Darwin & the Platypus

Given that tomorrow is Darwin Day, I've been trying to think of something original to write that will not merely be an echo of what my fellow bloggers have already written about Charles Darwin. Unfortunately, I have to brave the cold to attend classes for the rest of the afternoon and most of the evening, but I thought I would post something to illustrate just how much Darwin's perspective of natural history changed between the time he traveled the world on the Beagle to the time he published On the Origin of Species by Natural Selection. Writing in his diary during the Beagle voyage (specifically on January 19, 1836), a young Mr. Darwin records his experiences with a rather odd Australian animal;

In the dusk of the evening I took a stroll along a chain of ponds, which in this dry country represent the course of a river, & had the good fortune to see several of the famous Platypus or Ornithorhyncus paradoxicus. They were diving & playing about the surface of the water; but showed very little of their bodies were visible, so that they only appeared like might easily have been mistaken for many water Rats rats. Mr Browne shot one; certainly it is a most extraordinary animal; the mounted stuffed specimens do not convey a proper idea give at all a good idea of the recent appearance of the head & beak; the latter becoming hard & very contracted & hardened. --

Earlier in the evening A little time before this, I had been lying on a sunny bank & was reflecting on the strange character of the Animals of this country as compared to the rest of the World. An Disbeliever unbeliever in everything beyond his own reason, might exclaim "Surely two distinct Creators must have been [at] work; their object however has been the same & certainly the end in each case the end is complete". -- Whilst thus thinking, I observed the conical pitfall of a Lion-Ant: -- A fly fell in & immediately disappeared; then came a large but unwary Ant; his struggles to escape being very violent, the little jets of sand described by Kirby were promptly directed against him. The pitfall was not above half the size of the one described by Kirby. His fate however was better than that of the poor fly's:- Without a doubt this predacious Larva belongs to the same genus, but to a different species from the Europaean one. -- Now what would the Disbeliever say to this? Would any two workmen ever hit on so beautiful, so simple & yet so artificial a contrivance? It cannot be thought so. -- The one hand has surely worked throughout the universe. A Geologist perhaps would suggest, that the periods of Creation have been distinct & remote the one from the other; that the Creator rested in his labor.

I, for one, am thankful that Darwin eventually moved beyond the natural theology apparent in such passages. I do have to wonder, though, what would have become of the young Darwin had he returned home and clung on to Paley's Natural Theology as truth rather than using it as a springboard to strengthen his own ideas about evolution? (Terry Pratchett penned one such alternate history, Darwin writing the "wrong" book & requiring the aid of the Unseen University wizards.)

Such speculation aside, I think part of the reason why so many people come together to celebrate Darwin is because his records have been made so widely available to anyone who wishes to see them. Although many don't undertake the task themselves, we at least have the ability to read his diary, letters, notebooks, and published books to see how his ideas came together and evolved; there is truly a treasure-trove of information that allow people to retrace Darwin's intellectual steps. We're not so lucky with other naturalists, the thoughts of savants like Cuvier on the question of "the origin of species" often remaining obscure, but we are much more fortunate with what has been preserved of Darwin's writings. I feel that I've hit a bit of a dead-end here, though, but tomorrow I'll have something a little more substantial about why I will be celebrating Darwin Day.