Darwin’s Cathedral

On Charles Darwin’s passing in 1882, influential friends intervened to thwart his wish to be buried in a humble coffin in his parish. Such an interment, they felt, would deprive England of the privilege of honouring one of its great men. So it was that the professed agnostic was buried with high ceremony in Westminster Abbey. Canon Frederic Farrar’s eulogy assured his countrymen that the views of the deceased did not menace the Crown with the boisterous materialism promoted in the free thought press. Darwin’s life-long service to his parish, and his occasional acknowledgement of the Creator, proved his loyalty to Britain’s noble values.

This adroit evasion was not the beginning of the Darwin legend, but it was a landmark in his sanctification as the presiding spirit of scientific enlightenment. Signs abound that the celebration of his bicentennial will reverberate with new hymns and hosannas. Indeed, it has already begun with the opening of the lavish Darwin Exhibition at New York’s American Museum of Natural History in November last year. In June the exhibition will move successively to Boston, Chicago, and Toronto before finally opening in the London Natural History Museum in time for the bicentenary of Darwin’s birth on February 12, 2009. A quality online version of the exhibition is accessible at www.amnh.org.

The print media are also in the stream. In conjunction with the exhibition opening, leading science publisher W.W. Norton issued two beautifully produced volumes. One is by the exhibition’s curator and innovative evolution scientist, Niles Eldredge, Darwin: Discovering the Tree of Life. The second is the issue of four of Darwin’s publications under a single cover. This massive tome, From So Simple a Beginning: The Four Great Books of Charles Darwin, is beautifully done with no cost spared on typography, layout, and graphics. Norton recruited the world’s most honored naturalist, Edward O. Wilson, to serve as editor and to write glosses on the “four great books of Charles Darwin”.

The hosannas of these distinguished scientists provoke awe and adulation. We learn that the Origin is the “greatest scientific book of all time” that “fully explained” the struggle for existence (Wilson). The Voyage of the Beagle “is today regarded as intellectually the most important travel book of all time” (Wilson). Darwin “demonstrated without a shadow of doubt that life evolved”; “no idea in science has shaken society so much as evolution”; “Darwin did more to secularise the Western world than any other single thinker” (Eldredge).

The sanctification continues: Darwin revolutionised the biology of his day; he fashioned a new concept of humankind; he challenged basic philosophical and religious ideas about the nature and meaning of life; so profound was his insight that his thought remains relevant to contemporary biology. These surpassing achievements brought a “revolution” equal in importance to the Copernican revolution. Smitten with reverence, my eye falls on the dust jacket to contemplate the photo of the dignified aged Darwin: yes, he looks like a prophet!

As is wont with preaching, no evidence for this litany is offered: evidence implies evaluation and critical scrutiny. But outside the cathedral, old habits disturb my rapture. What grading system ranks Origin as the greatest book in science? What titles were runners-up? What were those signal discoveries that transformed the biological sciences of his day? What was his new concept of humankind? Did it support the actively canvassed universal suffrage and gender equality? What was the secularising element of Darwin’s thought, and how did it relate to the well-established influence of irreligion, industrialisation, engineering marvels, the free press, socialism, positivism, and the notorious laissez-faire doctrine of survival of the fittest?

These questions are not asked because answering them requires returning Darwin to his context, where the Legend’s claims are readily seen to be baseless. Darwin’s secularising influence is said to stem from his rebuttal of the creationist explanation in natural history. But the refutation was largely redundant. Secularisation was deeply entrenched before his birth (his grandfather Erasmus Darwin was an energetic secularist, as were utilitarians, free thinkers, and socialists): by 1860 it had achieved a massive base, including important elements of the Anglican clergy.

As for the sciences, they had been purged of non-mechanical causality long before. Only Darwin’s fellow naturalists, many of whom were clergy, continued to invoke divine causality. The voyage of the Beagle was one among many explorations. It isn’t obviously superior to those that came before or after. The Challenger expedition of 1880, for example, was an oceanographic survey whose results were published in 50 volumes, including, incidentally, a refutation of Darwin’s theory of the origin of coral reefs.

The most grotesque distortion is the claim that Darwin’s discoveries reformed the biological sciences of his day. The reality: Darwin’s science was in the amateur mode of the naturalist, whereas the physical and biological sciences had shifted into the precision instrument mode of the modern laboratory. This difference was well established in the public mind.

Real science was the sort of thing that Lord Kelvin, the maestro of the transatlantic cable and of the physics of the steam engine, did. In the biological sciences, the hero was Louis Pasteur, the conqueror of infectious agents and epidemics. The focus of those sciences was cellular biology, microbiology, biochemistry, and neurology, using constantly innovating experimental equipment and processes. They poured forth a stream of practical and profitable innovations, the most celebrated being vaccination, which was made legally obligatory in most European countries.

Darwin the country gentleman was in complete disconnect with this world. His measuring tool was a seven-foot ruler calibrated by the village carpenter, and his microscope was an ancient Smith and Beck model of low resolution. He had no instruments for measuring speed or for reducing tissue to smallest parts. He felt no need to acquire up-to-date equipment, whose cost he reproached, despite his great wealth.

The contrast might be put this way. Darwin made no discovery of Nobel Prize caliber, whereas Louis Pasteur made two such discoveries. Or more tellingly perhaps, when Darwin’s son Francis wished to pursue advanced botanical research, he migrated to a high-tech institute in Germany. There he learned first hand that his father’s science was amateur.

The legend-credulous express dismay when challenged to produce just one instance of a Darwin discovery that was taken over by experimental biologists. “How can you doubt what everyone knows?” goes the response. Darwin, after all, proved evolution! So they say in fulsome certainty, but what are we to make of his failure to make the discovery central to his theory? I mean the science of heredity. He lavished attention on domestication, conducting many plant and animal breeding experiments, because he believed that such induced changes were evolution in miniature.

The lead chapter of the Origin argues this case. But, in a singular demonstration of the limits of even great minds, he didn’t notice that domestication evidence massively contradicted his theory. It disproved his key premise that continuous selection of a single trait would evolve a population of better adapted organisms. Domestication shows on the contrary that selection for a single trait results in changes in numerous traits - changes that are usually maladaptive.

Domestication also provided abundant documentation of events that Darwin stoutly declared cannot happen: single generation “leaps”, such as the two-headed calf and other “sports of nature”, that disprove his “gradualist” theory of organic change. The correct conception of inheritance was published in 1866 by Gregor Mendel. His carefully controlled experiments on hybrid garden peas (Pisum savtivum) enabled him to formulate the laws of segregation and independent assortment, which explain why the variations of pea traits (round and wrinkled, yellow and green) occurred in the ratios that he experimentally observed.

These trait variations are “leaps” that Darwin’s theory denies. It was the beginning of genetics and the first discovery of a quantitative biological law. Mendel believed that his discovery disproved Darwin’s theory. He was right.

Mendel’s publication enjoyed none of the braggadocio of “revolutionary” enlightenment. Indeed, it had no uptake whatever during his time. Yet eventually biologists rediscovered his work and embarked on a course leading to the discovery of chromosomes, genes, alleles, and sexual replication. It is a lesson worth repeating that Darwinians of the day recoiled in horror from these splendid discoveries. They proudly declared their “faith” in the master while hurling themselves vehemently at the new science. One, the brilliant Karl Pearson, persisted in dogged opposition to genetics until his death in 1936! So much for evidence.

The Darwin Exhibition doesn’t mention Mendel and Pasteur. Bringing them into the picture would spoil the halo over Darwin’s head and cast doubt on his singularity. Nor does it mention that the introduction of genetics, today considered the experimental core of any possible evolutionary theory, was accomplished over the bodies of true Darwinians. This silence about fundamental history of science underscores the regrettable faith-based orientation of the Darwin bicentenary, together with the implication that science is based on authority.

Creationists, alas, will probably conclude that the exhibition’s symphony to the legend confirms their conviction that to refute evolution one need but refute Darwin. This nonsense may be cast out by discarding the legend, which in any case has no business in science.

Hiram Caton is a former professor of politics and history at Griffith University in Queensland and an associate of the US National Centre for Science Education. He is working on a book titled Evolution in the Century of Progress. He can be contacted at hcaton2@bigpond.net.au.

Why don't you use the full title of his book:

ON THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES BY MEANS OF NATURAL SELECTION,

OR THE

PRESERVATION OF FAVOURED RACES IN THE STRUGGLE FOR LIFE.

You forget that Darwin himself was a racist and that his book has been used by many to justify racism against blacks and other groups because they were 'less evolved' than others.

Thanks for that information on Hiram Caton...I know that some have tried to float the idea that HIV does not cause AIDS...did not realize that this guy was one of them...

Thanks for the corresponding link...will have to read that and see what his explanations for that belief are...

Oh yeah, we're the nuts. You're in the camp that says life comes from non-life. Yup we observe that all the time. Yup we see punctuated equilibrium of new species from old species all the time. Why my dog just gave birth to something totally different than a dog yesterday! Yup, we don't jump to conclusions based on bad assumptions. Yup we don't have a recorded history of scientific fraud to back our viewpoints - Piltdown man, Lucy, where the great 'pillar's of evolution and geology created the greatest hoaxes that so many others built careers defending, only to find out it was all a lie.

No you're really standing on firm ground there buddy.

Regarding your post #38....its long been known, that there is a small percentage of those who have been found to be HIV+, never get full blown AIDS...but as far as I know, that percentage is a very low number...and its hardly mostly high profile types...there was a TV special on some channel or another a while back, exploring this very thing, and the folks in the group who were HIV+ for years and had never gotten full blown AIDS, were just regular folks, no big money, no fame, no fortune, no such thing...they were just everyday folks, who for one reason or another, never got sick with AIDS...

Regarding your post #40...first, see my post #106...I am not aware of Magic Johnsons medical regime, but on this TV special that I note in my post, it seems to me, that they do mention that these folks were not taking any kind of cocktail....I could be wrong or remember this in error, and really dont know how to check this out....

This may seem like a stupid question, but could this be similar to an experience I had...when I began working in nursing homes, I had to be given a TB test...I came up positive...but I never had TB...before I could get my job, I had to have my lungs X-Rayed by a doctor, to make sure that I had no active TB, which, thankfully I did not...

The doctor explained, that this positive TB test that I had experienced, showed that I was exposed to TB, my immune system took care of it, I never got active TB, but a TB tests shows that I have antibodies for TB in my blood...

Another example, when my younger boy got chicken pox, just about every single kid in his class also got chicken pox...they were all exposed to chicken pox, and got the disease...however, one little boy, who lived just a few doors down from us, never did sick...and his mom said he never had had chicken pox previously...for some reason, he was immune to chicken pox...but I would bet, that if he had a blood test, he would show antibodies to chicken pox...

So is it not just possible, that even with HIV, some people may be exposed, and for whatever reason, they just form antibodies, yet never have the full blown disease...

Thanks for an answer in advance...

Yup we don't have a recorded history of scientific fraud to back our viewpoints - Piltdown man, Lucy, where the great 'pillar's of evolution and geology created the greatest hoaxes that so many others built careers defending, only to find out it was all a lie.

Let's not forget one of the most recent examples of EVO fraud - from February 19, 2005:

History of modern man unravels as German scholar is exposed as fraud

It's a doozie! It will take eons to correct all those textbooks. :)

There are two significant questions about all this:
1) Are there people who have HIV who never get AIDS?

2) Are there people who have AIDS but don't have HIV?

This guy is a professor of Molecular and Cell Biology at the University of California, Berkeley. He has been researching AIDS and HIV.
http://www.duesberg.com/index.html

I don't know what the answer is but there is some interesting contrary evidence to the current thinking.

A percentage of people are either immune to or able to fight off any disease, including HIV. It's rather bad medicine to use these people to demonstrate the cause or cure of the disease.

Paralytic polio was almost unknown in India at the time it was terrorizing the U.S. It wasn't because the didn't have the virus in India or because the virus doesn't cause the disease. It was because the entire population was continuously exposed to it. Everyone had antibodies.

It's amusing to note that the dunderheads who don't understand this are complaining about who gets references for medical school.

"It was because the entire population was continuously exposed to it. Everyone had antibodies. "

Those people have antibodies to the disease. That's not the situation that we are talking about here.

"It's amusing to note that the dunderheads who don't understand this are complaining about who gets references for medical school."

You guys are always so good at calling people names. Too bad you don't spend that energy doing a little reading instead.

BTW, I didn't say anything about references to medical school. But it's amusing to read posts by people who haven't a clue because all they know about the subject is what certain hard-core evos on FR think about it. Sycophantic loyalty is not very impressive.

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