About Darwin.
Darwin,
Charles (1809-82). Darwin
was born in Shrewsbury, Shropshire. He was the son of Robert Waring Darwin and
his wife Susannah; and the grandson of the scientist Erasmus Darwin, and of the
potter Josiah Wedgwood. His mother died when he was eight years old, and he was
brought up by his sister. He was taught classics at Shrewsbury, then sent to
Edinburgh to study medicine, which he hated, and a final attempt at educating
him was made by sending him to Christ's College, Cambridge, to study theology
(1827). During that period he loved to collect plants, insects, and geological
specimens, guided by his cousin William Darwin Fox, an entomologist. His
scientific inclinations were encouraged by his botany professor, John Stevens
Henslow, who was instrumental, despite heavy paternal opposition, in securing a
place for Darwin as a naturalist on the surveying expedition of HMS Beagle to
Patagonia (1831-6).
Under Captain Robert Fitzroy, he visited Tenerife, the Cape
Verde Is, Brazil, Montevideo,
Tierra del Fuego, Buenos Aires, Valparaiso, Chile,
the Galapagos, Tahiti, New Zealand, and Tasmania. In the Keeling Is he devised
his theory of coral reefs. During this five-year expedition he obtained intimate
knowledge of the fauna, flora, and geology of many lands, which equipped him for
his later investigations. By 1846 he had published several works on the
geological and zoological discoveries of his voyage - works that placed him at
once in the front rank of scientists. He developed a friendship with Sir Charles
Lyell, became secretary of the Geological Society (1838-41), and in 1839 married
his cousin Emma Wedgewood (1808-96).
From 1842 he lived at Down House, Downe, Kent, a country
gentleman among his gardens, conservatories, pigeons, and fowls. The practical
knowledge he gained there, especially in variation and inter breeding, proved
invaluable. Private means enabled him to devote himself to science, in spite of
continuous ill-health: it was not realized until after his death that he had
suffered from Chagas's disease, which he had contracted from an insect bite
while in South America.
At Down House he addressed himself to the great work of his life
- the problem of the origin of species. After five years of collecting the
evidence, he began to speculate on the subject. In 1842 he drew up his
observations in some short notes, expanded in 1844 into a sketch of conclusions
for his own use. These embodied the principle of natural selection, the germ of
the Darwinian Theory, but with typical caution he delayed publication of his
hypothesis.
However, in 1858 Alfred Russel Wallace sent him a memoir of the
Malay Archipelago, which, to Darwin's surprise, contained in essence the main
ideas of his own theory of natural selection. Lyell and Joseph Hooker persuaded
him to submit a paper of his own, based on his 1844 sketch, which was read
simultaneously with Wallace's before the Linnean Society in 1858. Neither Darwin
nor Wallace was present on that historic occasion.
Darwin then set to work to condense his vast mass of notes, and
put into shape his great work, The Origin of Species by Means of Natural
Selection, published in 1859. This epoch -making work, received throughout
Europe with the deepest interest, was violently attacked because it did not
agree with the account of creation given in the Book of Genesis. But eventually
it succeeded in obtaining recognition from most biologists. You can read a
bit more about the background to Darwin's theory at evolution
of evolution.
However, in his book Darwin's Black Box,
Prof. Michael
Behe comments that there have always been since the time of Darwin, well
informed and respected scientists who have found Darwinism to be inadequate.
This is in
spite of the likely millions of man hours that have been spent trying to prove
the theory of evolution in the
c. 150 since Darwin's book "Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection" was
first published. With the advent of molecular biology, there are increasing
number of scientists who question the theory of evolution as all living things
at a molecular level are now know to be incredibly
complex. Indeed, in the Spectator
magazine, 24th October 2003, there was a quote "Once only
religious nuts questioned Darwinism. All that has changed". This was
accompanied by an article giving brief details of how many serious scientists now
doubt Darwinism.
Darwin continued to work at a series of supplemental treatises:
The Fertilization of Orchids (1862), The Variation of Plants and Animals under
Domestication (1867), and The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex
(1871), which postulated that the human race derived from a hairy animal
belonging to the great anthrapoid group, and was related to the progenitors of
the orang-utan, chimpanzee, and gorilla. In his 1871 work he also developed his
important supplementary theory of sexual selection.
Later works include The Expression of Emotions in Man and
Animals (1872), Insectivorous Plants (1875), The Effects of Cross and Self
Fertilization in the Vegetable Kingdom (1876), Different Forms of Flowers in
Plants of the Same Species (1877), and The Formations of Vegetable Mould through
the Action of Worms (1881).
Darwin died after a long illness, leaving eight children,
several of whom achieved great distinction. Though not the sole originator of
the evolution hypothesis, nor even the first to apply the concept of descent to
plants and animals, he was the first thinker to gain for that theory a wide
acceptance among biological experts. By adding to the crude evolutionism of
Erasmus Darwin, Lamarck, and others, his own specific idea of natural selection,
Darwin supplied a sufficient cause, which raised it from a hypothesis to a
verifiable theory. To top
"A man who dares to waste an hour of life has not
discovered the value of life." Charles Darwin.
Many believe that the theory
of evolution appeared abruptly in the second half of the nineteenth
century mainly through the pen of Charles
Darwin and his visit to the
Galapagos Islands
. However,
this is simply untrue. Charles Darwin was the grandson of Erasmus Darwin (picture
right). An accomplished poet, inventor, country doctor and furtive
evolutionist. (1)In 1771 in
keeping with his evolutionary beliefs Erasmus Darwin added the motto “E
chonchis omnia”, or "everything from shells" to his family’s coat
of arms, which featured three scallop shells. In response to these blasphemous
words his neighbour Canon Seward of Lichfield Cathedral countered with his own
inspired poetry:
“Darwin
renounces his Creator and forms all sense from senseless matter. Great wizard
he! By majic spells can all things raise from cockle shells.”
Twenty years after this event the elder Darwin,
now the leading poet of his day expounded the theory of evolution in the first
volume of his medical tome “Zoonomia” including the hypothesis of the
survival of the fittest by natural selection. His life’s work was completed
with the posthumous publication of a long poem that he called “The origin of
society” but for fear of reprisals the publisher changed the title to “The
Temple of Nature”. Below is a small excerpt:
Hence without parent by spontaneous
birth
Rise the first specks of animated earth;
From Nature's womb the plant or insect swims,
And buds or breathes, with microscopic limbs.
ORGANIC LIFE beneath the shoreless waves
Was born and nurs'd in Ocean's pearly caves
First forms minute, unseen by spheric glass,
Move on the mud, or pierce the watery mass;
These, as successive generations bloom,
New powers acquire, and larger limbs assume;
Whence countless groups of vegetation spring,
And breathing realms of fin, and feet, and wing.
Charles Darwin was therefore, neither objective nor
original in his thinking. In fact even the title of his first book was
unimaginative “The origin of the species” is not a great leap from the title
of his grandfathers’ poem “The origin of society”.
Certainly though, the theory of evolution appeared a very
long time before the
Darwin
family. The first recorded evolutionary statements appear approximately 570BC
from a Greek philosopher named Anaximander (611-546 BC). He hypothesized that:
“In the beginning there was a fish-like creature with
scales that arose in and lived in the world ocean. As some of these advanced,
they moved onto land, shed their scaly coverings and became the first humans.”
This first recorded evolutionary idea can be seen to have
several of the features of current evolutionary dogma i.e. entirely naturalistic
process that excluded any form of Divine intervention or design, life arising
from the sea and the change of one creature into another. What this first idea
lacked was any time span involved in the process. It is interesting that the
Apostle Paul writing in 70 AD specifically in the first instance to the Greeks
described the message of the cross as a stumbling block to the Jews and
foolishness to the gentiles and quotes God as saying “I will destroy the
wisdom of the wise, the intelligence of the intelligent I will frustrate.”
Where is the wise man? Where is the scholar, where is the philosopher of this
age? Has not God made foolish the wisdom of the world? For since in the wisdom
of God, the world through its wisdom did not know Him, God was pleased through
the foolishness of what was preached to save those who believe." (2)
In godless society this first evolutionary idea was slowly
refined by the addition of a time span, albeit a short one. Life could arise
“spontaneously”. Amazingly enough this idea was very fashionable right up
until the 1850’s when the beautiful experiments of Louis Pasteur finally put
paid to the pseudo-science entwined in this refinement of evolutionary dogma. The
theory basically went this way. Life could arise from non-living things, for
instance, if you observed a pond long enough you would eventually see a frog
come from the pond. The reason for this, so it was said, was that the frog was
spontaneously generated in the pond. Or again, leave a piece of meat on the side
and leave it rot. After a while you would observe maggots on the meat that had
been spontaneously generated out of the decay. There seemed to be rather good
evidence for this belief system and as such it held sway through much of the
civilised world and for many centuries. In fact the leading scientists of the
day were the proponents of it. The learned naturalist Ross for example stated
that:
“To question that beetles and wasps were generated in
cow dung is to question reason, sense, and experience. Even such
complicated animals as mice didn’t have to have mothers or fathers-if anyone
doubted this, let him go to
Egypt
, and there he would find the fields literally swarming with mice, begot of the
mud of the river
Nile, to the great calamity of the inhabitants”.(3)
The ideas of spontaneous generation were
strengthened by the lack of careful observational science (scientia- to know),
together with godless peer pressure. However, this was all to change with
Francesco Redi. Redi was a graduate of medicine from
Pisa
in
Italy
in 1647 and goes down in history as one of the greatest scientists of all time.
He published on a wide range of subjects but Redi’s true masterpiece was
“Esperienze intorno alla generazione degl’insetti” (experiments concerning
the generation of insects) published in
Florence
in 1668.
This experiment was designed to smash the
philosophy of spontaneous generation, which it did admirably and is the first
known example of a scientific experiment that was conducted with proper
controls. Redi’s masterpiece used three Jars with meat placed in the bottom.
In the first jar the neck was left open to the elements, the second jar was
corked with a large bung but the third was a class piece of intellect, a jar
exposed to the elements but covered with gauze that would not allow flies
through. The result of the experiment could be experienced by anyone who would
merely observe. Flask 1 developed maggots but both flasks 2&3 did not. In
this one simple experiment the long held evidence of spontaneous generation of
maggots from rotting meat was obliterated. The truth that even flies have
parents and offspring was evident to all. The pseudo-scientific second version
of the theory of evolution tottered and almost fell.
I say virtually because most people of
intellect dropped the idea but a small core including the grandfather of
Charles Darwin did not want to lose their excuse for not believing in an
intelligent designer. The sad group included the great thinkers of the day not
only Erasmus Darwin but also Comte de Buffon (picture right), one of the
first proponents of an old age for the
earth and the idea that men were descended
from monkeys. The darling of the group was a man named
Needham
.
Needham
was a Catholic priest who liked to dabble in pseudo-science. Although the
experiments of Redi had put an end to the idea that insects and large animals
could be generated spontaneously yet surely they said small creatures such as
animalicules (present day ciliates and bacteria) could. Added to his philosophy
was real science that
Needham
thought was on a par with the great Redi. Indeed, so they thought, this was a
proof backed up with scientific evidence in the form of undeniable experimental
proof. (4)
Needham's experiments involved boiling mutton
gravy in glass flasks and as "everyone knows" he bantered “nothing can
survive boiling.” He then corked the flasks and left them for several
days. After the allotted time span, he put the now rancid material under the
microscope and behold animalcules were found everywhere. The only possible
reason for this, so he thought, was that these animalcules were spontaneously
generated from the mutton gravy as it putrefied. Not only was the scientific
world rocked by this momentous discovery, but, also every strata of society.
Here was scientific proof as good as any Redi that demonstrated that spontaneous
generation of micro-organisms was a fact. Buffon
said “father Needham
you have discovered the very force of life we should call it the vegetative
force”. The royal society was so impressed that
Needham
was made a fellow. This was the greatest scientific accolade of the day. Once
again people could breathe safe in the knowledge that they could be
intellectually fulfilled atheists no longer subject to the accountability of an
intelligent designer. However, their hope was soon dashed.
In
on our scene came another great Italian scientist Spallanzani (picture left)
and for intellectually fulfilled atheists the worst kind, a man with a bias for
truth. Spallanzani was a Catholic priest but one that really believed in a God.
One who believed that life could only come from life and every living thing must
have a parent. Enthused and empowered by the beautiful experiments of Redi he
went to design his own. He thought to himself
Needham
is wrong he must have missed something, but what could it be? He thought of all
the possible scenarios and then came to the conclusion. It must be that either
Needham
didn’t boil those flasks for long enough or, he didn’t boil them hard
enough to kill the parents or, maybe their eggs are protected in some way. Or,
maybe those tiny creatures could get into the flasks by the small cracks in the
cork, but how to prove it?
Spallanzani designed experiments to test his
ideas, or even defeat if necessary, his own explanations. He heated one group of
flasks for a few minutes, another set he boiled for an hour. But how to seal
them he thought-corks might not be tight enough, they may let these tiny
animalcules through. He pondered. “I’ve got it, I’ll melt the necks of
my bottles in a flame. I’ll close them with glass-nothing, no matter how
small, can sneak through glass!” Then, inspired by Redi, he added a
control, he made a duplicate set of flasks, which he plugged up with corks. After
a suitable time he returned to his flasks and one by one he cracked open their
necks, and fished down with a slender hollow tube to get some of the soup out.
He first looked at drop after drop of the sealed flasks that had been boiled for
an hour, nothing! Then he looked at the set that were boiled for a few minutes
here and there, there were animalcules playing and sporting about. The truth
dawned on him that the flasks were sealed nothing could get in from outside,
these little being must be able to withstand boiling for a few minutes. Then the
flasks that were just plugged with corks as Needham
had done, every one of these flasks was alive with little animals, even the
flasks that had been boiled for an hour. “That means the little animals get
into Needham's flasks from the air!” he shouted. “And besides I have discovered
a great new fact, living things exist that can stand boiling water and still
live, you have to heat them to boiling almost an hour to kill them!”
This indeed was a great day for Spallanzani
and a great day for the world. Spallanzani had proved that Needham's theory of
little animals arising spontaneously was wrong just as the old master Redi had
proved the idea was wrong that flies can be bread in putrid meat. Unknowingly he
had laid the foundation for the germ theory of disease later discovered by
Pasteur and Lister.
You may think that this was the end of the
ideas of spontaneous generation. However, Erasmus Darwin would not let go of it.
It was an essential part of his evolutionary theory and his poem “The origin
of society” described and annotated it. (5)Erasmus Darwin simply chose deception rather than truth and ignored
Spallanzani's experiments as though they were never performed. It was not until
Louis Pasteur (interestingly another believer in Creation) that spontaneous
generation was finally laid to rest, just in time for Erasmus Darwins grandson
Charles to pick up the batten of godless philosophy. Interestingly, Erasmus
Darwin combined spontaneous generation with millions of ages for the first
microbes to change into humans. As such from pure philosophy he moved the
hypothesis of evolution firmly out of the reach of experimentation by future
Redis and Spallanzanis. Today the hypothesis of evolution can never be proved
incorrect by real observational science and no controls can be used against it.
As such it remains as an improvable and un-testable fashionable belief. But, by
its very nature pseudo-science. To
top
Darwin's
doubts. It is to Darwin's credit as
a Scientist that he was honest enough to express doubts about the validity of
his theory of evolution. These
are recorded in the sixth chapter of his book on the origins of the species and
this chapter is entitled "Difficulties on Theory" (Darwin C., 1974).
Some difficulties are also recorded in other chapters.
Please note, for some of these doubts
(though not all as far as is known) Darwin proposed counter arguments that are not
included here.
This
is not intended to be deceptive. The doubts are of interest as they stand
regardless of how good the counter arguments are. Please see
his book to get a full view of all the arguments and counter arguments.
General difficulties:
"Long before having arrived at this
part of my work, a crowd of difficulties will have occurred to my reader. Some
of them are so grave that to this day I can never reflect on them without being
staggered .......". Also: " .....scarcely a single
point is discussed in this volume on which the facts cannot be adduced, often
apparently leading to conclusions directly opposite to those at which I
arrived".
On natural selection:
And to think that the eye could evolve
"by natural selection seems, I freely confess, absurd to the highest
degree". Also: "Nothing at first can appear more
difficult to believe than that the more complex organisms and instincts should
have been perfected, not by means superior to, though analogous with, human
reason, but by the accumulation of innumerable slight variations ........".
On instinct: Such
"simple" instincts as bees making a beehive could be "sufficient
to overthrow my whole theory".
On his own reasoning:
"But then arises the doubt, can the
mind of a man, which has, as I fully believe, been developed from a mind as low
as that possessed by the lowest animals, be trusted when it draws such grand
conclusions? ....... Would anyone trust in the convictions of a monkey's mind,
if there are any convictions in such a mind". and
"Often a cold shudder has run through me, and I have asked myself
whether I may have not devoted myself to a phantasy". (Charles Darwin, Life
and Letters, 1887, Vol. 2, p. 229).
In relation to religious
thought: Darwin referred to his
theory as "The devil's gospel" (Ankerberg, 1998a).
On fossil evidence:
"Why then is not every geological formation full of such intermediate
links. Geology assuredly does not reveal any finely graduated organic change,
and this is the most obvious and serious objection that can be urged against the
theory". To top
Books - These do not all focus
specifically on the contents of this page, but all will have some content of
direct relevance to this page. All these books can be bought on line at the
"Was Darwin right
store".
(3)
Microbe Hunters, Paul De Kruif. Harcourt, INC Publishers.
San Diego
,
New York
,
London
. Chapter 2 “Spallanzani- Microbes must have parents” page 27.
(4)
Microbe Hunters, Paul De Kruif. Harcourt, INC Publishers.
San Diego
,
New York
,
London
. Chapter 2 “Spallanzani- Microbes must have parents”
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About Darwin.
Darwin,
Charles (1809-82). Darwin
was born in Shrewsbury, Shropshire. He was the son of Robert Waring Darwin and
his wife Susannah; and the grandson of the scientist Erasmus Darwin, and of the
potter Josiah Wedgwood. His mother died when he was eight years old, and he was
brought up by his sister. He was taught classics at Shrewsbury, then sent to
Edinburgh to study medicine, which he hated, and a final attempt at educating
him was made by sending him to Christ's College, Cambridge, to study theology
(1827). During that period he loved to collect plants, insects, and geological
specimens, guided by his cousin William Darwin Fox, an entomologist. His
scientific inclinations were encouraged by his botany professor, John Stevens
Henslow, who was instrumental, despite heavy paternal opposition, in securing a
place for Darwin as a naturalist on the surveying expedition of HMS Beagle to
Patagonia (1831-6).
