[00:00:04] Speaker A: Id the future, a podcast about evolution and intelligent design.
[00:00:12] Speaker B: Welcome to id the future. I'm your host, Andrew McDermott. Today I'd like to read for you an exclusive excerpt from Dr. Robert Sheddinger's new book, Darwin's bluff, the mystery of the book Darwin ever finished, now available from Discovery Institute Press. Darwin frilly admitted that solid empirical evidence was largely absent from the origin of species, and he promised a sequel that would supply the missing evidence and expand on his mere abstract of a theory, as he called it. He penned a good deal of that sequel, 300,000 words to be exact, but he never finished it or chose to publish it. Why not? In a fresh and engrossing piece of historical detective work, Dr. Sheddinger provides evidence that Darwin's big book, begun in earnest, devolved into a bluff. To start things off, I want to share a few of the endorsements of Darwin's bluff. After all, that's often the first thing you see in a book when you pick it up, and I find that those are helpful in framing the book and capturing the essence of it. Here's what paleoentomologist Gunter Beckley said about it. Beckley is former curator of amber and fossil insects in the department of paleontology at the State Museum of Natural History in Stutgart, Germany. He's a senior fellow with Discovery Institute's center for Science and Culture. Beckley says Darwin's bluff particularly resonates with me. In 2009, as a card carrying darwinist serving as a fossil curator in one of Germany's natural history museums, I mounted an exhibit showing Darwin's famous work outweighing the works of his leading modern detractors. To prepare for hard questions from reporters, I decided to give the naysayer books a quick read, books I had been assured were all froth and foolishness. I soon discovered that I had been misled. The arguments in those pages were neither shallow nor illogical. Instead, I came to see that it was actually modern darwinism that rested on a carefully constructed bluff. Robert Sheddinger's latest book shows that the bluffing has a long pedigree stretching back to the master of downhouse himself. What emerges from Sheddinger's deep dive into Darwin's private writings is a picture of a man racked by doubts and insecurities about his evolutionary theory, but also a man not above a good bluff, one he sold so artfully that he may even have persuaded himself. Here's another endorsement, this time from Neil Thomas, reader emeritus in modern european languages at Durham University and author of the book taking leave of Darwin, a longtime agnostic, discovers the case for design. Thomas writes this stung by early reviewers'resistance to many unsubstantiated conjectures in which his origin of species abounds, Charles Darwin announced he would bring out a more detailed sequel to quell the opposition of skeptics. Robert Sheddinger shows that this promise was essentially a bluff. Since the promised book on natural selection never appeared in the early 1860s, Darwin instead devoted his energies to a botanical study of orchids. He nevertheless hoped that by describing the exquisite contrivances found in orchids, his readers would see in these adaptations the power of natural selection at work. Yet precisely the opposite impression was created, expressing a common sentiment. In a review of the volume, an anonymous reviewer wrote in 1862, the notion of the origin of species by natural selection we continue to regard as an ingenious mistake. Worse, Darwin's orchids volume was favorably compared with the Bridgewater treatises in its supposed contribution to christian apologetics. Contextualizing Darwin's own doubts and insecurities. By exhaustively researched reference to his correspondence, Sheddinger opposes many accretions of Darwin hagiography. It would be a sensible step forward, Sheddinger concludes, to take Darwin at his word when he wrote in a letter to Aza Gray in 1857, I am quite conscious that my speculations run quite beyond the bounds of true science. This book is particularly to be recommended to those tempted to view Darwin as an unquestionable victorian sage.
Next I'll read the introduction to Darwin's bluff, followed by a portion of chapter six, where Schedinger shows how Darwin created expectations for the big follow up book and how his correspondents took him at his word in their anticipation of it.
Introduction does the world need another book about Charles Darwin? What can anyone say that has not already been said about this seminal figure, considering the wealth of literature written about him? The simple answer is yes, we do need another book about Charles Darwin, for there are aspects of his life and work that have surprisingly continued to evade the attention of his many biographers and interpreters. The very human Charles Darwin has grown into a mythological figure, the parademafic example of a true scientist without whom nothing in biology would make sense. In the words of Theodosius Dobsanski. Unfortunately, this mythological figure would be scarcely recognizable to Darwin's own contemporaries. Happily, for the present enterprise, the flesh and blood Charles Darwin is considerably more interesting than the two dimensional Darwin of the hagiographies. The state of his scientific legacy is also more intriguing than those same hagiographies would allow. Intriguing because it is embattled in ways confessed to in some of the peerreviewed literature and at high level scientific conferences, but rarely acknowledged beyond those specialized contexts. Modern scientific advances in fields like molecular biology, genomics, epigenetics, paleontology, developmental biology, and more are raising significant questions about the power of the darwinian mechanism of variation and natural selection to account for the evolutionary history of life on earth. Some are calling for an extended evolutionary synthesis, while others believe the entire darwinian edifice needs to be overhauled. It is no longer clear that Darwin can be said to have answered the question of the origin of species. There is thus no reason to begin an investigation into his life and work with the assumption that he did. One example of darwinian mythology has been to downplay the 19th century Englishman's own characterization of the origin of species as a mere abstract of his species theory, a summary lacking much of the facts, evidence, and authorities he promised would follow in a later work. The origin is usually treated as Darwin's magnum opus, a characterization in keeping with darwinian mythology, but out of step with Darwin's own view of his work. In truth, the Origin of Species was an abstract of a much larger book on species that Darwin was working on, and it was three quarters complete before events forced him to put the larger book aside and instead publish a mere abstract of it. Once the origin was in circulation, Darwin's many correspondents anticipated that he would quickly follow up with the publication of his big book on species so they could better evaluate the argument for natural selection made in the origin. Indeed, Darwin himself created this expectation, both in the origin and in his correspondence. Even early reviewers of the origin noted the lack of empirical evidence for natural selection, but gave Darwin the benefit of the doubt, since the origin was a mere abstract and therefore could not be expected to provide all the evidence. Given the anticipation among Darwin's readers for the big Book on species anticipation that Darwin himself repeatedly stoked, why didn't he publish the big book? This question is rarely asked. A rough, handwritten manuscript of Darwin's big book, titled Natural Selection, survived among his papers and was published by Cambridge University Press in 1975. Yet despite the easy access scholars now have to this work, I bought a copy on Amazon. There has been little detailed engagement with its contents or comparison of this work with its abstracted form in the origin. Such a comparison proves enlightening, for it serves to highlight the secondary nature of the origin as a hastily written abstract rather than a finely honed scientific treatise, thus challenging the iconic status of the origin as the foundational text of the modern biological sciences. This, of course, may be precisely why the big book gets overlooked. Another reason the big book has been largely ignored, I hope to show, is that it does not deliver the promised goods. This, I will also argue, is the best explanation for why Darwin never brought the book to print. It wasn't, as one might suppose, that he had made little headway on it and simply lacked the time or energy to produce it. Abstracts are usually distillations of longer works already in existence. So if the origin, as Darwin constantly repeats, is only an abstract, it would suggest the big book on species already existed in some substantial form prior to 1859. And in fact, this was the case. The manuscript contained nine chapters and was close to 300,000 words in length. It would likely have been around 400,000 words complete. Given that this book was nearly three quarters complete, why did Darwin never publish it? And why did he instead turn to the study of orchids as a follow up to the origin? Because, as will become clear, he came to see that it did not answer some key criticisms that the origin had elicited. So he abandoned the project, even as he allowed anticipation of its publication to persist for many years. To be sure, Darwin's orchid book, which he called a flank movement on the enemy, did attempt to provide some of the evidence for natural selection missing from the origin. And, as it turns out, missing from the book book as well. He tried to outflank his opponents by putting before them an entirely new work on the numerous contrivances Darwin's word found among orchid flowers to ensure their cross fertilization by insects. Surely this would impress his readers with the power of natural selection to evolve all these exquisite contrivances. But Darwin's strategy failed. Reviewers of his orchid book read it as providing evidence for natural theology, not natural selection. And, surprisingly, even Darwin himself in one place likened his orchid book to the Bridgewater Treatises, a series of writings designed to extol the power of God manifest in nature. Could anything be more ironic than that Charles Darwin, the poster child for the triumph of scientific naturalism and biology, actually advanced the cause of natural theology in his day? This is an aspect of his life and work that has been entirely erased by the prevailing mythological darwinian narrative. For all these reasons, a more nuanced assessment of Darwin's evolutionary writings is warranted. In my engagement with Darwin, I will give pride of place to his voluminous correspondence as the evidentiary basis of this more critical portrait of a truly enigmatic victorian figure. The argument that lies ahead cites more than 250 letters written by and to Darwin up to the year 1863, some never cited in darwinian biographies. These letters represent Darwin's engagement with more than 70 friends, family members, and scientific correspondents. I've elected to adorn the book with many direct quotations from these letters, since I think it's crucial for readers to hear Darwin's own voice on the page as much as possible to truly encounter the thought patterns and rhetorical style of this fascinating individual.
Many of Darwin's biographers take the reverse approach, providing their own paraphrases of Darwin's words, which has the effect of subordinating Darwin to the mythological figure the biography exists to perpetuate. I've also elected for authenticity's sake to retain Darwin's spelling and punctuation rather than correct them to modern standards. We need to let Darwin speak for himself. It turns out that Darwin, given the opportunity, is quite capable of dismantling his own mythology.
Who was the real Charles Darwin? In searching for this more authentic Darwin, we will pay particular attention to the many letters he wrote and received up through the year 1863. Unless otherwise noted, all letters mentioned in this book are taken from Frederick Burkhard et al. Editors. The correspondence of Charles Darwin, Cambridge University Press, and can easily be located based on the date and addressee of the letter. In addition, an index of letters cited, arranged chronologically, appears on the back matter of the book. Many of these letters are, as of this writing, freely available online at the Darwin Correspondence project.
Chapter one will limb the mythological Darwin found in many of his biographies show how even mainstream biographies have begun calling that portrait into question, and begin to show how Darwin himself contributed to the mythology. The opening chapter will pay particular attention to one rhetorical technique Darwin employed, almost obsessively involving his health. Chapter two considers Darwin as a geologist long before he turned to questions about the diversity of living organisms. His main interest was geology. While aboard the Beagle, Darwin read Charles Lyell's principles of geology. Lyle had replaced the geological theory of catastrophism with the principle of uniformitarianism. Catastrophism taught that the earth's geological features resulted from sudden cataclysmic events like a global flood, while uniformitarianism taught that the earth's geological features could be explained by slow, gradual change brought about by the more mundane processes of wind and water erosion, earthquakes, and volcanic eruptions. Acting over enormous spans of time, Darwin was convinced by Lyle's theory and spent much of his time in South America seeking evidence for it. After the voyage, Darwin continued his interest in geology developing a theory on the origin of the parallel roads of Glenroy in Scotland, as well as a theory about coral reefs. Why is Darwin's early interest in geology relevant to his more famous biological work? First, because it challenges the commonly accepted notion that the Beagle voyage was absolutely formative for Darwin's species work. And second, because some of Darwin's geological theories turned out to be wrong, shining a light on some of his weaknesses as a scientist. Of course, Darwin did eventually turn to the species question and began trying to accumulate evidence for it. This involved running various experiments. Chapter three focuses on this side of Darwin. He had little formal training in science, his only university degree being the general Bachelor of Arts degree from Cambridge. Did it show in the way he conducted his experiments? What kinds of experiments did he run, and what did he think about the results? Do his letters describing these efforts suggest the competence of a professional experimenter? Or is the portrait that emerges more that of a plucky amateur? And if the latter, what light does this shed on the origin? Chapters four and five focus on the writing and publishing of the origin and the responses to the book. What was Darwin's thought process as he wrote his abstract? Why did he encourage his readers to view it only as an abstract? How did people respond to the book? How did Darwin respond to his critics? And just how confident was Darwin that he had solved the problem of the origin of species?
Chapter six turns to Darwin's big book. Darwin drafted most of it repeatedly, promising that he would finish and publish it, but ultimately declined to do so. Happily for contemporary scholars, the unfinished manuscript was published a century later. The work has received surprisingly little attention, given that it is Darwin's big promised book. After all, it was supposed to provide the crucial evidence for the miraculous creative powers of natural selection, evidence that, he conceded, was largely absent from his mere abstract. In this chapter, we will give it the attention it deserves, exploring the question of why Darwin left it unfinished and unpublished. And see what the book can teach us about Darwin the man and his theory of evolution.
Chapter seven turns to the curious fact that Darwin, immediately after publishing the origin, immersed himself in the study of orchids, and in many ways, they were structured to ensure their cross fertilization by insects. The readers of the origin were awaiting the appearance of Darwin's promised big book on natural selection, so that they could better evaluate the arguments presented in Darwin's abstract. So why did Darwin put aside the big book and turn to botany, something he referred to as a mere hobbyhorse? I have suggested an answer above, but there is much more to be said on the matter.
In a final chapter, I will consider several ways that darwinian mythology obscures other aspects of Darwin and his work. For example, while it is true that Darwin came from abolitionist roots and himself detested slavery, what were his real views on race and racism? To what extent, if any, was Darwin himself partly responsible for the development of later scientific racism and the eugenics movement that drew on his work? Likewise, what about his views on gender roles and sexuality? Darwin's sexual selection theory has recently come under the microscope of scientifically informed feminist theorists. Are Darwin's arguments for sexual selection as an important driver of evolutionary change merely unfashionable politically? Or are gender theorists and other critics of the idea pointing up significant evidential and logical problems with the idea?
Finally, if Darwin and the origin have been mythologized, what about the modern version of his theory? Is there a bluff here as well? Or, as is regularly claimed, is the present state of the evidence for modern evolutionary theory truly overwhelming? In general, a detailed engagement with Darwin's correspondence will paint a picture of a very insecure amateur naturalist, desperate to make a mark in science but acutely aware of his limitations. Though a prodigious collector and cataloguer of facts and observations, and as someone who made real scientific contributions to the description of organisms like barnacles and orchids, Darwin knew that he had fallen well short of cinching the case for the evolution of all life via natural selection. And he knew that his critics also knew this. But unable or unwilling to admit this, Darwin hid behind a variety of rhetorical devices that allowed him to keep up the appearance that he had indeed solved the mystery of mysteries, as he called it. This more critical appraisal of Darwin's work should not be viewed in a purely negative light. Wading through the darwinian correspondence over these last several years has brought me to a place of real appreciation for aspects of Darwin's personality and work. I admire his undying devotion to his family and friends and his acute sense of humor. I marvel at his incredible patience and industry in collecting encyclopedic quantities of facts and observations, and I certainly can sympathize with his anxieties over publishing such a revolutionary new theory. If someone ever creates a time machine, I will be first in line with the dials set to downhouse to meet the man I feel I already know so intimately through his letters and works. That said, darwin was a mere human, with foibles and faults like all the rest of us, and he was a product of his times. But this more human Darwin so infrequently emerges from the literature about him that I will do my best to let him emerge here.
That was Dr. Sheddinger's introduction to Darwin's bluff, and before I close today, I'll read a very brief portion of chapter six as well, titled Darwin's Unfinished book, under the Microscope. I just want to give you a little taste of the insight Sheddinger provides about Darwin, creating much expectation for the big sequel to Origin of Species, but never delivering it.
Chapter six. Given the status of the origin of species as a mere abstract of a larger work, some three quarters complete, one would naturally expect Darwin to have followed up the origin by publishing this larger work, a work promising to contain all the facts, evidence and references Darwin was unable to include in the abstract. Indeed, he wrote to his cousin Fox on Christmas Day, 1859, just a month after the publication of the origin, that he intended now to plunge into my bigger book, which I shall publish as three separate volumes with distinct title but with a general title in addition. Of course, Darwin had already accreted this expectation in the origin itself. In the introduction, Darwin characterized his larger species book as nearly finished, but also noted that it will take me many more years to complete it. In the body of the work, Darwin repeatedly whetted his reader's appetites by noting the places where he was unable to provide all the facts on which his various propositions were based, implying or outright stating that those facts would be forthcoming in the larger work.
For example, in the beginning of the chapter on variation under Nature, Darwin wrote, to treat this subject properly, a long catalogue of dry facts ought to be given, but these I shall reserve for a future work. Likewise, in a place where Darwin pronounces the following theoretical principle, a part developed in any species in an extraordinary degree or manner in comparison with the same part in allied species, tends to be highly variable. He adds, it is hopeless to attempt to convince anyone of the truth of the above proposition without giving the long array of facts which I have collected and which cannot possibly be here introduced. In discussing the struggle for existence, he says, in my future work this subject will be treated as it deserves at greater length. And again, when describing the phenomenon of analogous variations, Darwin writes, I have collected a long list of such cases, but here as before, I lie under the great disadvantage of not being able to give them. Likewise, in a discussion of inter crossing, he writes, I must here treat the subject with extreme brevity, though I have the materials prepared for an ample discussion. Repeatedly, Darwin tantalizes his readers by referencing the long catalogues of facts which he had collected on numerous topics, facts which he could not include in the origin due to its being a mere abstract. This rhetorical ploy had the effect of building tremendous anticipation for the appearance of the Big Book on species.
A month after the origin's publication, on December 24, Darwin wrote to the swiss zoologist Francois Jewel picte de la Reeve, I am now going at once to commence getting ready for press my larger book as quickly as my weak health permits. About a month later, January 20, 960, Darwin wrote to the publisher Charles Griffin, who was preparing an entry on Darwin for his forthcoming dictionary of contemporary biography. Griffin had sent Darwin a draft of this entry and wanted Darwin to sign off on the text to which Darwin, after making amendations and additions, gave his assent. The finished entry included the following passage. He has recently November 1859, published a work entitled the Origin of Species by means of natural selection or the preservation of favored races in the struggle for life. This volume, as stated in the introduction, gives only a condensed form of the result of more than 20 years study and will hereafter be followed by a more detailed treatise on the same subject. Note that the part about this volume being only a condensed form that was to be followed by a more detailed treatise was not in Griffin's original draft, but was added by Darwin. So we see that Darwin gave every indication of intending to follow up the origin with his big book on species, and his readers took him at his word as reviews of the origin and letters written to Darwin will reveal.
And at this point Schedinger gives more detail on how lots of people anticipated this book, and he has ample quotations in support. Let me just get to another section here, which will help us understand why Darwin pivoted from one book to the other. This is Sheddinger. Now, why did Darwin switch from his work on species to the finer points of botany? Before tackling this question, we should consider Darwin's notes from his personal journal for the year 1860. We find the following entries. January 9, began looking over manuscript for work on variation with many interruptions. March 24, began introduction to volume on variation. June 10, finished second chapter on pigeons.
August 11, began chapter three. In the immediate aftermath of the publication of the origin, Darwin was beginning work on what he seems to have by this time viewed as the first of the three volumes that would make up his big book, a volume he titled variation under domestication. But if we follow his journal forward, we find that his attention quickly strayed from the big book for the year 1861. We find the following entries.
March 20, finished chapter three on variation under domestication and began chapter 4 July 1 during stay at torque did paper on orchids. All rest of here orchid book. So sometime between March and July 1861, Darwin seems to have set aside working on the big book to focus on orchids instead. What happened? This question finds an answer in Darwin's incomplete manuscript of the big book on species. Examining this manuscript will make it clear why Darwin abandoned its publication despite having created tremendous anticipation for it.
That was a reading from the introduction and part of chapter six of Darwin's bluff, the mystery of the book Darwin never finished by Robert Sheddinger, published by Discovery Institute Press. Learn more and get your own
[email protected]. Slash bluff that's discovery slash bluff. And if you haven't tuned in yet to my two part interview with Dr. Schedinger about his book, be sure to look those up and give it a listen.
Until next time, I'm Andrew McDermott for idthefuture. Thanks for listening.
[00:27:18] Speaker A: Visit
[email protected] and intelligentdesign.org. This program is copyright Discovery institute and recorded by its center for Science and Culture.
