1

Discovering Evolution: V. Nebula to Man.

"Nebula to Man, painting by Lancelot Speed, published as the fron-tispiece to Nebula to Man by Henry R. Knipe (London, 1905). Barely visible on either side of the human figures are monkeys, representing ... intermediate stages in the evolutionary sequence.” Picture from the original; caption from Brush (1974).

2

Readings. Brush, S. G. 1987. The nebular hypothesis and the evolution-ary worldview. Hist. Sci. xxv: 245-278. Desmond, A. 1979. Designing the dinosaur: Richard Owen's response to Robert Edmond Grant. Isis. 70: 224-234. Richards, R. J. 2001. Pulp Nonfiction: Commotion over Evo-lution Before Darwin. Amer. Scient. 89: 454-456. Rupke, N. A. 1994. C. C. Gillispie's Genesis and Geology. Isis. 85: 261-270. Yeo, R. 1984. Science and intellectual authority in mid-nine-teenth-century Britain. Victorian Studies 28: 5-31.

3

Was Evolution in the Air Before The Origin?

From Darwin’s Autobiography (F. Darwin, 1887):

“It has sometimes been said that the success of the 'Origin' proved ‘that the subject was in the air’, or ‘that men's minds were prepared for it.’ I do not think that this is strictly true, for I occasionally sounded not a few naturalists, and never happened to come across a single one who seemed to doubt about the permanence of species.”

Not Entirely Accurate.

1. By 1859, Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation was in its 10th edition. a. Readers included Queen

Victoria and Abraham Lincoln (Secord, 1994).

b. Interest fueled by anony-mous authorship.

2. Even Darwin (1861) credited Vestiges with having “done

excellent service in calling in this country attention to the subject, in removing prejudice, and in thus preparing the ground for the reception of analogous views.”

Figure 5.1 Printings of Vestiges and The Origin compared.

4

As noted by Secord (1994), Ves-tiges 1. Introduced the middle class to

developmental cosmology, and at the same time

2. Challenged authority.

“In the wake of widespread political and social unrest, a newly literate … reading public had to be kept at a dis-tance from the production of knowledge … Otherwise science could be used to undermine established in-stitutions, just as … in France before the revolution.” [p. xi]

3. Hence the vituperative reaction.

In short, evolution most certainly was in the air. 1. By the time Darwin got round to composing his “abstract”,

Vestiges had become part of the common culture – to the point that Darwin implored Asa Gray to keep his ideas confidential lest “anyone, like the Author of the Vestiges … work them in.” [Letter of 5 Sept., 1857, DCP 2136]

Figure 5.2 Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation was first published in 1844.

5

2. More to the point,

“[the] descent of man from the apes, spontaneous generation, the origins of the human mind through natural law, and cosmic progress were regular topics of conversation and controversy for hundreds of thousands of Victorian readers. Samuel Laing,[1] who, as a young man had compiled the Expository Outline of Ves-tiges, described the late 1850s as a saturated solution into which The Origin had dropped like a crystal, around which all the diverse elements coalesced. Historians used to say, vaguely, that evolu-tion was ‘in the air’ … ; but it was also in drawings rooms, libraries, churches, pubs, clubs and railway carriages.” [Secord, 2000, 522. Emphasis added]

3. Writing on the search for the “missing link” that would

connect mankind with its apish cousins, Kjærgaard (2011, p. 88) likewise observed that “The public debates about evolution in Victorian England ignited in the 1840s, especially after the publication of Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation in 1844. This book addressed funda-mental questions of a cosmic beginning, the making of the Earth, life out of matter, gradual organic change, common ancestry and the origin of humankind.”

1 Influential author, business man and politician. Laing was in and out of par-liament from 1852 to 1885.

6

From Nebula to Man.

Vestiges articulated a universal Law of Development em-bracing cosmology, geology and biology.

1. Laplace’s Nebular Hypoth-

esis (NH) the starting point. a. Gravitational contraction

of a gaseous cloud.

b. Increasing rotation. c. Expulsion of rings. d. Condensation of rings to

planets; core to the sun.

2. According to Chambers, physical and biological evolution both consequent to universal development.

3. Newton’s static universe replaced by one that evolved

4. Which, if true, Whewell (1833) had previously argued compatible with divine creation (Brush, 1987, 250).

5. Thereby anticipating later arguments of liberal clerics.

Figure 5.3. Nebular hypothesis. Wellcome Trust Image M0006119.

7

Biological argument advanced by Vestiges can be re-lated to the earlier doctrine of preformism. Latter 1. Imagined homunculi (Figure 5.4) pack-

aged within the germ cells within which were additional homunculi, within which …

2. Vestiges replaced “little men” with the po-tential to develop to a higher state.

3. Gave the example of bees, with develop-mental time of workers exceeding that of queens, and the developmental time of drones, that of workers.

Among the reasons for Vestiges’ success: 1. An over-arching evolutionary principle:

“The idea, then … is that the simplest and most primitive type, un-der a law to which like-production is subordinate, gave birth to the type next above it, that this again produced the next higher, and so on to the very highest, the stages of advance being in all cases very small – namely, from one species only to another; so that the phe-nomenon has always been of a simple and modest character” [Chambers, 1844, 222].

2. I.e., progressive evolution by moderate saltation.

Figure 5.4. Ho-munculus (little man) in sperm cell.

8

3. Appearance of new species tied to embryology: “It has been seen that, in the re-production of the higher animals, the new being passes through stages in which it is successively fish-like and reptile-like. But the resemblance is not to the adult fish or the adult reptile, but to the fish and reptile at a certain point in their foetal progress ... It may be illustrated by a simple diagram [Figure 5.5] … “This diagram shews only the main ramifications; but the reader must suppose minor ones, repre-senting the subordinate differ-ences of orders, tribes, families, genera, &c., if he wishes to ex-tend his views to the whole varie-ties of being in the animal king-dom.” [op. cit., 212-213, Em-phasis added]

Figure 5.5. The developmental hy-pothesis of Vestiges. “The foetus of all the four classes may be sup-posed to advance in an identical condition to the point A. The fish there diverges and passes along a line apart … to its mature state at F. The reptile, bird, and mammal, go on together to C, where the reptile diverges in like manner, and ad-vances … to R. The bird diverges at D, and goes on to B. The mammal then goes in a straight line to the highest point of organization at M” (p. 212).

9

4. Development by Law an everyday process & eminently comprehensi-ble: “Thus the production of new forms, as shewn in the pages of geological record, has never been more than a new stage of progress in gestation, an event as simply natural and at-tended as little by any circumstance of a won-derful or startling kind, as the silent advance of an ordinary mother from one week to an-other of her pregnancy” [op. cit., 222-223]

5. The need for Lamarckian notions

of use and disuse obviated.2

“Now it is possible that wants and the exercise of faculties have entered in some manner into the production of the phenomena which we have been considering; but certainly not in the way suggested by Lamarck, whose whole notion is obviously so inadequate to account for the rise of the organic kingdoms, that we only can place it with pity among the follies of the wise.” [op. cit., 230]

2 Vestiges retained, albeit without acknowledgment, Lamarck’s Pouvoir de la Vie. Like The Origin, it went through many editions during the course of which, it evolved. By the 10th and final edition, its argument had a good deal more in common with Lamarck’s than Chambers wished to admit.

Figure 5.6. Chambers’ Vestiges is noteworthy both for its rejection by the scientists of the day and its impact on the general public.

10

6. Chambers demonstrated by example that the “monkey problem” could be addressed head on in a clever but nonetheless pious way. “But the idea that any of the lower animals have been concerned in any way with the origin of man-is not this degrading? .... Were we acquainted for the first time with the circumstances attending the production of an individual of our race, we might equally think them degrading, and be eager to deny them, and exclude them from the admitted truths of nature. Knowing this fact familiarly and beyond contradiction, a healthy and natural mind finds no diffi-culty in regarding it complacently. Creative Providence has been pleased to order that it should be so, and it must therefore be sub-mitted to. Now the idea as to the progress of organic creation, if we become satisfied of its truth, ought to be received pre-cisely in this spirit” [pp. 233-234. Emphasis added]

7. Likewise, Chambers addressed the emptiness of materi-

alism – man may still be developing and that develop-ment, we can hope, will lead us to a better place. “The system of nature assures us that benevolence is a leading principle in the divine mind. But that system is at the same time deficient in a means of making this benevolence of invariable op-eration. To reconcile this to the recognised character of the Deity, it is necessary to suppose that the present system is but a part of a whole, a stage in a Great Progress, and that the Redress is in reserve.” [p. 385. Emphasis added]

11

The initial reviews were largely favorable. 1. Edward Forbes (1844, 265), who would later propose his

theory of “polarity”, writing for The Lancet observed that

“The great merit of “Vestiges” is, the attempt to shew the mutual bearing of sciences, at present too often regarded as far apart.”

2. Likewise George Combe (1845) writing for the Phrenolog-

ical Journal and Magazine of Moral Science.

a. Pronounced it “a bold, original, and interesting work, calmly and philosophically written” [p. 69]

b. Which was hardly surprising since “the author adopts Phrenology as the true philosophy of the mind” [p75]

But then came the firestorm. As C. C. Gillispie put it,

“Catastrophist and uniformitarian, astronomer and biologist, joined in repudiation … they all spoke out“. [Gillispie, 1951, 152]

1. Including Huxley who would five years later become Dar-

win’s bulldog. “’Time was’”, he vituperated quoting Hamlet, ` "‘that when the brains were out, the man would die.’ So time was, that when a book had been shown to be a mass of pretentious nonsense, it, too, quietly sunk into its proper limbo.” [Huxley, 1854, 1]

12

2. Infamous even in Darwin’s day was Adam Sedgwick’s 85 page review in the Edinburgh Review. “The book tells us of things new to many of us ... It lifts up the curtain of the dissecting-room, and publishes its secrets in rounded sen-tences of seeming reverence, and in the conventional language of good society. Things useful, and good, and excellent in one place, may be foul and mischievous in another. The world cannot bear to be turned upside down; and we are ready to wage an internecine war with any violation of our modest principles and social manners. .... It is our maxim, that things must keep their proper places if they are to work together for any good. If our glorious maidens and ma-trons may not soil their fingers with the dirty knife of the anatomist, neither may they poison the springs of joyous thought and modest feeling, by listening to the seductions of this author; who comes be-fore them … to talk familiarly with him of things which cannot be so much as named without raising a blush upon a modest cheek ;— who tells them — that their Bible is a fable when it teaches them that they were made in the image of God — that they are the children of apes and the breeders of monsters — that he has annulled all dis-tinction between physical and moral — and that all the phenomena of the universe, dead and living, are to be put before the mind … as the progression and development of a rank, unbending, and degrad-ing materialism.” [Sedgwick, 1845, 314-315. Emphasis added]

13

3. Vestiges was also justifi-ably criticized on scientific grounds. Among them, its a. Endorsement of the neb-

ular hypothesis then in eclipse.3

b. Endorsement of sponta-neous generation, e.g., of mites by electricity.

c. Advocacy of Quinarian classification.

d. Progress in the fossil

record: “It is not true that only the lowest forms of animal life are found in the lowest fossil bands, and that the more com-plicated structures … among the higher bands … We find, on the contrary, predaceous ceph-alopods … among the very old-est fossils” [Sedgwick, op. cit., 30-31]

3 In 1845, William Parsons (1800-1867) “succeeded in resolving into separate stars … nebulae that the famous astronomer. William Herschel, had con-sidered to be clouds of hot gas” [Brush, 1987, 257]

Figure 5.7 Quinarian classifica-tion schemes imagined sequen-tial five-way divisibility of taxo-nomic groups, i.e., five within five within five … Shown here is such a scheme for insects. (Rennie, J. 1845. Architecture. C. Knight. London V. II, 253).

14

4. And by appeal to authority: “The author … builds his castles in the air, … apparently, without having any just conception of the methods by which men … have ascended, step by step, to the higher elevations of physical knowledge …” [Sedgwick, op. cit., 2]

5. Likewise, David Brewster: “The voice of God is uttered as artic-ulately … in his Works as in his Word; and he is the greatest enemy of religion who would … limit sci-ence in the freedom of her range. It is otherwise, however, with those revellers [sic] in speculation who practice their orgies in the temple of science, ransacking its storehouse for the materials of hypothesis, and not unfrequently adulterating them for popular taste … Writers of this class have neither learned, nor wish to learn, the real meaning and sterling value of A FACT IN SCIENCE … that indestructible element of knowledge, which time cannot alter, nor power crush, nor fire subdue – that self-luminous atom, which shines brightest in the dark, and whose vestal fire an intellectual priesthood will ever struggle to maintain.” [Brewster, 1845, 478-479. Emphasis added]

Figure 5.8a. David Brewster, Scottish physicist, known es-pecially for his contributions to optics, among them, inven-tion of the kaleidoscope.

15

6. Indeed, the scientific defects of Vestiges and its hurtful consequences to society were universally proclaimed:

a. King and prelate; Crown and miter; scientist and theo-

logian; they marched together in lockstep.

b. As C. C. Gillispie put it in Genesis and Geology, [Sedgwick referenced] “the British constitution, the rise of Christianity and of Anglican doc-trine, the consequent ameliora-tion of human relations, the exist-ent social order, the university es-tablishment, the progress in sci-ence since Bacon, and the im-provement in manufactures, mor-als and manners since the Re-gency[4]. All these good things, he seemed to think, would crumble away at a touch if they could not be referred to the ordinances of a supervisory prov-idence …” [Gillispie, 1951, 169]

4 The reference is to the period (1810-1820) when the eldest son of George III ruled as Prince Regent, his father having gone mad.

Figure 5.8b. “Gent. No Gent. & Re. gent!!”. The royal excesses of Prince George, later George IV, here portrayed by cartoonist George Cruikshank (1816), were succeeded by Victorian modesty and seriousness of purpose.

16

7. In sum, the Anglican-Oxbridge establishment viewed Vestiges as a threat. a. In which regard, the Scottish physicist and glaciologist,

J. D. Forbes5 had written Whewell on 8 January, 1846,

“You have read of course the Sequel to the Vestiges. … The au-thor … has shown himself a very apt scholar, and has improved his knowledge so much since the first editions that his deformities no longer appear so disgusting. It is well that he began to write in the fulness [sic] of his ignorance and presumption, for had he begun now, he would have been more dangerous.” [Shairp, J. C., et al. 1873. Life and Letters of James David Forbes. MacMillan, London, 178. Emphasis added].

b. Likewise, Gillispie notes that

“Vestiges struck a note, which, besides being erroneous, was ‘dangerous’ – a word which creeps into all of the reviews and into all the correspondence....” [1951, 163].

c. And there was active collaboration to rebut it:

“The correspondence of Whewell, Owen, and [Edward] Forbes [of polarity theory (Lecture III)] reveals an explicit discus-sion of strategies for dealing with Vestiges.” [Yeo, 1984]

5 James David Forbes (1809-1868), physicist and glaciologist. Not to be con-fused with the naturalist, Edward Forbes (1815-1854), author of polarity.

17

Beyond Science and Religion. 1. The concerns generated by Vestiges reflected factors be-

yond organic mutability:

a. Chambers wrote for an emerging, mostly urban middle class that was demanding a range of social and political reforms inimical to Anglican-Oxbridge privilege.

b. Transmutation & related doctrines widely associated

with radical politics (Desmond, 1989; Secord, 2000). c. The ability of Oxbridge

dons, and the church to which they had sworn al-legiance, to control the in-tellectual and ideological inclinations of the popu-lace was at risk.

d. The more so because the

invention of steam print-ing was making it in-creasingly difficult to con-trol what was read and by whom (Secord, 2000).

e. And this was dangerous indeed, there being trouble

afoot threatening to the establishment.

Figure 5.9. Bauer and Koenig steam driven printer sold to The Times in 1814.

18

2. It is to be emphasized that Brewster, Sedgwick, etc. were a. Neither stupid,

b. Nor of a piece with fundamentalists who continued to

demand that the Bible be interpreted literally.

3. To the contrary, Vestiges’ critics maintained that a. Objective science, if true to its Baconian heritage, &

b. The Word of God, if properly interpreted, c. Would ultimately prove compatible, e.g., Brewster

above.

4. Result was retreat while maintaining contact with the enemy: As Gillispie so eloquently observed:

[Geologists] “set themselves a task which ultimately proved self-contradictory. They accorded complete philosophic validity to what-ever results Baconian induction might bring them; and they also re-quired these results to display the structure and development of the material world as the history of an intending Providence with a moral purpose, as physical evidence not only of God’s power but of His will and His immediacy. However firmly they might insist that Gene-sis was not designed to teach the truths of science, or the Geologi-cal Society to teach the truths of morality, still truth, as Sedgwick

19

felt, could not be inconsistent with itself. The central thread of inter-pretation became finer and finer. One by one its strands were bro-ken and the weight of demonstration put upon those remaining –

the six days of creation,

the six-thousand–year span of earth history,

the birth of our present globe in a primeval diluvium[6],

the antiquity of the original parentage of species,

the dynamical efficacy of divinely ordained cataclysms,

the flood itself. “Finally, the conception of a divinity who must continually interfere with his arrangements in order to prove himself a governing force depended upon the immutability of different manifestations of life. This was the one remaining strand. Publicists of the school of theo-logical science rushed to hang upon it, and of course they hanged themselves with it.” [1951, 146-147. Bullets added for clar-ity.]

6 “A coarse surficial [geologic] deposit formerly attributed to a general del-uge but now regarded as glacial drift.” (Dictionary.com).

20

Pillars of Privilege & Assaults Thereon.

Test and Corporation Acts (T&CA) 1. Religious tests for full societal participation.

2. Corporation Act of 1661

required all newly elected members of corporations to acknowledge the king as head of the English church (Oath of Supremacy) and to take communion within a year.

3. Test Acts of 1672 and 1678 imposed similar re-quirements upon holders of public office and members of Parliament as well as ad-ditional requirements in-cluding rejection of transub-stantiation, a requirement that excluded Catholics. 7

7 Hence Article 6 of the United States Constitution, “... no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States”.

Figure 5.10. Tory pushback against early efforts to repeal test and corporation acts. At the left Joseph Priestley, sci-entist and Unitarian cleric preaches to a motley crew with Charles Fox in front. Col-ored etching published by Wil-liam Dent, 22 March, 1790.

21

4. Support for the 1678 law galva-nized by rumors of a “Popish Plot” to assassinate Charles II.

5. Relevant to participants in the science wars that would follow, T&CA prohibitions applied to

a. Matriculation at Oxford and

graduation from Cambridge.

b. Membership in the Royal Colleges of Physicians and Surgeons.

6. Advocates of repeal included

a. Charles Fox (“Reynard”8 in

Figure 5.10).

b. Joseph Priestley (1733-1804) – Unitarian minister and discoverer of oxygen.

8 Charles Fox (1749-1806) was an anti-establishment politician: abolitionist; supporter of French and American revolutions; proponent of religious toler-ance. Reference in cartoon is to Reynard the Fox, a canny canid of medieval fable – hence “sly as a fox”. The “Cyprian corps” seated behind him were prostitutes, the term referring to ancientl worship of Aphrodite on Cyprus.

Figure 5.11. Popish plot revisited in 1816. From https://openlibrary.org.

22

Radical Activism

1. Satirized in the Tory press (Figure 10);

2. Inspired violence against nonconformists.9

3. Birmingham Riots.

a. Priestley’s residence, li-brary & meeting houses were destroyed.

“… rioters and looters, daubing their slogans of ‘Church and King forever’ on walls and shut-ters, encouraged by Anglican clergy, local landlords and even a justice of the peace, at-tacked four meeting houses and twenty-seven residences before dragoons[10] were brought in … to make arrests.” [Stott, 2012, 172].

b. In 1794, Priestley fled to America.

9 The term non-conformist referred to non-Anglican Protestants. 10 Carbine carrying mounted infantry.

Figure 5.12. July, 1791. Riot-ers burn Priestley’s house.

23

The Governmental Boot. 1. 1790: Edmund Burke, an influential MP who had de-

fended the Colonies, condemned the French Revolution.

a. Which he analogized to the overthrow and execution of Charles in 1658.

b. And distinguished from the “Glorious Revolution” (over-

throw of (Catholic) James II and ascension of (protestant) William of Orange in 1688.

2. 1792: Royal Proclamation against Seditious Writings. 3. 1792-93 Sedition trials. Thomas Paine (that Tom Paine!)

among those convicted – in Paine’s case, in abstentia. 4. 1794 High Treason trials:

a. Three tried; all acquitted. b. But – enthusiasm for radical causes diminished.

5. As did

a. Freedom of Assembly. b. Freedom of the Press.

24

Figure 5.13. Edmund Burke’s highly influential pamphlet criticized both French revolutionaries and their English supporters.

25

Figure 5.14. Top. [Burke] Smelling out a Rat; – or – The Atheistical-Revolutionist [Unitarian minister Richard Price] disturbed in his Midnight "Calculations" by James Gillray, 1790. Bottom. Priestley and Paine as imagined by Isaac Cruikshank (1792) in “The Friends of the People”.

26

Figure 5.15. Published account of the 1794 Treason Trials. Acquittal of all three defendants was received with enthusiasm by the citizenry. Thelwall and Hardy were members of the radical London Correspond-ing Society; Horne Tooke, a supporter of the American Revolution.

27

Corn Laws.

1. Passed in 1815. a. Restricted importation of

grains.11

b. Maintained inflated prices caused by naval block-ade during the Napole-onic Wars.

c. Deemed responsible for

post-war economic downturn by reducing discretionary spending.

2. Supported by rural interests, landed gentry especially.

Opposed by workers and factory owners, especially in Manchester and the industrial midlands.

3. Together with unaddressed demands for Parliamentary reform, the Corn Laws provoked protests and riots, the most notorious of which resulted in the “Peterloo Massa-cre” (below).

11 In 19th century Britain, the term “corn” referred to “any of various cereal plants, especially the predominant crop of a region, such as wheat in Eng-land and oats in Scotland and Ireland” (Dictionary.com).

Figure 5.16. 1815 Bread riot outside House of Commons – http://www.lookandlearn.com.

28

Inequitable Parliamentary Representation. 1. Concentrated electoral power in the hands of the rural An-

glican-Tory elite.

2. Unintended consequence of changing demographics absent periodic redistricting. a. Densely populated urban centers of production often

represented by one or two MPs or not at all.

b. Rotten / Pocket boroughs12: Tiny electorates con-trolled, i.e., by bribery or coercion, by one or a few indi-viduals.

c. Inequities exacerbated by public (as opposed to se-

cret) ballot – e.g., a rural borough with say 40 men, one of whom owned the land yjat everyone else worked.

3. Result: Less than 10% of adult males could vote.

4. If not intentional, the above inequities certainly appreci-

ated and defended by their beneficiaries.

12 Dictionary.com gives the following distinction: Rotten borough: “(before the Reform Act of 1832) any of certain English parliamentary constituencies with only a very few electors”. Pocket borough: “(before the Reform Bill of 1832) any English borough whose representatives in Parliament were con-trolled by an individual or family.”

29

Interactions and Feedback

Figure 5.17. Boxes and arrows representation of circumstances and political issues in Regency England (1811-1837). Black arrows denotes positive feedback; filled circles (●), negative feedback; red arrows (), preservationist government interventions.

30

RE Figure 17: Note the following: 1. Two-way positive feedback across the top:

a. Power begets power.

b. Critical factor in human evolution: biological and cul-tural.

2. Inequitable representation:

a. Resists repeal of Test and Corporation Acts.

b. Preserves Corn Laws for 30 years.

c. Stymies electoral reform until 1832, which, when it

comes, is but a partial measure – compare with Peo-ple’s Charter below.

3. High food prices and municipal under-representation in-

flame demands (radical activism) for electoral reform.

4. Social inequality likewise promotes pressure (radical ac-tivism) to repeal Test and Corporation Acts.

31

Peterloo Massacre.

1. One of a series of “risings” / demonstrations demanding

a. Electoral reform

b. Corn Law repeal.

2. Name “Peterloo Massacre”: a. Took place in St. Peter’s

Field, Manchester

b. Many participants Napoleonic war veterans; some of Waterloo; hence “Peterloo”.

c. Many (most?) unarmed / dressed in their Sunday best.

3. Organized by Manchester Patriotic Union.

4. On 16 August, 1819, tens of thousands gathered to hear calls for electoral reform.

5. Dispersed with casualties by cavalry.

6. Immediate consequence was government crackdown on dissent.

Figure 5.18. Peterloo massa-cre as depicted by activist and publisher, Richard Carlile.

32

Anti-Corn Law League.

Figure. 5.19. Radicals’ inability to repeal of the Corn Laws, led to the founding of the Anti-Corn-Law League in 1838. Shown here is a membership card. Banner above the starving supplicants reads "Give us this day our daily bread." (http://www.victorianweb.org/history/cornlaws4.html)

33

The People’s Charter.

1. In 1838, the London Working Men's Association, composed a six-point Charter “providing for just representation of the people of Great Britain”.

a. A vote for all men (over 21); b. A secret ballot; c. Electoral districts of equal

size; d. No property qualification to

become an MP; e. Payment for MPs; and f. Annual elections for Parlia-

ment. 2. Though never enacted as

such, all but one of the Chartist demands (annual elections) eventually enacted into law.

Figure 5.20. Proposed Peo-ple’s Charter.

34

Repeal and Reform 1. T&CAs repealed in 1828 and 1829.

2. Corn Laws repealed in 1846 on the occasion of the devel-

oping Irish potato famine.

3. Parliamentary reform initiated in 1832.

Figure 5.21. The Reform Act of 1832 removed rotten boroughs, added new ones in their place and doubled the number of voters.

35

Figure 5.22. Facing. “Conjugation of the Verb to Reform” by Charles Jameson Grant, 1831. The instructor is Charles Grey, 2nd Earl Grey, Whig politician, Prime Minis-ter from 1830-1834 and one of the chief backers of the Reform Act of 1832. The enforcer is Thomas Atwood, founder of the Birmingham Political Union, which cam-paigned for municipal representation. The dunce is Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington (that Wellington!) and a leading opponent of Reform. During 1831 and 1832, three reform bills were passed by the House of Com-mons, the first two of which were rejected by the House of Lords. Passage of the final bill by the upper chamber was secured both by public pressure, the so-called “Days of May, and pressure from the king – specifically the threat of packing the House of Lords with Whig Peers (Pearce, 2003. Reform! The Fight for the 1832 Reform Act. Jonathan Cape, London).

36

37

Figure 5.23. May, 1832. With the fate of the 3rd Reform Bill hanging in the balance, a meeting of Thomas Atwood’s Birmingham Political Un-ion attracts ~150,000 supporters. The implicit threat of violence, plus widespread rioting, economic sabotage, etc. lead some, at the time, and in retrospect, to believe that England was tottering on the brink of revolution. In the event, King and Lords caved, the bill was enacted, and Reform became the law of the land. Painting by Benjamin Haydon.

38

4. Followed by reform acts of 1867, 1884, and 1918 – uni-versal suffrage being the eventual result.

Figure 5.24. The Reform Act of 1832 notwithstanding, universal suffrage for men would not be achieved until 1918; and for women, until 1928.

39

The Anglo-Saxon Shogunate.

Darwin’s first theory of transmutation (Grinnell, 1974) 1. Held that isolation produces novelty – which it does.

2. Foundered upon the observation that insular faunas are

often archaic – which they are.

3. In fact, the evolution of insular biotas depends on both a. Immigration rate – intermediate rates may best promote

endemism by providing opportunity for divergence, without swamping out novelty.

b. Potential for local isolation – e.g., division of

i. Archipelagoes into islands and / or

ii. Individual islands by habitat.

By analogy, British opinion on transmutation a semi-iso-lated population of ideas, the isolating factors being

1. The English Channel

2. Language

40

Semi-isolation permitted development of a uniquely British natural history compatible with both 1. The British religion.

2. British exceptionalism.

3. Regarding which Gillispie

(1951, 200-201) quotes “an astonished German chem-ist” who gave the following account of a lecture by Wil-liam Buckland13 delivered in a limestone quarry.

“ ‘The immeasurable beds of iron-ore, coal and limestone, which are to be found in the neighbor-hood of Birmingham, lying beside or above one another, and to which man has only to help him-self in order to procure for his use the most useful of all metals …

13 William Buckland (1784-1856). As discussed in Lecture II, Buckland was and Anglican theologian and geologist, who contributed to paleontology (first dinosaur) and the concept of “deep time”, which he attempted to rec-oncile with an allegorical interpretation of Genesis. An early believer in a universal flood, he later became convinced that superficial deposits as-cribed to the deluge were, in fact, glacial debris.

Figure 5.25. Tourists en route to the interior of Dudley cavern via canal. In the 1830’s, the wealthy were sim-ilarly transported to hear geologists expound upon stratigraphy, coal for-mation & the providential underpin-nings of British hegemony. For humbler souls, access was by foot-path.

41

may not, he [Buckland] urged, be considered as mere accident. On the contrary, it in fact expresses the most clear design of Provi-dence to make the inhabitants of the British Isles, by means of this gift, the most powerful and the richest nation on the earth.’ … [The lecture concluded and] “led by Buckland, the meeting moved back towards the light of day singing ‘God Save the Queen.’ ’’ [Em-phasis added]

4. Reviewing Genesis and Geology, A. C. Crombie (1952,

99-100) observed that “This point of view [God’s Two Books], strongly advocated by Newton and John Ray, was a frequent object of astonished com-ment in the eighteenth century by French rationalists, for whom sci-ence was the richest source of ammunition to use against a religion in which they no longer believed and a social order of which they disapproved. Eighteenth-century English and Scottish Protestant-ism saw no such conflict between science and religion until the ge-ological controversies of the 'nineties. The conflict that began then was a peculiarly British Protestant phenomenon depending on a particular view of the relations between the findings of science and revelations of the workings of Providence.”

42

Specifically: semi-isolation allowed the British scientific es-tablishment to 1. Reject with a few exceptions the ideas of Buffon & La-

marck.

2. Subsequently embrace, to a greater or lesser extent, more recently imported Continental doctrines that a. While compatible with transmutation,

b. Did not necessitate its reality, and thereby

c. Deflected attention therefrom,

3. These being a. “Unity of type” (Desmond, 1989; Secord, 2000)

b. Platonic idealism (Rupke, 1985; 2009)

43

Continental Diseases I.

1st strain: Lamarckism. 1. 1st vectors: travelers, some

of whom had attended La-marck’s lectures (Lecture I).

2. 1st outbreak: Edinburgh.

3. There encountered by CD.

CD studied with marine biolo-gist, Robert Grant

1. Grant believed (1826, 283)

marine sponges evolved from freshwater species. “Although in every respect a sponge, it [Spongilla] has a more imperfect structure than any of the marine species …. From this greater simplicity …, we are forced to consider it more ancient than the marine sponges, and … probably their … parent …” [Re-call “sodium clock”].

Figure 5.26. In first decades of the 19th century, French evolutionism spread to Anglo-Saxon Britain via the “Celtic fringe”.

Figure 5.27. Vertical section of freshwater Spongilla, showing the arrangement of the canal system. From Parker (1900).

44

2. Biological Note: The traits (including freshwater distribu-tion) Grant regarded as primitive in Spongilla now viewed as derived (Van Soest et al., 2012).

3. Darwin a. Must also have read an article (Anonymous14, 1826)

published in the 1st issue of the Edinburgh New Philo-sophical Journal extolling Lamarck as “one of the most sagacious naturalists of our day.”

b. Was familiar (Egerton, 1976; Browne, 1995) with La-

marck’s (1801) Système des Animaux sans Vertèbres, which included an introductory lecture on evolution.

4. Likewise, Janet Browne (1995, 83) notes that CD

“had studied his grandfather’s volumes closely – closely enough to continue the interest by reading Anna Seward’s biography [of Eras-mus] … and following up crucial questions about the nature of life and organization as raised in Zoonomia and by contemporary de-bates in Edinburgh in other medical texts of the period.”

14 Traditionally attributed to Grant. More recently, Secord (1991) argued that the anonymous author was, in fact, Robert Jameson, a suggestion subse-quently endorsed by Desmond and Parker (2006).

45

5. All of which contradicts Darwin’s published recollection (The Autobiography) of the occasion on which Grant shared his ideas.

“He [Grant] one day, when we were walking together, burst forth in high admiration of Lamarck and his views on evolution. I listened in silent astonishment, and as far as I can judge without any effect on my mind. I had previously read the 'Zoonomia' of my grandfather, in which similar views are maintained, but without producing any ef-fect on me. Nevertheless it is probable that the hearing rather early in life such views maintained and praised may have favoured my upholding them under a different form in my 'Origin of Species.' ” [Barlow, 1958, p. 49]

6. Which is curious.

7. Likewise CD’s recollections of the Plinian Society, an un-dergraduate club a. That “met in an underground room in the University for the sake

of reading papers on natural science and discussing them”. [Bar-low, 1958, p. 5].

b. And about which CD recollected

“I used regularly to attend and the meetings had a good effect on me in stimulating my zeal and giving me new congenial ac-quaintances. One evening a poor young man got up and after

46

stammering for a prodi-gious length of time, blushing crimson, he at last slowly got out the words, ‘Mr. President, I have forgotten what I was going to say’. The poor fel-low looked quite over-whelmed, and all the members were so sur-prised that no one could think of a word to say to cover his confusion. The papers which were read to our little society were not printed, so that I had not the satisfaction of seeing my paper in print; but I be-lieve Dr. Grant noticed my small discovery in his ex-cellent memoir on Flustra.” [Barlow, 1958, pp. 50-51]

8. Which description omits the most memorable event that occurred during Darwin’s membership. a. On March 27, 1827, the day that Darwin gave his paper

on ciliated Flustra larvae, William Browne (who had sponsored Darwin’s membership) also spoke.

Figure 5.28. Flustra foliacea (a bryozoan). a. Portion of colony. b. Magnified to show individual cells. (Nicholson, H. A. 1880, Manual of Zoology. Blackwood & Sons.

Read more: http://chestof-books.com/animals/Manual-Of-Zoology/Chapter-XLI-Mol-luscoida-Poly-zoa.html#ixzz3qdZXnZtt

47

b. Browne attacked the teleology of Sir Charles Bell who, as Desmond and Moore (1991, 32) put it, had

“claimed that the Creator had endowed the human face with unique muscles that allowed man to express his unique emotions, which reflected his unique moral nature.”

c. And asserted that mind, “as far as sense, & conscious-ness, is concerned, is material” (Gruber, 1974).

d. Heated discussion ensued, the upshot being that the

transcribed summary of Browne’s presentation was struck from the Society’s minutes; likewise, the paper’s announcement from minutes of preceding meeting.

The following year Browne and Darwin both left Edinburgh:

1. Browne

a. Received his medical degree,

b. Specialized in psychiatry after which, he

i. Continued his assault on religion analogizing “reli-gious fanaticism” with insanity (Browne, 1836).

ii. Was instrumental in bringing psychiatry out of me-dieval darkness.

48

2. Darwin

a. Decamped for Cambridge, the Beagle and everything that followed.

Figure 5.29. Plinian Society minutes containing notes, sub-sequently lined out, of William Browne’s presentation. Left. Picture courtesy of J. M. Lynch. Right. Text transcribed from Gruber (1974, p. 479).

49

b. 11 years later, would write in Notebook C (1838), 166:

“Thought … being hereditary it is difficult to imagine it anything but structure of brain hereditary, analogy points out to this. — love of the deity effect of organization, oh you materialist! Read Barclay[1] on organization!! Avitism [2] in mental structure a disposition & avi-tism in corporeal structure are facts full of meaning. — Why is thought being a secretion of brain, more wonderful than gravity a property of matter? It is our arrogance, it our admiration of our-selves”.

1 Barclay, J. 1822. An Inquiry into the opinions, ancient and modern, concerning life and organization.

2.Avitism [sic, i.e., atavism] means relating to ancestors.” [Footnotes added by Darwin Online; emphasis, by present author]

c. Likewise, in Old & Useless Notes … (1837-40), 6v:

“Perhaps even the most complicated instinct might be analysed [sic] into steps, as species change.— Must be so if Lamarck's theory true” [Darwin Online; Emphasis added]

d. Mindful of the opprobrium directed at those who advo-cated mental materialism, he resolves in Notebook M, “To avoid stating how far, I believe, in Materialism, say only that emo-tions, instincts degrees of talent, which are heredetary [sic] are so because brain of child resembles parent stock.— (& phrenologists state that brain alters)” [1838, 40. Recall “delay” argument]

50

e. And in The Expression of the Emotions in Man and An-imals. (1872, 10-12):

“Sir C. Bell … maintains that many of our facial muscles are ‘purely instrumental in expression;’ or are ‘a special provision’ for this sole object.12 But the simple fact that the anthropoid apes possess the same facial muscles as we do,13 renders it very improbable that these muscles in our case serve exclusively for expression …”

——————————————

12 'Anatomy of Expression,' 3rd edit. pp. 98, 121, 131.

13 Professor Owen expressly states ('Proc. Zoolog. Soc.' 1830, p. 28) that this is the case with respect to the Orang, and specifies all the more important muscles which are well known to serve with man for the expression of his feelings. See, also, a description of several of the facial muscles in the Chimpanzee, by Prof. Macalister, in 'Annals and Magazine of Natural History,' vol. vii. May, 1871, p. 342.

Figure 5.30. Notebeook C (1838, 66). The words “Oh you materialist” have been circled. From Darwin Online.

51

3. In preparing Emotions, CD was assisted by James Crich-ton-Browne15,

a. William Browne’s son,

b. Whom he cited extensively in the resulting volume.

4. And yet CD never acknowledged the father,

a. The man who had proposed him for Plinian Society membership.

b. Even in 1872, when guilt by association with phreno-logical materialism was greatly diminished and charges of materialism no longer carried their one-time sting (e.g., Secord, 2000).

Which brings us back to the Autobiography,

1. Published four years after Emotions.

2. Why so forgetful?

3. Was it simply age or a lingering reluctance to be associ-ated with transformist radicals, whose ideas he had twenty-five years previous legitimized?

15 The “Crichton” in “Crichton-Browne” was to honor his godmother, Mrs. Elizabeth Crichton.

52

Bad Associations: The stain of Materialism.

Yeo (1984) observes that Vestiges:

“revived the prospect of a connection between science and material-ism, an association which had political implications in the aftermath of the French Revolution … In the year of Peterloo for example, the lec-tures of William Lawrence[16], which advocated a naturalistic approach to the study of the mind, were widely attacked not only for their theo-logical consequences but because of their alleged affinity with French physiological theories … Lawrence was accused of both blasphemy and sedition, and reminded … of the dangers of importing French ideas” [p. 10. Emphasis added]

1. Yeo’s reference is to a compilation of lectures Lawrence delivered to the Royal College Surgeons in 1817-1818.

2. Included response to criticism of his previous rejec-tion of his J. Abernathy’s (his teacher) identification of electric fluid with the vital force

“I cannot presume to address you … without first publicly clearing myself from … the charge of having perverted the honourable of-fice ... to the very unworthy design of propagating opinions detri-mental to society, and of endeavouring to enforce them, for the purpose of loosening those restraints on which the welfare of man-kind depends.” [Lawrence, 1819, p. 1. Emphasis added]

16 Lawrence, W. 1819. Lectures on Physiology, Zoology and the Natural History of Man. J. Calow, London.

53

3. In short order (Mudford, 1968), the book was attacked by

a. The Edinburgh Medical Review, the Quarterly Review,

b. The Christian advocate17 at Cambridge, and the lec-turer in Christianity at Oxford.

4. In addition, the hospitals where Lawrence was employed offered him the choice of deleting certain offending pas-sages or resigning (Ibid. 431).

5. Faced with losing his surgery, Lawrence withdrew the book, purchasing unsold copies at his own expense.

6. Pirated editions nonetheless circulated.

a. Issued by radical activists such as Richard Carlile who did so while imprisoned for sedition (Desmond, 1989, 120).

b. Led to a lawsuit that Lawrence lost because “an author had no property rights on a blasphemous book” (Ibid).

7. Writing of the dangers faced by the anatomists of the 1830’s, Secord (2000) likewise observed that

“Any treatise that discussed the mechanism of creation was in dan-ger of being accused of infidelity – what one evangelical Tory con-demned as ‘the absurd cry of Atheism’. ‘Materialism’ was not a co-herent doctrine, but a term of abuse.” [p. 64]

17 Charged with giving an annual lecture defending Christianity against its critics.

54

Secord (2000, 64 ff) emphasizes that it was nonetheless possible to insulate oneself from charges of materialism provided due care was taken.

1. Cites Wm. Carpenter18 as someone who successfully navigated the shoals of political & religious conservatism.

2. Promoted a Law of progress imposed by the Creator.

3. When attacked “for selling a machine world able to run without di-vine interference,” Carpenter was able to cite pre-positioned passages intended to vitiate such assaults: e.g.,

“Let it be borne in mind, then, that when a law of Physics or of Vitality is mentioned, nothing more is really implied than a simple expres-sion of the mode in which the Creator is constantly operating on inorganic matter, or on organized structures” [Quoted by Secord, 2000, 66]

4. Thereby able to secure support of distinguished scien-tists, physicians and men of the cloth, the Royal Physi-cian, most importantly, JFW Herschel among them [Ibid.]

Which takes us back to Darwin’s bad associations:

1. “Lawrence, then, was in Darwin’s day a living document of the price of dangerous ideas.” [Gruber, 1981, 205. Emphasis added];

2. And Carpenter, of the rewards of deferring to authority.

18 Carpenter, W. B. 1839. Principles of General and Comparative Physiology. Churchill London.

55

Politics and Naval Timber.

Adrian Desmond (1989) asserts the following:

1. Political and scientific inclination highly correlated.

2. Medical community divided into four camps:

a. “Anticorporation radicals … championed … philosophical anatomy” (the 2nd Continental infection – see below).

b. “Radical dissenters and disadvantaged private teachers at war with the surgeons … likewise inserted … [philosophical anatomy] into the medical curriculum.”

c. “Whig moderates … emasculated radical imports [by linking them to divine foresight] for their own professional ends.”

d. “Wealthy surgeons … promoting Owen’s ideal, anti-Lamarckian

anatomy [below], in which power emanated ‘from above’ and

sanctioned the traditional chain of authority.” [p. 18]

3. Each group represented by elements of the press – the result being on-going conflict. Hence:

“… the Revd. Thomas Pearson observed that ‘if the press be a pow-erful agency for good, it is unquestionably a powerful agency for evil also … [and it] is powerfully employed on the side of infidelity’ Pear-son actually did the calculation. Of religious publications he counted 24.5 million a year. From the atheistic and corrupting presses the total was 28.5 million. The devil was winning.” [Brooke, 2001, 133 ff]

56

Just how closely radical politics and radical biology were conjoined is illustrated by the writings of Patrick Matthew, a tree farmer, who would later claim (Matthew, 1860) priority for the discovery of natural selection.

1. Referring to what he called “selection by the law of na-ture”, Matthew wrote

“As Nature … has a power of in-crease far beyond what is needed to supply the place of what falls by Time's decay, those individuals who possess not the requisite strength, swiftness, hardihood, or cunning, fall prematurely without reproducing … their place being occupied by the more perfect of their own kind.” [Matthew, 1831, 365, quoted by Weale, 2015, 2]

2. But in the very next sentence, Matthew shifts from natural history to politics: “The law of entail19,” he writes,

“necessary to hereditary nobility, is an outrage on this law of nature … which has the most debasing influence upon the energies of a people, and will sooner or later lead to general subversion …”

19 Whereby a person’s title and estate passes undivided to a single individual, generally his eldest son or lacking a male heir to the closest male relative.

Figure 5.31. Plate from Mat-thew’s 1831 book.

57

3. Which abomination he links to inbreeding and hereditary deterioration of the nobility – think hemophilia.

“The abolition of the law of entail and primogeniture will, in the present state of civilization, not only add to the happiness of the proprietor, heighten morality, and give much greater stability to the social order, but will also give a general stimulus to industry and improvement ...” [Ibid. Emphasis added]

4. Before returning to biology:

“The self-regulating adaptive disposition of organized life may, in part, be traced to the extreme fecundity of Nature, who, as before stated, has, in all the varieties of her offspring, a prolific power much beyond (in many cases a thousandfold) what is necessary to fill up the vacancies caused by senile decay. As the field of existence is limited and pre-occupied, it is only the hardier, more robust, better suited to circumstance individuals, who are able to struggle forward to maturity, these inhabiting only the situations to which they have superior adaptation and greater power of occupancy than any other kind; the weaker, less circumstance-suited, being permaturely de-stroyed. This principle is in constant action, it regulates the colour, the figure, the capacities, and instincts; those individuals of each species, whose colour and covering are best suited to concealment or protection from enemies, or defence from vicissitude and inclem-encies of climate, whose figure is best accommodated to health, strength, defence, and support; whose capacities and instincts can best regulate the physical energies to self-advantage according to circumstances—in such immense waste of primary and youthful life,

58

those only come forward to maturity from the strict ordeal by which Nature tests their adaptation to her standard of perfection and fit-ness to continue their kind by reproduction.”

5. And shades of Darwin’s demon,

“From the unremitting operation of this law acting in concert with the tendency which the progeny have to take the more particular quali-ties of the parents, together with the connected sexual system in vegetables, and instinctive limitations to its own kind in animals, a considerable uniformity of figure, colour, and character, is induced, constituting species; the breed gradually acquiring the very best possible adaptation of these to its condition which it is susceptible of, and when alteration of circumstance occurs, thus changing in character to suit these as far as its nature is susceptible of change.” [op. cit., 384-385]

6. Elsewhere, Matthew appears to suggest that selection

can produce new species, i.e.,

“that a very slight change of circumstance by culture inducing a cor-responding change of character—may have gradually accommo-dated … [living things] to the variations of the elements contain-ing them, and, without new [divine?] creation, have presented the diverging changeable phenomena of past and present organized existence.” [Ibid, 382]

59

* From Weale, M. E. 2015. Patrick Matthew's law of natural selection. Biol. J. Linnean Soc. 115: 785-791.

Darwin, Wallace and Matthew Compared.*

60

Continental Diseases II. Unity of Type.

Robert Grant’s20 Lamarckism notwithstanding, biological progressives did not march under the transformist banner.

“Systematic treatises downplayed or rejected the evolutionary implica-tions of philosophical anatomy because it could be so readily associ-ated with infidelity, pornography, or the unstamped press. Such asso-ciations were fatal to any campaign to establish a safe science of life, or a medical profession based on technical expertise and science. A causal account of generation of higher species was, even in the most liberal medical circles, simply too speculative to be an available subject for general treatises, regular research, or a lecture course. Instead, ‘unity of type’ was the battle cry of the earlier reformers, not the origin of new species.” [Secord, 2000, 64. Emphasis added]

Unity of Type (aka Philosophical Anatomy) refers to the view that all animal structures constitute variations on a single universal theme.

1. Propounded by Étienne Geoffroy St. Hilaire (e.g., Appel, 1987; Le Guyader, 2004).

2. Stood in opposition to Cuvier’s opinion that animals could be divided into four great embranchments: Verte-brata, Articulata, Mollusca, and Radiata.

20 By 1827, Grant was teaching at University College London, an institution founded on utilitarian principles as an alternative to the restrictive policies of Oxford and Cambridge.

61

Cuvier and Geoffroy had dis-agreed on this point for some time, but in 1830, things came to a head.

1. Geoffroy’s favorable as-sessment of a manuscript (submitted for publication) claiming that cephalopods were actually vertebrates folded back on them-selves prompted a series of public exchanges.

2. Cuvier it is generally be-lieved, got the better of the argument:

“I restore all these facts to their truest meanings, and say that Cephalopods possess many organs in common with Vertebrates; that these organs perform analogous functions in them; that these organs are arranged differently, are often built differently, and are accompanied by organs that verte-brates do not possess at all, while [vertebrates] have various or-gans that are missing in Cephalopods. … I ask myself now: how is it possible, in view of these many, enormous differences … to speak of identity of composition, unity of composition between Cephalo-pods and Vertebrates without depriving words of their clearest meanings?” [quoted by Corsi (1988, 259]

Figure 5.32. Figure used by Cu-vier (1830) to refute Geoffroy’s claim of cephalopod-vertebrate homology. In the bird, the brain is mostly dorsal to the digestive tract; in the octopus, to one side. From Shgeno et al., 2010.

62

3. Transmutation.

a. Entered the argument explic-itly21 when Geoffroy argued Teleosaurus living gavial.

b. Cuvier, to the contrary, de-nied transmutation of any ex-tinct forms into living beings.

c. Geoffroy’s conversion came late in life.

d. Emphasized heritable modifications consequent to ab-normal development caused by changing environ-mental conditions, e.g., atmospheric composition.

4. Dispute was also about form and function.

a. Cuvier argued similarities in form were due solely to similarities in function – what we today call analogies.

b. Geoffroy emphasized pedigree: the same basic form could be modified to different ends.

c. And he was right in the sense that homologous genes control vertebrate and invertebrate development e.g., dorso-ventral patterning!

21 Goeffroy’s biographer argues) that "… evolution progressively enters the basic tex-ture of the conflict, ... the year 1830 [being] ... only one incident in a vast debate.” (Guy-ader, H. 2004. Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire: A Visionary Naturalist. P. 226).

Figure 5.33. Teleosaurus, a Jurassic crocodilian.

63

Dpp (Decapentaplegicand) and BMP-4 (Bone morphogenetic pro-tein-4) are small protein homologs that orchestrate the development of what becomes the dorsal axis of developing protostomes and the ventral axes of chordates by suppressing neural development. Sog (short gastrulation) and Chordin (), etc., are dpp / BMP inhibitors that thereby promote aorta formation ventrally in protostomes and dor-sally in vertebrates. Picture from Wikipedia.

Dorso-Ventral Patterning Inversion

in Arthropods and Chordates.

64

Designing the Dinosaur.

Long reviled by Darwinians for opposing CD & NS, Owen has more recently come in for rehabilitation (Rupke, 1994).

Hailed in his time as the “British Cuvier”; awarded just about every scientific honor Britain had to offer.

The force behind creation of the Natural History Museum in South Kensington.

“As my strength fails, I feel the term of my labours drawing nigh, how I long to see the conclusion of their aim! – the exposition of our national treasures of natural history in a manner worthy of the greatest com-mercial and colonial empire of the world.” [Rupke 2009, 13]

Owen’s museum goals required patronage, hence his

1. Cultivation of the wealthy and the powerful.

2. Adjusting his views as needed (Rupke, 1994, 66) and es-pecially (Desmond, 1979; 1982; 1985; 1989)

Owen’s patrons included

a. PM Peel who secured him a Civil List Pension (₤200).

b. Queen Victoria and Prince Albert.

65

Figure 5.34. In 1842, Drayton Manor was the home of Conservative Prime Minister, Sir Robert Peel. "Within two years," Adrian Desmond (1985) informs us, “Owen was … a guest … arranging for his portrait … to be hung alongside Cuvier's in Sir Robert's gallery. Picture from Wik-ipedia Commons.

66

Figure 5.35. Above. Megalosaurus as reconstructed by Owen from the skeletal remains indicated. Picture from Desmond (1979), who argues that imagining that dinosaurs approached the mammalian grade of or-ganization allowed Owen to argue against continuing progression through geological time, a proposition congenial to his “Paleyite”, Ox-bridge patrons – but see Rupke (1991, 81).

“… the hypothetical derivation of reptiles from metamorphosed fishes is negatived by the fact that … The Monitors … are older than the Labyrinthodonts … and … the thecodont Lizards… have equal claims to a more ancient origin.” [Owen

(1841), p. 197-198] Page Facing. Queen Victoria and Prince Albert enter the workshop of Waterhouse Hawkins wherein Owen’s concrete dinosaurs were con-structed. Greeting the royal couple are the sculptor (left) and Owen (right) who promoted and advised the project. From Kerley, B. and B. Selznick. 2001. The Dinosaurs of Waterhouse Hawkins. Scholastic Press, NY.

67

68

Figure 5.36. Owen’s dinosaurs restored. Although anatomically incor-rect, they are of historical, as well as scientific, interest, hearkening back, as they do, to a time of unbridled Victorian exuberance – “Rule Britannia”, and so forth. Source: Wikipedia Commons: “Crystal Palace Dinosaurs”.

69

Figure 5.37. New Year's Eve in the Iguanodon mold at the relocated Crystal Palace, 31 December, 1853. As part of the festivities, the cele-brants, Hawkins, Prince Albert and some twenty of Britain's most distin-guished naturalists, belted out a ditty composed for the occasion by Ed-ward Forbes. Each repetition of the chorus, per Forbes' instructions, was followed by a resounding roar.

70

Transcendentalism and Development.

Owen (Richards, 1987; Rupke, 1994, 2009) united 1. Geoffroyism (unity of type);

2. Cuvier’s embranchments (even though Owen himself fo-

cused largely on vertebrates);22

3. German transcendentalism, i.e., the archetype23 concept – one for each embranchment.

4. Von Baer’s view of embryology (embryos of “higher” forms pass through stages in which they resemble the embryos, not the adults, of “lower” forms).

5. Of these, transcendentalism and von Baerian develop-ment constituted the third wave of Continental natural history to wash the British shore.

Result of Owen’s synthesis imagined adaptation as conse-quent to appropriate modification of the archetype.

22 An exception was Owen’s work on the chambered nautilus, a “living fossil” the soft anatomy of which he was the first to describe (Rupke, 2009, 68 ff).

23 Ideas in the mind of God to many pre-Origin. Post-Origin, archetypes be-

came ancestors.

71

On the question of new species, though deferential and cir-cumspect, Owen was nonetheless bloodied early on 1. Regarding a passage in On the Nature of Limbs (Owen,

1849), The Manchester Spectator accused him of “importing into England the scientific pantheism of German natural-ists such as Oken[24] and supporting the Vestigian theory of devel-opment ‘that God had not peopled the globe by successive crea-tions but by the operation of general laws.’” [Rupke, 2009, 154]

2. Though cloaked in expressions of piety, the words that provoked the Spectator’s ire, were worthy of Vestiges. “To what natural laws or secondary causes the orderly succession and progression of such organic phenomena may have been com-mitted we as yet are ignorant. But if, without derogation of the Divine

24 German transcendentalist from whose ideas of serial homology, Owen’s vertebrate archetype was derivative.

Figure 5.38. Owen’s vertebrate archetype emphasized serial homology – everything from ribs. From Wikipedia Commons

72

power, we may conceive the existence of such ministers, and per-sonify them by the term ‘Nature,’ we learn from the past history of our globe that she has advanced with slow and stately steps, guided by the archetypal light, amidst the wreck of worlds, from the first embodiment of the Vertebrate idea under its old Ichthyic vestment, until it became arrayed in the glorious garb of the Human form.” [Owen (1849, 86) quoted by Rupke, Ibid.]

3. There followed

a. An explanatory letter to the editor by Owen and a par-tial retraction by the Spectator;

b. Not one word of support from Owen’s friends and col-leagues – including Darwin who had completed the “Essay” of 1844 five years previous.

4. As to Owen himself:

“A change of emphasis and the replacement of ‘secondary laws’ by the ambiguous ‘creative acts’ which could refer to divine, as well as to natural, creativity, remained Owen’s shelter for a number of years.” [Rupke, 2009, 155]

5. Whereafter The Origin united “the antagonistic doctrines of two great schools – Unity of Type … and Adaptation to Conditions of Existence” [Carpenter, 1860]

6. Thereby fortelling the demise of Owen’s attempts to have it both ways, i.e., his “self-portrait as the misrepresented and ignored evolutionist” [Rupke, op. cit., 163].

73

So Passes the Glory of the World 25

Darwin was disappointed26 by Lyell’s failure to fully endorse the selection theory in The Antiquity of Man – to which the older scientist had responded by emphasizing his own re-sponsibility to his readers: “Hundreds who have bought my book in the hope that I should demol-ish heresy, will be awfully confounded and disappointed.” [Letter of 11 March, 1863, DCP 4035] “… I am struck by the number of compliments … which I receive, be-cause I have left them to draw their own inferences.” [Letter of 15 March, 1863, DCP 4041]

Years earlier Lyell had likewise written Whewell: “If I had stated … the possibility of the … origin of fresh species being a natural, in contradiction to a miraculous process, I should have raised a host of prejudices against me …” [K. Lyell, 1881, II, 5]

Half converted, Lyell died in 1875; unconvinced, Louis Ag-assiz, the last Special Creationist of note, two years prior.

25 “I can pretty plainly see”, Darwin wrote Huxley, “that if my view is ever to be generally adopted, it will be by young men growing up & replacing the old workers …” [2 Decem-ber, 1860 DCP-Lett-3003]

26 Letter of 12-13 March, 1863 (DCP-LETT-4038)

74

Figure 5.39. The Great Fire of London; view of the city and the Thames, with buildings ablaze; several boats on the river; in the foreground, figures with dogs on a hill observing the fire; coats of arms at top left and right. By Anonymous (possibly Dutch), 1666. British Museum Online. Registra-tion number 1873,0809.1513. Note the caption, “Sic transit gloria Mundi”, which translates to the title of the present section.

75

Conclusions.

Britain’s scientific elite successfully kept the transformist fox out of the henhouse

1. For 50 years, i.e., if one counts from the publication of

Lamarck’s Philosophie til the publication of The Origin;

2. For 65 years, from the first edition of Zoonomia.

There was nonetheless an on-going struggle between de-fenders of the status quo and those who would change it. 1. Especially in paleontology and comparative anatomy,

points went both ways. a. Monotremes did lay eggs – point Transformism.

b. Dinosaurs did evidence a level of anatomical sophis-

tication far greater than that of living reptiles – point Non-Progressionism.

c. The men who caroused in the mold of the Iguanodon,

on 12/31/1853 were celebrating both New Year’s Eve and the triumph of Owenite transcendentalism that had restored British geology to its rightful leading role.

76

2. Both scientific and extra-scientific considerations entered

the argument.

3. To understand the collapse what Gillispie called “theolog-ical science” (1951, 147), one must study both

a. The scientific and

b. The societal particulars.

4. Likewise, the very human difficulty of teaching old dogs new tricks – e.g., Lyell and Agassiz.