TALES OF DARWIN
By Thomas B. Meyers*
PART 1: BACKGROUND TO THE CONTROVERSY
BISHOP JAMES USHER
About 6,000 years ago, more precisely on Sunday, October 23, 4004 BC, God created “light.” This was the first day of creation and the world was completed in five more days – man being created on the 6th day. These were the calculations of Bishop James Usher, the 17th Century Anglican Archbishop of Armagh, Primate of All Ireland, and Vice-Chancellor of Trinity College in Dublin.
Usher’s timeline was later modified by Sir John Lightfoot, who evidently did not favor a literal interpretation of the Bible. He calculated that the entire world, including man, was created by the Trinity on the very first day. Additionally, he showed that this occurred at 9:00 in the morning. Further study found that Adam and Eve were driven from paradise on Monday, November 10th in 4004 BC, and Noah’s Ark made landfall on May 5th, 2348 BC, a Wednesday.
These were religious beliefs held by many in the English world when Charles Darwin proposed his Theory of Evolution by Natural Selection in 1859. For many of the faithful today, this is still the way it all happened, although the dates and times have been dropped and the timeline for man’s existence on earth has been extended to about 10,000 years.
DARWIN’S EARLY LIFE
I’m not suggesting that these were beliefs held by Darwin or by his family. On the contrary. The religious beliefs of the Darwin’s and the Wedgwood’s (his mother’s family) were rather liberal for their day. His father and grandfather were considered to be “freethinkers,” and there were Unitarian connections on both sides of the family. As a very young boy, Darwin attended the Unitarian church with his mother. However, his father had him baptized in the Anglican Church. But this may not have been for religious reasons. To get anywhere in British society back then, ties to the Church of England were regarded as essential.
As to his Unitarian heritage we shouldn’t get too carried away. To say that Darwin was a Unitarian is akin to claiming Martin Luther was a Catholic. The key word is “was.” Indeed, during all the years of controversy following the publication of On the Origin of Species, Unitarians more or less shunned Darwin – or at least they didn’t run out and claim him as one of their own.
Let me interject clarification here regarding the Wedgwood’s. Darwin’s father married into the very famous and very wealthy Wedgewood pottery family. Darwin’s mother died when he was quite young, so he was raised essentially by both families – the Darwin’s and the Wedgwood’s. When Darwin married, it was to Emma Wedgwood – one of his first cousins. Thus his cousin became his wife, his uncle became his father-in-law, and his other cousins became his sisters-in-law. It made for a confusing family tree. It couldn’t have been any better for Darwin though since he essentially became a “double dipper” into the Wedgwood family fortune.
DARWIN AND WALLACE
I’m going to take a leap of faith at this point and assume most of you are somewhat familiar with Darwin’s early adult life – especially his five-year adventure on the Beagle and the influence this trip had on the formulation of his theory of evolution. However, two additional influences need mentioning.
The geologist Charles Lyell was a close friend of Darwin’s. Lyell’s hypothesis that the earth was ancient – shaped by slow moving forces still in operation today – solved Darwin’s problem of time. Now there was a framework within which the slow process of evolution by natural selection could work. Darwin had a copy of Lyell’s book with him on his Beagle voyage.
He got the notion of “competition between individuals of a species” from Thomas Malthus, the 19thcentury population economist. It was Malthus’s idea that human population, if unchecked, would increase at a geometric rate while the food supply would only grow arithmetically; thus setting up a battle for limited resources. Darwin applied this concept to all species. For Malthus, the problem was caused by the “poor in society,” since, in his view, they did most of the excessive reproduction. Therefore, any effort to help the poor only made the problem worse. There is no indication that Darwin shared this view, having once commented on his “humorous” reading of Malthus’s book.
So we can conclude that Darwin took his personal observations, meshed them with new ideas in the fields of geology and economics, and put it all down in the draft form of a book he hoped to someday publish. Then he sat on it for nearly 20 years, fearing the hostile reaction that was sure to come.
Now let’s fast-forward to June 18, 1858.
On this date, Darwin received a letter from another naturalist, Alfred Russell Wallace, who was collecting specimens in the Malay Archipelago. Included was a manuscript Wallace asked Darwin to read concerning some ideas he (Wallace) had on evolution. Darwin read the paper, and as a modern Brit might say, he was “gobsmacked.” Here was his “big idea” with someone else’s name on it.
What should he do? Darwin fetched up the early draft of his own paper and, being a proper British gentleman, had both of them read at a meeting of the Linnaean Society – at that time more or less a club where naturalists met to share ideas. Darwin did not attend the meeting and there is no record of whose paper was read first.
Then, with the resources available to him through his very wealthy wife, he sent his manuscript off to the publisher. This was On the Origin of Species. In the meantime, Wallace was still mucking around in the jungles of Malaysia without a clue as to what had transpired in London.
HUXLEY VS WILBERFORCE DEBATE
Darwin’s book was met with resistance right from the start. Although he only made a single reference to man in the book, it was clear that he was implying that humans evolved from animals – thus contradicting the biblical version of creation.
Darwin, however, stayed out of the controversy. He was ill much of the time and one of his children had died. He more or less secluded himself at his country estate, Down House, and let others provide the defense of his theory. No one defended it more aggressively than the naturalist Thomas Huxley – so much so that he earned the moniker “Darwin’s Bulldog.” Regarding Darwin’s theory, Huxley once quipped: “How extremely stupid of me not to have thought of that.”
Huxley had a famous debate in 1860 with the Church of England Lord Bishop of Oxford, Samuel Wilberforce. Wilberforce was a great public speaker and debater. He earned the moniker “Soapy Sam” for his “slippery” debating skills. So it was Darwin’s Bulldog vs. Soapy Sam on the night of June 30th at Oxford University. The only person missing was Howard Cosell at ringside.
At one point in the debate the Lord Bishop asked Huxley if it was from his grandmother’s lineage or his grandfather’s lineage that he claimed “descent from a monkey.” Huxley’s response was something to the effect that given a choice, he would much rather have a monkey for an ancestor than someone like Wilberforce who would make a mockery of the debate and use his great talents to obscure the truth. Score that round for Huxley!
CONTROVERSY TO DATE
In On the Origin of Species, Darwin’s single reference to humans was: “light will be thrown on the origins of man and his history.” As the Huxley-Wilberforce debate showed, this was all that was needed to ignite the controversy. It was another 12 years before Darwin finally addressed the issue of evolutionary change in humans, in his next book The Descent of Man. By then, what he had to say was more or less a reaction to the ongoing debate.
By the end of the 19th century, most mainstream religions had come to terms with Darwin’s natural selection idea, just as long as God was the maestro. However, the creationists were not to be appeased. The controversy boiled over in 1925 at the Tennessee Scopes Trial – or “monkey trial.” John Scopes was convicted of teaching evolution in violation of a new state law prohibiting it, but his conviction was later overturned. However, creationists clamed a major victory and attempted to get anti-evolution laws passed in over 13 states – succeeding only in Mississippi and Arkansas.
Their victory was an illusion. The long term effect of the trial was to divide the religious forces, with more tolerant Christians seeing an alternate way to finding the truth – the scientific approach. Additionally, every legal attempt to inject creationism into the classroom has since met with failure in the federal courts.
In the 1960s creationists changed tactics and tried to use “scientific evidence” to support their viewpoint. But this was too little, too late. The National Defense Education Act had been passed in 1958, a reaction to fears that our educational system was falling behind that of the Soviet Union. Public school textbooks were now stressing the importance of evolution as the unifying principle of Biology.
There have been challenges since then, most recently in Texas, Kansas, and our own Cobb County. These have gone nowhere. Through it all, evolutionary science has moved steadily onward: from the merging of Mendelian Genetics and Darwinian Evolution in the Great Synthesis of the 1940s, to the completion of the Human Genome Project. Sweet vindication for Darwin.
PART 2: THE ISSUES TODAY
BELL SHAPED CURVE
The various positions in the science vs. religion or the evolution vs. creationism controversy can be envisioned as a badly skewed bell shaped curve.
At one extreme you find the creationist position held by many fundamentalist and evangelical Christians, and ultraorthodox Jews. This position is based on a literal interpretation of the Bible. Some in this group are very vocal and aggressive, with the political connections to push their agenda.
At the other extreme you find individuals such as the physicist Steven Hawking, who, in his recent bookThe Grand Design proposed that it is theoretically possible for the universe to have created itself out of nothing. Also in this group are those who suggest that life in all its forms is nothing more than DNA replicating DNA. I would assume that this is the atheist position.
Moving in just a little would be the less extreme viewpoint represented by say Richard Dawkins, author of The God Delusion, who keeps one foot in the “God did it” camp – just in case; and maybe E. O. Wilson who describes himself as a “provisional deist.” This group tends to push their ideas in scientific publications and more popular books. They will, however, defend their ideas when challenged – especially in the courts.
The agnostic position is where Darwin placed himself – he just didn’t have enough information to take a stand. However, he also once stated that he did believe in an ultimate cause – a rather impersonal deity that set the universe in motion, but not a personal God that set mankind up as a favored species.
This leaves a very large percentage of the population with a variety of viewpoints representing what I call the “centrist-religion” position. Here you will find almost everyone else – from mainstream religions that accept Darwin’s evolutionary idea, as long as it is God’s doing, to those who have never given any thought to the topic and could care less.
It’s interesting that while numerous religions have taken a position favorable to Darwinian Evolution, it seems (at least to me) they rarely communicate this position to their membership with any serious conviction or enthusiasm.
The reason I suggest this centrist group is skewed toward creationism is due to a gross failure of our educational system. If pressed by a pollster for an answer, many fall-back on what they remember being taught when young. For most, this is their religious heritage, since their formal education in the sciences was minimal or nonexistent.
SURVIVAL OF THE FITTEST
There are a number of popular misstatements of Darwin’s theory that have become problematic. The one that really drives me up the wall is the phrase “Survival of the Fittest.” The phrase was coined by the sociologist Herbert Spencer, a contemporary of Darwin. At its worst, the phrase played a role in the eugenics movement of the early 20th century that promoted the genetic improvement of the human population. It is also seen as a metaphor for the advancement of a master race – such as we saw in Nazi Germany. At best, I consider it a rather meaningless phrase that has moved into the everyday lexicon.
The word “fittest” implies that some individuals of a species are in some way better than others. Therefore they will more likely be survivors and successfully pass their genes on to the next generation. Oddly enough, the phrase is usually applied to males only – the healthiest, the strongest, the bravest, the most handsome, etc. – traits that allow them to live a long life, successfully attract mates and fend off competitors.
An example of the absurdity of this concept is human warfare. For my generation it was the Vietnam War. All men in a certain age range were called to duty. Those found “fit” were drafted into service and sent off to fight. Those found “unfit” were sent to sit on Arlo Gutherie’s Group W Bench (I didn’t think I would get much of a response with that one – from Alice’s Restaurant?). OK, they were rejected.
Here’s the irony. The “fit” were sent off to be maimed and killed, and many of them were. The “unfit” were sent home where they procreated “unfit” descendents. Thus it was the “unfit” that were selected to carry on the species.
If you must use this phrase, I suggest that you modify it to “Survival of the Fit,” where “fit” has an entirely different meaning. To be “fit” means that you are “genetically fit.” Meaning that you are capable of producing a descendent that is also capable of producing a descendent, i.e., a grandchild. If that happens, you will be “fit.” Unfortunately by that time it doesn’t make any difference if you’re “fit.” Your value to the species has come and gone.
DARWIN AWARDS
Another example of a common misstatement of Darwin’s theory is the idea that species are constantlyimproving as they evolve. I was reminded of this the other day when Clarence Rosa emailed me the latest list of Darwin Award winners. For those of you unfamiliar with the Darwin Awards, they’re tongue-in-cheek honors that have been given since about 1985. They’re given to individuals who selectively remove themselves from the gene pool through some act of stupidity. They are most always awarded posthumously.
This year’s winner was a man in Long Beach, California whose gun misfired during a robbery. Wondering what went wrong he looked down the barrel and pulled the trigger again. This time it worked.
Of course the awards are given in jest. A problem arose for me, however, when the awards were announced this year with the statement: “Yes, it’s that magical time of year again when the Darwin Awards are bestowed, displaying obvious flaws in Darwin’s theory of evolution – the theory that we are constantly improving.”
Darwin would say: “No, this is not a correct interpretation of my theory.” Evolution by natural selection is change. It is a change in species in response to change in environment. It’s not good, it’s not bad. It’s not positive, it’s not negative. It’s a process that is occurring naturally. It just is.
DIRECTION
Related to this wrongheaded idea that we are constantly improving is the common misconception that life forms are improving in an upward direction – from the least complicated (say a one-celled organism) to the most complicated – human beings.
The Great Spiral of Life and the Tree of Life – with humans always at the top – are frequently used to illustrate this upward-moving concept. It is true that all species can be traced back in time to a common ancestor, but only very closely related species have an immediate common ancestor.
An easier way to depict life in all its varied forms is a “bush” with many separate branches and twigs. If you have an issue with the word “bush” – use “shrub” – The Shrub of Life. All life forms share an ultimate common ancestor, but divergence occurs in many different directions as species change (evolution) and new species appear (speciation). Species also disappear (extinction) and branches on the shrub disappear.
The human twig on the shrub is Homo Sapiens Sapiens. At least one subspecies of modern humans is now extinct –the Neandertals, who wiped out about 30,000 years ago. The extinction was likely the result of interbreeding with Sapiens, since it is now known that we carry a significant number of genes that were once unique to the Neandertal subspecies.
Humans are Hominids, as are chimpanzees, gorillas, and orangutans. Our closest living relative on the shrub, with a twig of its own, is the chimp – to its great misfortune. By so closely resembling us genetically, we have used them extensively for experimentation to find cures for what ails us.
The gorilla and the orang are now threatened with extinction. Losses of habitat, human warfare within their habitat, and poaching have taken a great toll on their populations. Although zoological specimens will survive for a while, these are not considered to be viable populations – the genetic variability is so reduced that they are no longer self-sustaining.
And, if we aren’t careful about how we treat our planet and its resources, we and most other life forms will also find ourselves on the road to extinction. Our once richly occupied shrub will be reduced to a single branch – occupied by the cockroach.
CLOSING WORDS
In closing, I’d like to share briefly one final story.
Beetles had always been Darwin’s area of interest as far as collecting was concerned. A few weeks before he died Darwin published a paper (his last paper) describing an unusual specimen of water beetle. Unusual in that it had a small clam attached to its leg – as if the clam was thinking about eating the beetle. However, it isn’t the beetle that we find so interesting today. Nor is it the clam. It’s the person who gave it to Darwin.
Darwin received the beetle from a shoemaker and amateur naturalist by the name of Walter Drawbridge Crick. Mr. Crick had a grandson born in 1916 named Francis Crick. It was Francis Crick, along with James Watson, who discovered the double helix structure of the DNA molecule – the molecule that carries the genetic code for the creation of all organisms. Their discovery validated everything Darwin had deduced about evolution. Thus it was Darwin’s “big idea,” confirmed by Crick and Watson, that set the stage for the advancements in biology and medicine that we see today.
*Sermon delivered Sunday, February 26, 2012 by Thomas B. Meyers. Tom has a PhD in Anthropology from the University of Missouri, with a longtime interest in Darwinian Evolution.