Charles Darwin (1809–1882)

Somewhere I read an essay by a biologist lamenting the decline of “natural history” – where the practitioner just went described what was going on in the world, without modeling or simulations or equations. The Origin of Species was given as an example – the seminal work of biology, but without any of the rigor that would be expected in modern work, such that it probably wouldn’t be accepted even as a master’s thesis in any university biology program today.


Darwin’s Expression show more of the Emotions in Man and Animals is a similar, if less exalted work. The question Darwin asks seems to be trivial, and his method of answering anecdotal: do all humans and (if appropriate) animals express themselves the same way when they have the same emotions? For example, if “we” (in this case, “we” being Victorian Englishmen) are happy, we smile. But does everybody? Frenchmen? Hottentots? Hindus? Cherokees? Blind people who have never seen a smile? Do babies smile from birth? Do monkeys smile? What about cats, rats, bats and elephants? And what about all the other emotions – rage, fear, love, disgust, etc.? Darwin watched his own children develop and noted when and how they first used facial expressions. He did the same for his neighbors and their children, for domestic animals, and for zoo animals. And he sent out questionnaires to missionaries, Foreign Service employees, and anyone else he could think of who lived abroad. (One of these was an “African chief”, Gaika, who seems to have given thoughtful and insightful answers to Darwin’s questions. I wish I knew more about Gaika; there’s a mention of a “Chief Gaika” being involved in the “Kaffir Wars” but it doesn’t seem likely it’s the same one). Darwin also made use of the relatively new photography technology to show respondents pictures of people in various emotional states, and asking them what emotion was represented. Interestingly, almost all his respondents could tell the difference between a “false” smile and a “true” one, and although not one was able to say how they knew.


This isn’t the last word on the subject, obviously; there’s a lot missing. Darwin goes into great detail on the exact facial muscles involved in expressions, but doesn’t go much of anywhere with the information (for example, he doesn’t investigate if a dog uses the same muscles to snarl that a human does to smile, or even if a dog has “smile muscles”). He doesn’t hit on the importance of diurnal versus nocturnal habitat for expression in animals (i.e., it doesn’t do any good to have elaborate facial expressions if it’s too dark to see them).


However, while not the last word, it is the first (or at least the first consolidation). Darwin finds that certain expressions are universal – everybody smiles, and they start doing it when they are just a few hours old. On the other hand, some gestures are not universal – different cultures have different methods for affirmation and negation – nodding the head for “Yes” and shaking it for “No” is local to Europe; some people shake for “Yes” and nod for “No”, and some don’t even involve the head and face at all, with “Yes” and “No” conveyed entirely by hand gestures and body posture.


The overall impression is similar to Origins; a work by a talented and astute observer, a “natural historian” if you will. The criticism of “lack of rigor” might be appropriate in a modern context – there are no equations or models. However, there’s a different kind of rigor here – the rigor of testing the null hypothesis. I imagine before Darwin nobody bothered to ask “Does everybody smile when they are happy? Does everybody weep when they are sad?” because it was expected that the answer would be “Well, of course they do!” Sometimes it takes a complicated mind to ask simple questions. show less

Summary: When people mention Charles Darwin and the HMS Beagle, the only place most people think of (if they think of anything at all) is the Galápagos Islands. However, the Beagle circumnavigated the world in its five year voyage, and the young Charles Darwin saw it all. The Voyage of the Beagle is his account of the journey, edited together from his journal entries at the time. He describes the geology, the animals, the vegetation, and the people of the lands he visits, and speculates show more about the nature of some of his observations.

Review: I read this book in a very, very piecemeal fashion (over five years it took!) but I really enjoyed it. Darwin is so often depicted as a grumpy old man with the giant beard that I think people tend to forget that his trip on the Beagle was actually when he was quite young, basically a twenty-something who didn't want to go to med school and didn't really know what he wanted to do with his life (I try to emphasize this point to my students as often as I can, since many of them are probably twenty-somethings not sure what they want to do with their lives). So his journals are full of careful observation and beautifully rendered descriptions and thoughtful conclusions, but there's also a fair bit of hitting birds with his rock hammer and jumping on the back giant tortoises and hitting them with sticks until they move and knocking birds off of their perches with the muzzle of his gun. (And also occasionally bemoaning his seasickness.)

It was also totally fascinating reading this book in the light of knowing about Darwin's future work. It's hard not to spot the germs of his future ideas on evolution by natural selection in some of the passages. This book is just peppered with little bits about the length of time that physical features must have taken, and how similar but different animals in different locations are, and the relationship between changing geology and changing vegetation, and island biogeography. For example: "Seeing this gradation and diversity of structure in one small, intimately related group of birds, one might really fancy that from an original paucity of birds in this archipelago, one species had been taken and modified for different ends." There's half of an introductory lecture on the history of evolutionary thought right there. And who doesn't hear echoes (or future echoes, I guess. Pre-echoes?) of the last line of On the Origin of Species in the line "Where on the face of the earth can we find a spot on which close investigation will not discover signs of that endless cycle of change, to which this earth has been, is, and will be subjected?"

This book obviously tickled me as a biologist, but it was also easy to read, and well-written, if full of the Victorian standard run-on sentences, but also some wonderfully evocative passages. Some parts are a little dry - he expounds at great length on some seemingly small and obscure topics, like the formation of coral atolls - but as a whole, it's a really interesting blend of science and adventuring and nature writing, and really a just plain fascinating book to read. 4 out of 5 stars.

Recommendation: Biologists and those interested in the history of science are the main audience, obviously, but I think anyone who likes travel books, naval adventures, or the age of exploration should find some bits here to interest them as well. If you can find an illustrated edition, I think that would be extremely helpful; if not, keep Wikipedia and a map of the Beagle's journey handy. show less

It's very discursive. You can almost hear Darwin pulling up a chair to the fireplace to discuss this idea he's had. And he's thought about it a lot.

It's also very cleverly written, starting with something the reader knows about (the human breeding of pigeons) then expanding slowly from that to the new stuff, but returning to that base whenever Darwin needs a clear, easy-to-understand example.

It's a complete refutation of the 'one great man makes a giant leap for human understanding' way of show more looking at scientific progress, with Darwin being very careful to say where and who he has got information from and whose ideas he's building on (even if he's retested as much of the info as he can and tested his theories as best as he can). He's also a lot nicer about his fellow scientists than a look of books today are.

I like that Darwin states the parts where his theory might not explain everything, and that he uses observation to try to plug those gaps.

He might have been able to cover more detail in the book if he stopped apologising for the amount of stuff he couldn't put in.

Looking backwards from what we know now, it's amazing how close Darwin gets to being right about most of it, and a lot of his uncertainties could only have been cleared up once genes and sequencing were discovered.

There's a couple of points where he wanders down paths that turned out to be dead ends (recapitulation theory is bunk) and we've still not got a 'how' of instincts, but given the information Darwin had to work with, he's right more than he's wrong.

It's pretty much a must read for scientists, and it's reasonably accessible to non-scientists, and a fairly straight-forward read once you've got used to certain Victorian writing quirks.

Definitely worth reading. show less

(posted on my blog: davenichols.net)

Having found that I'm hopelessly addicted to popular science books, especially those dealing with evolution, natural selection, and other wonders of biology, I promised myself that I'd pick up this foundational classic at some point. So much of what I had known previously about Origin was from reading the works of Dawkins, Quammen, and others, and I felt it was vitally important to take up Darwin's masterpiece and see for myself what he had to say. It is show more quite safe to say it was an excellent decision, and Origin stands up just as well in 2009 as it did when it was published 150 years ago.

Darwin's enthusiasm for the natural world comes through strongly on every page. I can easily imagine him sitting in his workshop, encouraging me, the reader, to see what he sees, to notice the details he explains with such passion. And he does not skip the scientific data. Darwin's arguments are strongly based on observation, experimentation, and an amazing convergence of multiple disciplines. Throughout the book, the reader feels he might be sitting in a room while Darwin leads a fascinating exhibition with the help of eminent biologists, zoologists, geologists, anthropologists, naturalists, and others.

I especially loved reading Darwin's original words dealing with biogeography and the migration of life. It is stunning just how prescient he was in so many things which he admits freely are greatly educated guesses. Sure, there are places where his thoughts were later shown incomplete or erroneous, but the vast bulk of his thoughts showed keen insight that often took many decades of research to prove correct. Darwin was quite literally one of the very few fundamental thinkers to ever risk putting his thoughts into writing, and his work is even more impressive given how little was known about genetics at the time by anyone but the largely-unknown Gregor Mendel.

While the book is quite dense at times, it is well worth the reader's effort to push through and experience this book's amazing insights. Darwin's enthusiasm is infective, and I think any reader of science who is interested in reading the classics should take the time to read and enjoy this groundbreaking and fascinating work. Five big stars. show less