We shouldn’t let the day pass without a thought for Erasmus Darwin, whose birthday it is today.
Erasmus Darwin by Joseph Wright of Derby 1792 (WikiCommons)
Erasmus was born on 12th December 1731, at Elston Hall in Nottinghamshire.
During his seventy year span, Charles’s illustrious grandfather made more and varied contributions to the world of ideas than many today would guess – if they’ve even heard of him.
Erasmus is also of course the spirit behind Zoonomian; here are a couple of earlier posts that sum up his achievements and involvements:
Erasmus Darwin House in Litchfield (Photo:Tim Jones)
Erasmus set up his medical practice in Litchfield, where he lived from 1756 to 1781. His house, now the Erasmus Darwin House Museum, is close to the magnificent cathedral, and well worth a visit. (Samuel Johnson also lived in Litchfield, so you can visit his house while you’re there.)
Litchfield Cathedral (Photo: Tim Jones)
Erasmus spent the last two years of his life at Breadsall Priory, where he died on April 18th 1802, aged 70.
Breadsall Priory, where Erasmus Darwin died in 1802 (Photo permission S.Klinge)
To round off, here are three excellent and recent videos on Erasmus courtesy of History West Midlands:
Erasmus Darwin at The Heart of The Litchfield Enlightenment
I suspect Darwin would be happy to see squirrels running over his daughter’s grave. ‘Annie’ Darwin’s Grave at Malvern Priory (Photo:Tim Jones)
Until last week, I’d only seen the Worcestershire town of Great Malvern from the air. Flying light aircraft in the nineties, one of my favourite sightseeing tours was to head out west from my local airfield near Stratford, turn south over Worcester racecourse towards the Malvern Hills, and watch the sun set over the waters of the Severn estuary.
The ‘Malverns’ are odd. An isolated stretch of peaks, nine miles long and 1394 feet at the highest point. Rising half way up the Eastern side, like a carpet pushed up against a wall, is the town of Great Malvern. In an aeroplane it’s a nice spot to practice steep-banked turns, while distracting your passenger with one of England’s greener and pleasanter views. We mostly got cloud and rain last week – so here’s a view in brighter conditions:
Malvern Hills (WikiCommons)Malvern’s gas lamps may have inspired the opening to C.S.Lewis’s Narnia (Photo:Tim Jones)
Amongst the famous folk associated with Malvern are C.S.Lewis and J.R.R.Tolkien, whose experiences walking together in the hills, it’s said, fed into their fantasy worlds. For sure, I can see how elves and dwarves might emerge from the cloudy scrumpy cider we sampled at the Unicorn pub – the authors’ favourite after-hike watering hole.
The composer Sir Edward Elgar was a local, and rests with his wife in nearby Little Malvern.
And the private school Malvern College gave many influential political, military, and media people their educational start – including journalist Jeremy Paxman; but not so many scientists or engineers it seems.
That said, it’s a scientist, Charles Darwin, that I associate most strongly with Malvern. A regular visitor from 1849, Darwin made the two-day journey to Malvern to partake of the town’s popular water therapy, hoping it might relieve the chronic vomiting and headaches that plagued him for much of his life (and caused some now think by Chagas’s disease1 contracted on his Beagle voyage to South America). He would later return with his seriously ill daughter Annie.
Ten year old Annie had weakened from scarlet fever over the previous two years, and, with her condition worsening, on 24th March 1851 Darwin made the trip with her to Malvern and Dr James Gully.
Pioneers of hydrotherapy, or hydropathy as they called it, Gully and his colleague James Wilson set up the first of several specialist clinics in the town. Like other spa towns in England, the geographic and economic growth of Malvern was largely driven by the perceived value of its natural waters.
First Water Cure Establishment in Great Malvern (Photo:Tim Jones)Plaque to the first purpose built water cure establishment (Photo:Tim Jones)
Despite Gully’s efforts, Annie was beyond any water-cure, and Darwin was to leave her in Malvern, permanently, a month later. She died at their lodgings in Montreal House on the Worcester Road, and is buried in the grounds of nearby Great Malvern Priory – literally a stone’s throw from our hotel. Gully described Annie’s condition at death as a “Bilious fever with typhoid character”2; it’s now thought more likely she died from tuberculosis.
Anne Elizabeth Darwin, 1848 (Wikipedia)Montreal House on Worcester Road, Great Malvern, where Charles and Anne lodged with Eliza Partington, and Anne Darwin died on 23rd April 1851 (Photo:Tim Jones)Plaque to Charles and Anne Darwin (Photo:Tim Jones)Great Malvern Priory (Photo:Tim Jones)‘Annie’ Darwin’s gravestone at Great Malvern Priory (Photo:Tim Jones)
From a modern perspective, Gully’s water treatments were doomed to failure. The enthusiastic Gully might wrap a patient in wet sheets, subject them to heavy douches from above and below, or enroll them for a course of ‘spinal washing’.
The core water treatment might be augmented with anything from hill walks to homeopathy, to clairvoyancey, to what amounted to a light baking under oil lamps. Hydropathy’s enthusiastic adoption and questionable effectiveness groups it with the electrical and magnetic treatments popular with Victorian physicians at the time, eager to apply new insights on nature, however misguided, to human well-being.
Some of the water treatments Gully and Wilson would have used. From: Hydropathy, or, The water-cure: its principles, modes of treatment. Joel Shew, Wiley & Putnam 1844 (Ref.3)
Perceived benefits were most likely due less to the watery aspects of Gully’s therapy, and more to the generally healthy context of their delivery. Plain eating, abstention from alcohol, and daily exercise in a calming environment could do a lot for a bloated Victorian gentleman. But that didn’t stop Gully and like-minded advocates publishing elaborate treatises and supposedly affirmative case studies4 directly linking water therapy to the cure of all kinds of disease.
Darwin hung in with Gully’s ideas for years before concluding any benefit was limited and purely psychosomatic. He never bought into homeopathy, and seems to have gone along with the more spiritual add-ons from Gully’s palette to keep their relationship. Darwin was open to new ideas, but he always judged them against the standard of reason.
Annie was a special favourite among Darwin’s children, and her death took a lasting toll on his mental state. The poignant memorial he wrote to Annie is here at the Darwin Correspondence Project5
Annie’s story also formed the background to the movie Creation (my earlier review here), with Paul Bettany as Darwin, Jennifer Connelly as his wife Emma, and Bill Paterson as Dr Gully. The film, based on Darwin’s descendent Randal Keynes’s book Annie’s Box, is worth watching if you can forgive a bit of historical license-taking (for one thing, Darwin’s other children don’t age through a series of flashbacks involving Annie). Also, note that the town where they shoot the Malvern scenes, which I can now vouch has the feel of the place, is actually Bedford-on-Avon).
2. Darwin, Desmond and Moore, Pub.Michael Joseph, 1991, p.384
3. Hydropathy, or, The water-cure: its principles, modes of treatment, &c., illustrated with many cases : compiled chiefly from the most eminent English authors on the subject. Shew, Joel, 1816-1855. New York : Wiley & Putnam, 1844. Link to text at U.S. Library of Medicine here.
4. The Water Cure in Chronic Disease. James Manby Gully, M.D., 1850, John Churchill, London
Owning multiple copies of a book isn’t that unusual. There’s that extra copy for the bath, the duplicate Christmas present you don’t have the heart to return, or maybe you’ve just made home with someone with similar interests – and library: always a good idea. But no one has hundreds of copies of the same title – do they?
Sure they do. Meet the front end of the Huntington Library‘s 252 strong collection of Darwin’s Origin of Species – all 20 feet of them. I snapped this at the permanent ‘Beautiful Science’ exhibition last month, and have just gotten around to a bit of research:
And turning the corner, here are the rest of them:
Henry Edwards Huntington acquired much of his collection, now at San Marino, by buying up ready-made collections or even whole libraries. But some books he bought individually, including, in 1860s New York, an 1859 first edition of the Origin of Species in original cloth – for $22.79 (1). Checking Abebooks.com just now, I see you can pick up the same thing in the same city today for a cool $210,000 (Arader Gallery). Nice investment, Henry.
All the Origins at Huntington are different. Most of the variations are reprints of the early six editions published by John Murray between 1859 and 1872; and then there are all the various languages. The original six do vary in content though, with Darwin making material changes in response to readers’ comments.
Despite the title’s legendary status, the print runs of Murray’s Origin look modest by modern standards:
Scholars have argued over the Origin’s scientific content since, well, its origin – so it’s refreshing to find an analysis along a different tack, like Michele and Chris Kohler’s essay about the Origin of Species as a physical object (2).
The authors mention Huntington’s collection of Origins as one of the three largest, along with the Kohler Collection at the Natural History Museum London and the Thomas Fisher Library of the University of Toronto.
Their research also suggests that many more people may have read the first edition than the 1,250 figure suggests, with 500 copies going not to wealthy individuals (books like this were still a luxury for most people) but to Mudies Lending Library – the largest commercial library in the country. (btw, current Origin sales are a respectable 75,000 to 100,000 units per annum.)
There’s also a discussion on how the content was on occasion not so much lost, but subtley changed, in translation, as in the case of Heinrich Bronn’s first German edition.
The Kohlers’ analysis of price history shows a run-away escalation of first edition values in the 20th and 21st centuries: so from an average £36 in the mid-50’s, to still only £4000 in the 80’s, to a top price of £49,000 in 1999; that’s still a long way off the £100,000+ values being achieved today.
The collector demographic has necessarly changed in step: from pure scholars to business people; but perhaps those working in sci-tech related areas who want, and can afford, to be close to a piece of scientific history. Maybe that ownership requires a Henry Huntington income is a good thing – reflecting an increased awareness of the value of it’s intellectual message?
There again, maybe it’s all going the way of the art market, with rare books becoming a commodity currency. What do you think?
References
1. Henry Edwards Huntington, A Biography. James Ernest Thorpe, University of California Press, 1994
2. Essay by Michele and Chris Kohler in: The Cambridge Companion to the Origin of Species, Ed. Michael Ruse, Robert J Richards, New York, 2008 (Archive.org .txt version here)
Charles Darwin wrote about roses in his The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication, but I’m guessing he didn’t expect a variety would be named in his honour.
Charles Darwin rose in the grounds of the Huntington Estate, San Marino (Photo:Tim Jones)
I stumbled upon these today in the gardens of the Huntington (Library, Art Collection, Botanical Gardens) Estate in San Marino. According to this rose dealer, the variety is hardy, with a ‘strong and delicious fragrance that varies between a soft, floral Tea and almost pure lemon according to weather conditions’. Sounds like it would be right at home at Darwin’s former home in Kent (where it may indeed be for all I know). Whatever. Compared to some of the other blooms on show today, most of which were wilted or entirely dropped off in the December chill, these Darwin specials are putting up a pretty good show.
Contrary to popular opinion, the British aren’t all manic gardeners, and I wouldn’t ordinarily get over-excited about a rose garden. But spurred on by the father of evolution, I scouted out a few more scientifically inspired varieties. Marie Curie is hanging in there but looking the worse for wear:
And one Archimedes would have approved of:
Leonardo needs some tidying:
Three for the astronomers:
The geologist’s choice looks the part:
Arctic explorers only:
Then a few others that aren’t really scientific but I find interesting, intriguing or odd – I didn’t expect to find ‘Pimlico’ and the ‘Radio Times’ in California – included:
Whisky Mac, Anne Boleyn, Radio Times, Brilliant Pink Iceberg, Brownie, Everest Double Fragrance, Moon Shadow, Bewitched, Pimlico ’81, Amelia Earhart, The Doctor, School Girl, Yellowstone, Octoberfest, Charles Dickens, Dynamite, and Smiles.
Maybe gardening’s not so boring after all.
Huntington Rose Garden on a sunnier day in 2013 (Photo:Tim Jones)
Tonight I joined the 2011 Darwin Lecture, with Sir David Attenborough speaking on ‘Alfred Russel Wallace and the Birds of Paradise’, organised and hosted by the Royal Society of Medicine in association with the Linnean Society of London.
Sir David Attenborough (Photo:Tim Jones)
Fresh back from a trip to Borneo – no less, the spritely 85-year-old was introduced by Professor Parveen Kumar, President of the Royal Society of Medicine, and Dr Vaughan Southgate, President of the Linnean Society.
Be it via the TV or lecture theatre, David Attenborough plays to full houses all the time, and this November evening was no exception.
His account of Wallace’s ocean voyage to the Malay Archipelago and pioneering observations of that unique group of theatrical show-offs: the Birds-of-paradise, made for an informative and fun evening – all the merrier thanks to a generous ration of film clips showing the birds’ unlikely courtship rituals.
But the real take-home for me was Attenborough’s poignant re-telling of the Wallace-Darwin story: How the two independently arrived at that world-changing idea for the origin of species – natural selection – whereby only the better-adapted offspring of animals survive and pass on their qualities to a new generation.
Sir David Attenborough (Photo:Tim Jones)Male Great Bird-of-paradise (Wikicommons)
Darwin had for years been working on his own version of natural selection from the comfortable surroundings of his home Down House, but had held back from publishing.
Then in 1858, Darwin receives a letter from Wallace, incapacitated with Malaria and holed-up in a shack on the Mollucas Islands of the Malay Archipelago. In it, he asks Darwin for an opinion on some ideas he’s had on the introduction of new species: ideas very similar to Darwin’s own.
Sir David Attenborough (Photo:Tim Jones)
Wallace’s communication is a bombshell. Yet for Darwin, the fear Wallace might publish first, pipping him at the post, is nothing compared to his horror of being branded a thief. So, after consultation with his scientific confidants, including Joseph Hooker but necessarily excluding the remote Wallace – Darwin’s camp decide a joint announcement of their common idea should be made at the Linnean Society in London, in the form of two short essays comprising Wallace’s note and a summary of Darwin’s work.
Sir David Attenborough (Photo:Tim Jones)
All goes to plan at the Linnean, and in due course Darwin publishes the full text of the ‘Origin of Species’ – with all the turbulent aftermath that comes with it. Wallace is comfortable with events, and pleased by the new associations he sees himself making in Darwin’s circle. He remains abroad, observing his beloved Birds-of-paradise .
Sir David Attenborough, Dr Vaughan Southgate (Photo:Tim Jones)
Darwin, Attenborough said, made known his view that Wallace was capable – had he enjoyed Darwin’s own means – of producing the ‘Origin’ himself. Wallace on the other hand was more than grateful that the painstaking task of collation, supporting work, and documentation demanded of the masterwork had fallen to Darwin. In the lingo of the day, they’d reached a gentlemanly solution with no ill feelings all round.
Sir David Attenborough. At the end of his lecture he received a framed memento of the event and an award from the Society for the History of Natural History. (Photo:Tim Jones)
Wallace produced much original work based on his observations of bird populations in the Malay Archipelago, which he captured in his book of the same name (The Malay Archipelago). Specifically, he identified the so-called ‘Wallace-Line‘ that runs between the islands of Bali and Lombok, separating two geographic regions whose animals Wallace found to be distinct and associated with either Australian or Asian origins. What he’d observed, without recognising it as such, was a product of moving land masses – or plate tectonics.
Related video:
David Attenborough talks about his fascination with birds of paradise (Nature Video)
You’re a young 33, with an already impressive scientific career under your belt, and – although you only suspect it – a spectacular future ahead of you. Within 10 years, you’ll be elected President of the Royal Society.
But in November 1811, you’ve got something else on your mind.
How exactly would Humphry Davy (he of Davy Lamp fame among many other achievements) impress the first true love of his life – the beautiful widow and heiress Jane Apreece ?
Well, as it turned out……with more science of course. And unlikely as it might seem, with quotes from the book whose spine forms the header of this very blog: Erasmus Darwin’s Zoonomia. (Erasmus was Charles Darwin’s grandfather….how many times)
Over to you, Humph….
‘There is a law of sensation which may be called the law of continuity & contrast of which you may read in Darwin’s Zoonomia [sic]. An example is – look long on a spot of pink, & close your eyes, the impression will continue for some time & will then be succeeded by a green light. For some days after I quitted you I had the pink light in my eyes & the rosy feelings in my heart, but now the green hue & feelings – not of jealousy – but of regret are come.’
Smooth, or what?
I’m not the first to spot Davy’s creative application of ground-breaking ideas in colour perception; the above passage is from Richard Holmes’s award-winning Age of Wonder. But what’s it all about? Let’s start with Zoonomia.
Erasmus describes his experiments on colour and the eye in Volume I, Section III: Motions of the Retina; and Section XI: Ocular Spectra.
In his letter to Jane Apreece, Davy is referring to this experiment (Warning for the unfamiliar: f = s):
Zoonomia Vol1 Section III, p.20
Later, Erasmus restates the experiment and proposes a mechanism for the observed effect:
Darwin’s experiments covered a range of colour and contrast effects. Here in his ‘tadpole’ experiment he interprets the bright after-image we see after staring at a dark object, explained again in terms of conditioning and sensitivity of the retina.
Erasmus’s ‘tadpole’ (a little smudged after 200 years)
The drawings in Zoonomia are individually hand drawn and hand coloured. In this passage, Erasmus encourages his readers to partake of some drawing-room diversion using silks of many colours:
Erasmus encourages his readers to lay down silksReaders are encourgaged to lay down coloured silks
All exciting stuff, not least for Erasmus, who betrays his giddiness in this chuckling wind up to his analysis, where he curries favour with the incumbent president of the Royal Society, Sir Joseph Banks.
“I was surprised, and agreeably amused, with the following experiment. I covered a paper about four inches square with yellow, and with a pen filled with a blue colour wrote upon the middle of it the word BANKS in capitals, and sitting with my back to the sun, fixed my eyes for a minute exactly on the centre of the letter N in the middle of the word;after closing my eyes, and shading them somewhat with my hand, the word was dinstinctly seen in the spectrum in yellow letters on a blue field; and then, on opening my eyes on a yellowish wall at twenty feet distance, the magnified name of BANKS appeared written on the wall in golden characters.” [Banks was elected President of the Royal Society in 1778].
Erasmus saw Banks’s name in large golden letters on his garden wall
Did Erasmus get it right with all that stuff about flexing of the antagonist fibres and analogy to the muscles? Well, he wasn’t a million miles away from the truth. Indeed, it looks like yet another case of Erasmus Darwin not getting the credit he deserves for being ahead of the game.
Here’s a modern popular version of the tadpole ‘trick’ (Credit: from here)
The idea is you stare at the bulb for 20 or 30 seconds then look at the white space to the right of it. The popular description of the effect is in terms of the retina cells stimulated by the light portions of the image being desensitized more than those which respond to the dark part of the image – so that the least depleted cells react more strongly when the eye switches to the more uniform all-white image next to the bulb.
Davy Lamp (Wiki Commons)
The modern authors note also that the size of the afterimage varies directly with the distance of the surface on which it is viewed: a manifestation of Emmert’s Law. This is consistent with Erasmus’s report of the name BANKS writ large on his garden wall.
Likewise, the modern interpretation of colour afterimages is popularly framed in terms of how ‘fatigued’ cells respond to light (See how fatigued’ aligns with Erasmus’s muscular references). Erasmus didn’t know we have two types of light-sensitive cells in the eye: cones (that broadly speaking detect colour) and rods (that are more sensitive to absolute brightness), and that the cones themselves are sub-divided to be maximally sensitive to red , blue and green (RGB).
But he did understand the concept of complementary colours, and recognised that whatever part of the retina detects the colour red becomes fatigued through over-exposure; he’d got the principle that green appears againt white as a kind of negative red ).
If we dig a little deeper we find the brain-proper conspires with the retina to consider what we see in terms of black-white, red-green, and blue-yellow opponencies. And the corresponding three sets of retinal cells operate in a pretty arithmetical fashion: the electrical impulse sent to the brain by the red-green cells is proportional to the net red-green exposure to light that the cell has experienced in recent time; likewise the blue-yellow sensitive cells.
That’s all clear then.
What bugs me a wee bit is that in my research for this post I never once saw a reference to Erasmus Darwin. Rather, the standard historical reference seems to be the German psychologist Ewald Hering (1834-1919), who is credited with the first observations of the phenomenon.
Hold the horses – it’s Valentines Day
Ok, we got a bit lost in the science there. And I got a bit hot under the collar; eh-hem. So, the real question is: did Davy’s colourful overtures hit the mark? Well, sort of. Humphry Davy and Jane Apreece married the following year in 1812. The bad news is it didn’t really work out longterm.
All the same, Davy shone ever bright in his science. Already famous for discovering a whole range of new chemical elements, including via separation by electrolysis potassium and sodium, and chlorine gas; he went on to discover elemental iodine and, for good measure, invented the Davy Lamp – thereby saving who knows how many thousands of lives in the mining indistry. In 1820, when Banks’s death ended his 40+ year run at the head of the Royal Society, Davy was elected President.
All of which doubtless kept a bit of colour in his cheeks.
Shop-front in Penzance where Davy served his early apprenticeship (Tks S.Klinge)
Sources
Darwin, Erasmus. Zoonomia Vol 1 Pub. J.Johnson 1796 (photos are from author’s copy)
Holmes, Richard. Age of Wonder. Pub. Harper Press (the softback is out for about £7 now – buy it!)
The film Creation went on general release in the UK today, and as I’m just back from a lunchtime viewing, here are a few thoughts on the movie while it’s still fresh in my mind.
Finch with fig, California (Tim Jones)
To cut to the chase: enjoyable film, with great performances from Paul Bettany as Charles Darwin and Jennifer Connelly as his wife Emma. I’m giving it 4 out of 5 stars.
Very odd start though. I arrived at 12.10 for a 12.15 showing and had the theatre entirely to myself. By 12.30 ish, when the ads were over, the final audience had grown to six people. I know most folk can’t just knock off for the afternoon, but I found it surprising all the same; clearly not one for the pensioners.
I’ve made a point of not reading most of the Creation reviews already out there; just one or two quickly once over. So I’m relatively untainted but sufficiently informed to pick up on some of the obvious criticisms.
One of those criticisms has concerned the film’s factual accuracy. But as few viewers will have read the various biographies and letters, it strikes me that the emphasis should be more on identifying only serious material misrepresentations – and overall I don’t believe there are any (an exception is Huxley’s character – read on).
I was pleased to see certain events included: the failure to ‘civilise’ the Fuegan kids, the water cures, the influence of Hooker & Huxley, Darwin’s animosity with his local church, and Wallace’s letter.
At times though, I felt some incidents and issues had been slotted in because they had to be there – as if the director had a check list of ‘leave that out and the Darwin aficionados will play hell’. That’s how I felt about Huxley’s appearance anyhow. Arguably, Huxley came in to his own in the affairs of the Origin only after its publication – exactly the point at which this film ends. But the filmmakers have done T.H. an injustice all the same; the take-away impression of the man is just wrong. Richard Dawkins wasn’t overjoyed with the portrayal, and I can see why; the character is out of kilter with the historic record, and may as well have worn a ‘new atheist’ sash. (I find New Atheist a silly term; what is an old atheist? – Quiet?). Intellectually, the portrayal is overly one-dimensional and aggressive. Physically, Toby Jones is too short to portray a man whose height and presence in reality matched his intellect. They got Hooker’s whiskers down to a tee, so why not Huxley?
The core narrative revolves around Charles’s relationship with, and thoughts about, his daughter Annie. I don’t know the actor who played Annie, but she has an obvious future in Hollywood. We don’t get to know the other children anything like so closely as we do Annie; and the intellectual, as well as emotional, bond between Annie and Darwin is particularly well developed. There is something of the co-conspirator about Annie – a sense of allegiance lacking in Emma until a reluctant appearance in the final scenes.
The various ghost sequences have been criticised, but again, I just saw these as a device to illustrate Darwin’s pre-occupation. I don’t think he actually ran about the streets chasing his dead daughter (but please correct me if you know different).
All the themes in the movie ultimately link back to the Origin and what it stands for. One of the more human incarnations of that influence is the Emma – Charles relationship. Here I’d liked to have seen Emma’s philosophy explored a little more – even if the detailed story-line were credibly fabricated (biographers do this all the time). I guess we can never know someone’s innermost thoughts on life, the universe, and everything – no matter how many letters we read; but I felt the middle ground that our two protagonists must have found could have stood a little more exploration.
And never mind the movie, I find this theme of different fundamental philosophies within a relationship fascinating. I wonder how many couples today mirror Charles and Emma? This is a personal blog, so I can say that I would, for example, find it challenging at best to live with a partner who I knew was going to hell. That said, I have friends in atheist/Christian marriages who appear to get on just fine.
Which brings us to the big issue: is there a conflict between science and religion? Back to Huxley, I suspect the director intentionally set him up as the fall guy on this score; he can safely be hated for his total lack of religious accommodation early on in the film. Hooker does pop up now and again to reinforce the atheist line (the word is not used – nor is Huxley’s later derived ‘agnostic’), but never with Huxley’s brand of enthusiastic venom.
So what will a religious person make of this movie? After all, wasn’t it the possible religious reaction, and associated reduction in box-office $, that was behind the recent stink over US distribution (the film now has a US distributor).
There is nothing in Creation more offensive than a portrayal of the facts of evolution as they were understood in Darwin’s day. And Darwin’s encounter with Jenny the orangutan, which is beautifully represented in the film (well it’s not really acting is it) leaves little more to be said on the question of our own evolution. I’m not about to dive into a lengthy science-religion debate, suffice to say my position is that there are elements of religion as defined by some that are – on the evidence – incompatible with some definitions of science; and that the science-religion debate is an important one with practical consequences for us all.
God’s official in Creation, the local vicar, is played by Jeremy Northam. In one memorable scene, Northam tries to comfort Darwin in his torn anguish, which only sparks a sarcastic tirade from Darwin on the delights of the God-designed parasitic wasp larvae and the burrowing habits of intestinal worms. Northam’s sincerity and Bettany’s losing his temper are both convincing.
I live within an hour’s drive of the real Down House, and know it pretty well. While the house in the movie was not Down, the exterior feel – with large bay windows and patio doors opening to the garden captures the right flavour.
Down House - rear from the garden (photo Tim Jones)
The study has a similar feel to English Heritage’s reproduction of the real thing at Down – even down to Darwin’s screened-off privy. Likewise, the lounge and dining room, while never visible in wide-shot, have an attractive homely ambiance. The village road and church scenes are consistent with the feel of the real Down.
It’s not the end of the world, but a sandwalk scene was noticeable by its absence. The sandwalk for those who don’t know it is a gravelly path leading into the woods near Down House. I tend to imagine Darwin pacing down the sandwalk, under the trees or sheltering from the rain; to be sure – it’s a nice spot for thinking.
Interesting angle on the sandwalk (photo tks Sven klinge)
To wind up, this movie contains all the main factual, scientific, cultural, and emotional elements I associate with Darwin in this important period in his life. Issues around the compatibility of science and religion are met head on through illustration (if a little caricatured) rather than tedious debate, and we get to see the human, sensitive and fragile side of a scientist.
There is plenty here to enjoy in the theatre, but also much to take home and mull over – with your partner perhaps :-).
I’ve just received this photograph from my good mate Sven, showing Alfred Russel Wallace’s grave and ‘tombstone’ in Broadstone Cemetery, in Dorset.
Alfred Russel Wallace's Grave
Now I know as a member of the ‘Carry-On’ generation my sensibilities are tainted, but all the same, in the spirit of low-brow citizen scientific journalism, it’s good to see A.R. can still stand tall in this remembrance year of his more celebrated associate in evolution – Charles Darwin.
Plaque on A.R.Wallace's grave
The structure is in fact a two metres high fossil tree trunk, and the plaque on the wide-angle photo is for his wife Anne; presumably interred in the same grave. This is the plaque for A.R. .
Short note on my ‘Darwin Hat-Trick day’ last Wednesday. Nothing too profound – but some nice pics!
Final resting place of the Beagle? Cutting in the Paglesham shore (photo Tim Jones) And again with me for scale (photo: Sven Klinge)
We set off at 5 a.m., and by the end of the day had visited: (a) the supposed final resting place of Darwin’s Beagle at Paglesham, (b)the newly refurbished former home of Darwin, ‘Down House’, in Kent, (c) the Geological Society in central London for a talk from Darwin biographer Janet Browne.
The Beagle (image Wikimedia Commons)Paglesham location Nr. Rochford (image Google Maps)
This sudden urge to drive around some of the more remote reaches of England’s green and pleasant land was triggered by a recent talk by Dr Robert Prescott at the Royal Society. A podcast or vidcast should be available here within the next few days.
Prescott, who is researching the Beagle’s fate post-Darwin, has shown that after her last sea voyage in 1843 the ship served as an anti-smuggling watch vessel, anchored amidst the twisting system of waterways north of the Thames estuary. He speculates, with evidence from contemporary charts, that the mastless hulk ended its days in a permanent mooring cut into the mud of Paglesham East End, near Rochford. With images from Prescott’s talks fresh in our minds, we successfully located the otherwise unremarkable stretch of grassy mud-bank shown in the first photo.
Ground radar has revealed something of the right size and shape for the Beagle about 6 meters down, but tests on core drill samples are ongoing. The team have identified wood and diatoms, and now hope to find evidence of life specific to the South Seas caught up in the timbers. There’s some evidence that the top half of the ship was salvaged, and wooden structures consistent with the naval architecture of the day have been found in this nearby boathouse.
Timber structures consistent with the Beagle were found in this building (photo Tim Jones)
According to Prescott, Darwin never visited the Beagle after his famous voyage, despite the relative proximity of the craft to his home at Downe and documentary evidence that the Beagle’s Captain – Fitzroy – had kept in contact with Darwin. While Darwin acknowledged the importance of the ship to his life and work, it appears any emotional attachment he had for the vessel did not extend to a need to be reunited.
Having driven 60 miles to walk over a (albeit important) stretch of mud, we continued our walk along the river bank to be rewarded with a watch post from another era – a World War II pillbox. Pillboxes like these can be found across the south of England, and originally formed a continuous defensive line against potential German invasion.
World War II defensive pillbox at Paglesham (photo Tim Jones)
Leaving Paglesham around 9 a.m., and arriving at Down House half an hour before the house itself opened, gave us plenty of time to explore the grounds and gardens of the Darwin family home. There’s been some replanting and landscaping as part of the refurbishment, but the famous greenhouse and ‘sandwalk’ , where Darwin did some of his most inspired thinking, are rightly unchanged.
Learned Gentlemen look for inspiration on the 'Sandwalk' (photo Belinda Murphy)Interesting angle on the sandwalk (photo Sven Klinge)
The house itself has benefited from a super exterior paint job and refurbishment, and a major re-modeling of the upper-floor exhibition space. The personal audio guides are now video guides, but retain a pleasant enough welcome from David Attenborough. But, photographers beware ! I’ve never been anywhere where the taking of pictures inside the house is so actively discouraged – quite a contrast to how things are managed in the USA. I’d also advise an early weekday visit, as parking is limited and the experience degrades when the house is crowded. All the same, it’s a beautiful location, the house is full of atmosphere, and it’s well worth the £8 entrance fee.
Down House - rear from the garden (photo Tim Jones)Down House rear garden (phot Sven Klinge)Down House frontage (photo Tim Jones)
Down House is a stone’s throw from the village of Downe (with an ‘e’ this time) and the local church where Emma Darwin, Charles’s brother Erasmus, and Darwin’s servant Parslow are buried.
Emma and Erasmus's grave in Downe Cemetary (photo Sven Klinge)Grave of Darwin's servant Parslow (photo Sven Klinge)
At 2 o’clock we were starting to feel the effects of the early start, so it was back to Kingston to drop off the car and consume some large coffees.
Phase three of our hat-trick required a train ride into the centre of London to see and hear Janet Browne speak at the Geological Society.
Janet Browne at the Royal Geological Society (photo Sven Klinge)
Browne, best known for her two Darwin biographies Voyaging and Power of Place, was over from Harvard to speak on the theme of ‘Two Hundred Years of Evolution: Celebrating Charles Darwin in 2009’ .
I guess the thrust of the talk was around how the various controversies surrounding Darwin and his theory have been accepted, challenged, and interpreted at different times and places. For my part I found Browne’s historical interpretation clear and entertaining. I was, however, at something of a loss to understand quite where she personally stood on more contemporary issues such as the compatibility of Darwinian evolutionary theory and religious belief. What I took from the early part of her talk as an accommodationist approach didn’t entirely jibe with her response during questions when, for example, she credited Dawkins’s stance as ‘brave’. Anyhow, you can listen to the podcast here at the Geological Society website and draw your own conclusions.
I can’t let the day go by without some sort of homage to Thomas Henry Huxley (1825-1895); for today – 4th May – is indeed his birthday.
The younger Thomas Henry HuxleyHuxley in 1893 (photo Tim Jones from a print in ‘Life & Letters’ Appleby 1901)
Everyone with a special interest in science, or those working in the sciences, has heard of T.H. Huxley. But for many others the name Huxley is more often associated with T.H.’s grandson Aldous – of ‘Brave New World’ fame or, closer to 20th century science and politics, Aldous’s biologist brother and founder of UNESCO Julian Huxley.
And in Darwin’s 200th anniversary year we’ve seen ‘T.H.’ come to the fore as Darwin’s Bulldog – portrayed as a kind of willing intellectual ‘heavy’, clearing the way of dissenters for Charles’s evolutionary thesis to hold forth – sending bishops flying as he went. I referenced the most recent re-enactment of Huxley’s encounter with Bishop Wilberforce during this year’s Secularist of the Year Awards here.
Thomas Huxley – ‘Darwin’s Bulldog’ (image Vanity Fair)
But Thomas Henry was very much his own man (no sexism intended). Originally trained in medicine, he served as a ship’s surgeon aboard the Rattlesnake in early life but, lacking the financial independence enjoyed by Darwin and other ‘gentlemen scientists’ of the day, had to establish his scientific credibility by hard clawing through the establishment.
In fact, T.H. should be the patron saint of impoverished scientists, for while his later life was comfortable, financial recompense during most of his career was totally out of kilter with his societal contribution and achievement. Fortunately, on an occasion when Huxley’s body failed to keep pace with his spirit, friends who were also members of the scientific ‘X-Club’ chipped in with Darwin to pay for a recuperative continental break.
Huxley’s interest was science in all its manifestations, and his legacy is today’s acceptance of science as a profession, and a system for science education that has its roots in the biology classes he held at South Kensington.
Huxley worked on the top floor of this building in South Kensington, London (now part of the V&A museum) (photo Tim Jones)
But T.H. was not happy doing just science. In fact there was a conscious moment when he was overtaken by the conviction that helping others understand science was even more important than the science itself; I guess that makes him the patron saint of science communicators as well then!
There was nothing snobbish or ‘look down your nose’ about Huxley’s lectures for working men. His monologue on ‘A Piece of Chalk’ is an icon of communication – of any sort – and can be compared with Michael Faraday’s famed public dissection of ‘The Chemical History of A Candle’ at the Royal Institution.
T.H.Huxley’s grave in East Finchley (photo Thanks Sven Klinge)
Being so close to nature, evolutionary concepts, and Charles Darwin, Huxley was bound to take a stance on religion. He coined the term ‘agnostic’ and declared himself as such. I think to understand exactly what HE meant by that you need to read his letters and essays. A pragmatist, Huxley did not subscribe to religious dogma through scripture, but at the same time was concerned that society could not function without something to fill the gap that would be left by, say, the removal of bibles from schools. I’ll resist several more paragraphs comparing Huxley to Richard Dawkins in this regard; suffice to say I believe there are fundamental similarities between the two – but also differences.
Although you’d never guess from the title or intro to this blog, it was Huxley, and specifically Adrian Desmond’s biographies – ‘The Devil’s Desciple’ and ‘From Devil’s Desciple to Evolution’s High Priest’ (which respectively deal with Huxley’s earlier and later years) that have most inspired me – in quite fundamental ways.
Anyone who ‘Twitters’ knows there are an awful lot of motivational gurus out there and, while I’m not against that, believe you’ll find in Huxley’s life a 90% exemplar of the right-thinking, right-stuff behaviour for a happy life. In fact, exploring the Zoonomian Archives I find I referenced the great man in August last year, here comparing his philosophy with that of a former headmaster at my school; perhaps the Huxley influence runs deeper than I know? There endeth that lesson.
If you want to know more about T.H., read the Desmond biographies alongside some of Huxley’s collected essays. And for a deeper understanding, the ‘Life and Letters of T.H.Huxley’ – published by his son Leonard in 1901 are engaging. The Huxley File is a comprehensive web reference.
Now something for the Huxley aficionados and the just plain interested:
On 15th July 1893, Huxley was sitting at his desk in his home Hodeslea, in Eastborne in the south of England, writing a letter to Sir J Skelton; you can find it on p.383 of the U.S. Appleton edition of ‘Letters’.
Huxley’s study at Hodeslea. Painted 1893. (Source: Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley, D.Appleton and Sons, 1901Hodeslea in Huxley’s Day (Source: Life and Letters of Thomas Henry Huxley, D.Appleton & Sons, 1901)Hodeslea Today (photo permission P.D.Smith)
Huxley tells Skelton how he never fully recovered from a bout of influenza in the spring and is setting off the next day to Maloja (Switzerland) for one of his recuperative breaks. As Huxley says: “It mended up the shaky old heart-pump five years ago, and I hope will again.” The next recorded letter I can find is from October 1st 1893. But Huxley did write at least one more letter on the 15th July – I know because I have it :-).
Huxley’s letter to Williams & Norgate (photo Tim Jones, Huxley ALS private ownership)
The note is to the publishers Williams and Norgate, sending a cheque as payment on his account, and asking them to obtain a missing volume.
Huxley’s letter to Williams & Norgate (photo Tim Jones, Huxley ALS private ownership)
So, it’s not exactly a keystone in the scientific chronology. But, taken in the context of the Skelton letter, Huxley’s last line does conjour up images of packed suitcases and trunks: ‘I am going abroad directly for nine weeks‘. Proving……I’m just a big romantic at heart.
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, Desmond and Moore, Pub.Michael Joseph, 1991, p.384
