Inception of Darwin's theory: Encyclopedia II - Inception of Darwin's theory - Transmutation

Inception of Darwin's theory - Transmutation

Scientific circles were buzzing with ideas of Transmutation of species with most medical men talking of a legislated "process of change", overturning the Creation biology doctrine of "Created kinds". Darwin came to accept that "the Creator creates by... laws". A few days after arriving in London he met Gould again. He learnt that his Galápagos "wren" was yet another species of finch, making 13 in all. Although Darwin had not bothered to label these birds by island, he had labeled four mockingbirds, speculating that if they turned out to be true varieties it "would undermine the stability of Species". Now Gould told him that they were not just varieties, but distinct species, related to but different from other species on the American mainland. Thomas Bell confirmed that the giant Galápagos tortoises were native, not brought in by buccaneers for food as Darwin had thought, giving credibility to the Vice-Governor's story that each island had its own tortoise.

By mid March Darwin realised that original immigrants had been altered somehow to become an array of new species. These were the ideas of what his Cambridge tutor Adam Sedgwick called "infidel naturalists..[adopting] false theories", and even for Lyell this heretically implied ape ancestry, destroying mankind's "high estate". Darwin was more open to new speculation. He had seen the bestial life of the natives of Tierra del Fuego, apparently happy in their harsh environment, and Jemmy Button's reversion to savagery. To him the need was to explain how both Fuegians and civilised Europeans could be "essentially the same creatures" from the hand of the same Creator. At the Geographical Society meeting on 2 May 1837, when Darwin read his next paper on the Pampas, the first discoveries of ancient fossil monkeys were announced. Lyell uncomfortably joked that from "Lamarck's view" this gave a long time "for their tails to wear off", but Darwin was beginning to look at these "wonderful" fossils in an evolutionary light.

At their frequent meetings Owen argued that intrinsic "organising energy" in the "embryonic germ" set the lifespan of the species and precluded transmutation. The botanist Robert Brown showed Darwin a different concept, of "swarming atoms" inside the germ, allowing nature's self development. Darwin began speculating on transmutation in his Red Notebook which he had begun on the Beagle. Gould confirmed that the southern Rhea was indeed a separate species, and Darwin speculated as to why their territories overlapped without intermediate species, wondering if mutations (known then as "monsters" or "freaks") "present an analogy to production of species". Embarrassed by his lack of labels for his finch specimens, he examined FitzRoy's in the British Museum and contacted seamen including Syms Covington for their collections. From this he was able to relate the finches to separate islands, with distinct species on each island. As well as pressing on with his Journal, he started an ambitious project to get the expert reports on his collection published as a multi-volume Zoology of the Voyage of H.M.S. Beagle. A search for sponsorship was answered when Henslow used his contacts with the Chancellor of the Exchequer Thomas Spring Rice to arrange a Treasury grant of £1,000. Darwin finished writing his Journal around 20 June when King William IV died and the Victorian era began.

Inception of Darwin's theory - Secret notebooks

In mid July 1837 Darwin began a secret notebook on transmutation, his "B" notebook, with a title page headed Zoönomia, scribbling down a framework for his speculations. Considering Owen's idea that complexity of a species was inversely related to its life span, he sketched an "irregularly branched" genealogical tree and began thinking of life as arising only once. Still influenced by Paley, he assumed that variants emerged perfect, but he rejected Grant's idea of progress upwards to higher forms, writing "It is absurd to talk of one animal being higher than another". He developed the hypothesis that, for example, where every island in the Galápagos Archipelago had its own kind of tortoise, these had originated from a single tortoise species and had adapted to life on the different islands in different ways. Thinking of how ancestors could have spread to islands, he noted possible experiments.

Under pressure with organising Zoology and correcting proofs of his Journal which had to have the introduction revised when FitzRoy complained that he was "astonished at the total omission of any notice of the officers" for their help, Darwin's health suffered. On 20 September 1837 he suffered "an uncomfortable palpitation of the heart". His doctors advised him "strongly to knock off all work" and leave for the country. Two days later he went to Maer Hall, the Wedgwood's home, for a month of recuperation. His relations wore him out with questions about gaucho life. His invalid aunt was being cared for by the as yet unmarried Emma, and his uncle Jos pointed out an area of ground where cinders had disappeared under loam which Jos though might have been the work of earthworms. Darwin returned to London on 21 October and on 1 November gave a talk on worm casts to the Geological Society, a mundane subject which to them seemed eccentric.

His notebooks developed an essentially materialist and deterministic view of human beings, with the conclusions that freewill was an illusion and the brain was mechanistic. He had avoided taking on official posts which would take valuable time, turning down William Whewell's request that he become Secretary of the Geological Society with excuses including "anything which flurries me completely knocks me up afterwards and brings on a bad palpitation of the heart", but by March 1838 he accepted the post. On 7 March he read to the Society his longest paper yet, which explained the earthquake he had witnessed at Concepción, Chile, in terms of gradual crustal movements, to the delight of Lyell. Despite hours of practice "I was so nervous at first, I somehow could see nothing all around me, & felt as if my body was gone, & only my head left." At the same time Darwin was privately scorning Whewell's faith in a human-centred universe being perfectly adapted to man and writing of "my theory" which he thought "would give zest to recent & Fossil Comparative Anatomy", transforming the "whole metaphysics".

Darwin's ideas fitted with the radical Unitarianism of his brother Erasmus's circle including Harriet Martineau, but were heretical to his Anglican friends in the scientific establishment. Despite stomach upsets Darwin explored in his notebooks the metaphysical implications of a consistent positivist creed, arguing that a person can be “congratulated for doing good” but the act is actually purely conditioned and “deserves no credit”. Indeed, “wickedness is no more a man’s fault than bodily disease!”. His Anglican friends would have found this deterministic materialism more shocking than his ideas of evolution. Such materialist ideas had been seized on by socialist agitators, red Lamarckians who stirred the mob to overthrow the social order and Chartists who even demanded the vote for working men! The establishment and the Tory press were quick to crush such ideas, using the full force of the law at a time when blasphemy was a criminal offence. Many were denounced and overthrown for such scandalous ideas, including the surgeon William Lawrence who was forced to resign his post and lost copyright on his book Lectures on Man. This book was promptly pirated by the notorious agitator and pornography publisher William Benbow, and then published in cheap editions such as the copy that Darwin now read. As a result Darwin was secretive and very cautious in even hinting about his ideas to the friends he was bursting to share discussions with.

Dissenters such as John Wesley abhorred slavery and privilege, and had a bleaker view of nature than Paley. Darwin reflected these ideas in his notes, writing "Animals – whom we have made our slaves we do not like to consider our equals. – Do not slave holders wish to make the black man other kind? Animals with affections, imitation, fear, pain, sorrow for the dead." and "if we choose to let conjecture run wild then animals our fellow brethren in pain, disease death & suffering & famine; our slaves in the most laborious work, our companion in our amusements, they may partake, from our origin in one common ancestor we may all be netted together."

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Transmutation", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki