This is THE book. It’s the one whose publication everyone refers to as marking the point in history before which religious explanations of the origins of life held sway, and after which they were irrevocably displaced by the explanations of reason and science.
I was feeling a bit embarrassed that I’d not read this foundational document of the theory of Evolution, having read so much that referred to it. And after having breezed through a book a week for months, I was surprised to find it taking me more than a month to work my way through a facsimile version of the first edition of Darwin’s book. That being said, let me give you my impressions of the book and it’s author.
Charles Darwin
First of all, I did not find in it the troubled and tortured man that I saw portrayed in the recent film “Creation” (reviewed on this site). Having been made so aware of Darwin’s inner conflict between his discoveries and his own waning faith (and — as shown most dramatically in “Creation” — the conflict with his beloved wife’s religious piety), the first thing that struck me was the sheer confidence of the writer as he presents the evidence for his theory of natural selection and descent with modification. In this passage he turns the Biblical “argument from nature” argument on its head:
“On the view of each organic being and each separate organ having been specially created, how utterly inexplicable it is that parts, like the teeth in the embryonic calf or like the shriveled wings under the soldered wing-covers of some beetles, should so frequently bear the plain stamp of inutility! Nature may be said to have taken pains to reveal, by rudimentary organs and by homologous structures, her scheme of modification, which it seems that we willfully will not understand.” P. 480
At nearly every turn, Darwin squares off against the belief in “special creation”, taking pains to present the falsity of its claims based on the evidence. (And boy is there a lot of evidence). This boldness surprised me. What also surprised me was how clearly every argument against his theory (a good third of the book addresses anticipated arguments against his theory) that Darwin answered represented the very same arguments used by young earth creationists today!
“It is so easy to hide our ignorance under such expressions as “plan of creation,” “unity of design,” &c., and to think that we give an explanation when we only restate a fact. Any one whose disposition leads him to attach more weight to unexplained difficulties than to the explanation of a certain number of facts will certainly reject my theory.” P. 481-82
What comes through is the sense of a scientist bursting with volumes of evidence so enormous that the task of condensing them into even a long book is a daunting one. Even so, there are long passages of great detail about the breeding of pigeons (for example) that can seem interminable, though they were necessary for Darwin to establish the fact that species are mutable (a major argument against the notion that each species we see were created separately by God at one moment in history). The same goes for long chapters on plant breeding. These sections I worked my way through like I once worked my way through the entire Bible, one page at a time (I have to confess here that I did scan the last couple of chapters, once I realized that the lengthy summation at the end of each chapter would give me a detailed recapitulation of the facts, and clue me in to anything in that chapter I really needed to go back and read).
Of course I read nothing new about the theory of Evolution in Darwin, but how could I expect to? (There has been so much fine writing about the current state of our research of late!) Of course everyone refers back to Darwin, and many writers point out the details he was wrong about, or the discoveries that came after his book. But what struck me deeply was just how much of everything I’ve learned about Evolution from modern authors is right there in Darwin’s first edition. This is no feeble framework that others had to shore up: this is an edifice of impressive dimensions. Here is a sampling of quotations:
“What can be more curious than that the hand of a man, formed for grasping, that of a mole for digging, the leg of the horse, the paddle of the porpoise, and the wing of the bat, should all be constructed on the same pattern, and should include the same bones, in the same relative positions?…The explanation is manifest on the theory of the natural selection of successive slight modifications, – each modification being profitable in some way to the modified form…” P. 434-435
“How inexplicable are these facts on the ordinary view of creation!…On the theory of natural selection, we can satisfactorily answer these questions.” P. 437
“That many and grave objections may be advanced against the theory of descent wit modification through natural selection, I do not deny. I have endeavored to give to them their full force. Nothing at first can appear more difficult to believe than that the more complex organs and instincts should have been perfected, not by means superior to, though analogous with, human reason, but thy the accumulation of innumerable slight variations, each good for the individual possessor. Nevertheless, this difficulty, thought appearing to our imagination insuperably great, cannot be considered real if we admit the following propositions, namely, – that gradations in the perfection of any organ or instinct, which we may consider, either now exist or could have existed, each good of its kind, – that all organs and instincts are, in ever so slight a degree, variable, – and, lastly, that there is a struggle for existence leading to the preservation of each profitable deviation of structure or instinct. The truth of these propositions cannot, I think, be disputed.” P. 459
The true reward of reading On the Origin of Species was to arrive at the final chapter (which is entirely quotable and elegant in its entirety), and this famous final paragraph, which — after having read what came before — had an impact upon me I could not have imagined:
“It is interesting to contemplate an entangled bank, clothed with many plants of many kinds, with birds singing on the bushes, with various insects flitting about, and with worms crawling through the damp earth, and to reflect that these elaborately constructed forms, so different from each other, and dependent on each other in so complex a manner, have all been produced by laws acting around us. These laws, taken in the largest sense, being Growth with Reproduction; Inheritance which is almost implied by reproduction; Variability from the indirect and direct action of the external conditions of life, and from use and disuse; a Ratio of Increase so high as to lead to a Struggle for Life, and as a consequence to Natural Selection, entailing Divergence of Character and the Extinction of less-improved forms. Thus, from the war of nature, from famine and death, the most exalted object which we are capable of conceiving, namely, the production of the higher animals, directly follows. 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.” P. 490
What a man Charles Darwin must have been. Too see what he saw; to so thoroughly connect the many dots; to so courageously challenge the dominant views of his time with such thoughtful, respectful and yet forceful argument. Even had science not added so much to his theories over the last 150 years, most of the great questions about our origins were answered in this book. The fact that so many still doubt that is beyond my understanding.
If we humans were truly rational creatures (or even close) the publication of this book would, indeed have dealt a blow to religion from which it would never have recovered. But religion persists in claiming to describe our origins, even as Darwin’s theories have been (and continue to be) proven true in ways that even he could have only (at best) vaguely imagined.
t.n.s.r. bob
Tags: Charles Darwin, creationism, descent with modification, Evolution, first edition, on the origin of species, review, the church of bob, the not-so-reverend bob