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(4.02) | 13 | "It is like confessing a murder." These are the words Charles Darwin uttered when he revealed to the world what he knew to be true: that humans are descended from headless hermaphrodite squids. How could a wealthy gentleman, a stickler for respectability, attack the foundations of his religion and Anglican society? Authors Adrian Desmond and James Moore, in what has been hailed as the definitive biography of Charles Darwin, not only explain the paradox of the man but bring us the full sweep of Victorian science, theology, and mores." "The authors unveil the battle over the mind and soul that raged around the student Darwin as well as his drunken high-life in prostitute-ridden Cambridge. They vividly re-create Darwin's five-year voyage on the Beagle and his struggle to develop his theory of evolution. Then, they follow Darwin through his decades of torment. Fully aware that his ideas could bring ruin and social ostracism to his beloved family, Darwin kept his thoughts secret for twenty years. Seeming to lead an ideal squire's life in rural Kent, he was actually a man "living in Hell," plagued by trembling, vomiting, and violent cramps and confronted by personal tragedy that left him grief-stricken for the rest of his life." "But even more than Marx and Freud, this anguished man was to transform the way we see ourselves on this planet. Desmond and Moore's rich, comprehensive, and unparalleled portrait of his life contains a wealth of newly transcribed and unpublished letters, a thorough understanding of all available Darwin research, and ninety photographs, many never published before. Its lively and accessible style makes each chapter as gripping to read as a novel, yet the legitimacy and importance of this seminal work is never diminished--providing the whole story of how Darwin came to his world-changing conclusions and how, when the Origin of Species was finally published, its consequences were far more dramatic than Darwin's worst fears ... and wildest dreams."--… (more) |
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| Epigraph |
What a book a Devil's Chaplain might
write on the clumsy, wasteful, blundering
low & horridly cruel works of nature!
Charles Darwin in 1856, about to
start the Origin of Species  | |
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| Dedication |
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CHARLES DARWIN'S grandfather Erasmus had a lacerating wit and a loathing of meddling gods. | |
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What need of Christianity when men can sup 'the milk of science'? Did not the priestess of Nature explain all things? - even Creation itself?
Nurs'd by warm sun-beams in primeval caves
Organic Life began beneath the waves . . .
Hence without parent by spontaneous birth
Rise the first specks of animated earth.
There spoke Erasmus (Erasmus Darwin - Charles' grandfather, in his poem 'The Temple of Nature' published posthumously in 1803), a hard-headed freethinker, like so many in the sun-lit years of the Enlightenment. Walking with Darwin … In his (Robert Edmond Grant) talks he had presented the sponge as the 'parent' of higher animals. ... Even dry-as-dust (Robert) Jameson penned an anonymous paper in 1826 praising 'Mr Lamarck' for explaining how the higher animals had 'evolved' from the 'simplest worms.' (This was the first use of the word 'evolved' in a modern sense.) Grant assumed that, as the primal earth cooled, changing conditions drove life towards higher, hotter-blooded forms. A progressive sequence of fossils stood as proof. He explained it as they strode along, and Darwin listened in 'silent astonishment.' ... before moving to Shrewsbury on 15 June (1842). Taking advantage of the seclusion, he finally fleshed-out a thirty-five-page sketch of his evolutionary theory in pencil. ... It looked good on paper, pieced together for the first time. (1855) From infinitesimal variations, common rabbits and pigeons had been stretched to the extent of emulating whole new genera.
Darwin believed that similar imperceptible variations held the key to Nature's own Malthusian selection. Weak, ill-adapted variants were discarded by Nature, as they were by the fancier. The good ones thrived and over the generations particular trends were encouraged. Adaptive features were drawn out, as if by an invisible breeder. 'Artificial selection' showed the craftsman sculpting nature; Nature's own 'selecting' hand was infinitely superior. ('after' Christmas Day 1857) Wallace ... wrote from the Malay archipelago to ask whether Natural Selection would delve into human origins. ... 'I think I shall avoid the whole subject, as so surrounded with prejudices,' Darwin replied, 'though I fully admit that it is the highest & most interesting problem for the naturalist.' At the eleventh hour - on 30 June (1858) - Hooker and Lyell inserted the Darwin-Wallace papers on to the agenda (of the Linnean Society meeting). The next evening the Secretary read them to thirty-odd nonplussed fellows; ... He had finally gone public. After twenty years of fret and frustration, he had exposed himself. He took his ailing children and stomach off to the Isle of Wight for sea air, and here, at the King's Head Hotel in Sandown on 20 July (1858), he began an 'abstract' of Natural Selection. At first he simply anticipated a paper, condensed 'to the utmost,' intended for the Society's Journal. But ... the condensation (of his already partly completed 'big book') expanded out of all proportion ... and inevitably it turned back into a book. ... the stock of 1250 copies was oversubscribed when the book went on sale to the trade on 22 November (1859). Darwin had wanted to add a chapter on the subject to Variation but the book was now so 'horridly, disgustingly big' ... (by) March 1867, Darwin had decided to turn his man chapter into a separate 'short essay,' concentrating on ape ancestry, sexual selection, and human expression. He would finally speak out, tired of being 'taunted that I concealed my views' on human origins. (in 1868 - physisist John) Tyndall's appeal was universal, which made him dangerous. In these combative years he initiated the Association's (the British Association for the Advancement of Science) working-class talks, and outrageously. Faces were agog with teasing talk of babies built from chemicals, and the thinking capacity of robots.
... Tyndall's 'new creed - "I believe in One Force".' The 'terrible "Darwinismus" was being hitched to a pantheistic superstructure and underwritten by its aggressive middle-class exponents. Darwin could only watch in wonder. (On the February 1871 publication of The Descent of Man) The early response was astonishing. 'Everybody is talking about it without being shocked.' ... the book was 'raising a storm of mingled wrath, wonder, and admiration' among the populace. They grudgingly admitted some sort of evolution but denied that man's 'spiritual powers' were selected from brute instincts ... | |
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Such men, on the up-and-up, were paying their dues, for Darwin had naturalized Creation and delivered human nature and human destiny into their hands.
Society would never be the same. The 'Devil's Chaplain' had done his work. (Click to show. Warning: May contain spoilers.) | |
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▾References References to this work on external resources.  Wikipedia in English (39)
▾Book descriptions "It is like confessing a murder." These are the words Charles Darwin uttered when he revealed to the world what he knew to be true: that humans are descended from headless hermaphrodite squids. How could a wealthy gentleman, a stickler for respectability, attack the foundations of his religion and Anglican society? Authors Adrian Desmond and James Moore, in what has been hailed as the definitive biography of Charles Darwin, not only explain the paradox of the man but bring us the full sweep of Victorian science, theology, and mores." "The authors unveil the battle over the mind and soul that raged around the student Darwin as well as his drunken high-life in prostitute-ridden Cambridge. They vividly re-create Darwin's five-year voyage on the Beagle and his struggle to develop his theory of evolution. Then, they follow Darwin through his decades of torment. Fully aware that his ideas could bring ruin and social ostracism to his beloved family, Darwin kept his thoughts secret for twenty years. Seeming to lead an ideal squire's life in rural Kent, he was actually a man "living in Hell," plagued by trembling, vomiting, and violent cramps and confronted by personal tragedy that left him grief-stricken for the rest of his life." "But even more than Marx and Freud, this anguished man was to transform the way we see ourselves on this planet. Desmond and Moore's rich, comprehensive, and unparalleled portrait of his life contains a wealth of newly transcribed and unpublished letters, a thorough understanding of all available Darwin research, and ninety photographs, many never published before. Its lively and accessible style makes each chapter as gripping to read as a novel, yet the legitimacy and importance of this seminal work is never diminished--providing the whole story of how Darwin came to his world-changing conclusions and how, when the Origin of Species was finally published, its consequences were far more dramatic than Darwin's worst fears ... and wildest dreams."-- ▾Library descriptions No library descriptions found. ▾LibraryThing members' description |
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Read in Samoa June 2002. (