Thanks Mark - your blog is great- though I made a longer list of blunders while watching! (You can use this if you want)
I was very disappointed with the Darwin documentary. There are a lot of people who spend their lives studying the man and yet here we get Dawkins' second-hand gloss with only one expert, Randal Keynes, briefly on screen.
First of all, the major theme was not "Who was Charles Darwin and how did he figure out how life works"? Instead, it was “Darwin is better than religious explanations”.
Dawkins Claim: Darwin wanted to be a priest instead of his family's desire he be a physician.
In fact, it was his family's idea he become a clergyman.
Dawkins Claim: His family connections got him the Beagle voyage offer.
It was his Cambridge connections, not his family connections.
[specifically Henslow]
Dawkins Claim: Darwin was one of the first to recognized that fossils were the remains of extinct organisms!
Wrong by centuries!
[centuries is a bit strong: my understanding is that Cuvier was the first to establish this in the 1790s, more than forty years before Darwin's Beagle voyage, but the recognition that fossils were the remains of once-living but not necessarily extinct, organisms goes back to Steno, over a century and a half before Darwin, so Darwin is far from the first]
Dawkins Claim: Darwin was one of the first to see that the world was older than 6000 years!
Again, wrong by centuries. In fact many discoveries are attributed to Darwin rather than to Richard Owen, Lyell and the entire scientific community of his day and the preceding generations. This Darwin lives in a vacuum!
Dawkins Claim: He thought his theory would be ‘upsetting’ so he therefore hesitated in publishing it.
The people on your blog who think they disagree with me and say 'it was lots of factors' have obviously not read my article! If you cite this copy people can read it for free:
All best, John -- Dr John van Wyhe
Director The Complete Work of Charles Darwin Online University of Cambridge CRASSH, 17 Mill Lane, Cambridge, CB2 1RX http://darwin-online.org.uk/ Fax: 01223 (7)65276
Bye-Fellow Christ's College, Cambridge
5 comments:
The people on your blog who think they disagree with me and say 'it was lots of factors' have obviously not read my article!
Looks like we're talking past one another, assuming this refers to me.
yes, indeed. Just gotten around to posting John's comments.
My point was simply that 1) some blogs seemed to me to imply that van Wyhe's essay meant that there was nothing more to consider. In terms of fear leading to an intentional delay, alright. But the question remains: Why did Darwin feel it necessary to compile so much evidence, put together so many preemptive counterarguments, cover so many topics, when others (e.g., Wallace) did not? That is a truly interesting question, and I don't know if it would show up in his letters (maybe -- but it seems to me, at least today, that someone who frets or obsesses when working on a difficult project often does not mention that!).
Anyway, let me say: I agree. No simple delay out of fear, especially not fear of the clergy or public. However, why it took so long even when he started working on it is an interesting question. Why was he so detailed? I don't know -- I'm glad he was, however.
Well, I assume you have read John's paper:-)
There are several explanations:
1. he had a backlog of work to get through (see the figure in John's paper as to his work plan and actual delivery)
2. his output was curtailed by illness
3. he wanted to get the science right
I guess you could argue that was fearful, but only in the way most scientists are, of not wanting to rush to publication when the science isn't yet conclusive
4. he was just a gentleman scientist, under none of the publish or perish pressure we experience today.
Also, Wallace didn't definitely want to publish. He sent his papers to Darwin to ask whether they were worth publishing. His work was published without his explicit consent.
At any one time, I typically have half a dozen to a dozen projects buzzing around my head, with grants and papers unwritten, but it is not fear that stops me getting stuff done, it is just that my curiosity outruns my ability to get stuff off the desk. I don't think Darwin was any different! In fact, his mind wandered far further than mine!!
Well, I assume you have read John's paper
Yep, after I saw Odling-Smee in Nature. I haven't been arguing against van Wyhe's claims, only that it's still an interesting issue. History may not be science, but one should still see what the rest of the experts say about an argument!
I guess you could argue that was fearful, but only in the way most scientists are, of not wanting to rush to publication when the science isn't yet conclusive
That's about as far as I took it, I think.
Certainly an interesting question, one that may or may not be answered by reading his written material.
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