IN SEARCH OF DARWIN - THE MAN BEHIND THE ISM
Dave Randle
Despite the perpetual bandying about of his name by those
for whom it is a talisman of good faith and often a professional credential,
Darwin the man tends to remain a sort of eminence
grise in the public mind.
An ardent Christian and believer in godliness, his faith was
to be tested, perhaps to destruction, and certainly edited out by those to whom
it was an embarrassment and practical inconvenience.
A bizarre outcome of this is that the old boy himself now
comes across as someone immortal, invisible and universally wise.
We know he had a big beard, and that he was lampooned
mercilessly by the press for allegedly saying people and monkeys were related -
indeed that we all ‘evolved’ from simian forebears. What he actually said is to
be found in his books, thankfully, so it is still possible to consult his real
thoughts and the progress of his investigations.
What a lot of people seem to think he said has much more to
do with ringmasters such as Huxley who turned those investigations into a
circus act and caused to be created the iconic ape to man cartoon whose
pictorial sleight of hand not only continues to deceive, but which has spawned
ever more publicity-hungry ringmasters and more unlikely sequences that depend
on it utterly for their apparent credibility.
Darwin’s family home, Downe House is now in the hands of
English Heritage. Set in the exquisite Kent countryside to the west of
Sevenoaks, it provides a rare tangible sense of its erstwhile owner, largely
thanks to sympathetic management that enables it to both retain its character
and something of the timelessness of its Victorian heyday. Visitors can still
sit on the terrace and contemplate the big questions. In fact, seating is
provided in almost every space in the house - a rare boon that could well be
emulated by other visitor attractions.
Passing through the obligatory shop (I bought a coaster with
the Huxley graphic on it) and up the one-way stairs, one is led into an
introductory room in which Darwin’s work is set in its historical context in a
clear and well-constructed wall display that even gives fair credit to
contemporaries such as Wallace and Lamarck; the latter, whose ideas Darwin
supported, getting away without any of the vitriol and ridicule often reserved
for him by those who have discovered or formulated nothing of value.
On the opposite wall, a monitor runs a loop of testimonials
from English Heritage bigwigs and TV pundits on what Darwin means to them.
All agree that he was a ‘very nice man’. In
contradistinction to the received picture of bluff and disciplinary Victorian
fathers, all are at pains to confirm that he was the perfect dad, involving his
numerous children in his discoveries and experiments and remaining even tempered
in all circumstances.
That other very nice man of science, Sir David Attenborough,
explains that before Darwin the subject of biology was in disorder. There was
no want of discoveries or theories, but there was no unifying plan that could
be called upon to turn the ragbag into whole cloth. Physicists had their
measurements, chemists their tables. The science of nature shared their
abhorrence for vacuums, so Darwin’s proposals and extrapolations rushed in to
fill the void.
He was helped not a little in this regard by having a
visible (and amenable) means of support. Earning a living had never crossed his
mind, his father being both able and willing to subsidise him in all
endeavours, including his specimen collecting voyagings on the Beagle, during
which he seemed to get through a surprising amount of money considering the
uncivilised or at least uncommercialised nature of many of the ship’s ports of
call. Both applying for more and getting the dosh to him were no small
enterprises in themselves in those times.
Lord Bragg chooses Darwin’s work with earthworms as his special
achievement. The dogged way in which he unravelled and recorded the systems and
the scale of these creatures’ apparently selfless contribution to the lives of
other forms, not least thee and me, is unquestionably a high point in
biological endeavour.
The worms don’t get much out of it, apart from a face-full
of dirt. But their service to us is incalculable.
Working in the days when ‘all creatures great and small’
were created and animated by God, it was easy for Darwin to see the
interdependence, the symbiosis that consisted of each in the service of all -
an eco-system in modern parlance - but a system, whatever you call it. The
enormity of this was naturally a source of major irritation to those looking
for a science they could control; one that put man in his place.
Darwin was not postulating a materialist world in which man
sprang from the earth, but his ‘natural selection’ suggested automaticity,
something driven or modified by reaction rather than causation and this was
enough to build on for those without their fellows’ best interests at heart.
Then tragedy struck. The Darwins’ eldest daughter, Annie was
taken from them. There was nothing more that could possibly be done by
materialist science. Darwin was desolated, and his accustomed scientific
rationality, not surprisingly, compromised. If God existed, how could he let
this happen? What we now know as the Stephen Fry Computation: If there is an
immortal, etc. author of the universe, his, her or its concerns would surely be
those of a television personality.
As Sir David hinted in the film, any system for the fledgling
science was better than no system, and a system that could devolve responsibility
and sentience to something mindless and automatic best of all. It can’t be laid
at Darwin’s door that misinterpretation and corruption of his work would be
used to give spurious legitimacy to the tyranny of Neo-Darwinists, whose nonsense
evolves the fattest and ugliest in all things from banks to corporations to
governments and the UN, and is really just fascism and eugenics dressed up as
science.
Down House still has something of the old man’s spirit.
Undistracted by games and projects to overstimulate and patronise children,
there remains sufficient of the calm atmosphere of this former home to tune
into.
Darwin was clearly a careful man; an observer not given to
jumping to conclusions, and someone who didn’t need to dance to the tune of the
food or pharmaceutical mafias to obtain funding. He could take his time and
observe what was before him - for long hours.
As Lord Bragg suggests, his work on earthworms was far more valuable
than that on evolution. It demonstrated symbiosis, to someone who took the time
and trouble to look, the way in which life supports life through all its forms.
I think he would be genuinely distressed by the rape and
slaughter that is done by people who don’t even begin to grasp the empty
tautology of ‘survival of the fittest’, those who take it to mean a few
predatory lunkheads will inherit the earth when they’ve gobbled up everyone
else.
You can get close to the man’s mind by reading his work. But
you get closer to his spirit by visiting Down House.
