Darwin Mythology

How can you possibly be against a book devoted to refuting misinformation about Charles Darwin and his views on evolution? This is an anthology edited by Kostas Kampourakis whose main interest is "the public understanding of evolution and genetics." He currently teaches at the University of Geneva (Geneva, Switzerland).

Kampourakis has assembled a bunch of authors who present their 24 most important myths about Darwin in 24 chapters. It appears that this book was motivated, in part, by Kampoourakis' view that Charles Darwin needs to knocked down a peg or two because it corrupts the general public's view of how science really works. He begins his book by quoting Richard Dawkins, Michael Ghiselin and Jerry Coyne as examples of scientists who see Darwin as a scientific hero.

Darwin was without question a brilliant naturalist, observer and experimentalist and scholar. But this kind of hero-worshipping should be avoided because it is misleading—science is not done, and does not advance, by individuals who make big breakthroughs in one go. Science is done by communities, which consist of individuals many of whom have something important to contribute to the overall achievement. Even when some individuals happen to see something that others do not, the validation of a novel perspective or findings by the community is absolutely necessary. Most importantly, coming up with anything novel takes time and effort—it took Darwin twenty years of painstaking work—while one works in a particular context and with particular resources to hand—and Darwin had experiences and resources that most other lacked. This kind of hero-worshiping is also better avoided because it dehumanizes science; in the last chapter of the present book, I explain how the stories in its twenty-four chapters can help us better understand science as a human activity. My aim is to humanize Darwin and to emphasize a number of points about how science is done.

There's much to agree with here but I think Kostas picked a bad example. I think that Charles Darwin is the greatest scientist who ever lived but that does not mean that all of his views were correct and it does not mean that he worked alone. I think that there really are some scientists whose contributions merit a bit of hero-worship, especially since there are a lot of really bad scientists out there.

Yes, it's true that many of us toil in the background making small contributions to the advancement of science and yes it's true that the average member of the scientific community doesn't get enough credit, but that does not mean that some scientists aren't way better than us at seeing the big picture and shifting paradigms. They also deserve credit as brilliant individuals.

If you are interested in Darwin and the history of science then I strongly urge you to buy this book, you won't be disappointed. Some of the essays are enlightening, some of them are boring, and some of them will make you angry.

I know that most of you aren't going to buy Kostas' book so that's why I'm listing all the myths. You need to be aware of them and of the (mostly) serious scholarship behind refuting them.

Myth #1: That Myths Are Simple Falsehoods, John L. Heilbron, Emeritus Professor of History at the University of California-Berkeley.

Heibron writes about three separate "myths." The idea that science and religion are in conflict is a myth because there are many religious scientists. "The beliefs that there exists a full and rational account of the universe and that human beings, or anyway mathematicians, can discover it is the greatest and most inspiring myth of science." It's a myth that there was a scientific revolution in the 1600s.

Myth #2: That Most European Naturalists Before Darwin Did Not Think That Species Change Was Possible, Pietro Corsi, Emeritus Professor of the History of Science at the University of Oxford.

"It is commonly thought that nobody before Darwin had thought that species change was possible."

Myth #3: That Charles Darwin Was Not Directly Influenced by the Evolutionary Views of His Grandfather Erasmus, Patricia Fara, Emeritus Fellow of Clare College, Cambridge.

"Although it has often been said that Charles Darwin was not directly influenced by the evolutionary views of his grandfather Erasmus, such a negative contention is too weak to have acquired the mythical status of other familiar anecdotes ..."

Myth #4: That Darwin Always Rejected the Argument from Design in Nature and Developed His Own Theory to Replace It, Michael Ruse (1924-2024), formerly Emeritus Professor in History and Philosophy of Science at Florida State University.

"Thus, Darwin on the argument from design. He has dropped the Designer intervening miraculously in His creation. But he always accepted the fundamental truth that organisms seemed designed-like. They exhibit final causes.

Myth #5: That Darwin Converted to Evolutionary Theory During His Historic Galápagos Islands Visit, Frank J. Sulloway, Adjunct Professor in the Department of Psychology at the University of California-Berkeley.

"This chapter focuses principally around the claim that Darwin was converted to the theory of evolution during his historic Galápagos visit ..."

Myth #6: That Darwin's Galápagos Finches Inspired His Most Important Evolutionary Insights, Frank J. Sulloway.

"If Darwin's iconic Galápagos finches did not play a decisive role in his conversion to the theory of evolution, as I have argued in the preceeding chapter of this book, then what influence did these birds actually have in his evolutionary theorizing?"¹

Myth #7: That Darwin Was a Recluse, and a Theoretician Rather Than a Practical Scientist, Alison M. Pearn, formerly Associate Director of the Darwin Correspondance Project at Cambridge University.

"The image of Darwin as a lone thinker, a "supreme theorizer" rather than a hands-on scientist, and a "recluse" who worked largely in isolation, is stubbornly persistent. Accounts that do feature him as a practical researcher tend to emphasize the domestic setting of his work, focusing on experiments that can be replicated in a modern house, garden or school. But Darwin was an ingenious and innovative experimenter, keenly aware of advances in science, and often at the cutting edge both in the nature of his investigations and in the technologies that he employed."

Myth #8: That Darwin Rejected Lamarck's Ideas of Use and Disuse and of the Inheritance of Acquired Traits, Richard W. Burkhardt, Jr., Emeritus Professor of History at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.

"The belief that Darwin rejected Lamarck's idea of the inheritance of acquired characters may not rise to the level of a myth, but it is at the very least a common misunderstanding. One has only to read any of Darwin's major writings to recognize its falsity."

Myth #9: That Darwin's Theory Was Essentially Complete Once He Came Up with the Idea of Natural Selection, Alan C. Love, Distinguished McKnight University Professor in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Minnesota.

"One of the most persistent myths about the process of scientific discovery is the instantaneous moment of discovery. Many recognize the common label - "Eureka moments" - dereived from the myth that Archimedes exclaimed "Eureka!" after entering a bath and recognizing that the water level rose ..."

Myth #10: That Darwin Delayed the Publication of His Theory for Twenty Years, Being Afraid of the Reactions It Would Cause, John van Wyhe, historian of science at the National University of Singapore.

"Nowhere in the millions of surviving words of Charles Darwin does he ever indicate, even obliquely, that he held back his theory of kept his belief in evolution a secret. In fact, he repeatedly said the opposite." (The photo on the cover of the book is a photoshopped fake.)

Myth #11: That Wallace's and Darwin's Theories Were the Same, and That Darwin Did Not Reveal Wallace's 1858 Letter and Theory Until He Ensured His Own Priority, Michael Ruse.

"First, it will be shown that Darwin and Wallace did indeed, separately, hit on the same cause or process of change. Second, it will be argued that, claims to the contrary notwithstanding, Darwin behaved in an exemplary moral and professional manner in the events leading up to the reading of the two papers. Also, that what happened afterwards, that people took for granted that it was Darwin by far who was the major player in the evolution-through-natural-selection story, was perfectly justified."

Myth #12: That Huxley Was Darwin's Bulldog and Accepted All Aspects of His Theory, Peter J. Bowler, Emeritus Professor of the History of Science at Queen's University, Belfast.

"It is certainly true that Thomas Henry Huxley was recognized as the most active of Darwin's defenders, and this has led many commentators to assume that he accepted the whole Darwinian theory. In fact, he had substantial reservations about the theory's explanatory powers, and he did not gain the sobriquet 'Darwin's Bulldog' until much later."

Myth #13: That Huxley Defeated Wilberforce, and Ridiculed His Obscurantism, in the 1860 Oxford Debate, former Professor of Science & Religion at Oxford and former President of the British Society for the History of Science.

"In a classic study, Frank Turner pointed out that the Victorian conflict between science and religion was in an important respect an epiphenomenon. It reflected a social transformation in the organization and practice of the sciences. Whereas natural history and the life sciences had often been a favorite study of the English clergy, their essentially amateur approach was being overtaken by new standards of professionalism."

Myth #14: That Darwin's Critics Such as Owen Were Prejudiced and Had No Scientific Arguments, Nicolaas Rupke, Emeritus Professor of the History of Science at Göttingen University.

"Owen's conversion from Paleyan natural theology to scientific naturalism and evolution theory took place in the course of the 1840s and 1850s, roughly at the same time that Darwin formulated his theory of evolution by means of natural selection. The two naturalists conducted a courteous, even friendly correspondence, and Darwin came to be aware of Owen's evolutionary views, while he himself kept his views under wraps until 1858-9."

Myth #15: That Natural Selection Can Also Be Accurately Described As the Survival of the Fittest, David Depew, Professor Emeritus in Rhetoric of Inquiry at the University of Iowa.

"For Spencer, organisms that adjust to environment pressures, whether in utero or after, are adapting, if not yet fully adapted. In fact, they may well acquire their helpful characteristics by their own effort, pulling themselves up by the bootstraps of their 'life-preserving power,' as it were."

"Not so for Darwin. Ever the pluralist about evolutionary agencies, he did not deny that passing acquired characteristics to offspring can result in adaptation. What he denied is that Spencer's Lamarckian scenario counts as adaptation by natural selection."

Myth #16: That Darwin Banished Teleology from Biology, James G. Lennox, Professor Emeritus in the Department of History and Philosophy of Science at the University of Pittsburgh.

"But as this chapter will demonstrate, Darwin thought deeply about the relationship between natural selection and teleology, and concluded that his theory, far from banishing teleology, provided a profoundly original foundation for teleological explanation."

Myth #17: That Darwin's Success Depended on Undermining "Aristotelian Essentialism," James G. Lennox

"... Charles Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection certainly did conflict with a certain kind of essentialism about species that was dominant among naturalists, even among Darwin's supporters, in the nineteenth century; and he did argue strenuously in Origin of Species and elsewhere to undermine it. The myth that I shall debunk in this chapter is that this essentialism is Aristotelian in nature."

Myth #18: That Darwin's Theory Would Have Become More Widely Accepted Immediately Had He Read Mendel's 1866 Paper, Gregory Radick, Professor of History and Philosophy at the University of Leeds.

"It is by no means clear that Darwin needed any theory of inheritance, whether Mendel's or anyone else's.

Myth #19: That Darwin Faced a Conspiracy of Silence in Lamarck's Country, Liv Grjebine, a postdoc in the Department of the History of Science at Harvard University.

"In the nineteenth century, Darwin chose to rely partially on accessible representations and common perceptions to increase his audience. In France, his strategy was particularly effective. Indeed, Darwinism triggered a vast public debate and became a central political issue before being acknowledged by Parisian academic institutions. However, Darwin became more critical of approaches which were intended to reach the public directly to sidestep scholars' reviews. He regretted his own strategy so popular, yet so misunderstood."

Myth #20: That Hitler Endorsed and Was Influenced by Darwin's Theory, Robert J. Richards, Morris Fishbein Distinguished Service Professor of the History of Science at the University of Chicago.

"Neither Darwin's nor Haekel's name is mentioned in Mein Kampf, rather strange if Hitler's racial theory comes from Darwinian conceptions, as claimed by the conservative critics I've cited in the first pages of this essay. Indeed, the only name carrying any scientific weight cited in the book is that of Houston Stewart Chamberlain."

Myth #21: That Sexual Selection Was Dawrin's Afterthought to Natural Selection, Kimberly A. Hamlin, James and Beth Lewis Professor of History at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio.

"Though he only devoted two pages of the Origin of Species to sexual selection, Darwin thoroughly outlined the core elements of the mechanism there because, in fact, he had more or less worked out the entire theory by the summer of 1858."

Myth #22: That Darwin's Hatred of Slavery Reflected His Beliefs in Racial Equality, Erik L. Peterson, Associate Professor of the History of Science & Medicine at the University of Alabama.

"It is a shame Darwin could not have wielded that original Wedgewood abolitionist flame to argue for racial equality. Instead, any scientific argument for racial equality lost credence for at least a half-century after Darwin. Descent became not an egregious example of scientific racism but all too typical."

Myth #23: That the discovery of Australopithecus in 1925 Belatedly Confirmed Darwin's 1871 Scientific Prediction of African Human Origins, Emily M. Kern, Assistant Professor in History of Science at the University of Chicago.

"... this is a case of myth-making in action, one that hides a vast number of intellectual skirmishes, complex interplay between evidence and theory, and paths toward knowledge production that were, at best, uneven and highly contingent—hardly the smooth progression from Darwin's proposal to Dart's proof that one might assume."

Myth #24: That Darwin's Theory Brought an Instant and Immediate Revolution in the Life Sciences, Shruti Santosh and Anya Plutynski, graduate student (Santosh) and Professor of Philosophy (Plutynski) at Washington University-St. Loouis.

"It has commonly been held that Darwin's Origin of Species led to a 'revolution' in science. Our aim here is to consider one particular variant of this claim: namely, that Darwin's theory brought about an immediate change in the life sciences. We will argue here that this claim is false—a myth."

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Photo credit: The photo of Charles and me is from a Darwin Day 2009 article in the Toronto Star [Darwin still spurs tributes, debates].

1. I find it very annoying that many authors seem to be confused about the difference between "the theory of evolution" and Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection. Perhaps that should have been myth #26?