Archive for the ‘Who Darwin Was’ Category

As a boy, Darwin was a runner and racer, and often successful. In explaining the reason for success, Darwin wrote, “When in doubt I prayed earnestly to God to help me, and I well remember that I attributed my success to my prayers and not to my quick running, and marveled how generally I was aided.”

Darwin was not alone. Founded five years after the publication of the Origin of Species, X Club was founded by Thomas Huxley to market Darwinism. X Club members were the secular elite of the day and included George Busk, Edward Frankland, Thomas Hirst, Joseph Dalton Hooker, Thomas Huxley, John Lubbock, Herbert Spencer, William Spottiswoode, and John Tyndall. The members of the X Club were joined in a fight to unite “devotion to science, pure and free, untrammelled by religious dogmas”—an organized atheist movement.

 Club members wielded much influence over scientific thought. Between the inception in 1864 and its termination in 1893, the X Club and its members gained prominence within the scientific community ruling order. Between 1870 and 1878, Hooker, Spottiswoode, and Huxley held office in the Royal Society simultaneously, and between 1873 and 1885, they consecutively held the presidency of the Royal Society.

X Club member sphere of influence extended beyond the halls of the Royal Society. Five X Club members eventually held the presidency of the British Association for the Advancement of Science between 1868 and 1881. Hirst was elected president of the London Mathematical Society between 1872 and 1874 while Busk served as Examiner and eventually President of the Royal College of Surgeons. Frankland also served as President of the Chemical Society between 1871 and 1873. Just the dynamics, influence, and public relations of the X Club alone ensured a place for Darwin in history in the halls of academia and far beyond.

Not only were the X Club members Darwin’s PR agents, members gained rule over the emerging institutional academic sciences. Darwin was not alone.

Cambridge University

Without question, Darwin had a distain for Christianity. Darwin wrote, “I can hardly see how anyone ought to wish Christianity to be true; for if so the plain language of the text seems to show that the men who do not believe, and this would include my Father, Brother and almost all my best friends, will be everlasting punishment. This is a damnable doctrine.” This is a remarkable statement for someone formally educated to be a clergyman in the Church of England.

Perhaps Darwin’s angst against Christianity stemmed from his father’s insistence that he attend Christ’s College at Cambridge University. Or perhaps, Darwin’s angst stemmed from speculating based the perspective of uniformitarianism that championed by Charles Lyell. While on the Beagle Darwin read Lyell’s book, entitled Principles of Geology. Lyell’s theory contradicts any concept of a global flood. 

Yet, like Lyell, once the scientific method had been abandoned, Darwin was free to explore concepts beyond the evidence. Two years before the publication of the Origin of Species, in an 1857 letter to Asa Gray, Darwin wrote, “I am quite conscious that my speculations run quite beyond the bounds of true science.”

Ironically, even Darwin’s “bulldog,” Ernst Mayr, by the end of the twentieth century came to the same conclusion that “biology, even though it has all the other legitimate properties of a science, still is not a science like the physical sciences.”

Darwin had evidence, but the analysis was not bassed on the scientific method. Now 150 years later, the irresolvable issues could have been avoided had Darwin’s not reached “beyond the bounds of true science.” The convening of the Altenberg Summit in Austria this last summer highlights our entrance into the postmodern evolution era.

Darwin

February 12, 1809, on the same day that Abraham Lincoln was born in a log cabin, Darwin was born into aristocracy at the Mount. Since Darwin’s mother died when he was only eight years old, his father sent him to Butler’s boarding school. By his own admission, Darwin considered himself a “below average” student.

 Then at the age of sixteen, Darwin started college at Edinburgh University to become a physician, because that is what his father wanted him to do. But Darwin was repulsed but what he saw. Transferring to Christ’s College at University of Cambridge to become a minister, Darwin developed life-long associations with Professors Henslow and Sedgwick.

 After receiving an offer of a lifetime after graduation following Henslow’s recommendation, Darwain joined the HMS Beagle as a volunteer naturalist. Leaving Plymouth, England in December 1831, the Canary Islands were the first to be explored and while nearly “utterly homesick,” the thirty-five days on Galápagos Islands cumlinated the voyage. While it was Captain FitzRoy Legacy gave Darwin the opportunity of a lifetime, he later deeply regreted the decision, eventually committing suicide.

 Impressions from the voyage eventually paved the way for the publication of The Origin of Species, more than 20 years later. In 1882, in the area of Westminster Abbey known as Scientists’ Corner, Darwin was laid a few feet from the burial place of Sir Isaac Newton and next to that of the astronomer Sir John Herschel.