Darwin's Sciences E-Book

Duncan Porter

• Herausgeber: John Wiley & Sons
• Kategorie: Wissenschaft und neue Technologien
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 784

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2015

Beschreibung

A complete scientific biography of Darwin that takes into account the latest research findings, both published and unpublished, on the life of this remarkable man. Considered the first book to thoroughly emphasize Darwin's research in various fields of endeavor, what he did, why he did it, and its implications for his time and ours. Rather than following a strictly chronological approach - a narrative choice that characteristically offers an ascent to On the Origin of Species (1859) with a rapid decline in interest following its publication and reception - this book stresses the diversity and full extent of Darwin's career by providing a series of chapters centering on various intellectual topics and scientific specializations that interested Darwin throughout his life. Authored by academics with years of teaching and discussing Darwin, Darwin's Sciences is suited to any biologist who is interested in the deeper implications of Darwin's research.

Leseprobe

Table of Contents

Cover

Title Page

Copyright

Preface

Acknowledgments

Chapter 1: Introduction

Chapter 2: Darwin the Geologist

Shrewsbury

Edinburgh

Cambridge

Shrewsbury and North Wales

The Beagle voyage

Geological observations on the volcanic islands (1846)

Geological observations on South America (1842)

The structure and distribution of Coral Reefs (1842, 1874)

After the Beagle

On the Origin of Species by means of Natural Selection, or the preservation of favoured races in the struggle for life (November 1859)

Chapter 3: Darwin the Zoologist

Shrewsbury

Edinburgh

Cambridge

The Beagle voyage

After the Beagle

Chapter 4: Darwin the Botanist

Shrewsbury

Edinburgh

Cambridge

Botany on the Beagle

After the Beagle

CD as a botanist

Chapter 5: Darwin the Social Scientist

On and off the Beagle

Ethics and religion

The Descent of Man

The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals (1872, 1890)

CD as genealogist

Chapter 6: Coda: Darwin, Worms, and the World

Bibliography

Index

End User License Agreement

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Guide

Cover

Table of Contents

Preface

Begin Reading

List of Illustrations

Chapter 1: Introduction

Figure 1.1 Photograph of Charles Darwin at the age of 59, by renowned photographer Julia Margaret Cameron at Freshwater, Isle of Wight, August 1868.

Figure 1.2 Charles Darwin at the age of 22 before he sailed on the

Beagle

voyage. Sculpture in the new Darwin Garden at Christ's College, Cambridge, where he was a student from 1828 to 1831. Sculpted by Christ's student Anthony Smith, unveiled on Darwin's 200th birthday, 12 February 2009.

Figure 1.3 Map of the

Beagle

'

s

circumnavigation of the world, December 1831–October 1836, drawn by Laszlo Meszoly.

Chapter 2: Darwin the Geologist

Figure 2.1 Darwin's cross-section drawing of the geological strata exposed at Signal Post Hill, near Porto Praya, Isla St. Jago, Cape Verde Islands, made January/February 1832.

Figure 2.2 Volcanic tuff craters, showing the action of prevailing winds on their windward sides, Bartholomew Island (Isla Bartolomé), Galapagos Islands.

Figure 2.3 A drawing of the barrier reef around the island of “Bolabola” (Bora Bora, one of the Society Islands, French Polynesia), based on a drawing from Jules Dumont d'Urville's voyage in

Le Coquille

(1822–1825).

Figure 2.4 A drawing of the atoll of “Whitsunday Island” (Pinaki, in the Tuamoto Archipelago, French Polynesia), based on a drawing from Frederick Beechey's voyage in HMS

Blossom

(1825–1828).

Chapter 3: Darwin the Zoologist

Figure 3.1 Sketch of Darwin the entomologist riding beetles, by his fellow Cambridge student Albert Way. (DAR 204: 29).

Figure 3.2 Frigatebird skimming the surface, drinking fresh water, and leaving a wake behind itself on the surface of the lake, El Junco, Chatham Island (Isla San Cristóbal), Galapagos Islands.

Figure 3.3 Ornithologist David Lack's “Suggested evolutionary tree of Darwin's finches.” Figure 21 in

Darwin's Finches

, by David Lack, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press [1947], p. 102.

Figure 3.4 Darwin's first drawing of a genealogical diagram, made in his

Transmutation of Species Notebook B

in July/August 1837. (DAR 121: 36).

Figure 3.5 Darwin's only published illustration of the genealogical relationships of a specific group of organisms, the breeds of domestic pigeons descended from the wild rock-pigeon (

Columba livia

). Figure from

The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication

by Charles Darwin, London: John Murray (1868), 1: 136.

Chapter 4: Darwin the Botanist

Figure 4.1 Photograph of a pastel drawing by portrait painter Ellen Sharples of Darwin at age 7 in 1816 with his younger sister Catherine, both of them holding plants.

Figure 4.2 Darwin's first known herbarium collection; three specimens of sea stock (

Matthiola sinuata

), made by him for J. S. Henslow at Barmouth, Wales, while he was on his August 1831 geological fieldtrip with Adam Sedgwick. The fourth specimen was made in Devon by a Miss. Blake.

Figure 4.3 Drawing by George Darwin of the leaf of a sundew (

Drosera rotundifolia

), showing the sticky “tentacles” that capture its prey.

Figure 4.4 Drawing showing the results of exchange of pollen between and within the long-styled and short-styled forms of primrose (

Primula veris

).

Figure 4.5 Drawings of the three forms of flowers found in loosestrife (

Lythrum salicaria

) showing “the directions in which pollen must be carried to each stigma to ensure full fertility”; that is, showing that pollen must come from stamens of the same height as the stigmas for maximum seed formation.

Figure 4.6 Tracing by Charles or Francis Darwin of movement of a

Dahlia

(“garden var.”) leaf over 46 hours.

Chapter 5: Darwin the Social Scientist

Figure 5.1 Drawings of inhabitants of Tierra del Fuego (“Fuegians”) made by Captain Robert FitzRoy. Plate from FitzRoy (1839, opposite: 141).

Chapter 6: Coda: Darwin, Worms, and the World

Figure 6.1 Photograph of the Kew botanist Gren Lucas and his family viewing the facsimile of Horace Darwin's Worm Stone in Darwin's garden at Down House, Surrey.

List of Tables

Darwin's Sciences

How Charles Darwin voyaged from rocks to worms in his search for facts to explain how the earth, its geological features, and its inhabitants evolved

Duncan M. Porter

and PeterW. Graham

This edition first published 2016 © 2016 by Duncan M. Porter & Peter W. Graham

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Porter, Duncan M., author.

Darwin's sciences : How Charles Darwin voyaged from rocks to worms in his search for facts to explain how the earth, its geological features, and its inhabitants evolved / Duncan M. Porter & Peter W. Graham.

pages cm

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-1-4443-3035-9 (pbk.) – ISBN 978-1-4443-3034-2 (cloth) 1. Darwin, Charles, 1809-1882.

2. Naturalists–Biography. 3. Natural history. 4. Evolution (Biology) I. Graham, Peter W., 1951- author.

II. Title.

QH31.D2P67 2015

508.092–dc23

[B]

2015010081

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Wiley also publishes its books in a variety of electronic formats. Some content that appears in print may not be available in electronic books.

Cover image: Charles Darwin photograph by Julia Margaret Cameron, taken at Freshwater, Isle of Wight, August 1868 (Courtesy of Google Images 2013).

Marine iguana photograph by Duncan M. Porter, taken on Hood Island (Isla Española), the Galapagos, 1967.

“Tree of Life” – Darwin's first drawing of a genealogical diagram, made in his Transmutation of Species Notebook B in July/August 1837, (DAR 121: 36), (Reproduced by kind permission of the Syndics of Cambridge University Library).

Title page image. Charles Darwin at age 22 before he sailed on the Beagle voyage. Sculpture in the new Darwin Garden at Christ's College, Cambridge, where he was a student from 1828 to 1831. Sculpted by Christ's student Anthony Smith, unveiled on Darwin's 200th birthday, 12 February 2009. (Photo by Duncan M. Porter, 2009.)

Preface

Biologists hear the name Charles Darwin from an early age. This was no exception for DMP, who became aware of him in high school biology class, albeit without much understanding of how evolution took place, but an awareness that it did. My biology teacher at Ventura Senior High School, the charismatic Bob Rollins, kindled an interest and opened the doors to the natural world. At Ventura College, botanist/microbiologist Tom O'Neill introduced me to plants, which I fell in love with; zoology was not there pursued because one had to dissect a rat in the beginning course laboratory. Transferring to Stanford University, I came under the spell of some excellent botanists: mycologist Bob Page, plant physiologist Win Briggs (whose first lecture began with a discussion of Charles and Francis Darwin's plant hormone experiments), evolutionist Dick Holm (the best teacher I have ever had), and taxonomist and ecologist Ira Wiggins, who became my MA advisor. A group of biology students there also influenced me greatly, especially undergraduate Curt Givan and graduate students John Thomas and Wally Ernst, all of whom became good friends. My undergraduate advisor Bob Page suggested that I apply to Harvard University to study for a PhD, which I did and, surprisingly to me, was accepted. In the 1960s, Harvard Graduate School was much less stressful for students than now, although perhaps I found it so because of already having spent two graduate years at Stanford. Curt Givan followed me to Harvard, and he and fellow graduate students Beryl Simpson, Jim Walker, Garrison Wilkes, and Steve Young continued to add to my botanical education. As at Stanford, Harvard produced a number of influential professors, especially paleobotanist Elso Barghoorn, ethnobotanist Dick Schultes, and my PhD advisor, plant systematist Reed Rollins, in whose courses I was a teaching fellow (graduate assistant). It was while I was working on my dissertation that I first encountered Darwin's plant specimens, because one of the species of the genus I was monographing is endemic to the Galapagos Islands. More were studied during a postdoc back at Stanford working on the flora of the Galapagos with Ira Wiggins.

My initial motivation to pursue research on Darwin was supplied by Cambridge University Herbarium assistant curator Peter Sell. After he showed me some Darwin plant specimens from the Galapagos during a visit by me and my wife Sarah in the spring of 1973, I said “But most of these have not been identified.” Peter answered: “No one at Cambridge has ever been much interested in the flora of South America. Why don't you identify them?” On that same trip, we visited the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, where botanist Gren Lucas also urged me to identify the Galapagos plants, the second set of which is in the Kew herbarium. On a visit in 1976 to examine the Galapagos collections, I met Darwin experts zoologist Sidney Smith, librarian Peter Gautrey, and botanist David Kohn, at Cambridge University Library, who encouraged my interest in Darwin. At lunch after I presented a talk on Darwin's Beagle plant collections at London's Natural History Museum in 1979, Smith, Kohn, and school headmaster and Darwin aficionado David Stanbury urged me to identify the rest of the Beagle plants. When I demurred, saying, “I am not prepared to do so,” I was answered: “No one else is prepared to do so. You do it!” A grant from the National Geographic Society led to a Visiting Fellowship at Clare Hall, a graduate college of Cambridge University, where the family and I lived for 10 months in 1980–1981 while I examined Darwin's specimens. I spent 1 week a month with Gren and Shirley Lucas and their family studying the Kew Darwin specimens. Over the years, all these led not only to the study of Darwin's Galapagos Islands plants and those collected elsewhere on the voyage of HMS Beagle, but also to the historical record of his geological, zoological, and botanical collections and interests. Research was pursued almost every summer at Cambridge and Kew. Eventually, I became a senior editor and then for 9 years director of the Darwin Correspondence Project at Cambridge University Library. I was well immersed in what another Harvard influence, evolutionist Ernst Mayr, called the “Darwin Industry.” Along the way, I met my peerless collaborator Peter Graham, and we began teaching an honors colloquium on “Darwin: Myths and Reality”.

PWG, for his part, also first encountered Darwin in a high-school Advanced Biology course, heard more of him at Davidson College, but first studied Darwin's writing (On the Origin of Species, as edited by Morse Peckham) in Clyde de L. Ryals's magisterial Victorian course in the English graduate program at Duke University. Later, as a Lilly Post-Doctoral Fellow studying the then-new field of Medical Humanities in the University of Florida's Humanities Perspectives on the Professions program, I met David Locke, a science writer turned English professor who was offering an innovative course applying the methods of literary analysis to iconic texts of science: Harvey's De motu cordis, Newton's Optics, Freud's Interpretation of Dreams, Einstein's Relativity—and, most pertinent to me in the long term, Darwin's Origin. The chance to teach Origin to David Locke's undergraduates kindled my keen interest in Darwin as a person and a writer, an interest that resurfaced a few years later when Duncan and I, both fairly new faculty members at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, serendipitously met at the local Episcopal Church. Our team-taught University Honors Colloquium on “Darwin: Myths and Reality” rose out of several long and engrossing conversations on Darwin the man and his works. This course worked well from the get-go, given that its two teachers, a scientist and a humanist, came at Darwin from different disciplinary perspectives but shared a belief that it was crucial to understand Darwin as much more than just the author of Origin, itself a text more invoked than actually read. Thanks in great measure to another serendipitous event, an introduction offered by Bert Moyer, a distinguished historian of science and chair of the History Department at Virginia Tech, collaboratively teaching Darwin led us to being enlisted by Viking Penguin as editors of The Portable Darwin. This challenging task led us both to read far more comprehensively—and then with great regret to excise, first selectively, then radically—in order to settle on some 600 pages to represent Darwin's intellectual achievement in our anthology.

My scholarly interests have varied widely over time. They have ranged over topics in literature and medicine and in British Romanticism (especially the works of Lord Byron and Jane Austen)—and they have also included Charles Darwin. Attempting to account for this eclecticism to a more single-minded colleague, I hit on a tentative explanation: “Byron and Austen appeal to me because they're the two English Romantics with a sense of humor, and Darwin's in the mix because he is, like them, one of the great British empiricists of the 19th century.” That improvised formulation eventually resulted in a comparative book, Jane Austen & Charles Darwin: Naturalists and Novelists. This intertextual conversation juxtaposes two thinkers and writers, superficially quite different but in some respects surprisingly similar, who share an inclination to look with a clear eye at the concrete particulars of the world before them, to form opinions on the basis of attentive observation rather than of transmitted opinion and to say what they have seen in accessible, often elegant prose. During the years when I was writing the four long essays that would become Jane Austen & Charles Darwin, Duncan and I were sporadically engaged in designing a Darwin biography to supplement The Portable Darwin and fit the needs of our undergraduate students, who sometimes drowned in the details of whatever biography (we assigned a number of the finest) we taught in our colloquium. Determined that our students would come to know Darwin as a man with a long, complex arc of scientific accomplishment, not just a one-book star, we envisioned a slim volume organized according to Darwin's different categories of scientific research: geology, zoology, botany, and the social sciences. Over the years, this slim volume substantially expanded—to that extent, we found ourselves following in Darwin's footsteps—as it appeared ever more important to represent Darwin's intellectual accomplishments in their totality, to examine all his books, many of his scientific papers, and his remarkable, revealing correspondence, more of which was becoming accessible each year, thanks to the ongoing efforts of the Darwin Correspondence Project. Over the years of reading, researching, and writing, we have learned a great deal from other Darwinists and from one another—but the debt's not symmetrical, and I am the more deeply indebted party. It has been a great blessing, delightful and edifying in equal measures, to collaborate with a scientist and scholar who has walked in Darwin's footprints and who offers the distilled essence of a life-long scholarly devotion in what he has contributed to our manuscript.

Duncan M. PorterPeter W. GrahamBlacksburg, VirginiaJuly 2014

Acknowledgments

Unfortunately, most of those mentioned in our Preface as mentoring us throughout our careers are now deceased. Fortunately, however, most of those mentioned in the following paragraphs are still living, active, and in contact with us.

We are particularly grateful to William Huxley Darwin for permission to quote from the Darwin letters and manuscripts. We also thank the Syndics of the Cambridge University Library for permission to quote from Darwin manuscripts and reproduce several drawings in their possession (Figures 3.1 and 3.4), facilitated by Adam Perkins.

Quotations from The Correspondence of Charles Darwin (© Cambridge University Press 1985–2013) and Richard Darwin Keynes's editions of Charles Darwin's Beagle Diary (© Cambridge University Press 1988) and Charles Darwin's Zoology Notes & Specimen Lists from H.M.S. Beagle (© Cambridge University Press 2000) are reprinted with the permission of Cambridge University Press. Erasmus Barlow kindly granted us permission to quote from the publications of his mother, Lady Nora Barlow, aided by her granddaughter Claire Barlow. Peter C. Lack (The Estate of David Lack) granted us permission to reproduce Figure 3.3 from his father's Darwin's Finches (Copyright © David Lack 1947), with the aid of Sophie Wilcox of The Alexander Library of Ornithology, University of Oxford.

At Cambridge University Herbarium, the late Peter Sell, David Briggs, Gina Murrell, John Parker, and Christine Bartram supplied encouragement and information about Darwin's plant specimens, and Christine kindly provided us with a photo of Darwin's first known plant collection, reproduced as Figure 4.2. At Clare Hall, the late Jim Council, Bob Ackerman, Dame Gillian Beer, Richard Eden, Michael Loewe, Martin Rudwick, David Sacks, and Ekhard Salje all provided keen interest and verbal engagement in our project; David Gosling provided that as well as information on Darwin's influence in India. The late Richard Darwin Keynes, a superb student of his great-grandfather, also showed great interest in our planned book.

At Virginia Tech's Department of Biological Sciences, successive Department Heads Bob Jones and Brenda Winkel provided encouragement and an office. T. F. Wieboldt expertly photographed illustrations from various books for us, and Valerie Sutherland kindly digitized slides. Richard Bambach, formerly in the Virginia Tech Department of Geosciences, shared his knowledge of Darwin as a geologist and evolutionist. Dick Burian and the late Marjorie Grene, of the Department of Philosophy, asked and answered many questions about Darwin and evolution. Newman Library's Interlibrary Loan department was very helpful in obtaining copies of books and papers needed for our research.

At John Wiley & Sons, Alan Crowden and Ward Cooper encouraged us from the beginning, when they were employed by Cambridge University Press. Our Project Editor, Kelvin Matthews, has been not only encouraging, but also very patient with us. Assistant Editor Laura Bell designed our beautiful cover and Prasanthi Mahalingam provided helpful copy-editing.

Our text was read and commented on by Anna Altizer, Michael Ghiselin, Sandra Herbert, Heather Pierce, Tony Pierce, Sarah Porter, and David West (by most more than once!). Sandra (author of Charles Darwin, Geologist), Michael (author of The Triumph of the Darwinian Method and editor of Darwin and the Galapagos), and David (author of Fritz Müller: A Naturalist in Brazil) all provided insightful commentary from their wide backgrounds in history and the natural sciences; this book's integrity has been increased by their input. Anna, Heather, Tony, and Sarah are nonscientists, who were asked to test the readability and understandability of the book; we hope that their contributions have helped make it more accessible to those who know little or nothing about the historic Darwin. We are greatly indebted to them all, as we are to our students in University Honors 3004, Charles Darwin: Myths and Reality, over the many years we have taught it. These honors students, the collective human inspiration for our project, were encouraged to enroll in the colloquium by Jack Dudley and Terry Papillon, successive directors of the Virginia Tech Honors Program. Frank Sulloway, of the University of California, Berkeley, has long been a helpful source of Darwinian information, particularly on the Galapagos Islands

We are especially indebted to Gren and Shirley Lucas, who helped start all this by providing DMP with a home away from home sporadically for many years, while he was pursuing research in England on Darwin, and treated him as a member of their family. Permission to use Figure 6.1 was granted by them and their children, to whom this book is dedicated.

Chapter 1Introduction

Reflecting back on his childhood while in his sixties, Charles Darwin wrote in his autobiography that by the age of eight “my taste for natural history, and more especially for collecting, was well developed.” He recalled that he “collected all sorts of things, shells, seals, franks, coins, and minerals. The passion for collecting, which leads a man to be a systematic naturalist, a virtuoso or a miser, was very strong in me, and was clearly innate, as none of my sisters or brother ever had this taste” (Autobiography: 22–3). It is clear that this innate trait led him to accumulate during his lifetime not only natural history specimens, but also voluminous notes on them and on relevant subjects, numerous publications, and a vast correspondence with naturalists and others around the world. These documents have left subsequent generations a vast treasure trove of information about Darwin, his interests, and his family that we have mined in producing this book.

Today, many people picture Charles Darwin as a solemn, black-cloaked, gray-bearded Victorian patriarch staring at them with rheumy eyes, as seen in the well-known photographs Julia Margaret Cameron had taken in 1868 (Figure 1.1). However, he was only 22 when he embarked on the life-altering voyage of HMS Beagle in December 1831 and 28 when he began his notebooks on transmutation of species (evolution) in March 1837 (Figure 1.2).

Figure 1.1 Photograph of Charles Darwin at the age of 59, by renowned photographer Julia Margaret Cameron at Freshwater, Isle of Wight, August 1868.

(Courtesy of Google Images, 2013.)

Figure 1.2 Charles Darwin at the age of 22 before he sailed on the Beagle voyage. Sculpture in the new Darwin Garden at Christ's College, Cambridge, where he was a student from 1828 to 1831. Sculpted by Christ's student Anthony Smith, unveiled on Darwin's 200th birthday, 12 February 2009.

(Photo by Duncan M. Porter, 2009.)

The narrative that follows will not be the usual chronologically organized biography about Darwin's life. For comprehensive biographical details, the reader should seek out the recent books by Adrian Desmond and James Moore (Darwin. The Life of a Tormented Evolutionist 1991) or Janet Browne (Charles Darwin. Voyaging 1995; Charles Darwin. The Power of Place 2002). Or, for recent studies of certain aspects of Darwin's life, see Keith Thomson (The Young Charles Darwin 2009), which leads up to his theory of evolution by natural selection; Randal Keynes (Annie's Box 2001) on Darwin's loss of his favorite daughter; or Edna Healey (Emma Darwin 2001) and James and Kent Loy (Emma Darwin. A Victorian Life 2010) on his domestic life; Andrew Pattison (The Darwins of Shrewsbury 2009) and Tim Berra (Darwin and His Children 2013) on the family; Richard Keynes (Fossils, Fishes, and Fuegians 2002) on the Beagle voyage; Thalia Grant and Greg Estes (Darwin in Galápagos 2009) on where he went and what he saw in these islands; Rebecca Stott (Darwin and the Barnacle 2003) on his research with barnacles; Daniel Pauley (Darwin's Fishes 2004) on his research with fishes; and Sandra Herbert (Charles Darwin, Geologist 2005) on his career in geology. All these readable books rely heavily on the definitive, multivolume ( 1985–2013), as henceforth must all research on Darwin's life and work. So does our study—which is the first biographical treatment to emphasize his lifelong research in various fields of endeavor, what he did, why he did it, and what its implications were and are for his time and ours. This account, ordered by topic rather than chronology, logically follows our earlier book ( 1993), which reprinted and discussed a number of his research papers and excerpts from his books. Above all, we aim to help our readers understand that Darwin's career did not build toward—and then subside from—one grand idea (natural selection or evolution) but instead involved many longstanding projects, some distinct and some interrelated, which together served to generate, support, and enrich his understanding of change as the great constant of the natural world.