For Sara: Poor Eddie Blyth

I once adopted Loren Eiseley's cause as my own: that is, Chuck stole both natural and sexual selection from Ed. Bear in mind that I also found merit in Verhaegen's and Morgan's hypothesis of an "aquatic ape" but have since found another route to explain the same phenomena.

A couple of points:

- Chuck borrowed from many, including his own grandfather, Erasmus. Hutton, per a newly found 3 volume manuscript, also found evolution but 60 years before The Origin appeared. Wallace did so and apparently wrote it down first but didn't publish it. Indeed, he probably couldn't unless he had help from a macher. He contacted Darwin...

- Darwin forgot to say "thanks" or to acknowledge his sources in matters of theory but often mentioned contributors of observations.

He, however, has been generally forgiven in the same manner as that distinguished plagiarist, Senator Joe Beiden. Darwin in his biography also admits to theft and lying from an early age: he took fruit from his dad's orchard but "found it" later. He also paid older peers to agree that he was the fastest runner. We are all, after 500 million years, moths that love spotlights.

- Blyth's material was published in 1835 and in 1837 and, it has been argued, was borrowed to the extent of the species chosen as examples, their order of description, and some peculiarities in vocabulary, especially the word, "inosculate." (See Eiseley, 1979, Darwin and the Mysterious Mr. X...I have 3 copies) Eiseley also doubted that Malthus had anything to do with Darwin's formulation: that is, Chuck had the chassis but needed an engine to drive it. Selective starvation worked and, like merging genes, Chuck adopted TommyBob.

- The idea of "evolution" was much in the air but applied within embryology and restricted to changes within a species and to changes within a growing fetus. Darwin crossed species lines. Darwin also was a clever politician: he built an alliance through letters, borrowing examples from many people and citing them. (Read, enjoy, and understand Barbara Browne's remarkable biography, Charles Darwin: the Power of Place.)

- I've never seen Ed called a "creationist scientist." I would have suggested him to be manic, a condition that matches what I know of his adventure-filled life. Such individuals travel, do outrageous things, and make announcements to whatever audience they might collect late at night or early on Sunday mornings. They frequently imagine special alliances with one deity or another. They debate but rarely have discussions. Agree with them until you can escape their presence and they send you away with "Peace." Disagree and it's "Burn in hell."

- Know some facts AND choose from them well but know that others' will choose a different set for genetic reasons as much as for social...

I close with three emails, two from Mike Waller (in England but who got his material from his son in Australia!) in 1998 and one from Ian Pitchford in March, 2003.

From Mike:
"One thing is clear: Darwin did not borrow the idea of natural selection from an earlier writer (As well as Blyth, William Charles Wells and Patrick Matthew have been implicated)...The notebooks confirm the fact that there was no critical input form these sources...As far as I'm aware, no current Darwin scholars (who have no studied Darwin's letters and notebooks in extraordinary detail) concur with Eiseley's thesis....Eiseley's thesis was proposed in two essays in 1959 and 1961...in 1974 in the History of Biology journal there were several articles debunking the notion. The idea is still alive, though. There's a fellow in England who has set up a web site rehearsing Eiseley's arguments. www3.mistral.co.uk/bradburyac/dar6.html.

Also from Mike:
"Darwin was always a Lamarckian and couldn't understand whose who weren't...His commitment to gradualism...has more to do with his hostility to the idea of 'special creations' advocated by the American naturalist, Louis Agassiz. Agassiz argued that the fossil record could be explained by imputing divine intervention on numerous separate occasions in the earth's history, involving God releasing his latest batch of adapted organisms."

From Ian:
"I don't see how Darwin could have built on Blyth's theory if the latter was arguing against the transmutation of species. Darwin did read and annotate papers by Blyth as early as 1838, and did finally formulate his theory of natural selection in September or October of that same year. However, in a paper published in 1837, Blyth argued that inherited characteristics were not sufficient to produce new species. Blyth also believed in the separation of reason and instinct and that human beings had reason but no innate knowledge; indeed his comment that 'The human race is compelled to derive the whole of its information through the medium of the senses' makes him sound like an archetypal blank slate theorist, See Richards, R. (1987) Darwin and the emergence of evolutionary theories of mind and behavior. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, pp. 106-108. Blyth provided Darwin with data for many years and also visited him at Down in 1868, which indicates that he probably didn't have any complaints about Darwin's behaviour"

JB

Copyright, 2003, James Brody, all rights reserved. (except for Mike's and Ian's material!)

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