Inception of Darwin's theory
The inception of Darwin's theory began with a search for explanations of contradictions in current Creationist ideas, and led him to formulate his theory of evolution which was eventually published in his book On the Origin of Species.
This article covers the period during which Darwin conceived of his theory, and includes the context of his life, work and outside influences at the time. See the development of Darwin's theory, the publication of Darwin's theory and the reaction to Darwin's theory for the periods that followed.
Background: influences
See also History of creationism and Charles Darwin's views on religion
Charles Darwin grew up in a conservative era when repression of revolutionary Radicalism had displaced the 18th century Enlightenment. The Church of England dominated the English scientific establishment which saw natural history as revealing God's plan underlying and supporting the existing social hierarchy, rejecting Enlightenment philosophers such as David Hume who had argued for naturalism and against belief in God.
Discoveries of fossils showing the extinction of species were explained by catastrophism, which propounded the belief that animals and plants were periodically annihilated as a result of natural catastrophes and that their places were taken by new species created ex nihilo (out of nothing). The extinct organisms could then be observed in the fossil record and their replacements were considered to be immutable.
Darwin's extended family of Darwins and Wedgwoods was strongly Unitarian, and one of his grandfathers, Erasmus Darwin, was a freethinker who hypothesized that all warm-blooded animals sprang from a single living "filament" long, long ago and proposed evolution by acquired characteristics. This anticipated the theory later developed by Jean-Baptiste Lamarck who observed that every new generation inherits some characteristics of its ancestors and that an individual's traits or organs become enhanced with repeated use, or weakened or removed by disuse, then deduced that these changes would be passed directly on to offspring, eventually forming new species.
University
Lamarck's ideas gave rise to theories of Transmutation, associated with radicals and revolutionaries. At the University of Edinburgh Darwin joined Robert Edmund Grant on field trips and learnt these theories.
He then went to the University of Cambridge to qualify as a parson, and joined the natural history course of the Revd. John Stevens Henslow who gave him tuition in theology. Charles became particularly interested in the writings of the Revd. William Paley, whose Natural Theology set out to refute Hume and saw a rational proof of God's existence in the complexity of living beings exquisitely fitted to their places in a happy world, proving their design by a Creator. While this was a odds with the ideas of Grant and Erasmus Darwin, it convinced Charles and encouraged his interest in science. During this time Cambridge was briefly visited by the Radicals Richard Carlile and the Revd. Robert Taylor on an "infidel home missionary tour", causing a stir before being banned, and Taylor would be remembered by Charles as "the Devil's Chaplain", a warning example of an outcast from society who had challenged Christianity and had been imprisoned for blasphemy.
Voyage on the Beagle
During the Voyage of the Beagle Charles Darwin became convinced by Charles Lyell's uniformitarian theory of gradual geological process over eons of time, and puzzled over how various theories of creation fitted the evidence he saw.
He returned with his reputation established as a theoretical geologist, and set about getting his huge collection of specimens properly assessed by experts as well as writing books based on his notes. Richard Owen showed that the fossil specimens were of extinct species related to current species in the same locality. John Gould startlingly revealed that completely different birds from the Galápagos Islands were species of finches, and Darwin found that both these species and species of tortoises were distinct to each island.
Transmutation
Early in 1837 Darwin was speculating on transmutation in his "Red Notebook" which he had begun on the Beagle. At this time, when the Revd. William Whewell recruited him to the establishment position of secretary of the Geological Society, Darwin was privately scorning Whewell's faith in a human-centred universe being perfectly adapted to man and writing of "my theory" which he thought "would give zest to recent & Fossil Comparative Anatomy", transforming the "whole metaphysics". In July 1837 as his speculation deepened he started the first of a series of secret notebooks on transmutation.
Darwin's ideas fitted with the radical Unitarianism of his brother Erasmus's circle including Harriet Martineau, but were heretical to his Anglican friends in the scientific establishment. Such "Materialist" ideas had been seized on by socialist agitators, red Lamarckians who stirred the mob to overthrow the social order and even demanded the vote for working men! The establishment and the Tory press were quick to crush such ideas, using the full force of the law at a time when blasphemy was a criminal offence. Many were denounced and overthrown for such scandalous ideas, including the surgeon William Lawrence who was forced to resign his post and lost copyright on his book Lectures on Man. This book was promptly pirated by the notorious agitator and pornography publisher William Benbow, and then published in cheap editions such as the copy that Darwin now read. As a result Darwin was secretive and very cautious in even hinting about his ideas to the friends he was bursting to share discussions with.
Animal observations
By February 1838 Darwin was on to a new pocketbook, the maroon C notebook, and was investigating the breeding of domestic animals. He found the newspaper wholesaler William Yarrell at the Zoological museum a fund of knowledge, and questioned if breeders weren't going against nature in picking varieties. He was now writing of Descent rather than transmutation, and hinting at ideas of adaption to climate. He found a pamphlet by by Yarrell's friend Sir John Sebright with a passage reading: "A severe winter, or a scarcity of food, by destroying the weak and the unhealthy, has all the good effects of the most skilful selection. In cold or barren countries no animals can live to the age of maturity, but those who have strong constitutions; the weak and the unhealthy do not live to propagate their infirmities." After reading the pamphlet, Darwin commented "excellent observations of sickly offspring being cut off".
At the zoo on 28 March he had his first sight of an ape, and was impressed at the orang-utan's antics "just like a naughty child" when the keeper held back an apple. In his notes he wrote "Let man visit Ourang-outang in domestication, hear expressive whine, see its intelligence.... let him look at savage...naked, artless, not improving yet improvable & let him dare to boast of his proud preeminence." Here Darwin was drawing on his experience of the natives of Tierra del Fuego and daring to think that there was little gulf between man and animals despite the theological doctrine that only humanity possessed a soul.
Malthus and Natural Law
On 21 June 1838 Darwin was elected to the establishment Athenaeum Club, and it was here in August that he read a review of Auguste Comte's Positive Philosophy which bolstered Darwin's ideas of natural laws, making him remark "What a magnificent view one can take of the world" with everything synchronised "by certain laws of harmony". Then in late September he began reading the new 6th edition of Malthus's Essay on the Principle of Population which reminded him of Malthus's statistical proof that human populations breed beyond their means and compete to survive, at a time when he was primed to apply these ideas to animal species. Malthus had softened from the bleakness of the earlier editions, now allowing that the population crush could be mitigated by education, celibacy and emigration.
Already Radical crowds were demonstrating against the harsh imposition of Malthusian ideas in the Poor Laws, and a slump was resulting in mass emigration. Lyell was convinced that animals were also driven to spread their territory by overpopulation, but Darwin went further in applying to his search for the Creator's laws the Whig social thinking of struggle for survival with no handouts. He did broach the subject with Emma around the time that he proposed to her in November, and when she wrote expressing concern about his faith, his warm reply eased matters but this tension would remain. By December 1838 he was seeing a similarity between breeders selecting traits and a Malthusian Nature selecting from variants thrown up by chance so that "every part of newly acquired structure is fully practised and perfected", thinking this "the most beautiful part of my theory".
Developments
On 19 December 1838 as secretary of the Geological Society of London Darwin witnessed the vicious interrogation by Owen and his allies of Darwin's old tutor Robert Edmund Grant which ridiculed Grant's Lamarckian heresy, a reminder of establishment intolerance of materialist theories.
In 1839, once married and settled in smoky London, Darwin continued to look to the countryside for information and began a Questions & Experiments notebook with ideas that would have seemed bizarrely mundane to the "philosophical" scientists of the time. He printed Questions about the Breeding of Animals and sent them out to gentlemen farmers, asking for information on animal husbandry from their nurserymen and gamekeepers on how they crossed varieties or selected offspring. Of only three who responded one simply found the questions too overwhelming to answer. He found agreement with the visiting Swiss botanist de Candolle who had first mooted the idea of "nature's war". However, when he tried explaining his theory to Hensleigh Wedgwood, his cousin "seemed to think it absurd... that [a] tiger springing an inch further would determine his preservation".
The publication in May of Darwin's Journal and Remarks (The Voyage of the Beagle) brought reviews accusing him of theorising rather than letting the facts speak for themselves. He turned his attention to a book on coral atolls.
See the development of Darwin's theory for the ensuing developments, in the context of his life, work and outside influences at the time.
Reference
- Adrian Desmond and James Moore, Darwin (London: Michael Joseph, the Penguin Group, 1991). ISBN 0-7181-3430-3
See also
- Articles showing the context of his life, work and outside influences at the time:
- inception of Darwin's theory
- development of Darwin's theory
- publication of Darwin's theory
- reaction to Darwin's theory
