Charles Darwin

Origins and Arguments

Bill Price

• Publisher: Pocket Essentials
• Year: 2009
• Print ISBN: 9781842433126
• eBook ISBN: 9781842435595
• Topic: Ciencias biológicas
• Subtopic: Biografías de ciencia y tecnología

The publication of On the Origin of Species in 1859 was the culmination of more than 20 years of work by Charles Darwin, and the ideas he presented in it would lead to a fundamental change in the way we think about life on earth. Evolution was controversial at the time and now, as the bicentenary of Darwin's birth approaches in 2009, it remains the subject of bitter argument. As revolutionary as the theory was, it did not come out of thin air, but developed within the context of the scientific and philosophical thinking of the period. In order to arrive at a better understanding of the current debate, this book looks at key moments in Darwin's life and at the relevant aspects of the intellectual climate of the time which, taken together, would lead him towards the theory . It goes on to consider how evolution has developed, how its opponents have responded, and how the arguments between scientific rationalism and religious faith are much the same now as they were in Darwin's day.

The Making of a Naturalist

Early Years

When considering the life of any well known person, it is always tempting to look for the signs of what is to come in his or her childhood. This is certainly justified in some cases – the example of Mozart comes easily to mind – but, in truth, Charles Darwin's childhood was not particularly remarkable. In a short piece of autobiography written in 1876, he recalled:

When I left school I was for my age neither high or low in it; and I believe I was considered by my masters and by my father as a very ordinary boy, rather below the common standard in intellect. To my great mortification my father once said to me, "You care for nothing but shooting, dogs, and rat catching, and you will be a disgrace to yourself and all your family."

There may be a certain amount of Victorian modesty in Darwin's thoughts, and his father's words, although they carried sufficient weight for Darwin to remember them something like fifty years after they were said, are the sort of thing fathers say to their sons when they appear intent on idling their lives away. But they give an indication of a normal and, with a few notable exceptions, mostly happy childhood. Anyone attempting to delve into Darwin's early years in an attempt to uncover the reasons why this particular child would go on to become the greatest naturalist of his day and have his life and work celebrated two hundred years after his birth is likely to come away disappointed.

Charles Robert Darwin was born on 12 February 1809 in Shrewsbury, the county town of Shropshire, and, as a child, was known to his family as Bobby. He was the fifth child of six born to Robert and Susannah Darwin, and had three older sisters, Marianne, Caroline and Susan, who were between six and eleven years older than him, an older brother Erasmus, five years his senior, and a sister, Catherine, who was a year younger. His mother, the daughter of Josiah Wedgwood, suffered from regular bouts of illness when Darwin was very young and died at the age of 52, when Darwin was eight years old. Without doubt it was the most, and quite possibly only, traumatic experience of his childhood. He would later write that he could hardly remember her at all, only the shape of her dresses and going on walks with her, and, while he could remember the funeral of a soldier held in Shrewsbury at about the same time, he had no memory of his mother's funeral at all. From then on his older sisters, particularly Caroline, took over the role of mother in the lives of the younger children, which was a continuation of what they had been doing anyway while Susannah Darwin had been ill. The loss of a mother at such a young age must have had an enormous impact on Charles, as it would on anyone, but it does not appear to have led to any emotional problems either at the time or later in life. Darwin's own frequent bouts of ill health could have had their roots in growing up in a household where illness was an everyday occurrence and became a means of gaining attention but, with no definitive diagnosis of Darwin's illnesses, this can only be a matter of speculation. The overall picture of the family after Susannah's death is of a close and caring one dealing with difficult circumstances as best they could. Robert Waring Darwin had moved to Shrewsbury in 1786, at the age of twenty, to set up in practice as a doctor, having qualified at the University of Leiden in the Netherlands and taken an MA at Edinburgh University. He was financed in this enterprise by his father Erasmus Darwin (1731–1802), who was also a doctor and was a well-known and well-connected man in Georgian Britain. Erasmus was something of a polymath, being a writer, inventor and natural philosopher, and was also known as a freethinker and nonconformist. One of the many subjects he wrote about was evolution, following on from the thoughts of the pioneering French naturalist, the Comte du Buffon (1707–1788), who would also influence Jean Baptiste Lamarck. Some of Erasmus Darwin's ideas about evolution were expressed in verse, which perhaps goes some way to explaining why he is less well known in this field than Lamarck is today even though their conclusions were similar. Darwin's unconventional lifestyle, sharing his house with a wife and a mistress, and some of his more radical views, for example his support of the French Revolution, which did not go down well at the beginning of the nineteenth century when Britain was at war with France, have also tended to overshadow his other achievements.

In all probability Robert Darwin shared many of the views held by his father but, with his position in Shropshire society as doctor to the aristocracy, he appears to have kept them very much in the background. The family were Unitarians, attending a chapel in Shrewsbury rather than the Anglican church but, like the Wedgwood family, as their position in society increased, they gradually began to shift away from nonconformity. Darwin was, for example, christened in the Anglican church in Shrewsbury rather than the Unitarian chapel. In the early nineteenth century, when anything radical or unorthodox was viewed with suspicion, it paid for anybody wanting to get on in life to conform.

The connection between the Darwin and Wedgwood families began with Erasmus Darwin and Josiah Wedgwood. Both belonged to the same social and intellectual circles in the English Midlands and met regularly at a number of clubs where they were both members. One of these was the Lunar Society, so called because meetings were held on nights when there was a full moon and members could benefit from the moonlight as they made their ways home after the meetings had finished. Some of the leading intellectual figures in the industrial revolution were members of the club, including Matthew Boulton and James Watt and the natural philosopher and dissenter Joseph Priestley.

At the time the Lunar Society was holding its meetings, Erasmus Darwin lived in Lichfield, not all that far from the Wedgwood factory at Burslem, one of the six towns of Stoke-on-Trent in Staffordshire. The two families virtually grew up together, and Robert Darwin knew his future wife from a very early age. After they married, Susannah received £25,000 in an inheritance on the death of her father. They invested the money in land and property and built Mount House, a mansion to the north of Shrewsbury, for their expanding family.¹¹ From then on Robert Darwin would add greatly to the income he gained from his medical practice with a large portfolio of investments and, in a time before loans were available through banks, by lending money to businesses and individuals. By the time of his death in 1848, he had become a very wealthy man, leaving more than £200,000 in his estate, a sum which would today equate to him being a multi-millionaire.

Robert Darwin was a big man, both physically and in personality. He was 6 feet 2 inches tall and, as Darwin would write, stopped weighing himself after he had reached 24 stones. When visiting an unfamiliar house, his son would go on to say, Robert Darwin sent a servant in before him to test that the floorboards were strong enough to hold his weight and he had to have stone steps made to enable him to get into his carriage because he kept breaking the wooden ones. Although he could be over-bearing and expected obedience from his children, Darwin was keen to point out his many good qualities, describing his father as 'a remarkable man'.

The Wedgwood family were frequent visitors to Mount House and, particularly after Susannah Darwin's death, found the atmosphere stuffy and quite strict. Josiah Wedgwood's son, also called Josiah, took over the family business after the death of his father and bought an estate at Maer, about thirty miles north of Shrewsbury. Darwin was frequently at Maer, where life was more relaxed than in his own home, and it was, no doubt, in the grounds of the estate that he first learned the hunting skills which would attract the disapproval of his father but would later become very useful to him as a naturalist collecting specimens. Uncle Jos, as Charles called Josiah Wedgwood II, would be an important influence on his life and he would ask his uncle (and future father-in-law) to intervene on his behalf when he was attempting to persuade his father about a course of action he wanted to pursue. Darwin's education began at home, where he was tutored by Caroline. From the age of eight, he attended the day school at his local Unitarian chapel, although he did not excel as a pupil. His interest in natural history, however, was already apparent and he would spend long hours on his own in the countryside, writing in his autobiography:

By the time I went to this school my taste for natural history, and more especially for collecting, was well developed. I tried to make out the names of plants and collected all sorts of things, shells, seals, franks, coins, and minerals. The passion for collecting, which leads a man to be a systematic naturalist, a virtuoso or a miser, was very strong in me, and was clearly innate, as none of my sisters or brother ever had this taste.

After a year at the day school, Charles became a boarder at the well-respected Shrewsbury School, a public school which was hardly a mile from Mount House. The head master, Dr Butler, based the education on the classics of Greek and Latin literature, as all public schools did at the time. Charles was interested in natural history and was developing an appreciation for other science subjects, particularly chemistry. When not at school he and his brother Erasmus would conduct their own experiments but such independent activities did not find favour with Dr Butler. Charles did not excel at classical study and, although he appears to have been popular with his fellow students, he did not remember his school days fondly, writing:

Nothing could have been worse for the development of my mind than Dr. Butler's school, as it was strictly classical, nothing else being taught accept a little ancient geography and history. The school as a means of education to me was simply a blank.

In 1825, when Charles was sixteen, Robert Darwin, aware that his younger son was not thriving at Shrewsbury School, sent him to Edinburgh University, where his older brother had already been for two years, to follow in the family tradition of studying medicine. Although Darwin would not complete the course, it was at Edinburgh that he would start out on the course that would ultimately lead him to becoming a naturalist and writer.

Edinburgh and Cambridge

In the summer of 1825, before going to university, Darwin helped his father in the medical practice, attending patients and writing up notes. Robert Darwin thought that his son's sympathetic and understanding nature would make him a good doctor in his own right and, in October of that year, Darwin travelled up to Edinburgh to begin his medical studies.

In the early nineteenth century, the medical school at Edinburgh had the reputation of being the best in the country. Oxford and Cambridge remained strictly Anglican, not allowing either Catholics or non-conformers to attend at all, but Edinburgh was much more cosmopolitan in outlook, being open to all who could afford to pay. As a result the university was much more receptive to new ideas, including those of a radical nature. The sciences, including chemistry and geology, were very much a part of the curriculum and the classics were not considered essential, at least for medical students. The sixteen-year-old Darwin shared rooms with his older brother who was in the final year of his own medical degree when Charles arrived. But Charles initially did not find the course he had set out on any more congenial than he had previously found Shrewsbury School. The lectures were incredibly dull and the practical aspects of the course revolted him. He attended physiology demonstrations and watched, in the days before any sort of anaesthetic was available, a number of operations. He was deeply distressed by what he saw and knew that a medical career would not be the right one for him. The social side of university life and time spent both with his brother and with his fellow students was, on the other hand, much more agreeable. Darwin was an easy going, sociable young man and was intent on enjoying his time at Edinburgh. While not attending lectures, he had plenty of time to pursue his interests in collecting and natural history. He joined a number of student clubs and presented his first paper on a natural history subject to one of them, finding this type of study, learning on his own in a informal atmosphere, much more instructive than attending lectures. Through this route, he came to the attention of Dr Robert Grant, who had wide ranging interests across many scientific fields and became the first of a number of academic mentors to Darwin. In his autobiographical writing, Darwin would say of Grant:

I knew him well; he was dry and formal in manner, but with more enthusiasm beneath this outer crust. He one day, when we were walking together burst forth in high admiration of Lamarck and his views of evolution. I listened in silent astonishment, and as far as I can judge, without any effect on my mind. I had previously read the Zoonomia of my grandfather, in which similar views are maintained, but without producing any effect on me. Nevertheless it is possible that the hearing rather early in life such views maintained and praised may have favoured my upholding them under a different form in my Origin of Species.

In the summer months Darwin continued to occupy himself with country sports, spending much of his time at Maer, his uncle Jos's estate, and visiting neighbouring estates for the shooting. The social aspects of the sporting life also appealed greatly and there were always interesting and entertaining people to dine with in the evening. Emma Wedgwood would, no doubt, have been part of this company but, at this stage, there was no indication of any romantic feelings between the future husband and wife. Darwin was actually attracted to another estate owner's daughter called Fanny Owen. The two saw one another regularly while Darwin was in the East Midlands and wrote to each other when he was at college, although nothing would ultimately come of it. Shortly after Darwin embarked on the Beagle, Fanny would marry someone else.

Towards the end of the summer of 1827 some difficult decisions had to be made. It was obvious that Darwin was not suited to a medical career and his father insisted he find another suitable profession, worried that his feckless son would waste his life indulging in his favourite pastimes. With the legal profession and the military equally as unsuitable as medicine, Robert Darwin suggested what now appears the most unlikely of career choices. His son should become a clergyman. Surprising as it may seem, the eighteen-year-old Darwin was himself quite enthusiastic about the idea of becoming a country vicar, even though he had never given the impression of being particularly religious. His decision to take religious orders had more to do with the social aspects of the Anglican clergy at the time than with religion. Country vicars were very much involved in the social life of their parishes and, as well as having a good and steady income, had plenty of free time on their hands to indulge their interests, such as country sports and natural history. Gilbert White had followed this path in the mid-eighteenth century and his book, The Natural History of Selborne, was not only well on its way to becoming an enduring classic of nature writing but was also one of the young Darwin's favourite books. It was probably not difficult for him to imagine himself living the life of a country vicar when he took people like Gilbert White as his models.

With this in mind, and after spending some months with a private tutor relearning the Latin and Greek he had forgotten while in Edinburgh, he went up to Christ's College, Cambridge at the start of the following year to begin a three-year Bachelor of Arts degree with the intention of going on to take holy orders afterwards. He found Cambridge an easy place to live socially, with several of his friends from Shrewsbury School already there, as well as his cousin William Darwin Fox, who would introduce Darwin to the joys of collecting beetles and become a life long friend. Initially, he fell in with the country sports set, spending more of his time shooting, drinking and dining than studying, but gradually he began to apply himself, particularly in the areas he had always found the most interesting – the natural sciences.

One of the standard texts in natural history at the time was Natural Theology by William Paley, first published in 1802. Darwin read this, together with other works by Paley, saying later that these were some of the few books of the ones he had to read for his degree that left any lasting impression on him. Paley advanced the argument of the divine nature of creation and wrote that the study of the natural world could lead to a better understanding of God. He used what would become a very well known analogy to illustrate the argument for design. He suggested that, if someone out walking were to find a watch without knowing how it had been made, they would reach the inevitable conclusion that the intricate mechanism had not come together by chance but had been designed and put together by a watchmaker. Organisms in the natural world, Paley argued, were a great deal more complicated than a watch, implying an intelligence at work in their design and thereby proving the existence of God. As an undergraduate Darwin did not question this reasoning and, even though he would contradict this argument in The Origin of Species, his own writing was influenced by Paley. He may also have first been introduced to the population theory put forward by Thomas Malthus through reading Paley. Malthus's ideas were an important influence on his later work and would be instrumental in leading him to his own theory of natural selection.

With the exception of Paley, Darwin remained sceptical about the use of much of the formal study he was required to do for his degree, preferring instead to find his own methods of learning: reading on his own account, making his natural history collections and entering into discussions with his peers. Gradually he moved away from the idle life of the sportsman he had dropped into at Cambridge, becoming more serious and studious. This new attitude brought him to the attention of a number of his tutors, including the geologist Adam Sedgwick and the botanist John Henslow, both of whom were not only university professors but also ordained in the Anglican Church.

Darwin would remain far too modest throughout his life to articulate the reasons why such eminent scientists would take an interest in him, preferring instead to highlight his various failings as a student. However, he was bright and enthusiastic and, in his own studies, showed enough independence of mind to follow his own interests. He was also affable and entertaining company and was well used to mixing in the company of high society from his shooting days on the estates of Staffordshire. Henslow, in particular, thought highly of Darwin, perhaps seeing much of himself as a young man in a student who was beginning to make his way in science. The Friday evening get-togethers held by Henslow were something of a Cambridge institution and, after being introduced to them by William Darwin Fox, Darwin became a regular attendee. He also became a regular at Henslow's botany lectures, breaking the habit of not bothering to attend any of the formal studies of the university he had got into when he first arrived in Cambridge. He later wrote:

Before long I became well acquainted with Henslow, and during the later half of my time at Cambridge took long walks with him on most days; so that I was called by some of the dons "the man who walks with Henslow"; and in the evening I was very often asked to join his family dinner.

By this time Darwin had become obsessed with collecting beetles, spending large amounts of time riding out to likely sounding locations to hunt for more specimens, sometimes employing assistants to carry his equipment and regularly writing to natural history magazines about some of his more unusual finds. In the regency period, natural history was highly fashionable and collecting expeditions were a regular occupation for even the highest levels of society. The skills Darwin developed in this fashionable pursuit would be extremely useful techniques he would later go on to use when he became a serious naturalist.

Henslow had one of his most important influences on Darwin by encouraging him to broaden his study of the natural world to include such disciplines as geology. He also suggested books to further Darwin's reading, including A Preliminary Discourse on the Study of Natural Philosophy by John Herschel, a book which emphasised the rational basis of science and the use of observation and experimentation in scientific research. Darwin would later describe it as a book that 'stirred up in me a burning zeal to add even the most humble contribution to the noble structure of science' and he would allude to Herschel in the opening paragraph of his introduction to the Origin, describing him as 'one of our greatest philosophers'. Another book Darwin read at this time which had an equally lasting ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Charles Darwin: Origins and Arguments
• Introduction
• The Book That Changed the World
• The Making of a Naturalist
• Evolution after the Origin
• The Controversy Continues
• Notes
• Books by Charles Darwin
• Bibliography