The surprising spread of the Annie hypothesis

As I have pointed out in previous posts, I have been working on a paper on the unsubstantiated claim that his daughter Annie's death led to Darwin's abandonment of Christianity. Once the paper is press, I will present my analysis of just what flimsy evidence the "Annie hypothesis" was based on by its originator, James Moore. But for now, let's just take a look at how far this modern "Darwin myth" has spread and how many people have suckered by it (even Carl Zimmer has been taken in!). 

Note, I use the term "myth" not so much in the sense of "false story" although I do think it is false, or at least unfalsifiable, but more because so many people wish to draw moral lessons from it. Most people seem far more comfortable with the idea that Darwin gave up Christianity only after something as traumatic as the death of a daughter, rather for the mostly dry intellectual reasons he cites in his Autobiography.

Anyhow, here is a draft of a table from the paper, showing quite how far the "Annie hypothesis" has spread. If you know of any additional striking examples of its presentation in print or on screen, please let us know by adding comments.

Table 1 Selected examples of the Annie Hypothesis in print, on screen and online

	Year	Quotations and context
In Print
1859 and All That: Remaking the Story of Evolution-and-Religion James R. Moore	1982	"Perhaps it was the "bitter and cruel" death in 1851 of ten-year-old Annie, his favourite child, just a month after he had read the moral challenge to that doctrine in Francis Newman's "excellent" spiritual Autobiography Faith, that prompted Darwin, as he later said, to give up Christianity once and for all."
Of Love and Death: Why Darwin 'gave up Christianity', James Moore	1989	See text of paper for discussion (in preparation).
Darwin, Desmond and Moore	1991	Account of Annie’s illness and death interspersed with interpolations about Darwin’s loss of faith.
Charles Darwin, Voyaging. Janet Browne.	1995	“His sense of God had virtually disappeared along with his daughter Anne.”
Rebecca Stetoff, , Charles Darwin And The Evolution Revolution	1996	"Darwin's own Christianity, never very deeply held, gradually eroded as he worked out his theory of natural selection; the remnants of his faith were wiped out entirely by the suffering and death of his daughter Annie in 1851. Later in life he described himself as an Agnostic--one who questions but does not flatly deny the existence of God. ... [Annie's] death destroyed the last lingering remnants of Darwin's Christianity."
Evolution, The Triumph of an Idea, Carl Zimmer	2001	“He could no longer believe that Anne’s soul was in heaven, that her soul had survived her unjustified death. It was then, 13 years after Darwin discovered natural selection, that he gave up Christianity”
Annie's Box Randal Keynes	2001	"After Annie's death, Charles set the Christian faith firmly behind him."
Emma Darwin, Edna Healey	2001	“The death of Annie confirmed Charles’s loss of faith”
Darwin and the Barnacle, Rebecca Stott	2003	“Perhaps he [Darwin] wanted to say what he was beginning to feel himself… that after death there was nothing—no God waiting to scour Annie’s record book…”
Darwin’s Origin of Species, A Biography, Janet Browne	2006	“Annie’s death may have finally tipped Darwin into disbelief”
The Reluctant Mr. Darwin, David Quammen	2006	“The death of Annie in 1851, following the death of his father three years ealier, marks an important point in Darwin’s long, quiet disengagement from religious belief and spirituality”
Darwin Loves You: Natural Selection and the Re-enchantment of the World, George Levine	2008	“But the hard experience of Annie’s death certainly had larger implications for his attitude toward religion, as James Moore has argued in his essay on this subject.” “That Anna [sic] died on Shakespeare’s birthday is a coincidence (is “intelligent design” an option?) of which I wish to take advantage, as I return to Darwin’s comment that Shakespeare had come to nauseate him.”
Rebel Giants, David Contosta	2008	“ For Charles, the death of this beautiful, kind, and beloved child was the last blow to any faith he had in God.”
“Call the Black Horses” from The Darwin Poems by Emily Ballou	2009	"You can safely put God to bed now/the way you can’t your daughter anymore./Tuck the sheets so tight he cannot move/and lock the bedroom door."
On Screen
The Voyage of Charles Darwin, BBC series	1978	Darwin voiceover on religion over funeral scene
The Devil's Chaplain, BBC documentary	1991	Moore stands over Annie's grave proclaiming that it was here that Darwin lost his Christian faith
Darwin's Dangerous Idea, PBS documentary	2001	Darwin family in black attends church, Darwin stays outside; Moore claims Annie's death destroyed Darwin's Christianity; claim repeated on PBS website
Darwin's Struggle: The Evolution of the Origin of Species BBC documentary	2009	Narrator states that after Annie's death "With his own belief in a Christian God already shaken, Darwin now severed his ties with traditional faith"; Moore links Darwin's statements in the Autobiography about the doctrine of damnation to anger at Annie's death. Moore claims links between Annie's death and "face of Nature" statements in Chapter III of Origin of Species, culminating in declaration "she suffered at Easter that others may live"
Did Darwin kill God? BBC Documentary	2009	Conor Cunningham bizarrely claims Annie died from cholera. Nick Spencer claims Annie's death once and for all finishes Darwin's Christian faith.
Creation (movie)	2009	Director's Statement: "The Darwin we meet in CREATION is a young, vibrant father, husband and friend whose mental and physical health gradually buckles under the weight of guilt and grief for a lost child. Ultimately it is the ghost of Annie, his adored 10 year-old daughter who leads him out of darkness and helps him reconnect with his wife and family."
Online
Wikipedia (accessed in 2009)		http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Development_of_Darwin "With Annie's death Darwin lost all faith in a beneficent God and saw Christianity as futile. "

 

Ten myths about Darwin and his theory of evolution

One of the things I discovered while writing The Rough Guide to Evolution was how much that I thought I knew about Darwin and his theory of evolution turned out to be wrong. There are many suppositions masquerading as facts-- for example, how many times have you seen it written that Darwin suffered from Chagas disease or his daughter Annie died from tuberculosis, when there is no way anyone can make a definitive diagnosis in either case. These are just educated guesses. And despite what Claire claims in the TV series Heroes, Darwin never said "It is not the strongest species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the ones most responsive to change"--that quote originates from Clarence Darrow!. But worse still, there are plenty of myths among the dozen things that everyone "knows" about Darwin that have no substance in fact or which can neither be falsified nor verified.

To liven things up for the Year of Darwin, here is my choice of ten myths about Darwin and his life and times! I do not have time and space in this one post to elaborate the history of all the myths here nor the reasons why they count as myths rather than reality (some are discussed in the book), but I will set my self the challenge of exploring one myth in detail each month for the ten months (Feb-Nov) that span the two Darwin anniversaries this year.

Feel free to suggest your own myths in the comments section or challenge my assignments. But please don't just parrot biographers and other self-styled authorities: challenge the assignments only if you are prepared to quote the primary literature--there is no excuse not to, now with Darwin Online and The Darwin Correspondence Project available online and freely searchable.

TEN MYTHS

Myth 1. Darwin lost his Christian faith because of the death of his daughter Annie.
Brief response: There is no direct documentary evidence for this in anything Darwin or his contemporaries wrote. Darwin certainly never said anything about it. It is a hypothesis formulated by Darwin biographer Jim Moore. Darwin describes his own loss of faith in his Autobiography and brings in plenty of other good reasons that explain his loss of faith that have nothing to do with Annie's death. See earlier posting.

Myth 2. Darwin delayed publication of his work on evolution fearful of its consequences for religion and the reception it would receive.
Brief response: He didn't delay. He was busy working on lots of other projects. Plus there is little or no evidence for this myth from anything Darwin or his contemporaries wrote. It is a modern invention. See van Wyhe's paper. [covered in the book]

Myth 3. Marx offered to dedicate Das Capital to Darwin.
Brief response: No he didn't. This myth is the result of a mix-up in letters assigned to Marx and his common-law son-in-law Aveling. [covered in the book]

Myth 4. Darwin lied about the timing of when Wallace's package arrived and stole some of his ideas.
Brief response: No he didn't. This issue is explored in the introduction to the relevant section of Darwin's correspondence.

Myth 5. Darwin was scooped by the Baghdad scholar Al-Jahiz, who hit on the idea of evolution a thousand years earlier than Darwin did; Darwin learnt Arabic from his Cambridge friend Samuel Lee and then stole ideas about evolution from the Islamic tradition.
Brief response: There is little or no evidence in English as to what Al-Jahiz actually wrote, but a lot of uncritical acceptance of material misrepresented in the Wikipedia. There is no evidence that Darwin ever knew anything of Al-Jahiz and other Islamic scholars and evidence for only one brief dinner party meeting with Lee. [covered in the book]

Myth 6. Huxley and science trounced Soapy Sam Wilberforce and religion at the BA meeting in Oxford in 1860
Brief response: there are few contemporary accounts of what happened here and at least three participants claim to have won the day (Wilberforce, Hooker and Huxley). Huxley did not deliver any decisive knock-out blow and Wilberforce argued against Darwin on scientific not religious grounds. [covered in the book]

Myth 7. Darwin underwent a deathbed conversion to Christianity.
Brief response: no he didn't. This myth starts with the accounts of certain Lady Hope, who claimed to have visited Darwin during his final illness. The family strongly denied that she was ever there and if she was, she never claimed that Darwin underwent a conversion.

Myth 8. Darwin abandoned a belief in God as a direct consequence of his discoveries in the field of evolution.
Brief response: as noted above, in his Autobiography, Darwin put forward plenty of other reasons for abandoning his belief in conventional Christianity and on several occasions stated that he saw no incompatibility between evolution and religion. He never became an atheist and even well into middle age claimed that "the conclusion was strong in my mind" [that] "I feel compelled to look to a First Cause having an intelligent mind in some degree analogous to that of man; and I deserve to be called a Theist". See earlier posting.

Myth 9. Darwin was responsible for the Holocaust.
Brief response. There is no direct link between Darwin and Hitler. Darwin never advocated anti-semitism or genocide. Hitler never cited Darwin as an influence. Even if it could be established that Darwin's view had any kind of impact on Nazism, attaching personal blame to a historical individual for the unforeseen consequences of their work is fraught with difficulty. Should we blame Jesus for the Inquisition or Mohammed for 9/11? A more obvious historical figure to blame for the Holocaust is Martin Luther, who advocated the burning of synagogues. [covered in the book]. See this earlier posting.

Myth 10. Darwin experienced a eureka moment while visiting the Galapagos, where on glimpsing the resident finches and tortoises he immediately hit upon his theory of evolution.
Brief response: no, he didn't. His notebooks reveal that it was only months later, during the journey home in the summer of 1836, that the Galapagos mocking birds (not finches) raised his first doubts as to the fixity of species. Darwin's finches played only a minor role in his thinking and only well after his return to England. He does not specifically mention the Galapagos finches in The Origin. [covered in the book]

Annie Darwin and Darwin's loss of faith: it ain't necessarily so!

I have just read this article from the Independent by Darwin's great-great-grand-daughter, Ruth Padel. I look forward to Ruth's forthcoming book of poems, but I am distressed to see her repeating the commonly expressed, but undocumented, claims that Charles Darwin's loss of faith was attributable to the death of his daughter Annie just across the road from where I sit in Malvern.

Let me put this plainly: there is no direct documentary evidence for this claim from anything Darwin himself ever wrote. This is an inference (as is TB as a cause of Annie's death) that has somehow hardened into a "fact" in the last decade or so, starting with the "rediscovery" of Annie's grave in Malvern by Jim Moore and amplified by Randal Keynes' book Annie's Box.

Now, in case you missed my point there: there is NO evidence for the idea that Darwin's abandonment of Christianity was influenced by the death of his daughter or that this event precipitated an agonising crisis of faith. If anyone of you out there have some, then let's have it. But I cannot find a single jot. If this really were the case, wouldn't Darwin have said so somewhere? His life is among the best-documented of all scientists, but there is nothing there to support this claim! Take a look at what he says on this topic in his Autobiography:

"Thus disbelief crept over me at a very slow rate, but was at last complete. The rate was so slow that I felt no distress, and have never since doubted even for a single second that my conclusion was correct. I can indeed hardly see how anyone ought to wish Christianity to be true; for if so the plain language of the text seems to show that the men who do not believe, and this would include my Father, Brother and almost all my best friends, will be everlastingly punished. And this is a damnable doctrine."

No mention of Annie's death there!

So, please let's pull back from continually asserting as fact something that is mere supposition. It is entirely possible that Annie's death had an impact on Darwin's religious beliefs, but there is no documentary evidence for this! I remain an Annie-sceptic! If you disagree, show us your evidence!