The ‘Annie Hypothesis’: Did the Death of His Daughter Cause Darwin to ‘Give up Christianity’?

The paper that I wrote with John van Wyhe on what we call "the Annie Hypothesis" is now out here:

http://doi.wiley.com/10.1111/j.1600-0498.2012.00256.x

Here is the abstract:

This article examines one of the most widely believed episodes in the life of Charles Darwin, that the death of his daughter Annie in 1851 caused the end of Darwin's belief in Christianity, and according to some versions, ended his attendance of church on Sundays. This hypothesis, it is argued, is commonly treated as a straightforward true account of Darwin's life, yet there is little or no supporting evidence. Furthermore, we argue, there is sufficient evidence that Darwin's loss of faith occurred before Annie's death.

During peer review, the paper was criticised for mixing history with historiography and for being overly positivist, but what can you expect of a scientist! We are all positivists!

Sadly, the paper is not open access: if anyone wants a copy but cannot access it, please email me (m.pallen@bham.ac.uk).

Allow me to thank John van Wyhe for beating the paper into shape and nursing it through to publication!

Other previous posts on this topic:

• http://roughguidetoevolution.blogspot.co.uk/2008/12/annie-darwin-and-darwins-loss-of-faith.html
• http://roughguidetoevolution.blogspot.co.uk/2009/07/spread-of-annie-myth-its-worse-than-i.html
• http://roughguidetoevolution.blogspot.co.uk/2009/06/emma-darwins-poignant-diary-entry.html

Origin of Species: new online variorum

Yesterday, the world celebrated the sesquicentennial of the publication of The Origin of Species. But it is worth stressing that there was not one "Origin of Species", but six different editions produced in Britain alone during Darwin's lifetime. Fifty years ago, in time for the hundredth anniversary of the first publication, Morse Peckham produced a variorum text, which showed the variant readings between the six editions. However, Peckham's variorum has always been difficult to follow and is decidedly old-fashioned with its literal use of cut and paste.

To celebrate the 150th anniversary, my colleague at the University of Birmingham, Barbara Bordalejo, working with John van Wyhe at Darwin Online, has produced a fantastic new digital online variorum, which is much more flexible and user-friendly than Peckham's. Take a look at it here: http://darwin-online.org.uk/Variorum/index.html

For more details, see the editor's introduction: http://darwin-online.org.uk/Variorum/Introduction.html

At last, all of us can follow the evolution of The Origin!

Darwin podcasts from the Fitzwilliam Museum

The Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge (which Darwin frequented), is next week launching an exhibition, Endless Forms, to celebrate the Darwin bicentennial. 

To accompany the exhibition, the Fitzwilliam has produced a series of fascinating podcasts, including most recently an account of Darwin's time in Cambridge from my friend John van Wyhe. Note the sly reference in John's talk to the myth of Annie Darwin and Darwin's loss of faith: watch this space for more on this issue!

The Origin of Species as an organism: census, taxonomy and evolution

Last Friday, John van Wyhe, creator of Darwin Online, visited me in Birmingham. He gave a nice seminar on Darwin's Delay (or lack of it: see John's paper on this topic), which covered familiar ground for me. But one interesting topic that cropped up in our discussions, which I was unaware of, was a census of all first editions of The Origin, due to culminate in November in time for the book's 150th anniversary

Following John's advice, I tracked down this description of the census on Darwin Online. The census reminds me of a similar effort to track down all extant copies of Copernicus's masterwork De Revolutionibus, which I read about a copies of years ago in The Book Nobody Read, by Owen Gingerich.

This new census of The Origin falls into a line of thinking that has been rattling around for quite a while. Just as Darwin placed variation between organisms within a species centre stage in biology as the very seed corn of evolution by natural selection, it is also important to recognise that documents also evolve by descent with modification—and The Origin of Species is no exception! 

In Darwin's lifetime, there were six different editions authored by him, with numerous small and large differences from one edition to the next. These differences were collated in a printed variorum by Morse Peckham around fifty years ago (now available online via Google books). My colleagues at the University of Birmingham Barbara Bordalejo and Peter Robinson are working on a digital variorum.

But another key facet of The Origin's evolution that intrigues me is just how much of it was written over fifteen years before 1859 in two short documents, Darwin's 1842 Pencil Sketch and 1844 Essay. It is interesting to take favourite passages from the Origin and see their ancestors in those earlier drafts. Here are is the most obvious example, the closing words:

"There is a simple grandeur in the view of life with its powers of growth, assimilation and reproduction, being originally breathed into matter under one or a few forms, and that whilst this our planet has gone circling on according to fixed laws, and land and water, in a cycle of change, have gone on replacing each other, that from so simple an origin, through the process of gradual selection of infinitesimal changes, endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been evolved." 1842 Pencil Sketch. 

"There is a [simple] grandeur in this view of life with its several powers of growth, reproduction and of sensation, having been originally breathed into matter under a few forms, perhaps into only one, and that whilst this planet has gone cycling onwards according to the fixed laws of gravity and whilst land and water have gone on replacing each other—that from so simple an origin, through the selection of infinitesimal varieties, endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been evolved." 1844 Essay

"There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed into a few forms or into one; and that whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved." The Origin of Species, First Edition. NB: in the 2nd edition "by the Creator" is introduced after "originally breathed."

But the new census of the first edition hammers home the differences not just between editions, but also between copies of the very same edition. Start off by taking a look at the census guide for a panoply of features that can be used to classify a copy of The Origin as a First Edition. A key hallmark is the misspelling of species on p. 20:

There can be no doubt that a race may be modified by occasional crosses, if aided by the careful selection of those individual mongrels, which present any desired character; but that a race could be obtained nearly intermediate between two extremely different races or speceies, I can hardly believe. The Origin, First Edition, Page 20. 

But look at all the other minute differences, for example in the binding:

1. If there is a full stop after MURRAY at the bottom of the spine, it is a 2nd or 3rd edition binding. 
   
2. If the letters at the bottom of the spine are short and square (as opposed to tall and thin), it is a 2nd edition binding. 
   
3. If the second N in LONDON is slightly lower than the other letters, it is a 3rd edition binding. 
   

And there are differences even within the first edition!

For original bindings there are two variants, the difference being the width of LONDON. In the first variant, LONDON at the bottom of the spine is 16mm wide; in the second variant, it is 18mm.

I will leave it to the train-spotters among you to look at the guide for all the minutiae;-) 

But those who prefer more human stories behind the history of the copies of the first edition take a look at this article from the New York Times: Digging for Darwin.

And perhaps I should close with a new variant of the ending of the Origin:

"There is grandeur in this view of The Origin of Species, with its several powers, having been originally breathed by Darwin into a few forms or into one; and that whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless editions and variants most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved!"

Cambridge: Darwin's rooms and the Rap Guide to Evolution

What was that we were saying about forgetting about Darwin? What nonsense! In fact, readers might be interested to know that Darwin's rooms in Cambridge are being nicely restored for the bicentenary. Read John van Wyhe's ongoing accounts of the process here:

http://www.christs.cam.ac.uk/alumni/distinguished-alumni/charles_darwin/darwin_room/

With luck, I might get to see the rooms when I visit Cambridge a week today, leading a "Darwin's roadshow" party of visitors, which will include two hip-hop artists, Baba Brinkman and Greydon Square and two people involved with the Dover trial, Lauri Lebo and Cyndi Sneath (one of the plaintiffs). 

We will be doing a bit of Darwinian tourism before the show in the evening. The show will include one hour on "The Devil in Dover" from Lauri and Cyndi and then will conclude with the world premier of "The Rap Guide to Evolution". 

I have seen some of the early drafts of the material from Baba and it looks very exciting, particularly as Baba has grafted some of the evolution material on to existing hip hop tracks. For example, here is a snippet of the lyrics from Baba's I'm a African (which draws on a Rap song of the same name by Dead Prez--if you follow the link, watch out for explicit lyrics).

I’m a African, I’m a African
And I know what’s happenin’
I’m a African, I’m a African
And I know what’s happenin’

1 No I wasn’t born in Ghana but Africa is my mama
2 ‘Cause that’s where my mama got her mitochondria
3 You can try to fight if you wanna, but it’s not gonna change me
4 ‘Cause it’s plain to see, Africans are my people
5 And if it’s not plain to see then your eyes deceive you
6 I’m talkin’ primeval; the DNA in my veins
7 Tells a story that reasonable people find believable
8 But it might blow your transistors; Africa
9 Is the home of our most recent common ancestors
10 Which means human beings are all brothers and sisters

You can pick up a sample of Baba's music here: a track called Natural Selection here (complete with samples of Dawkins as Darwin!).

After Cambridge, we take the show (and our Darwinian tourism) to London (Tues 10th), Birmingham (Darwin Day itself) and Shrewsbury (Fri 13th). The shows are aimed mainly at schoolkids and students, but if anyone lives near these venues and wants to come along, let me know. It is going to be an awesome bicentenary celebration!

Oh and I must remember to thank the British Council for making this all possible!

Wikipedia and the question of who owns Darwin

We live in age where "information wants to be free" and steadily ever more information that one used to have to pay for is now available online free of charge, from maps to bibliographic databases such as Medline to scientific articles themselves. But "free to look at" does not mean "free to use for whatever purpose one likes", and what happens when two online giants of the information age (Wikipedia and Darwin Online) collide?

The Wikipedia must surely rate as one of the seven wonders of the Internet. But although simple in concept--an encyclopedia in which anyone can create and edit material--in fact, it has grown to be a highly complex  trans-national organisation, with its own culture and customs. Beneath the simple exterior of the wiki article lies a complex machinery of rules, edits, discussions and guidelines...

A couple of times when I have tried to contribute myself, I have come away somewhat disgruntled--once over the neutering suffered by the no-bacteria-on-the-moon article mentioned in an earlier post and on another occasion, when I tried to create an entry for Charles Darwin 1st (1758-1778), the uncle of the more famous CD and the son of Erasmus Darwin. Before I had even finished the article, a notice was slapped on, saying that the article was likely to be deleted very soon on grounds of lack of notability--a decision made by someone whose credentials one could only guess at!

But although my own experiences have led me to have mixed feelings about the Wikipedia, I marvel at the effort put in behind the scenes in terms of arguments for or against a given position on what should be included. There is something magical here with the Wikipedia, as I know from experience that attempts to get research communities to engage in community annotation or maintenance of subject-specific wikis (e.g. the E. coli wiki) usually collapse in apathy, as academics say they are just too busy to contribute. How is it that the Wikipedia manages to enlist so much support from so many unpaid volunteers! And how do these people find the time for all this, when academics are so busy?

A couple of examples suffice to illustrate the remarkable internal machinations of the Wikipedia:

1. In one of the Wikipedia's lamest edit wars, the issue of whether the fact that Darwin and Lincoln were born on the very same day is notable enough for inclusion in their respective Wikipedia entries has generated the equivalent of a short novel's worth of words of discussion! See further discussion on the I'm-from-Missouri blog.

2. Just this morning I came across this protracted and fascinating discussion as to whether John van Wyhe at Darwin Online is able to assert copyright on the images scanned from out-of-copyright printed works. This issue has a particular interest for me, as we explored whether we could afford to use some of John's images in The Rough Guide to Evolution in the light of the tight budget we had been allotted for pictures. In a nutshell, the argument is whether the Wikipedia and its sister resource, Wikimedia Commons, has the right to appropriate these images from John's Darwin Online site without his permission and without payment on the grounds that the images are in the public domain. 

John argues that the act of scanning creates copyright, at least in English law. Various wikipedians argue that mechanical processes that do not add originality do not create copyright where none exists to start with; that English copyright law does or does not allow for "sweat of the brow" efforts; that the Wikipedia should or should not ignore English law and so on! 

John, perhaps wisely, has refused to take part in the discussions--he is busily writing or editing several books on Darwin (working on one book has been exhaustive enough for me!). In the end, the wikipedians seem to have side-stepped the issue by starting to scan in their own images, and so I am left unclear what the precise legal position is. One elephant-in-the-room argument that they haven't addressed is whether changing an image from a paper format to a digital format creates copyright. Or does this not make any difference?

The question of who owns Darwin goes deeper than these arguments over copyright of images. Cambridge University claims to own the copyright on all Darwin's letters, whether held by the University or in private hands. This seems a bit odd to me, as when Darwin sent someone a letter, one would have thought that the recipient gained ownership of the letter and perhaps even copyright of what was in it. I wonder what case law exists on this.

One thing is clear, in the Internet age, who owns Darwin remains a highly contentious point!