start now and I live in England. However, there are other ways. There’s a great guy who works out of Ohio State Uni – named Prof. Richard Pogge. He records all his lectures in his astronomy courses and podcasts them through iTunes and elsewhere. This is mainly for his fortunate students incase they can’t attend lectures, (they still do BTW) but also because he is aware of a growing number of life long learners all around the globe who have always wanted to attend a quality Astronomy course but never had the chance. He regularly gets emails from people who listen to his lectures as they commute, plough their fields or what ever. So what are the chances of your lectures finding their way onto iTunes? Think of the woo you could stifle if it took off.
Bob
Apparently you are not teaching them the of Darwin as related by his talk.origins biographer, Richard Forrest.
The truth about Darwin is far more pernicious than you let on.
Actually, the whole idea of evolution was very much in the air in the 19th century. There’s at least one previous statement. Let me quote from Darwin’s Century, (page 125) by Loren Eiseley:
*More from Darwin’s Century:
Wasn’t it Darwin’s father who said he was good for nothing but rat-hunting?
It’s really sad that all of you are in denial about the fact that Darwin was always about 60 years old with a big beard who spent all his time trying to think up ways to attack the one true church.
The role of chance in this matter is considerable. Wallace went to the Amazon basin collecting flora & fauna, for four years. On his return to England, his ship caught fire & sank, along with his collection. Fortunately, he was rescued. So he then decided to go to the Malay Archipelago, starting afresh as it were.
While recuperating there from a bout of malaria, he made the critical observations that closely related species were geographically proximate to one another, & that fossilized remains indicated that, in the case of species belonging to related groups, species taken from strata of the same era showed more morphological similarity than ones from more distant eras.
This indicated relatedeness across both space & time. He had also read Malthus’ Principles of Population, & was aware of geometrical progression, so he reasoned that an awful lot of death occurred, otherwise the world would be overrun. Seeing the variation within species, he reasoned that small advantages woud enable an animal to better compete, leading to the survival of the best fitted individuals.
He also reasoned that species became distinct because, over vast periods of time, they gradually accumulated beneficial changes peculiar to their particular environmental niches, the less adapted organisms dying out.
He wrote this to Darwin, in 1855, I believe, aged about 35.
The role of chance in this matter is considerable. Wallace went to the Amazon basin collecting flora & fauna, for four years. On his return to England, his ship caught fire & sank, along with his collection. Fortunately, he was rescued. So he then decided to go to the Malay Archipelago, starting afresh as it were.
While recuperating there from a bout of malaria, he made the critical observations that closely related species were geographically proximate to one another, & that fossilized remains indicated that, in the case of species belonging to related groups, species taken from strata of the same era showed more morphological similarity than ones from more distant eras.
This indicated relatedeness across both space & time. He had also read Malthus’ Principles of Population, & was aware of geometrical progression, so he reasoned that an awful lot of death occurred, otherwise the world would be overrun. Seeing the variation within species, he reasoned that small advantages woud enable an animal to better compete, leading to the survival of the best fitted individuals.
He also reasoned that species became distinct because, over vast periods of time, they gradually accumulated beneficial changes peculiar to their particular environmental niches, the less adapted organisms dying out.
He wrote this to Darwin, in 1855, I believe, aged about 35.
Not only that, Darwin suffered from seasickness for the whole five years of the voyage. I get seasick for the first couple of days of the new sailing season, and it’s misery. He lived in incredibly cramped conditions too. (I’m a professional skipper, available for deliveries and tuition, ahem, and I have known people broken by seasickness and go completely mad after a few days aboard, far less five years before the invention of baby wipes – items crucial to personal hygiene aboard).
Darwin was a rich kid who could have bailed and sailed home on the first available boat, but he stuck it out and went through incredible dangers and privations. No cult of personality, but huge respect.
On the point of Edinburgh naming a building after him, Britain is disgracefully poor at celebrating this scientific hero: Queen Victoria started it when she administered the black spot denying him a knighthood on the advice of her
cackwitlackwit bishops.There’s a Darwin College, a Charles Darwin primary school, but were he german there would Karl Darwin institutes, if her were French they’d nave boulevards after him and never shut up about him, Spaniards would toss donkeys out of church towers in his honour. Taking The Beagle Project to UK government civil servants I can just hear their utter indifference in their voices. Celebrate a British scientific hero? Nah. Bring on the Princes Di inquest, much more interesting.
On the point of Edinburgh naming a building after him, Britain is disgracefully poor at celebrating this scientific hero
His head appears on the currency – the £10 note, IIRC. He’s buried in Westminster Abbey. He’s always mentioned alongside Newton (no higher honour).
Now, Maxwell is ignored…
I want to second BigBob’s request (#15). That’d be an invaluable resource!
I second both Jonathan’s call for PZ to publish his list of things Darwin got right/wrong and BigBob’s suggestion that PZ web-cast his lectures.
University College London named its biology building after him. Not because he had anything to do with the university- he didn’t, but because his house, before he moved to Downe was on the site. There’s now a blue plaque to commemorate this.
Hank Fox, thanks for the story from “Darwin’s Captain”. That one goes on my reading list. In his most recent book, “Collapse”, Jared Diamond uses the failure of the Norse Greenland colonies to illustrate a similar, though much broader, point. Diamond suggests that rigid adherence to a certain cultural self-image (“European Christian”) may have been a significant contributor to that failure, as it prevented the Norse from adopting practices (such as Inuit fishing methods) which might have saved them. As modern first-worlders, we need to be asking ourselves which aspects of our own cultural self-images we value more highly than the resources on which our survival depends.
My favorite image of Darwin is of him trying to ride the giant tortoises of the Galapagos islands. Because I do believe I’d be trying the same thing.
On the topic of evolution being “in the air”, Erasmus Darwin (Gramps, to Chuck) wrote a (hideous) poem about evolution. Darwin’s contribution was the mechanism, not the ToE.
I’m reading Voyage of the Beagle right now, and just last night read the part about Darwin catching himself with the bolas, and the Gauchos all laughing at him.
I got a kick out of this part, too, discussing the tucutuco, and how it doesn’t appear to be too adversely affected by being blind (italics mine), “Lamarck would have been delighted with this fact, had he known it, when speculating (probably with more truth than usual with him) on the gradually acquired blindness of the Asphalax…”
Stephen Jay Gould beat you to it, maybe ten years ago.
I’ve got a CD of one of SJG’s lectures (in Hypercard, I believe, so I’ll have to check to see if it runs on my current iMac) where he has a sketch of the young Darwin in a tee-shirt, jeans and running shoes.
In case I missed someone else pointing this out, Darwin’s work is available on line at http://darwin-online.org.uk/
A Nobel winner ten-times-over is right; plus a genuinely nice fellow.
fusilier
James 2:24
Bob said (above)
–
I would *really* love to attend your ‘Introduction to Biology’ class, but I can’t, because I’m way too old to start now and I live in England.
Now hold har’ … ahsay hold hard there little britches …
Of course I don’t know *how* old you are Bob – but it’s definitely not *too*. This guy left school at 17 and didn’t start University study till he retired and suffered some medical problems on the way:
press release here if you’re interested:
Good to hear about Richard Pogge of Ohio putting his notes on the Web – there’s an increasing amount of quality Science (and other academic) stuff becoming available for free, if you can find it amongst all the dross. In the UK, where you and I are, the Open University (our country’s biggest, and the one with the highest student satisfaction rating BTW) has decided in principle to roll all it’s material out online. There’s some stuff here on Darwin and Natural Selection at an introductory level (Look! Look! I’m back on thread!) and this link should take you to a list of all Science (and other) stuff that’s on-line so far (click on “Browse topics” if you’re not sure). Also the OU seems to be encouraging on-line social collaboration by providing some web-space for people using the material as well – and it’s OK to incorporate it in teaching materials (and all free).
Their research material is going on-line and free as well here . The OU is highly rated on Earth and Interplanetary Science (they were responsible for the Beagle Mars missile) but there seems to be a good mix that might be of interest to others.
You may not be entirely surprised to learn I’m an OU student myself. They got me a degree in Computing and I’m currently trying to drag my Maths above basement level prior to starting a Masters – and I’m 61, so well into my second bloom of youth. Are you *really* too old Bob? *really* really?
You may not be :)
(Back on thread redux) There’s also 5,000 of Darwin’s letters plus some other historical material here .
Pete
Darwin’s contribution was the T, not the E.
Darwin’s contribution was the T, not the E.
I’ve grown fond of the portrait of Darwin by G. Richmond, for many of the reasons expressed here: the Darwin in Richmond’s painting is the young man who went out and figured stuff out, rather than the old bearded controversial celebrity.
Jonathan and Karen: Well, you *could* just read the Origin and find out for yourselves. And I think you’ll be amazed and awed by the amount of stuff that Darwin DID get right, considering that he didn’t know about things like genetics and plate tectonics.
Puh. As if his not getting every last nuance of the theory exactly right from the get go somehow invalidates it. People, if we knew everything about evolution, it wouldn’t be a current field of study, would it?
Darwin rates along side Newton for the simple fact that he developed his theory without a “physical” entity to discover. Curie had Radium ,Thomsen had the electron ,Faraday had electromagnetism , Roentgen had X-Rays ,etc. Darwin did not “have” natural selection. He had to discover a mechanism that explained the evidence !!!
I’m reminded of a point that was driven home to me a coupla years ago (in Firenze by sir Harry Kroto, I think).
This is the guy who had his Annus Mirabilis, not this old fogey.
Oh, have you met Sir Harry, too?
Yeah, I want to be a wild-eyed Dobzhanksyist.