Charles Darwin. 1880
Much has been made recently of the fact that Lincoln and Darwin share a birthday. Two hundred years ago, this past Thursday. A new book talks about another thing they share. Their hatred of slavery. It sounds like a great read. Here's a short excerpt:
Darwin's Sacred Cause
How a Hatred of Slavery Shaped Darwin's Views on Human Evolution
By Adrian Desmond & James Moore
Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. 448 pp. $30
Feb. 15, 2008
IntroductionUnshackling Creation
Global brands don't come much bigger than Charles Darwin. He is the grizzled grandfather peering from book jackets and billboards, from textbooks and TV - the sage on greeting cards, postage stamps and commemorative coins. Darwin's head on British £10 notes radiates imperturbability, mocking those who would doubt his science. Hallow him or hoot at him, Darwin cannot be ignored. Atheists trumpet his 'atheism', liberals his 'liberalism', scientists his Darwinism, and fundamentalists expend great energy denouncing the lot. All agree, however, that for better or worse Darwin's epoch-making book On the Origin of Species transformed the way we see ourselves on the planet.
How did a modest member of Victorian England's minor gentry become a twenty-first-century icon? Celebrities today are famous for being famous, but Darwin's defenders have a different explanation.
To them Darwin changed the world because he was a tough-minded scientist doing good empirical science. As a young man, he exploited a great research opportunity aboard HMS Beagle. He was shrewd beyond his years, driven by a love of truth. Sailing around the world, he collected exotic facts and specimens - most notably on the Galapagos islands - and followed the evidence to its conclusion, to evolution. With infinite patience, through grave illness heroically borne, he came up with 'the single best idea anyone has ever had' and published it in 1859 in the Origin of Species. This was a 'dangerous idea' - evolution by 'natural selection' - an idea fatal to God and creationism equally, even if Darwin had candy-coated this evolutionary pill with creation-talk to make it more palatable. Evolution annihilated Adam; it put apes in our family tree, as Darwin explained in 1871 when he at last applied evolution to humans in The Descent of Man. Secluded on his country estate, publishing book after ground-breaking book, Darwin cut the figure of a detached, objective researcher, the model of the successful scientist. And so he won his crown.
The most that can be said for this caricature is the number of people who credit it. Not only evolutionists and secularists, but many creationists and fundamentalists see Darwin's claim to fame - or infamy - in his single-minded pursuit of science. Doggedly, some say obstinately, he devoted his life to evolution. A zeal for scientific knowledge consumed him, keeping him on target to overthrow God and bestialize humanity. Brilliantly, or wickedly, Darwin globalized himself. By following science and renouncing religion, he launched the modern secular world.
This isn't just simplistic; most of it is plain wrong. Human evolution wasn't his last piece in the evolution jigsaw; it was the first. From the very outset Darwin concerned himself with the unity of humankind. This notion of 'brotherhood' grounded his evolutionary enterprise. It was there in his first musings on evolution in 1837.
