Here it is, at long last, my take on the first part of The Genius of Charles Darwin. I've included each of the parts available on YouTube and recorded the running time to which each of my comments applies. This may require some scrolling if you're playing the home game. Now that I think of it, it would have been fun to do a Rifftrax-style commentary on each episode, but I don't have the means or know-how to pull that off. I'll also cover parts 2 & 3 in the days to come, but (as I've heard) the very beginning is a very good place to start.
False facts are highly injurious to the progress of science, for they often endure long; but false views, if supported by some evidence, do little harm, for every one takes a salutary pleasure in proving their falseness: and when this is done, one path towards error is closed and the road to truth is often at the same time opened. - Charles Darwin, The Descent of Man
0:15
And A.R. Wallace, of course.
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0:39
Hold your horses there a minute. A complete explanation for the complexity and diversity of all life? Darwin was a genius, no doubt about it, but even he acknowledged that natural selection by itself might not provide the whole evolutionary picture.
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1:20
The Blair Dawkins Project...
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3:28
I've said much the same about science education in the past. Even if creationism isn't in the classroom, schools treat evolution as a side topic and often push it to the end of the semester rather than treat it as the unifying concept of biology. "Scandalous" is a very apt word, indeed.
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4:01
Let's hear it in the back! Dick to the Dawk to the PhD...
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5:17
That's basically it in a nutshell, and it's good to see someone really object to the idea of "believing in evolution." Evolutionary science is not a belief system, yet it is often characterized as such by antievolutionists. The longer we continue to say we "believe in evolution" the longer we're going to be shooting ourselves in the foot.
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7:08
Darwin's family connections got him aboard the Beagle? If Dawkins means that the young Charles appealed to his uncle Josiah Wedgewood to convince Robert Darwin to let him go on the ship, then the statement is correct, but in truth Darwin could have easily been denied the opportunity. The captain of the ship, Robert Fitzroy, offered the position Darwin occupied to several people who all turned the down the opportunity to be the captain's gentleman companion (the ship already had a naturalist, the surgeon Robert McCormick, whose position in this respect was later usurped by Darwin). One of Darwin's teachers, John Henslow, was offered the post but could not go, and so the offer was relayed to Darwin. Even when Darwin got the approval of his father it was uncertain whether he would be going at all until almost the last minute, but eventually the spot was cleared for him and he went on the journey.
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8:50
The immediate impact of what Darwin saw during his time among the Galapagos Islands is a little overplayed, here. In truth, when people Darwin met insisted that the tortoises on each island had different shells Darwin didn't particularly care to catalog the differences. He thought that the tortoises were imports from elsewhere, brought by buccaneers, and therefore irrelevant. Nor did he make much effort to catalog the birds he collected by island. It was only after he noted slight differences in the "mockingbirds" that he cataloged them by island, but in general he did not take much care in tagging his birds because in many cases, try as he might, he just couldn't tell them apart. Even among the differentiated mockingbirds he thought he was seeing exceptions rather than the rule.
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9:12
For most of the 19th century paleontology caused more problems for Darwin than it offered solutions. It provided time during which evolution could work and was not inconsistent with Darwin's theory, yet it also failed to present the graded transitions natural selection predicted. The marriage of transitional fossils and evolution by natural selection would not by consummated until T.H. Huxley came up with his hypothetical lineages for birds, whales, and horses around 1870. Even with Huxley's help, however, evolution by natural selection was not always accepted as the primary mechanism for evolutionary change in the fossil record. Various alternate mechanisms were proposed until G.G. Simpson's contribution to the Modern Synthesis, Tempo and Mode in Evolution, finally brought evolution by natural selection and the fossil record into alignment.
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0:41
Darwin was very familiar with geology and was enamored with Lyell's Principles of Geology while on his trip, but he didn't know much about fossil mammals. While Darwin did uncover some fossil sloths in South America there were many fossil mammals he did not recognize, and overall he was more curious about what their world was like and why they have gone extinct. Indeed, rather than drawing parallels between living and extinct sloths Darwin was vexed by the extinction of such animals and tried to figure out a mechanism for their demise. It was only after his specimens were back in England, being studied by Richard Owen and scrutinized by Charles Lyell, that the connection between the giant precursors and the small extant animals was sensed.
If anyone is to get the credit for recognizing the affinities between living and extinct sloths it is Georges Cuvier, who was asked to describe the skeleton of a fossil sloth that had been dug up in South American and subsequently sent to Madrid. Cuvier recognized that the skeleton was indicative of sloths and anteaters in general, but showed the closest similarities to living sloths. Cuvier was not an evolutionist, however, and being that he despised the idle speculations of his peers he did little more than offer a description of the extinct animal.
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1:10
Sure, show the fossils but don't show Buckland. Maybe Buckland was cut out because he lectured on geology at Oxford and tried to reconcile his belief in the Bible with paleontology, as other paleontologists had done. (I'm not serious, but it is an interesting coincidence how a modern Oxford professor cut out one of his predecessors.) Today paleontology presents some of the most dramatic evolutionary proofs, but even after Darwin published On the Origin of Species the consensus about the fossil record did not provide ample support for evolution by natural selection.
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1:35
Darwin was hardly the first scientist to recognize that fossils were the remains of extinct animals. I'm not going to go into a detailed review here, but I would highly recommend that anyone interested in how and when fossils were recognized as organic remains read Martin Rudwick's The Meaning of Fossils.
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2:52
It's not a correction, but looking for fossils along the sea shore reminds me of one of the great "unsung heroines" of paleontology, Mary Anning.
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5:23
What I found interesting about the ammonite sequence is the fact that the fossils, by themselves, don't say much about evolution. Dawkins talks about the formation of strata, what our ancestors were like at the time, etc., but the purpose of the ammonites is to get the students thinking about life and time. 200 million years ago life was very different, and that provides a starting place to think about what that really means. There are few better ways to get people to start to think about the history of life than to take them fossil hunting.
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5:43
Dawkins uses the term "heretical" to describe what Darwin was thinking about, yet thinking about evolution itself was not heretical in the mid-19th century. Many naturalists were concerned with finding a "secondary law" to solve the "species problem." What made Darwin's idea truly dangerous was that not only did it seem violent (and therefore too bloody for a Creator to use) but that it could be extended to all life everywhere throughout time. There was no barrier, no limit, nothing to separate us from the apes. The satirical cartoons and responses from antievolutionists to Darwin's work made that much clear. Darwin did provide the foundation for evolutionary theory with a mass of evidence, but even though he initially left human evolution alone that was the subject on everyone's mind.
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7:45
Ah, homology. How could any documentary on evolution be complete without it? As with the sloths, though, the credit here should not immediately go to Darwin. The famed (and often misunderstood) anatomist Richard Owen did much pioneering work on the concept, yet to him homologies represented different arrangements of a particular Platonic Archetype, like an idea in the mind of the Creator. Based upon the diverse uses limbs were put to Owen extrapolated backwards to come up with a generalized vertebrae archetype. To him it was like seeing a basic framework used by the Creator, but to Darwin it represented a hypothetical ancestor. If you are interested in Owen's thoughts on this subject I recommend picking up a copy of the recently re-published On the Nature of Limbs.
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8:02
Oh noes! It's Haeckel's embryos! Using an illustration that shows similarities during certain parts of development is a good thing, but can we please stop using the same drawings that Haeckel did? (Ernst Mayr also used them, if I recall correctly, in What Evolution Is.) Even if we rearranged them to more accurately represent the patterns of ontogeny I still would not feel entirely comfortable using them; it simply gives creationists the chance to say "You see! They're still using diagrams known to be fudged!"
2:08
It's neat that so many of Darwin's specimens are still around, and I'd definitely geek out a bit if I got to personally see them, but I have to wonder if clips give the impression that we're venerating the relics of St. Darwin.
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5:26
Is the idea of "nature red in tooth and claw" a reality? Or is it more of a convenient generalization when we're talking about natural selection? There are all sorts of levels of competition in nature but it is not always the strong preying on the weak or predators consuming the "unfit." Different types of symbiosis, like algae living within coral, are important to understand in considering evolution, as is sexual selection (which I think is covered in the next episode), kin selection, etc. Many of these other concepts fit under the umbrella of natural selection, but it is for that reason that I think we need to present it in a more nuanced way than the classic shots of lions eating wildebeest.
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8:38
I've always found the focus on predators as prime examples of one creature "naturally selecting" another to be interesting, primarily because predators often go after the young, the slow, or the sick. It can be dangerous and difficult to hunt and kill healthy adults, and so predators are influencing their prey by culling those vulnerable to disease and youngsters. (In terms of old individuals, they may have already reproduced, so removing them from the population is not going to have to same effect as, say, a cheetah that kills a young bovid that never got the chance to procreate). Even adult animals make mistakes, however, as when a herbivore runs smack into a tree and knocks itself out, an easy meal for the predator. In such a case it doesn't matter what other beneficial variation the animal might have, from disease resistance to longer legs; if they are killed they can't reproduce and pass on those variations. The most fit don't always survive and organisms of lesser fitness are not always extirpated. Indeed, it seems that predator prey relationships in places like Africa are in a sort of equilibrium, stasis being the general trend, with the migration of a new predator or major changes in environment providing the pressure for larger evolutionary change. But that's another story...
1:57
Are there limits to the arms race? Historical contingency and structural constraints impose certain limits, and for beneficial variations to be selected they have to exist. While it isn't explicit, I think the view of how natural selection works in the documentary is a little too uniformitarian in nature (at least in the sense of evolution proceeding at a slow, near uniform rate). Natural selection is certainly working all the time, but why does it sometimes produce major changes and other times result in stasis?
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7:19
There are plenty of ideas as to why Darwin took so long to publish, but I have my doubts that it was for fear of criticisms from the religious. Darwin certainly knew that his ideas would create controversy but I think a more important factor for his "delay" is that there was always more to learn and contemplate. He didn't want to go public before he was ready, and even though he eventually had to do that anyway, I think Darwin was more meticulous than worried.
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7:49
I don't think Dawkins gives Wallace enough credit, particularly since he refers to Wallace's contribution to the joint unveiling of natural selection as "notes." Wallace had crafted a well-written essay about natural selection while Darwin's contribution consisted of snippets from his notebooks and letters. Both made strong cases, but after reading the material presented in 1858 Darwin's presentation definitely gave the appearance of being somewhat hastily thrown together (because, essentially, it was). Ultimately Wallace deferred to Darwin in terms of who came up with the idea of evolution by natural selection, but I do have to wonder what would have happened had Wallace not been so gentlemanly.
4:53
Is an understanding of genetics enough to illustrate evolution? I don't think so (but, of course, I want to be a paleontologist and have my own bias). What makes evolutionary theory so powerful, and what I think Darwin understood, is that there are intertwining lines of evidence that support each other. If we only had the products of one discipline we might be able to explain everything away as being attribute to some whim of a Creator, but when you combine the different lines of evidence the fact of evolution becomes clear. Think of the debate over the evolution of whales, for instance. For about 35 years paleontologists favored mesonychids as the best candidates for whale ancestors based upon anatomic evidence and molecular biologists favored at least a close association with (if not evolution from within) artiodactyls based upon their evidence. There was much debate, but starting in 2001 fossil evidence was turned up that confirmed the molecular hypothesis and opened up new lines of inquiry. This is how science should work, and even though we all have our disciplinary preferences I don't think any single one can stand alone and say "We have the most indisputable proof of evolution."
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Perhaps I have been a bit of a pedant in my critique, but I have to say I was disappointed that the person most often regarded as the top popularizer of science made so many mistakes. I realize that on aspects of modern theory I might be inclined to disagree with Dawkins, but I see no reason to perpetuate historical errors. The historical tidbits I have mentioned in this post are not trade secrets; they are widely discussed in many books about the history of evolutionary science. Indeed, this documentary represents the danger of putting Darwin on too-high a pedestal. He was a genius, yes, but he also was only one naturalist who was also a product of the social, political, & scientific climate of his day. We should not ignore the contributions of other naturalists working before or at the same time as Darwin. In all, the program presented a textbook cardboard version of history and evolutionary theory, and I don't have much desire to watch it again.
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Sudden random thought - how much of a coincidence is it that Simpson was working in America with access to a much more detailed vertebrate fossil record than Darwin would have had in England?
Still, I think it's an important point that even if we didn't have the fossil record then the existence of evolution could still be inferred from everything else we know about biology. Indeed, as you said, that's essentially what Darwin did. I don't know if that's what Dawkins was saying (to all intents and purposes, web video is inaccessible to me), but that's my thought on the matter.
You note that Darwin didn't give Wallace enough credit - I think that is an understatement. Put simply I think Wallace deserves almost all the credit.
Darwin seems to have systematically lifted other people's ideas (and sometimes even their wording) and used it without attributing. The main victims were Edward Blyth, Patrick Matthew (who seems to have been the originator of the phrase 'natural selection') and of course Wallace. Much of the insight attirbuted to Darwin was retrospectively edited in - as is evident from the original documents.
I have long thought Wallace was hard done by, but having recently read 'The Darwin Conspiracy' by Roy Davies (not a creationist book, in case the title gives the wrong impression) I now am convinced that Wallace deserves the bulk of the credit, and Darwin virtually none. Wallace was a truely original thinker, and a real adventurer (his 'Malay Archipelago' is well worth reading), but he lacked the influential friends and made the mistake of trusting the wrong people.
Read Wallace's Sarawak Law, or better yet his Ternate paper ('On the Tendancy of Varieties to depart indefinitely from the Original Type') and see who really deserves to be described as the genius.
Darwin is the subject of way too much hero worship (and Dawkins is currently the prime culprit with this rather mediocre TV series) - if you or I had done what Darwin did then we'd be in deep trouble for plagiarising.
Please also note that the huge controversy that modern writers often claim was stirred up by Origin of Species is somewhat overstated, the real controversy had been 15 years earlier in 1844 when 'Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation' was published - it did not propose a mechanism, but did set the ground for it, and caused major debate at the time. Interestingly, based on comments in letters they wrote (not to each other) Darwin at the time dismissed the book while Wallace had a high opinion of it.
I suspect that there will be plenty who will disagree with this - but don't accept my word for it, go check the evidence for your self.
That was great! Thanks!
Chris; You're probably right. What I was thinking, though, is that if all we had was the genetic code we would only have a record or living organisms. Given that, we would only be able to tell the similarity between living organisms. Maybe an evolutionary idea might have come from this, but it could just as easily be said (as some creationists do) that God just used the same plans and tweaked them a little. Like I said, my bias is clear, but I think at least time is an essential part of the fossil record.
Mark; I think you go too far the other way. It is well documented that several people came up with notions of natural selection before Darwin but they all thought of it as insignificant. Darwin, by contrast, realized the power and the mechanism and was set to produce a huge monograph called Natural Selection on the subject, of which On the Origin of Species is only an abstract. He started doing this long before Wallace sent his essay. Indeed, while we should give due credit to Wallace and recognize his contribution it is without merit to say that Darwin stole Wallace's idea. I do not know of any serious historian of science who holds such a notion, and the paper trail (which is very long for both Darwin and Wallace) is clear how they independently developed similar ideas. Indeed, an interesting difference between the ideas developed by the two involved the importance of artificial selection. Darwin used it an evidence that natural selection could work, while Wallace thought that it was a bad example because when domesticated animals returned to the wild they "reverted" to their original type, spurred by natural selection.
As far as Vestiges goes it was certainly a popular book but it was also widely derided by scientists because it was a mish-mash of different ideas (including discredited ones like spontaneous generation). It got people to discuss the idea of evolution but it bore little resemblance to what Darwin proposed. As I said in this post, the idea of evolution was no longer anathema by the 1840's, even if the ideas of earlier naturalists like Lamarck were derided. What scientists were looking for was a solid mechanism, and what Darwin proposed in On the Origin of Species made such a mechanism accessible not only to scientists but to the public, as well.
The fact that I winced and griped and groused at the same moments as an actual biology person gives me some small hope that I understand a little biology!
Mark Lees, good analysis, thank you.
I really dont see the point in the evolutionists vs creationists? argument/
All creation has a design, creation builds/destroys and makes anew{do you not create/destroy? was you not created/built from destruction?
Creation also changes/evolves, that isn't to say what changes/evolves YOU wasnt around at the time of creations first creations.. like a puzzle mixed up for re-alignment. So in a matter of fact its about chance in creation, the chance that somthing will evolve/fuse if one crosses path with another, the design of the link has already been put in place so that when they duely meet they can evolve/fuse, lolz......
So we have a Creation designed which evolves, peace Elon
Laelaps is entitled to repeat the broad strokes of Darwin's path to evolution, as handed down by generations of historians of science, as truth. Sadly he, like most other Darwin enthusiasts is simply misinformed. He is right in that there were many exponents of some form of natural selection before Darwin. Some were extremely sophisticated. However, Darwin's theory of natural selection as outlined in his sketch of 1842 and essay of 1844 was an entirely different idea to that to be found in the Origin of Species. This little problem for historians of science is rarely, if ever, discussed. But before 1857 Darwin was still striving to make Hooker and Lyell believe in a theory based on the religious idea of perfect adaptation which he had taken from Lyell shortly after the Beagle voyage. Both Lyell and Hooker told him that his migration theory was flawed but Darwin didn't want to know. It was only after Wallace's first letter arrived at his home on January 12, 1857 that Darwin's ideas began to change towards the idea of natural selection as finally outlined in the Origin of Species. What was also missing from Darwin's early migration theory was any idea of descent with modification. This was also something he did not understand until at the earliest 1857 but probably not completely until after Wallace's paper arrived at his home on June 3, 1858 just four weeks before the Linnean meeting.
Without either natural selection or divergence - descent with modification - Darwin's ideas until long after Wallace's articles in the Magazine of Natural History between 1855 and 1857 and his personal letters to Down House were both unacceptable to his friends and unconvincing to others. Asa Gray, replying to Darwin's outline of his principle of Diverence in September 1857, did not validate his ideas. Rather he suggested that they were, in Darwin's own words 'grievously hypothetical'. And yet this same outline was presented at the Linnean meeting as proof that Darwin understood the key issue of divergence before September 1857. He understood no such thing, nor was it spelled out in what Laelaps calls his 'huge' monograph on Natural Selection begun after Lyell's warning that he was about to be scooped by Wallace if he did not buck up his ideas. Laelaps says he knows of no serious historian of science who holds with the notion that Darwin stole his ideas from Wallace. (How could they in the light of the paucity of evidence that has been presented to them before this point - ignoring for the moment that they have had access to the same documents and books as the author of The Darwin Conspiracy.) That doesn't mean in the light of the new evidence in the book that they are right. Since all the new assertions and claims are both in the historical record and referenced in the book the fact that not one serious historian of science has yet countered with evidence of their own to prove that the arguments in The Darwin Conspiracy are erroneous suggests that at the very least the arguments in the book have some validity. Finally, at what stage do we all stop accepting at face value what 'serious historians of science' write about Charles Darwin? Sometime soon we have to move forward with a serious discussion of this new evidence - much of which comes from Darwin's own correspondence and which clearly reveals that it was Wallace who was the genius in this particular scientific episode and Darwin who was an also ran. [For the record I wrote The Darwin Conspiracy - Origins of a Scientific Crime]
Wallace, in a letter to Darwin:
"As to the theory of Natural Selection itself, I shall always maintain it to be yours and yours only... My paper would never have convinced anybody or have been noticed as more than an ingenious speculation, whereas your book has revolutionised the study of natural history..."
Quoted in F. Sulloway, Born to Rebel (1996), p. 246.