Posts Tagged ‘Darwin’

Long denigrated as vestigial or useless structure, the human appendix is now known to have a number of specific functions. The most widely recognized function is as a “safe house” for the beneficial bacteria living in the human gut.” There are approximately 500 species of bacteria in the gut alone—the continued presence of beneficial bacteria is essential for good health.

ScienceDaily in an article entitled “Appendix Isn’t Useless At All: It’s A Safe House For Good Bacteria,” October 8, 2007, William Parker, Ph.D., assistant professor of experimental surgery along with R. Randal Bollinger, M.D., Ph.D., Duke University professor emeritus noted—”Our studies have indicated that the immune system protects and nourishes the colonies of microbes living in the biofilm. By protecting these good microbes, the harmful microbes have no place to locate. We have also shown that biofilms are most pronounced in the appendix and their prevalence decreases moving away from it.” One of the functions of the appendix is to serve as a microbe storehouse.

According to their study published in the Journal of Theoretical Biology, the bacteria in the human gut functions to digest food and produce vitamins, like Vitamin K—essential to coagulation. In the event that bacteria in the intestines become unbalanced, or taken over by opportunistic organisms such as cholera or amoebic dysentery, the appendix functions to reboot the bacterial flora. Parker explains the mechanism: “Once the bowel contents have left the body, the good bacteria hidden away in the appendix can emerge and repopulate the lining of the intestine before more harmful bacteria can take up residence.”

“Darwin simply didn’t have access to the information we have,” explains Parker. “If Darwin had been aware of the species that have an appendix attached to a large cecum… he probably would not have thought of the appendix as a vestige of evolution.”

When Jerry Coyne (2009), professor at the University of Chicago, writing in his book, Why Evolution is True that “our appendix is simply the remnant of an organ that was critically important to our leaf-eating ancestors, but is of no real value to use,” excluded known evidence. Continued adherence to the vestige status of the appendix by evolutionists requires rejection of the scientific method.

“Maybe it’s time to correct the textbooks,” says William Parker, Ph.D., assistant professor of surgical sciences at Duke and the senior author of the study. “Many biology texts today still refer to the appendix as a ‘vestigial organ.’”  

Jerry Coyne (2009), professor at the University of Chicago, writes in his new book, Why Evolution is True that, “We humans have many vestigial features proving that we evolved. The most popular is the appendix.” Coyne claims that: “our appendix is simply the remnant of an organ that was critically important to our leaf-eating ancestors, but is of no real value to use.”

Coyne believes the expansion of appendix development occurred because of “use” followed by contraction due to “disuse”—the rise and fall of the appendix. Following this belief, one would expect to find the appendix first increasing then decreasing in our presumed human evolutionary ancestors.

The vestige logic is great; unfortunately, the evidence does not support the logic. Coyne, along with the rest of the vestiges adherents fail mention that the rise and fall theory of the appendix simply never happened. The reason: the appendix occurs only in a few diverse mammals—and does not follow an evolutionary continum of rising and falling.

In fact, the appendix, in any form, is not present in any invertebrate. Among the vertebrates, the appendix is absent in fish, amphibians, reptiles, birds, and, most importantly, even in only a few mammals. In fact, the appendix is only present in a few marsupials, including the wombat and South American opossum, a few rodents, including rabbits and rats, and only a few primates, only the anthropoid apes and man. Even monkeys do not have an appendix.

Even though the appendix is “critically important to our leaf-eating ancestors,” tracing the development of the rise and fall of the appendix in presumed human evolutionary ancestors is simply a mirage—nothing more.

Although the Chimpanzee, touted as our closest genetic ancestor, has an appendix, surgeons are not exploring the possibility of any type of Chimpanzee-to-human transplantation and nor is the pharmaceutical industry exploring the use of any Chimpanzee molecules for use in humans, not even insulin.

Insulin and heart valves from the Suidae, the biological family to which pigs and their relatives belong, have long been used in humans. Calcitonin, a polypeptide hormone, is identical to the Calcitonin produced in the species of the fish family known as Salmonidae—Salmon. Why are pigs and the salmon more similar to humans than our closest genetic counterpart?  

The reason is—nature is discontinuous and digital, designed as unique creations. Anatomical and molecular evidence demonstrates that nature is not the result of “slight, successive changes” via mutations as touted by evolution adherents—evidence Jerry Coyne must inconveniently ignore; a practice popularized by Charles Darwin.  

In the final paragraph of the section entitled Rudimentary, Atrophied, and Aborted Organs, Darwin writes: “Finally, the several classes of facts which have been considered in this chapter, seem to me to proclaim so plainly, that the innumerable species, genera and families, with which this world is peopled, are all descended, each within its own class or group, from common parents, and have all been modified in the course of descent, that I should without hesitation adopt this view even if it were unsupported by other facts or arguments.”

The concept of vestiges from the actions of “use and disuse” continues today even though proven to be “unsupported by other facts or arguments.” Little wonder why students continue to question whether science in the classroom today is really science. Even though touted by esteemed college professors, what may be “most popular” can be dead wrong. 

Vestiges  are tauted as evidence for biological evolution based on the Larmarckian concept of “use and disuse” that Charles Darwin reluctantly, yet fully accepted by the 6^th edition of The Origin of Species in 1872.

In the 1^st edition Darwin wrote that“use and disuse seem to have produced some effect” that was later changed to “use and disuse seem to have produced a considerable effect” in the 6^th edition. For Darwin, the importance of “use and disuse” increased from “some effect” to “considerable effect.”

In this series, we are examining the concept that the human appendix is a vestige structure through the process of “disuse.” Vestiges are thought to be biological elements that have lost their function through “disuse.” At issue is—what is the evidence that the process of “disuse” can actually produce vestiges?

In the decade following the publication of the 6^th edition, German biologist August Weismann, at the University of Freiburg, launched the first scientific inquiry to directly challenging Darwin’s theory. Now known as the “Weisman Barrier” in 1883 Weismann cut off the tails of mice from twenty-one generations. Seeing that the twenty-second generation still had tails, Weismann concluded that the evidence contradicted Darwin’s theory of “disuse” and that despite obvious reasons for change in the mice, “continuity” was observed, not new variations.

The concept of the Weismann Barrier became central to the emerging  Modern evolutionary synthesis. “Disuse” alone simply does not result in vestige structures. Ernst Mayr, known as Darwin’s bulldog of the twenty-first century, called Weismann “the second most notable evolutionary theorist of the nineteenth century, after Charles Darwin.”

Evidence from the Weismann Barrier continues to stand unchallenged, now for over 100 years. Even more to the point, after thousands of years of circumcision, “disuse” has failed to any effect on human anatomy. Without scientific experimental evidence demonstrating that “disuse” can result in any biological changes, the concept of vestige as evidence for evolution remains untenetable.

Other known vestige problems for evolution include, 1) the appendix is not found systematically found through nature, even in mammals; 2) “vestige” structures are now known to be functional. These evolutionary contradictions for vestiges continue to undermining evidence for evolution.

In the up-coming posts, we will continue to explore why these last two problems have completely undermined the concept that the human appendix is a vestige structure.

Charles Darwin attempted to avoid the use of the term “vestiges” largely because the term had been associated with the “erroneous” Larmarckian concept of “use and disuse” that was only “veritable rubbish.”

Jean-Baptiste Lamarck (1744 – 1829) was a member of the French Academy of Sciences and was appointed to the Chair of Botany in 1788. When the Muséum national d’Histoire naturelle was founded in 1793, Lamarck was appointed professor of zoology. In 1801, he published Système des animaux sans vertèbres, a major work on the classifications and coined the term invertebrates. Lamarck is thought to be the first use the term biology in its modern sense. Lamarck continued his work as a premier authority on invertebrate zoology.

Darwin did credit “Lamarck as the first man whose conclusions on the subject excited much attention.… In these works he up holds the doctrine that all species, including man, are descended from other species.”

Lamarck’s theory of evolution, which he referred to as “transformism,” was based on the idea that individuals develop new traits during their own lifetimes by “use and disuse” and transmit them to the next generation. Larmack writes – “Progress in complexity of organization exhibits anomalies here and there in the general series of animals, due to the influence of environment and of acquired habits.”

The giraffe served as Lamarck’s classic example of evolution through “use,” acquiring longer necks in successive generations in competition to reach the ever-scarcer leaves higher in the trees. In illustrating Lamarck’s views on adaptation, Darwin wrote, “To this latter agency he seems to attribute all the beautiful adaptations in nature; such as the long neck of the giraffe for browsing on the branches of trees.”

For Darwin, however, this explanation was simply not scientific – “Lamarck, who believed in an innate and inevitable tendency towards perfection in all organic beings, seems to have felt this difficulty so strongly that he was led to suppose that new and simple forms are continually being produced by spontaneous generation. Science has not as yet proved the truth of this belief.”

One of the most eminent pre-Darwinists was Charles Darwin’s own grandfather, Erasmus Darwin (1731–1802). Erasmus discussed his ideas at length in a two-volume work, Zoonomia, published in 1794. Erasmus wrote that “all … have risen from one living filament.”

Erasmus’ book was widely popular in Western Europe- even translated into German, French, and Italian. Erasmus envisioned that the driving force behind species modification was a result of “lust, hunger, and danger.” In line with Greek philosophy, Erasmus envisioned changes by “continuing to improve its own inherent activity.”

Actually how these “improvements” developed was completely unknown to Lamarck and Erasmus—evolution was a philosophy, not a science. The unknown cause of “improvements” is what drove Darwin to discover the underlying laws of nature—scientifically. Writing in the preface of The Origin of Species, Darwin suggests how Erasmus’s work, although “erroneous,” may have influenced Lamarck: “It is curious how largely my grandfather, Dr. Erasmus Darwin, anticipated the views and erroneous grounds of opinion of Lamarck in his Zoonomia.”

For Lamarck, new characteristics are acquired through the process of “use and disuse.” Darwin’s grandfather, Erasmus Darwin, was a Lamarckian evolutionist. Charles Darwin, however, in pursuit of a “scientific theory” of evolution, initially opposed Lamarckian evolution, only granting the theory marginal support.

In a letter written to J. D. Hooker in 1844, Darwin wrote, “Heaven forefend me from Lamarck nonsense of a ‘tendency to progression.’ … But the conclusions I am led to are not widely diff erent from his, though the means of change are wholly so.” “With respect to books on this subject,” Darwin continues, “I do not know any systematic ones, except Lamarck’s, which is veritable rubbish.”

Although attempting to distance himself from Lamarck’s concepts of “use and disuse” and “vestages,” Darwin distain for “use and disuse” eventually waned as causes for the origin of variation required for the actions of natural selection remained Darwin’s largest unsumountable enigma.

Since then, the term, “vestiges” has once again gained prominence over “rudiments,” as has Larmarckian concepts of evolution. The question remains, however, are structures classified as “vestiges” evidence of evolution? Specifically, have vestiges seemingly lost all or most of their original function in a species through evolution?

To address answers to these questions, we will be examining the most popular example of vestiges—the mammalian appendix in the up-coming posts.   

Charles Darwin uses “vestiges” five times in The Origin of Species. Vestiges, since then has become synonomous with evolution. The emenent evolutionist, Douglas Futuyma, Professor of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at the University of Michigan, notes that vestigial structures make no sense without evolution. The first question is—what are vestiges?

 In this first in a series on vestiges, we will discover how structures labeled as vestiges play an important role as evidence for the theory of evolutionary. Since the most popular example of a vestige structure is the human appendix, the human appendix will be the focus structure examined in this series.

By the time The Origin of Species was published in 1859, vestiges had already been a hot topic popularized by Robert Chambers’ following the publication of the Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation in 1844. The work brought together various ideas of stellar evolution and progressive transmutation of species. The book was a best-seller and is now seen as causing a shift in public opinion that paved the way for the general acceptance of evolution.

While agreeing with the general concept of evolution, Darwin took exception to the concept that evolution occurred by sudden changes in nature. Darwin wrote – “The author apparently believes that organisation progresses by sudden leaps, but that the effects produced by the conditions of life are gradual.”

Perhaps for these differences with Robert Chambers, Darwin even avoided defining the term “vestiges” in the The Origin of Species. In the Glossary, however, Darwin does define a related term: “RUDIMENTARY.—Very imperfectly developed.” In The Origin of Species, the term “rudimentary” appears 101 times.

Darwin envisions rudimentary structures to be the result of two different dynamics: 1) as structures “imperfectly developed”—emerging, and 2) as structures in disuse undergoing loss of function—elimination. Darwin writes – “Rudimentary organs will speak infallibly with respect to the nature of long-lost structures”—a Lamarckian disuse concept. Darwin explains that rudimentary structures exist because “natural selection… had no power to check deviations in their structure.”

Today however, only the elimination due to disuse concept is thought to be in operation. WIKIPEDIA.org states: “Vestigiality describes homologous characters of organisms that have seemingly lost all or most of their original function in a species through evolution. Answers.com defines vestige structures, as “A rudimentary or degenerate, usually nonfunctioning, structure that is the remnant of an organ or part that was fully developed or functioning in a preceding generation or an earlier stage of development.”

The next question is – how well does the human appendix fit the vestige structure criteria? Next week we will examine the existence of the appendix throughout the animal kingdom.

Jerry A. Coyne, one of the leading evolutionists at the University of Chicago, in his new book entitled Why Evolution is True (2009) writes “much confusion and misunderstanding surrounds evolution” even though “the modern theory is easy to grasp.” The question is how can a theory be “easy to grasp” and still be surrounded by “much confusion”?

But what could the confusion be over? Here are some examples.  Charles Darwin wrote in The Origin of Species - “There is no logical impossibility in the acquirement of any conceivable degree of perfection through natural selection”. Coyne contradicts Darwin by stating – “natural selection does not yield perfection”. Over a trivial issue, confusion reigns over whether natural selection can or cannot produce perfection in nature.

Presumably, to show how easy the theory of evolution is to understand, Coyne features what he calls the six basics of evolution: “evolution, gradualism, speciation, common ancestry, natural selection, and nonselective mechanisms”. For Coyne, natural selection is not the exclusive driving force of evolution.

Niles Eldredge, evolutionary biologist and curator of the American Museum of Natural History, disagrees. Niles Eldredge, architect  and designer of the museum’s currently touring Darwin exhibit in the companion book Darwin, Discovering the Tree of Life (2005), credits Darwin with discovering the actions of natural selection—the essence of evolution: “When [Darwin] formulated the principle of natural selection, he had discovered the central process of evolution.”

Unlike Coyne, Eldredge envisions evolution acting exclusively through the process of natural selection: “A century and a half ago, Charles Darwin offered the world a single, simple scientific explanation for the diversity of life on Earth: evolution by natural selection.” Unlike Coynes six basics of evolution, Eldredge uses a VISTA acronym for natural selection that stands for Variation, Inheritance, Selection, Time, and Adaptation.

Differences in approach even between Coyne and Eldredge, exemplify why evolution theory continues to be confusing—even on the basics. The teaching of evolution is in chaos. Coyne pines “most of my university students who supposedly learned evolution in high school, come to my courses know almost nothing about this central organizing theory of biology.” Could it be because a unified theory of evolution simply does not exist?

Even university science major graduates seem to be no better. T. Ryan Gregory and Cameron A. J. Ellis, in their paper entitled “Conceptions of Evolution Among Science Graduate Students” published in BioScience 59(9):792-799 (2009), surprizingly found that less than 30% of students pursuing advanced science degrees could correctly identify even the basic principles of evolution.

The reason is—a comprehensive theory of evolution simply does not exist. Even with the convening of the most respected evolutionary scientists at the Altenberg Summit in 2008, no consensus was reached on a comprehensive theory of evolution.

Given the flood of available evidence, in the wake of Crick’s Central Dogma collapse, evolution is a theory that remains in chaos—now more than ever.

Species and natural selection are the two most common terms Charles Darwin uses in the book from the title—The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life.

In the “Glossary of the Principle Scientific Terms Used in the Present Volume”, while Darwin defines “Organism” as “An organised being, whether plant or animal”, surprizingly, neither “species” nor “natural selection,” the key terms of the book, are defined in the Glossary. The question is why.

Defining “species” became one of Darwin’s great challenges. From the start, Darwin recognized that among naturalists of the day, the term “species” did not have a consistent definition: “No one definition has satisfied all naturalists; yet every naturalist knows vaguely what he means when he speaks of a species. Generally the term includes the unknown element of a distinct act of creation.”

 Unlike Newton who was able to measure and test the laws of gravity, Darwin had to deal with the problem that there “is no possible test but individual opinion to determine which of them shall be considered as species and which as varieties.”

In the pursuit for a definition, Darwin suggested that as a variety begins to exceed the number of the parent species, the new variety becomes a new species: “If a variety were to flourish so as to exceed in numbers the parent species, it would then rank as the species.” In other words, species was simply a numbers game.

Darwin’s numbers game approach was never seriously taken—even by Darwin himself. After 150 years, the problem of defining species has not been resolved and is now known as the long-standing “Species Problem.”

Jody Hey of Rutgers University wrote in Trends in Ecology & Evolution (2001) – “The species problem is the long-standing failure of biologists to agree on how we should identify species and how we should define the word ‘species’. The innumerable attacks on the problem have turned the often-repeated question ‘what are species?’ into a philosophical conundrum.”

Massimo Pigliucci professor of Ecology and Evolution at the State University of New York at Stony Brook noted in BioEssays (2003) “First, the species problem is not primarily an empirical one, but it is rather fraught with philosophical questions that require – but cannot be settled by – empirical evidence.”

The Origin of Species is loaded with plastic contradictory definitions even on the central term of the book—species. Darwin eventually concedes on the definition of species by writing – “We have seen that there is no infallible criterion by which to distinguish species and well-marked varieties.”

Today, known evidence remains compatible with the following definition of species that Darwin long endvoured to eliminate – “Generally the term [species] includes the unknown element of a distinct act of creation.”

Charles Darwin struggled with significant health problems. Just less than two weeks before publication of The Origin of Species, Darwin described his condition to his cousin Fox in a letter, stating, “I have had a series of calamities; first a sprained ankle, and then badly swollen whole leg and face; much rash and a frightful succession of Boils—4 or 5 at once. I have felt quite ill—and have little faith in this ‘unique crisis’ as the Doctor calls it, doing me much good. I cannot now walk a step from bad boil on knee.”

Things that Darwin once found pleasurable as a young man turned on him. By 1865, at the age of fifty-six, Darwin summed up his problems in writing to a new medical adviser by writing that for twenty-five years he had experienced extreme flatulence, preceded by ringing ears and visual black dots, and vomiting preceded by shivering and crying.

In 1871, one year before the publication of the sixth and final edition of The Origin of Species, in a letter to his natural selection collegue, Alfred Wallace, Darwin confided: “present I feel sick of everything, and if I could occupy time and forget my daily discomforts, or rather miseries, I would never publish another word.”

Time and health took a toll on Darwin’s mind: “I have said that in one respect my mind has changed during the last twenty or thirty years. Up to the age of thirty, or beyond it, poetry of many kinds, such as the works of Milton, Gray, Byron, Wordsworth, Coleridge, and Shelley, gave me great pleasure, and even as a schoolboy I took intense delight in Shakespeare, especially in historical plays. But now after many years I cannot endure to read a line of poetry: I have tried lately to read Shakespeare, and found it so intolerably dull that it nauseated me. I have also lost my taste for pictures or music.”

What caused Darwin’s life-long health problems? To explain why Darwin experienced such poor health, scientists have pointed to a one night event east of the Andes near Mendoza in March 1835—Darwin wrote: “At night I experienced an attack (for it deserves no less a name) of the Vinchuca, a species of Reduvius, the great black bug of the Pampas. It is most disgusting to feel soft wingless insects, about an inch long, crawling over one’s body.” Darwin is thought to have been bitten by an insect called the “Great Black Bug of the Pampas” carrying the infectious parasite Trypanosoma cruzi.

For over a period of forty years, Darwin suffered intermittently from various combinations of symptoms such as malaise, vertigo, dizziness, muscle spasms and tremors, vomiting, cramps and colics, bloating and nocturnal intestinal gas, headaches, alterations of vision, severe tiredness, nervous exhaustion, dyspnea, skin problems such as blisters all over the scalp and eczema, crying, anxiety, sensation of impending death and loss of consciousness, fainting, tachycardia, insomnia, tinnitus, and depression. However, since attempts to test Darwin’s remains at the Westminster Abbey by using modern PCR techniques have been refused by the Abbey’s curator, the real cause of Darwin’s health problems remains only speculative.

Michael Ruse, author of Defining Darwin, Essays of the History and Philosophy of Evolutionary Biology concluded that “Indeed, the truth is that there is virtually nothing today in evolutionary studies that correspond exactly to the facts of the Origin.”

For Charles Darwin, molecular clocks were the farthest his mind, not to mention cellular biology or DNA. In 1859, inheritance was thought to occur by blending the characteristics with the new information learned by the “gemmules” in the parents. Gregor Mendel, the Austrian monk, in 1865 eventually decimated blending inheritance, but the foundation of modern genetics went unrecognized until rediscovered by Hugo de Vries and Carl Correns in 1900.

To estimate the pace of evolution, in 1962 molecular biologist Emile Zuckerkandl and Nobel Prize winner Linus Pauling were working at California Institite of Technology on hemoglobin evolution and expressed the idea of “molecular anthropology” as a new discipline. The idea was later termed the molecular clock theory. The purpose of the molecular clock is to estimate the rate of evolution for individual molecules. In 1962, molecular sequence problems were just emerging.

Zuckerkandl and Pauling postulated that in a protein, each amino acid randomly changes at a constant rate. If the estimated time for divergence between species and the number of amino acid changes since that time can be determined from the fossil record, the rate of change can be calculated. This rate of molecular change (time per amino acid change) has been called the molecular clock.

As the molecular data began to accumulate during the early 1990s, it became increasingly apparent that the theory was intrinsically even more problematic when examining evolution from the context of the entire organism and the fossil record. At the core of Darwinian evolution are the successive, slight changes in molecules. However, how different molecules can evolve at different rates in the same organism emerged as an enigma.

Information from the molecular clock was once thought to be one of the most useful tools in establishing evolutionary biology. How the evolution of each molecule can run by a different molecular clock in the same organism continues to undermine a cohesive theory of molecular evolution.

The pursuit to resolve the clock issue has reemerged onto center stage because the rate of molecular change is foundational to evolution. If the molecular mechanisms of evolution cannot be traced, the only logical conclusion is that molecular biology has played no role in evolution.

In 2007, Naoyuki Takahata, of The Graduate University for Advanced Studies in Japan, wrote in the journal Genetics, “It is now clear that any kind of molecular clock ticks erratically, but it is nevertheless widely used [unfortunately] for estimating species divergence times.”

How Zuckerkandl and Pauling’s simple postulate has become so complicated begs the question, are molecular clocks real? Professor of evolutionary biology Thomas Cavalier-Smith of the University of Oxford in England wrote in Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B in a paper entitled Cell Evolution and Earth History: Stasis and Revolution that the answer is no: “Evolution is not evenly paced and there are no real molecular clocks.”

Available evidence bodes negatively for the usefulness of molecular clocks in establishing any shape for the Tree of Life. What was originally thought to become a cornerstone for molecular evolution is now irreconcilable with evolution and created chaos in evolutionary thought. Difficulties associated with attempting to explain how a family of homologous proteins could have evolved at constant rates have created chaos in evolutionary thought.

Rather than supporting the theory of evolution, the molecular clock evidence and the sequence data actually undermine the theory of evolution through “successive, slight” variations in molecular biology. Just as hope in the fossil record, the origin of life, and the sequence of amino acids dissipated, the hope that molecular clocks will become an evidential, evolutionary cornerstone is vaporizing. In 2005, geneticist Giuseppe Sermonti wrote: “Once the universal ‘molecular clock’ was shelved, biochemists ceased to question (in any case dubious) datings proposed by paleontologists.”

Molecular biologists beginning in the early twentieth century had expected to trace the organization of inorganic to organic molecules as well as the successive molecular changes as the species evolved. Clearly, however, the convergence of molecular evidence does not support the theory. Darwin concluded in The Origin of Species if the evidence does not support “numerous, successive, slight modifications, my theory would absolutely break down.”

Molecular clocks, as evidence for evolution, continue to be unsuccessful in delivering on earlier expectations.

Charles Darwin recorded in his autobiography that The Origin of Species “is no doubt the chief work of my life. It was from the first highly successful. The first small edition of 1,250 copies was sold on the day of publication, and a second edition of 3,000 copies soon afterwards. Sixteen thousand copies have now (1876) been sold in England and considering how stiff a book it is, this is a large sale.”

While it is unknown how the 1,250 copies could have been sold on “the day of publication” without Amazon.com, what is known is that Darwin was famous long before the publication of the first edition of The Origin of Species in 1859.

Charles Darwin was following in the tradition of his grandfather, Erasmus Darwin—author of the infamous Zoönomia. King George III even asked Erasmus to be his doctor, but he refused the appointment—too busy.

Erasmus was building a vast network of associates that became known as the leading social and philosophical lights. With contacts like Matthew Boulton, Josiah Wedgwood, and James Watt, Erasmus established the Lunar Society that became the main intellectual powerhouse of the Industrial Revolution in England.

By the time Charles Darwin entered Edinburgh University, Zoönomia (meaning “the law of life” in Latin) had become a popular poetry and science textbook. At Edinburgh University, Charles Darwin learned that his professor, Robert Edmund Grant, quoted from Zoönomia for his doctoral thesis. 

Just months after returning from the voyage on the HMS Beagle in February 1837, and before starting working on what is now known as The Origin of Species, Darwin was elected to the Council of the Royal Geographical Society, later accepting Darwin accepted the position of Secretary of the Society in March 1838. Darwin was elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society in January 1839. The Geographic and Royal Society institutions were reserved for the intellectual elite—only.

The Darwin’s in the eighteenth century has been likened to the Kennedy’s of the nineteenth century. Darwin’s notoriety can even be seen at play during the voyage of the HMS Beagle. By British custom, the ship’s surgeon traditionally took the position of the official “naturalist.” Darwin’s role was to be a “gentleman’s naturalist” and assist the ship’s surgeon, Robert McKormick, and Captain FitzRoy. 

On shore in Brazil, however, it was the 22-year old Charles Darwin, not Doctor McKormick, who began receiving all the notoriety and the invitations from dignitaries on shore. Reasonably, McKormick felt upstaged by Darwin. Being sufficiently disgruntled, McKormick left the Beagle at Rio de Janeiro. McKormick’s status was “invalided out” back to Britain.

In 1859, not only was the topic of evolution was “in the air”, Darwin’s word was like E.F. Hutton speaking. The timing was perfect. Darwin’s pre-Origin notoriety preceded the successful launch of one the most influential and contentious books ever in the history of science.