TheMillerCircle.org

This month is the 150th anniversary of Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species, perhaps the greatest scientific and social publication in history.  Many years ago I purchased a paperback copy of Darwin’s book, a Dover publication as I recall, and read it for the first time, though not from cover to cover. At that time,  reading it more than a 125 years or so after it was first published, introduced me to the arguments, examples and logic that Darwin used to make his case: the genius of his insights and the power of his observations are not subtle in the book.  But then as now, there was little doubt or argument that evolution was the only rational way to interpret biological variance in species and the principle of natural selection seemed like a sensible way for nature to take advantage of genetic mutations, the majority of which probably give a disservice to the propagation of the species. But at the period of my reading and even more so today, evolution had become a proven fact, not a theory, a result of an expansive knowledge of biology, molecular biology and genetics, coupled with increasing clarity from the fossil record, including that of our own Hominidae and Hominina history, which, for human ancestors (Hominina), now goes back more than 4 million years. We know more about evolution than we do about the structure of the atom and each new piece we find in the puzzle, such as the ever-expanding Hominina fossil record, gives us an increasingly broad insight of our ancestors’ culture and behavior, all achieved through slow changes that reveal a story about a species that started to walk erect before it developed its large brain. But at the time that Darwin published his book, there was virtually no knowledge of genetics and only a very primitive grasp of the fossil record that supported such a sweeping interpretation of species origins and connectivity. Darwin did however acquire fossils during his trip to the Galapagos Islands beginning in 1831.  He  made his case for evolution based on the animals that he retrieved for study, including many birds, and the evolutionary-like changes that man had created through domestication of certain species, particularly dogs. Though Darwin had no knowledge that the code for reproduction was within our DNA, which would not be identified until well into the next century, and he did not have knowledge of Gregor Mendel’s work on plant genetics and the nature of inheritability, his  introduction of natural selection as the key to adapting mutational change for  improved chances of species survival, was the most insightful feature of his argument. Darwin’s genius was in recognizing that a vast change in species could be achieved over time, through minute, advantageous and heritable traits that would initially appear to be small. As one example, he used the evolution of the eye from invertebrates to mammals as an illustration of the differences in optical qualities that could be achieved through natural selection, advantageous changes and a whole lot of time. The time required for these changes remains incomprehensible for humans to absorb.

Darwin ages well with time, as increased exposure to his arguments and illustrations serves to emphasize how much he shared his lifetime  commitment for his work and his insatiable curiosity about nature. Through his work, the genie of species connectedness came out of the bottle and never went back in. Some of his stories are just as stunning today as they were when Darwin first revealed them to his naive audience. At the time his famous book was published, English society believed that the function of flowers was to beautify the countryside and they were not prepared when Darwin told them that flowers were for sex. The Origin was written under duress. Darwin discovered that Alfred Russel Wallace had hit upon the same idea, so he hurried his book and published it in a condensed form, rather than the much larger book he had originally contemplated. Yet, by modern standards, it is not a small book, as it contains 150,000 words. But partially because of his truncated book, the Origin made it easier for him to explain his theory more clearly, which is probably why it had an impact with the public, in addition to the new guiding principles it established for science. When Origin was published, Darwin was already a well-known, popular scientific writer, as he had previously published his well received account of his voyage on the HMS Beagle that was the stimulus for his career as our first evolutionary biologist.

When you realize the general naivete of British Society in the early part of the 19th Century, it makes you wonder how anyone could grow up in that culture with a fascination for the range and depth of biological organisms. We should all be grateful that Darwin did not become the doctor that his father wanted him to be. Darwin extended his innate curiosity into a form of innovative genius based on observation and intuition and he was amazingly correct on some things he could only intuit rather than prove, particularly without the detail of the modern fossil record that now exists today for virtually all species, interconnected through our knowledge of genetics.  When so clearly present, as in Darwin’s case,  genius gives us that rare quality of a sharp demarcation line between the before and after and that’s what the Origin provided–a demarcation line that was so distinct and permanent that a new trajectory of discussion was instantly embedded into the scientific and social conversation of our own origins and the nature of biological diversity. Unlike many other scientists, such as Gregor Mendel, Darwin lived to see a wide appreciation of his theory in his own time, as he was one of the great notables of 19th Century English science.

Of course, after 150 years of Darwin’s revolutionary ideas, the controversy surrounding the origin of man remains as much a part of our cultural landscape as it did shortly after Darwin’s  publication. However, today, the arguments against evolution are no longer about the facts of evolution, but instead we see how the efforts of creationists and the like have been reduced to that of trying to capture Darwin’s insights and co-opt them through distortion into their own abortive descriptions and conclusions, so creationism tries to mask itself as science, such as what we see in the form of “Intelligent Design.” Geneticist Steve Jones has a beautiful summary of Darwin’s Origin published in the NewScientist, with contemporary examples and expansion of how Darwin’s  arguments have stood the test of time.  The section on dog domestication found in chapter one (variation under domestication) is particularly relevant as an example of how man-made selection used the principles of an accelerated form of natural selection and survival of the desired traits, accomplished by killing the animals with undesirable traits and breeding the desired ones into existence and stark prominence. Today for example, we have developed about 400 breeds of dogs, most of which are less than 400 years old. Most dogs can interbreed with other dogs and with their ancestors, the wolf. Interbreeding is often used as the demarcation line between species. Yet, the large number of dogs with different popular names, all share the same genus and species names as the wolves from which they were generated–Canis lupus!

RFM