Simply Darwin E-Book

Michael Ruse

• Herausgeber: Simply Charly
• Kategorie: Sachliteratur, Reportagen, Biografien
• Serie: Great Lives
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 171

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2016

Beschreibung

“An excellent sprint through the highlights of Darwin’s life and work. Ruse is a masterful writer who presents a clear account of who Darwin was and why he was important. It’s the connection to larger questions of our lives that makes this book a success. Well done, Ruse!”
—Joe Cain, Professor of History and Philosophy of Biology, University College London

Simply Darwin tells the story of Charles Robert Darwin (1809–1882) and his theory of evolution through natural selection. On one level, the book portrays a dedicated scientist who, through careful observation and brilliant insight, became convinced that organisms were the end product of a long, slow, and natural process of development. On another level, it is an account of a cataclysmic change in our ideas about ourselves—a conceptual upheaval that continues to generate aftershocks—and heated debates—to this day. 

In Simply Darwin, author Michael Ruse puts Darwin and his ideas in their proper context, clearly showing that, while the father of evolutionary biology was a true trailblazer, he was no rebel. He was simply following an evidentiary trail that led to an inevitable conclusion about the origin of species and natural selection. Eventually, as Darwin and his fellow scientists began to apply his ideas to humans, long-held notions about the nature and origins of religion, morality, race, sexuality, and much more, were called into question. Then, as now, some of us embraced these provocative ideas, while others reacted with horror and disbelief. 

In recounting this fascinating and inspiring story, Ruse doesn’t neglect the visual component that has always been an inherent part of evolutionary thought. Simply Darwin features copious illustrations, which provide an informative and captivating element to this riveting account.

Leseprobe

Simply Darwin

Michael Ruse

Simply Charly

New York

Copyright © 2016 by Michael Ruse

Cover Illustration by José RamosCover Design by Scarlett Rugers

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permission requests, write to the publisher at the address below.

[email protected]

ISBN: 978-1-943657-01-8

Brought to you by http://simplycharly.com

Contents

Praise for Simply DarwinOther Great LivesSeries Editor's ForewordPreface 1. The Man and His Life 2. Pseudoscience? 3. The Origin of Species 4. Reception 5. The Descent of Man 6. Popular Science 7. Professional Science 8. HumankindSuggested ReadingAbout the AuthorA Word from the Publisher

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Praise for Simply Darwin

“Written in a direct, funny, and compelling style, Simply Darwin is simply Michael Ruse at his best, distilling a complicated history or idea to its essential features so that it is readily comprehended. The reader will be impressed with his synthesizing ability and his talent to develop conceptions that seem irresistible—even if, on due reflection, you want to resist.”

—Robert J. Richards, Fishbein Professor of the History of Science, University of Chicago

“In his inimitable style, Michael Ruse—one of the world’s foremost experts on the history of evolution—provides an entertaining, stimulating, and provocative account of the life and legacy of Charles Darwin. This is one of the best short summaries of the topic available. Highly recommended especially for students and general readers.”

—David Sepkoski, Research Scholar, Max Planck Institute for the History of Science

“An excellent sprint through the highlights of Darwin’s life and work. Ruse is a masterful writer who presents a clear account of who Darwin was and why he was important. It’s the connection to larger questions of our lives that makes this book a success. Well done, Ruse!”

—Joe Cain, Professor of History and Philosophy of Biology, University College London

“Anyone interested in Darwin, the man and his ideas, will find this an engaging read. No other book provides such a rich account of Darwin and his transforming theory in a colloquial manner, and yet is faithful to the historical details and the philosophical depth of his contribution to science.”

—Paul Thompson, Professor in the Institute for the History and Philosophy of Science and Technology, University of Toronto

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Other Great Lives

Simply Austenby Joan Klingel RaySimply Beckettby Katherine WeissSimply Beethoven by Leon PlantingaSimply Chekhov by Carol ApollonioSimply Chomskyby Raphael SalkieSimply Chopinby William SmialekSimply Descartesby Kurt SmithSimply Dickensby Paul SchlickeSimply Diracby Helge KraghSimply Einsteinby Jimena CanalesSimply Eliot by Joseph MaddreySimply Euler by Robert E. BradleySimply Faulkner by Philip WeinsteinSimply Fitzgerald by Kim MorelandSimply Freud by Stephen FroshSimply Gödel by Richard TieszenSimply Hegel by Robert L. WicksSimply Hitchcock by David SterrittSimply Joyce by Margot NorrisSimply Machiavelli by Robert FredonaSimply Napoleonby J. David Markham & Matthew ZarzecznySimply Nietzsche by Peter KailSimply Proust by Jack JordanSimply Riemann by Jeremy GraySimply Sartre by David DetmerSimply Tolstoy by Donna Tussing OrwinSimply Stravinsky by Pieter van den ToornSimply Turing by Michael OlinickSimply Wagner by Thomas S. GreySimply Wittgenstein by James C. Klagge

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Series Editor's Foreword

Simply Charly’s “Great Lives” series offers brief but authoritative introductions to the world’s most influential people—scientists, artists, writers, economists, and other historical figures whose contributions have had a meaningful and enduring impact on our society.

Each book provides an illuminating look at the works, ideas, personal lives, and the legacies these individuals left behind, also shedding light on the thought processes, specific events, and experiences that led these remarkable people to their groundbreaking discoveries or other achievements. Additionally, every volume explores various challenges they had to face and overcome to make history in their respective fields, as well as the little-known character traits, quirks, strengths, and frailties, myths, and controversies that sometimes surrounded these personalities.

Our authors are prominent scholars and other top experts who have dedicated their careers to exploring each facet of their subjects’ work and personal lives.

Unlike many other works that are merely descriptions of the major milestones in a person’s life, the “Great Lives” series goes above and beyond the standard format and content. It brings substance, depth, and clarity to the sometimes-complex lives and works of history’s most powerful and influential people.

We hope that by exploring this series, readers will not only gain new knowledge and understanding of what drove these geniuses, but also find inspiration for their own lives. Isn’t this what a great book is supposed to do?

Charles Carlini, Simply Charly New York City

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Preface

This is a book on Charles Darwin. One is tempted to say, this is “yet another book on Charles Darwin.” If you have any doubts, go to Amazon.com and type in “Charles Darwin.” You get 21,549 results. To put things in perspective, if you type in “Michael Ruse” you get 623 results, and I bet most of those are a function of the fact I share my name with the English word for a trick, a “ruse.”

So why yet another book on Charles Darwin? Partly because it is a good tale to tell—a rich young man, of apparently rather modest talents, who travels to faraway lands, upon coming back to England, finds one of the most significant theories in the whole of science. And partly because, even today, there is new material coming out, which changes or modifies our views. The latest finding, for instance, is that Darwin may have been lactose intolerant. This has implications for the way we understand him and his theory. Did he spend his life cowering in a rural village avoiding company, racked with psychosomatic pain from the stress of having discovered a theory that was to get so hostile a reaction from his society? Or were Darwin’s ailments a matter of simple physiology and coming to and holding his theory was no great strain at all? And does this tell us something about both Darwin and the society in which he lived, namely that however major the coming of evolution might have been, it was not something that would universally be considered threatening or even unwelcome?

The tale is worth retelling because history is never just one fact after another. One writes it and shapes it, according to our interests. The truth is that today, especially in America, Darwin’s ideas are highly controversial, primarily because they are taken to oppose the widespread commitment to a form of evangelical Christianity. I will probably not make many converts, especially among older people, but if some young people read this book and decide that it is a more interesting and challenging world than they have so far been led to think, that in itself is a good reason for the book.

I am grateful to a number of people. First, obviously, to Charles Carlini, editor and publisher of this book, for asking me to contribute to the series about influential historical figures, and also for the help given by him and his co-workers in getting the manuscript ready for publication. Special thanks are due to Helena Bachmann, the copy editor. As always, Martin Young, my illustrator, has done a very professional job. I am indebted to my fellow laborers in the so-called “Darwin Industry,” and most especially to those with whom I have the greatest disagreements. So much of our work is, in fact, a collaborative effort and without their insights and generosity, my book simply could not have been written. Mark Borrello and David Sepkoski, two of today’s best historians of biology, read the manuscript for me, and I thank them for doing so. I owe much to my home institution of Florida State University and especially to the gift of William and Lucyle Werkmeister that funds my professorship. I give particular thanks to Hendrik Geyer, his colleagues, and his staff, at the Stellenbosch Institute for Advanced Study in the wine-growing area of South Africa where I spent a semester, away from the distractions of the real world. I have never had such a wonderful environment, during and after the working hours. Lizzie, my wife, as always makes it all worthwhile.

Michael Ruse Tallahassee, Florida

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The Man and His Life

Although Charles Darwin was a great revolutionary—in fact, there are few human beings who have had the same effect on the field of biology and culture, in general—he was not a rebel. He came from a very comfortable, moneyed segment of British society, at a time when Great Britain was the most powerful nation on earth.

Born on February 12, 1809, Charles Robert Darwin was the fourth of five children (and the second of two sons) of Dr. Robert Darwin, a physician in the town of Shrewsbury, in the British Midlands, and his wife, Susannah. His paternal grandfather, Dr. Erasmus Darwin, was a physician too, and also an inventor. His maternal grandfather, Josiah Wedgwood, founded the pottery firm bearing his name; Wedgwood porcelain is still manufactured today, although few people know about the company’s link to Darwin.

Because his father was not only successful in his profession but also a talented financier, and because his mother received a large dowry from her father, young Charles never had to work during his lifetime. He fell comfortably into the role expected of him: that of a respectable, upper-middle-class Englishman.

To understand Charles Darwin and his great achievements we should look at the influences around him. There is nothing new in Darwin’s work. And yet the work itself was entirely new!

This is a portrait of Charles Darwin, drawn by George Richmond around 1840 when Darwin was thirty, to commemorate his wedding. The excellent quality of the portrait – Richmond was the best in England – reflects the fact that Darwin came from a very wealthy upper-middle-class family.

Before evolution

Charles’s father was naturally concerned that his young son would become an idle wastrel. Therefore, when the lad was still in his teens, Robert pushed Charles towards medicine. However, after two years of study in the Scottish capital of Edinburgh, Charles realized that he had no interest in following in his father’s footsteps and becoming a doctor. Looking for an alternative, and somewhat in despair, Robert directed Charles towards the church (which is ironic, considering that later on Darwin’s theory of evolution would put him at odds with many people’s understanding of religious doctrine). In order to become a clergyman in the Church of England, a degree from a British university was required. Therefore, in 1828, Charles enrolled at Christ’s College in Cambridge.

He spent three happy years as an undergraduate. His formal courses were not onerous, and he had time to pursue the study of biology, an interest that was growing strongly. However, Darwin’s first explorations as a full-time scientist came in the area of geology. In 1831, he had the offer to go as the captain’s companion on board the British warship HMS Beagle. The ship, under the command of Capt. Robert FitzRoy, was going down to the southern hemisphere to map the coastline of South America. FitzRoy was looking for a gentleman who could pay for his own mess bills (food and drink), who would be outside the line of command, and with whom he could relax in his spare time. Darwin fit the bill exactly.

Overall, the Beagle voyage lasted some five years. It went first across to the east coast of South America, starting with Brazil, and then worked its way down to the very bottom to the snowy lands of Tierra del Fuego. It then sailed up the west coast past Chile, eventually swinging out into the Pacific. It made a visit to the group of islands known as the Galapagos Archipelago, now belonging to Ecuador. Afterward, the Beagle went southwest to New Zealand and on to Australia. It then visited South Africa, made a quick trip back to South America, and finally returned to England in the autumn of 1836.

HMS Beagle on which Darwin spent five years, from 1831 to 1836, circumnavigating the globe.

During the voyage, Darwin rapidly progressed from the role of captain’s friend to that of ship’s naturalist. He made massive collections of plants, rocks, and fossils, as well as animal and bird skins. These samples were sent back to England for cataloging and classification. At the same time, Darwin did a fair amount of geology, as well as detailed studies of the flora and fauna of the lands he visited. He proved to be a bad sailor, often being dreadfully seasick. However, most of the time during the Beagle voyage, Darwin was not on board. He would disembark at a port and stay there or travel on land, and then rejoin the ship at a later point, when it returned after its survey up and down the coast. Darwin kept detailed diaries, which would be published in 1839 as a critically acclaimed travel book (in a later edition) titled The Voyage of the Beagle.

The greatest influence on Darwin during the Beagle voyage was the newly published (in 1830) work by the Scottish lawyer-turned-geologist, Charles Lyell. Darwin took with him the first volume of Lyell’s Principles of Geology, and the other two subsequent volumes were sent out to him from England. Lyell was arguing for what came to be known as the “uniformitarian” view of geology. He claimed that, given enough time, all of the varied geological phenomena such as the mountains, valleys, oceans, rivers, volcanoes, and much more, can be produced by regular forces, no more intense than those presently in action—snow, rain, deposition, silting, volcanic eruptions, earthquakes, and all of the other natural effects. Darwin was impressed by this view of the Earth’s history. Although his mentors at Cambridge, particularly the geologist Adam Sedgwick, had endorsed a view that came to be known as “catastrophism,” where one supposes massive upheavals now and then, Darwin rejected this entirely in favor of Lyell’s alternative position.

The frontispiece of the first volume of Charles Lyell’s Principles of Geology published in 1830. The corrosion on the pillars, above about eight feet, suggests that after the columns had been first erected, the land sank and the pillars were submerged (and there was no corrosion beneath the surface). Then at some later point, the land rose, and the pillars emerged from their watery grave. This all supports Lyell’s geological picture of Earth’s history.

In fact, the first piece of scientific work that Darwin undertook, for which he is still rightfully famous, was based on Lyell’s argument that the Earth is a little like a water bed—as one part subsides (perhaps because of silt deposits from rivers), another part rises. The major puzzle, unsolved by Lyell in the Principles, was that of coral reefs. Why do we find these circular, island-like phenomena in tropical seas, with coral growing around their rim? Lyell had suggested that they were the relics of now-extinct volcanoes. But Darwin reasoned that it was highly unlikely that the volcanoes would have come up to, and no further than, the ocean’s surface. He argued that the coral had first grown around the edges of islands, and then kept growing upwards as the islands sank. Darwin’s view, incidentally, was vindicated by 20th-century science.

Lyell’s uniformitarianism had two major effects on Darwin, one scientific and the other religious. On the scientific side, Lyell’s insistence that geological processes are explained by regular laws of existing intensity started to push Darwin towards an evolutionary perspective on organisms, that is, the belief that organisms are naturally produced by regular laws from other forms—perhaps far more simple ones—than by miracles. Lyell himself denied evolution, but Darwin started to think otherwise. On the religious side, Lyell started Darwin on the long path that eventually led towards skepticism or agnosticism. As a young man intending to join the clergy, Darwin had been a practicing and believing Christian—a member of England’s established Protestant church, the Anglican Communion. However, on the Beagle voyage, under Lyell’s influence, Darwin increasingly found himself unable to accept religious doctrines:

By further reflecting that the clearest evidence would be requisite to make any sane man believe in the miracles by which Christianity is supported,—that the more we know of the fixed laws of nature the more incredible do miracles become,—that the men at that time were ignorant and credulous to a degree almost incomprehensible by us,—that the Gospels cannot be proved to have been written simultaneously with the events,—that they differ in many important details, far too important as it seemed to me to be admitted as the usual inaccuracies of eye-witnesses;—by such reflections as these, which I give not as having the least novelty or value, but as they influenced me, I gradually came to disbelieve in Christianity as a divine revelation.

It is important to emphasize that Darwin did not become an atheist, but he did start to move away from Christian “theism” to what is known as “deism”—the belief in a Supreme Being, a creator who does not intervene in the universe. This deism stayed with Darwin throughout his adult life, and only towards the end did it start to fade into a form of non-belief. It goes without saying that the truth of evolution is, if anything, proof of the power of God—everything, including organism life, is produced by unbroken law without the need for intervention by the deity.

From evolution to natural selection

Darwin did not become an evolutionist on the Beagle voyage. However, the visit to the Galapagos Archipelago in 1835 was probably the most important event in his intellectual life. It was there that Darwin saw the giant tortoises, as well as the teeming birdlife. To his great surprise, Darwin discovered that the reptiles and the birds differed from island to island. Moreover, although they were similar to the wildlife of the South American mainland, there were also certain differences. Darwin was puzzled by these disparities. Yet, it was not until he returned to England and asked a leading authority to examine and classify his birds that Darwin made the move over to evolution. When he was told that the birds from the various islands of the Galapagos were undoubtedly different species, he could see no way of explaining this fact except through a long process of what he was to call “descent with modification.”

Early in the spring of 1837, Darwin became an evolutionist. It is worth noting that, probably due to the Galapagos influence, he always thought of evolution as a branching process, starting with an original form that then diverged as the descendants got separated and went their different ways. For this reason, a branching “tree of life” was the picture of organic history adopted by Darwin and from which he never deviated. He may have made a great discovery, but making it public was another matter. By this time, Darwin was starting to make a name for himself as a very promising young scientist. His work on coral reefs was gaining him much respect, and he realized that “coming out” as an evolutionist would be fatal to his professional success. Therefore, although he opened some private notebooks and set out on a detailed course of inquiry, he kept his newfound belief to himself.

A celebrated sketch by Darwin, drawn in 1837, showing how he had grasped the idea of branching evolution.

As a graduate of the University of Cambridge, which some 200 years before housed the great Isaac Newton, Darwin realized that becoming an evolutionist was not a simple matter. As Newton had found the cause of the Copernican system—his force of gravitational attraction that exists between all bodies—so Darwin likewise realized he had to find a cause for evolution.

Astronomers might formerly have said that God ordered each planet to move in its particular destiny. In same manner God orders each animal created with certain form in certain country. But how much more simple and sublime power,—let attraction act according to certain law, such are inevitable consequences,—let animal«s» be created, then by the fixed laws of generation, such will be their successors. Let the powers of transportal be such, & so will be the forms of one country to another.—Let geological changes go at such a rate, so will be the number & distribution of the species!!