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.

What you are talking about is strictly a scientific bias problem. If you disagree with the mainstream it is more difficult to get published. Much more difficult. Dogma in science is still dogma. Once Murray went down the road of "qualifying" sources, you and I lost the ability to determine systemic errors in the analysis.

Here's an interesting question: What should we do about a music encyclopedia that is published by Sony?

Foghat might even get more than a footnote.

God help us all.

Economic viability over the course of time is a better measure. In biology, Darwinism is a footnote in the lab. Companies are going wild over after various bio tech issues. Rarely does Darwinism, NeoDarwinism etc, ever limit or guide the methodology. It may when we know more about the genomes, and what they mean. We don't and it doesn't.

A paradigm shift is not looked upon as a good thing by entrenched researchers. They hate it and resist it with every neuron of their very smart brains.

But the economics will prevail. I don't remember which character said it in Ghostbusters, but the idea is priceless. "Hey, I've worked in the private sector...and they want results!" to a couple of professors that just lost their positions.

Thanks for the info on Murray again.

DK

Kary Mullis is a nutcase, and probably the least deserving Nobelist of the last 50 years. Funny how all these AIDS patients started taking antivirals and suddenly stopped dying.

But of course, anyone who thinks the scientific evidence is consistent with the earth being created 6000 years ago could believe anything.

The legend-credulous express dismay when challenged to produce just one instance of a Darwin discovery that was taken over by experimental biologists.

Hiram must be a scientific ignoramus. Took me all of 10 seconds to come up with "an instance". There are more all over the web.

Here's one:

"Jeffrey Podos, Joel A. Southall, and Marcos R. Rossi-Santos

Vocal mechanics in Darwin's finches: correlation of beak gape and song frequency

JEB 2004; 207(4): 607-619"

"Mendel believed that his discovery disproved Darwin’s theory."

Did Mendel ever mention Darwin? I've never read that he did. Mendel's work shows that he thought he was working on a different mechanism for evolution. I don't think he and Darwin were at cross purposes.

Handel 155
Wagner 423
Haydn 74

Did Murray account for the language bias and how? I am not disparaging Murray, but that is a monumental bias to overcome.

It is a meta social construct study and Wagner appears to be a problem.

Judging sources has the systemic error in logic of appeal to authority. I have not read Murray so I really can't say he falls into that fallacy. But in movies, Wagner is certainly more important than one would gather from Murray.

Bach was still robbed.

DK

Mendel and Pasteur were Christians, and only fools would say this limited their scientific accomplishments. That's why the secular monkey-men of today refuse to acknowledge them as superior to their imam, Darwin. You can't argue with their religious convictions.

"Did Murray account for the language bias and how? "
That's why, as you could see from my partially reprinted list of his "qualified sources" on Western music, he was trying to pick English, American, Italian, German, French, Danish etc. sources - to eliminate, minimize, or average out cultural bias in the statistical treatment of the averaged totals. The French could be thought to be partial to Debussy, but why would the Americans be?

Well, "appeal to the authority" is not a fallacy there - while "man on the street" [or his market preferences] could be a gage of popularity of the day, Murray made a conscious and perfectly reasonable decision that only the professionals are in any position to offer learned and informed judgment on the relative standing of truly prominent contributors in their disciplines. To order the importance of scientists in biology by the means of statistical polling, for example, the only valid "voters" ought to be biology PhDs, or still better, tenured biology professors. All others need not bother. To filter off fads, he limited his statistical work to those who were born before 1910 [and thus had reached the "acme of 40" by 1950.]

That tends to be my point. Murray attempts to measure a social issue using his judgement to limit his data. Did he use Slavic sources, and once you go there, how do you weigh the evidence?

My simple movie search indicates Wagner was under represented. The degree of underrepresentation is vast. Wagner may be ranked above Beethoven and Bach. I doubt there was a concerted effort to insert Wagner in the movie database, so the question is always: How do you know, what you know?

ToEs have a vast following, and few applications. Genetics has a vast following and vast applications. How in the world could Darwinism have more of an impact than genetics and the discovery of DNA in biology?

DK

"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."

And that is still true today.

"Kary Mullis is a nutcase, and probably the least deserving Nobelist of the last 50 years. Funny how all these AIDS patients started taking antivirals and suddenly stopped dying."

Funny how Magic Johnson and some other high-profile types are still healthy without taking any of that stuff.

But appeal to authority is the problem. Meta studies are particularly prone to them. While the scientific standard of a good study might be 95% confidence (1 in 20 may be completely rigorous but absolutely wrong), a meta study has no "real" standards.

He eliminated fads...why? He cut his info off at 1950...why?

I would say that as a matter of convenience, he cut off all the hard science biologists that came into being after DNA and genetics became important and biology evolved into hard science.

DK

Funny how Magic Johnson and some other high-profile types are still healthy without taking any of that stuff.

False.

See, you were just complaining about creationists being called liars. And I replied that the problem is, people post falsehoods without any apparent attempt to check on their truth. And you just illustrated what I said beautifully. Magic Johnson indeed takes a cocktail of anti-HIV drugs.

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