Revisiting the Origin of Species

The Other Darwins

Thierry Hoquet

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN: 9781138607156
• eBook ISBN: 9780429884191
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Sociology
• Index: Social Sciences

Contemporary interest in Darwin rises from a general ideal of what Darwin's books ought to contain: a theory of transformation of species by natural selection. However, a reader opening Darwin's masterpiece, On the Origin of Species, today may be struck by the fact that this "selectionist" view does not deliver the key to many aspects of the book. Without contesting the importance of natural selection to Darwinism, much less supposing that a fully-formed "Darwinism" stepped out of Darwin's head in 1859, this innovative volume aims to return to the text of the Origin itself.

Revisiting the 'Origin of Species' focuses on Darwin as theorising on the origin of variations; showing that Darwin himself was never a pan-selectionist (in contrast to some of his followers) but was concerned with "other means of modification" (which makes him an evolutionary pluralist). Furthermore, in contrast to common textbook presentations of "Darwinism", Hoquet stresses the fact that On the Origin of Species can lend itself to several contradictory interpretations. Thus, this volume identifies where rival interpretations have taken root; to unearth the ambiguities readers of Darwin have latched onto as they have produced a myriad of Darwinian legacies, each more or less faithful enough to the originator's thought.

Emphasising the historical features, complexities and intricacies of Darwin's argument, Revisiting the 'Origin of Species' can be used by any lay readers opening Darwin's On the Origin of Species. This volume will also appeal to students and researchers interested in areas such as Evolution, Natural Selection, Scientific Translations and Origins of Life.

Part I

Darwin-the-Selectionist and beyond

1 A labyrinthine Origin

A first source for the wide variety of interpretations Darwin has been submitted to is the sheer number of editions of his seminal book, On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, that he oversaw.¹ Historically, depending on whether readers were referring to one edition or another, they could easily play one Darwin against another. A clear example of this underlies a series of debates that erupted in Christchurch, New Zealand after Samuel Butler published an anonymous review of the Origin in the columns of the newspaper The Press. An anonymous opponent, later known as “The Savoyard” (probably Dr Abraham, the Bishop of Wellington), concluded his subsequent critique of Darwin’s book with the following remark:

All his fantasias … are made to come round at last to religious questions, with which really and truly they have nothing to do, but were it not for their supposed effect upon religion, no one would waste his time in reading about the possibility of Polar bears swimming about and catching flies so long that they at last get the fins they wish for.²

Four days later, another anonymous critic, calling himself “A.M.” (perhaps Samuel Butler himself), came back with this retort to

the implicit statement that Darwin supposes the Polar bear to swim about catching flies for so long a period that at last it gets the fins it wishes for […] Now, however sceptical I may yet feel about the truth of all Darwin’s theory, I cannot sit quietly and see him misrepresented in such a scandalously slovenly manner. What Darwin does say is that sometimes diversified and changed habits may be observed in individuals of the same species; that is, that there are eccentric animals just as there are eccentric men. He adduces a few instances and winds up saying that “in North America the black bear was seen by Hearne swimming for hours with widely open mouth, thus catching—almost like a whale—insects in the water”. This and nothing more.

A.M. then adds a page number to his argument, referring readers to the Origin: “pp. 201 and 202”. “The Savoyard” duly reacted to these accusations of “carelessness” and his being “disgraceful” on 11 April, and he too quoted from Darwin:

Even in so extreme a case as this, if the supply of insects were constant, and if better adapted competitors did not already exist in the country, I can see no difficulty in a race of bears being rendered, by natural selection, more and more aquatic in their structure and habits, with larger and larger mouths, till a creature was produced as monstrous as a whale.

The editor of The Press then got involved, adding this perplexed note:

The paragraph in question has been the occasion of much discussion. The only edition in our hands is the third, seventh thousand, which contains the paragraph as quoted by “A.M.”. We have heard that it is different in earlier editions but have not been able to find one. The difference between “A.M.” and “The Savoyard” is clearly one of different editions. Darwin appears to have been ashamed of the inconsequent inference suggested, and to have withdrawn it.

This was indeed the case: the page numbers indicated by A.M. refer to the third edition (pp. 201–202), whereas the paragraph cited by The Savoyard came from the first edition (p. 184). In this episode involving the bear/whale story, and on many other occasions like it, it is the various versions of the text that come into conflict, opening the way for vastly different readings and competing visions of what Darwin really had in mind. Darwin chose to delete a speculation that proved to be embarrassing, but not before critical damage had been done, as Alvar Ellegård has also pointed out.³

Why did the Origin change so much? Darwin had been elaborating his theory since 1837 and had been conscientiously working, since at least 1854, on what has been called his “big species book written from 1856 to 1858”,⁴ a book he referred to under various names, expressing his desire to produce a “Species theory”⁵ or “to write a book with all the facts and arguments, which I can collect, for and versus the immutability of species”.⁶ The project was also given different code-names, from the quite vague “my big book”⁷ to the last and most famous of them: “Natural selection”.⁸

Darwin often complained during those years of both the magnitude of his project and the frailty of his health: “My health has been lately very bad from overwork.… My work is everlasting”, he wrote on 16 April 1858.⁹ Then, suddenly, in mid-June, came the manuscript of a young naturalist, Alfred Russel Wallace, advancing a theory about how varieties tend to form species. Darwin immediately perceived its striking proximity to his own theory and feared that “all [his] originality, whatever it may amount to, will be smashed”.¹⁰ Darwin now found himself trapped in something of a moral dilemma, caught between his desire to avoid being forestalled and his loyalty to Wallace, but also between his dream of completing the larger version of his work and the necessity to hastily provide his readers with a shorter version of his theory.¹¹ He asked both Charles Lyell, in his role as Lord Chancellor, and Joseph D. Hooker to help him find a fitting solution. A reading of different manuscripts was arranged during a meeting of the Linnaean Society held on the 1st of July. This involved Wallace’s paper together with an extract from Darwin’s 1844 essay and a part of the sketch Darwin had sent to Asa Gray in September 1857. The following August, the texts were published in the Proceedings of the Linnaean Society. Soon after this Darwin realised that, now that his ideas had been made public, he had no choice but to write an extended version of his ideas, providing a detailed account of the evidence he had gathered in support of it. Soon after his baby Charles had succumbed to scarlet fever, Darwin fled with his family to the Isle of Wight. Here, he began to think that a series of papers in the journal of the Linnaean Society would do the job of setting out his theory more fully: “I pass my time by doing daily a couple of hours of my Abstract, and I find it amusing and improving work”. To which he adds the ironic comment, “It seems a queer plan to give an abstract of an unpublished work; nevertheless I repeat I am extremely glad I have begun in earnest on it”.¹² Then, by mid-October, Darwin “expect[s his] abstract will run into a small volume, which will have to be published separately”.¹³ In the end, On the Origin of Species was written in just over a year: by April 1859, Darwin had negotiated with the publisher John Murray and a copy of the whole manuscript, drafted by the schoolmaster of the village of Down, was sent to the printer; by mid-June, Darwin received the first galley-proofs, to which he brought significant corrections; the proofs were finally corrected on 1 October 1859. Darwin wrote in his diary: “Finished proofs (thirteen months and ten days) of Abstract on Origin of Species”.¹⁴

Darwin always quite bluntly presented his book as an “abstract”, inviting all the expected correlative implications this brought with it. Usually, its status as an “abstract” is perceived as being a positive quality, since it resulted in Darwin maintaining a clear line of argumentation. Darwin himself, however, certainly saw it as a failing. Having amassed hundreds of pages of material, Darwin (strictly to avoid being beaten to the post) decided at first to publish an abstract of his book under the quite cumbersome title of “An abstract of an essay on the origin of species and varieties through natural selection”.¹⁵ In the first edition of the book, On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life, Darwin makes constant reference to a “longer work” that he was planning to complete.¹⁶ The original Natural Selection manuscript was pushed aside (it would eventually be published post-humously in 1975) to make room for other writings, not to mention to allow time for Darwin’s involvement in the numerous debates sparked by the Origin. Instead, Darwin dedicated considerable time to carefully reworking the 1859 text, gradually turning his Origin into a book of many versions. During Darwin’s own life, no fewer than six successive editions were published by John Murray.

Around 75 per cent of the book underwent modification, with its overall length increasing by about one third in total. All of these changes are documented in Morse Peckham’s Variorum text—a book which transforms how the reader looks at the Origin, presuming that the reader actually manages to navigate its almost unreadable maze of additions and corrections. The first edition came out in November 1859 [a]; the second in January 1860 [b]; the third in April 1861 [c]; the fourth in December 1866 [d]; the fifth in August 1869 [e]; and the sixth in February 1872 [f]. The bracketed letters [a], [b], [c], [d], [e], [f] are used by Morse Peckham for quick reference to the various editions and I will follow his system here.¹⁷

Almost every aspect of the Origin changed during its long life, right down to its date of birth: “October 1st, 1859” in [a] became “November 24th, 1859” in [...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Fm
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of tables
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction: the meanings of “Darwinism”
• PART I: Darwin-the-Selectionist and beyond
• PART II: Darwin-the-Variationist
• PART III: Radical origins: Darwin-the-Cosmologist
• References
• Index