The myth of Darwin's delay

Many ideas in the history of biology get going for reasons that have to do with agendas, ideologies, and plain old bad scholarship rather than the results of research. In particular, myths regarding the motivations of historical figures. I well remember Erik Erikson's execrable attempt to psychoanalyse Luther from a distance of 500 years, culminating in the claim that he was anal retentive (and, therefore, so was his theology).

There are plenty of these myths in the history of biology. One of the longer lasting ones, although it turns out to be a late arrival, is the myth that Darwin didn't publish for 20 years, from 1839 when he first conceived of evolution, to 1859, because he was afraid or worried about how his theory would be received.

Now John van Whye, who is the fellow responsible for putting Darwin's works entirely online (apart from the second edition of the Descent, but I live in hope), has published a very nice paper [PDF] re-examining this myth. He concludes that it is false, and that reading Darwin's letters, notes and published works afresh gives no reason to think there was such a delay. Instead, says van Whye, Darwin sketched out a plan of work that he stuck to pretty closely thereafter.

What he did do, though, was underestimate badly the time it would take him to do his systematic study of the invertebrates he had collected on the Beagle voyage, and in particular his extensive 2 volume monograph on barnacles. Darwin wanted to do this work to show that he was a serious scientist, and also to learn more about their development and relationships, to support his evolutionary claims.

What is particularly interesting to me is that Darwin drew up this plan before the Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation was first published in 1844, which is popularly supposed to be one reason Darwin was so "cautious", given its bad reception by the biological community. Moreover, he happily discusses this developing idea with the leading natural historians and anatomists of the day, including Richard Owen, who was later thought to be an antievolutionist:

The list includes Emma, his father Robert, his brother Erasmus, Darwin's children, Hensleigh and Elizabeth Wedgwood, William Lonsdale, Hugh Strickland, Edward Forbes, Hugh Falconer, Dieffenbach, Fletcher, Edward Cresy, J. S. Henslow, Leonard Horner, Leonard Jenyns, Richard Owen, G. R. Waterhouse, J. D. Hooker, W. D. Fox, Lyell, C. J. F. Bunbury, Asa Gray and, later, T. H. Huxley, T. V. Wollaston, H. C. Watson, J. D. Dana, E. L. Layard, C. A. Murray and E. Norman. It seems likely that Darwin told William Herbert, Hugh Cuming, William Yarrell and John Lubbock

At that rate of dissemination, the mere fact that he hadn't yet published his ideas seems irrelevant - most of the scientific establishment already knew. And while he expressed some concern, it was not for the reaction from the scientists, but from the religionists, something Owen himself had already suffered from.

Many writers, most famously the biography of Desmond and Moore, have held that Darwin was conflicted (in their case, by his class betrayal), a view I always thought was rubbish. But if there was no delay, only a measured plan to develop the theory properly, there is nothing to explain. van Whye has convincingly argued this case, I think.