DARWIN, SEX, AND LOVE.

(1) © [All Rights Reserved.] Placed on the WWW on September 29, 2003, for a presentation in Professor Robert Stewart's PHIL 137 (Philosophical Perspectives on Sex and Love) at CSU, Chico.

ABSTRACT: Charles R. Darwin was born on February 12, 1809 and died on April 19, 1882. While famous primarily for his epoch-making 1859 publication entitled On The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life , Darwin also is noted for his 1871 publication entitled the The Descent of Man And Selection in Relation to Sex. Today's presentation, with various visuals, deals with information of an anthropological nature dealing with Charles R. Darwin and his research: Darwin sailed from England on HMS Beagle on December 27, 1831 and after conducting research in South America, the HMS Beagle entered the Pacific Ocean on June 11, 1834. Darwin reached the Galápagos Islands on September 15, 1835. After that, HMS Beagle continued around the globe, arriving back in England on October 2, 1836. Darwin never left England again. The 1973 Nobel Prize Winner Konrad Lorenz (1903-1989) wrote: I believe that even today we do not quite realize how much Charles Darwin knew [stress added]. Konrad Lorenz, 1965, "Preface" in The Expression Of The Emotions In Man And Animals by Charles Darwin, 1872 [1965 University of Chicago Press edition], pages ix-xiii, pages xi-xiii. [Photo by Charles F. Urbanowicz, Natural History Museum, London (1999).

ABSTRACT (Above)
BACKGROUND
DARWIN, THE HMS BEAGLE, AND THE GALÁPAGOS ISLANDS
DARWIN AND ORIGIN (1859+)
DARWIN AND THE DESCENT OF MAN (1871) AND EXPRESSIONS (1872)
ON-GOING CONCLUSIONS
SPECIFIC URBANOWICZ DARWIN ITEMS
SELECTED REFERENCES (in addition to those cited above):
SEPTEMBER 2003 POSTSCRIPT
A FEW VISUALS

BACKGROUND

"Charles Darwin's personality is important for an understanding of his work and influence. Darwin was famous for his modesty and his ability to remain aloof from the condemnations and eulogies that pored in upon him for twenty-two years, yet his personal writings reveal an amazing self-concern, expressed with wonderful naiveté and candor. His fiancée considered him '...the most open transparent man I ever saw....'" Abram Kardiner and Edward Preble, 1961, They Studied Man (NY: Mentor Books), page 15.

I am delighted to be invited to modestly contribute to Professor Stewart's PHIL 137 course (Philosophical Perspectives on Sex And love). I have spoken in Rob's PHIL 108 for several years and I have enjoyed that: it encourages me to (#1) re-analyze some of my previous Darwin ideas and (#2) encourages me to provide something "new" for every class for Professor Stewart. (Previous PHIL 108 presentations are referenced at the end of this paper.) I am also greatful for Rob pointing out Helen Fisher's 1992 publication entitled Anatomy of Love: A Natural History of Mating, Marriage, and Why We Stray (NY: Fawcett Colombine).

Charles Darwin was, indeed, an interesting individual and in 1871 he wrote the following:

"The highest stage in moral culture at which we can arrive, is when we recognise that we ought to control our thoughts...." Charles R. Darwin (1809-1882), The Descent of Man And Selection in Relation to Sex, 1871 [1981 Princeton University Press edition, with Introduction by John T. Bonner and Robert M. May], Chapter 3, page 101).

In that same 1871 publication, however, as Fisher pointed out in 1992 (pages 189-190), Darwin also wrote what she called a "sexist credo" as follows:

"Man is more courageous, pugnacious and energetic than woman, and has a more inventive genius. His brain is absolutely larger, but whether or not proportionately to his larger body, has not, I believe, been fully ascertained. In woman the face is rounder; the jaws and the base of the skull smaller; the outlines of the body rounder, in parts more prominent; and her pelvis is broader than in man; but this latter character may perhaps be considered rather as a primary than a secondary sexual character. She comes to maturity at an earlier age than man." Charles R. Darwin (1809-1882), The Descent of Man And Selection in Relation to Sex, 1871 [1981 Princeton University Press edition, with Introduction by John T. Bonner and Robert M. May], Chapter 19, pages 316-317.

Definitely not "politically correct" and Darwin's influence to date is great, as the following from The Wall Street Journal pointed out:

"Whatever the controversies that surround him, Charles Darwin was certainly the most important natural scientist of the past century; he may become the most important social scientist of the next. His great insight--that humans are animals and that their behavior, like that of all animals, is shaped by evolution--is now making its way into social theory. In economics, linguistics, anthropology and psychology, scholars are attempting to see how our evolved nature, interacting with particular environments, generates the ways we trade and speak, live with others and with ourselves [stress added]." Anon., The Wall Street Journal, May 27, 1999, page A24

Depending on how one counts his monographs, he published more than thirty major items in his lifetime on such diverse (yet related!) topics as flowers (1877), vegetables (1876), breeding animals (1839), vegetable mould (1881), climbing plants (1876), zoology (1836-1838), worms (1869), coral reefs (1842), as well as The Expression of the Emotions in Man And Animals (1872) and A Monograph of the sub-class Cirripedia, With Figures Of All The Species (1851 and 1854). (This last two-volume work was the result of eight years of research into this barnacle!)  

DARWIN, THE HMS BEAGLE, AND THE GALÁPAGOS ISLANDS  

"The fact is that Charles Darwin was in almost all respects a fairly standard example of the nineteenth century student, well off, active in field sports, working hard enough to avoid academic failure, but a long way from academic success." Peter Brent 1981, Charles Darwin: A Man Of Enlarged Curiosity (NY: Harper & Row), page 89.

Charles R. Darwin definitely proved many individuals wrong, and nothing is as clear as his monumental 1859 publication (and subsequent editions of 1860, 1861, 1866, 1869, and 1872): On The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life [Note: this is the on-line version of the 1859 edition]; Darwin himself was to write in his Autobiography that the Origin "is no doubt the chief work of my life [stress added]" (Nora Barlow, 1958, The Autobiography of Charles Darwin 1809-1882: With Original Omissions Restored Edited With An Appendix And Notes By His Grand-Daughter, page 122).

Darwin was chosen by Captain Robert FitzRoy (1805-1865) to accompany him as an unpaid nauralist on a trip around the world on HMS Beagle over the period of 27 December 1831 through 2 October 1836. After spending several years along the South American coast (and on South American countries) the HMS Beagle went to the Galápagos Islands for several weeks (16 September through 20 October 1835) and Darwin continued with his data-gathering and thinking processes. After he returned to England he continued with his scholarly research and on January 30, 1839 Charles Darwin married his cousin Ms. Emma Wedgwood (1808-1896). They had ten children, seven of which survived to adulthood ("sex and love"). After living in London for a few years, in 1842 Mr. & Mrs. Darwin moved with their two young children (WIlliam Erasmus Darwin and Anne Elizabeth Darwin) to the village of Down (Kent), some sixteen miles southeast of "the city" and they remained there the rest of their lives. William was born in 1839 and died in 1914. Anne Elizabeth, on the other hand, was born in 1841 and died in 1851, and was Charles Darwin's favorite child. Anne's death affected him deeply.

In my attempts to "understand" Darwin and some of the individuals involved with him during his time, I have seen to FitzRoy's home in London (38 Onslow Square, SW7) as well as the area where Charles Darwin and Emma Wedgwood Darwin lived (110 Gower Street, WC1), and where Thomas Henry Huxley (1825-1895) maintained his residence (38 Marlborough Place, NW). I have also visited Down House, Luxted Road, Downe, Kent (where Mr. and Mrs. Charles Darwin moved to, from London, in September 1842) and in North America, I have visited the Rhea County Courthouse (Dayton, Tennessee) where the celebrated "Scopes Trial" of 1925 was held. I also reside in Chico, California, a community that Joseph Hooker (1817-1911) visited in the 19th century!

Darwin began a Notebook in July of 1837 and started gathering all of the facts that he could on variations in plants and animals, both under domestication and existing in the wilds of nature. By 1844 Darwin had enlarged his notes into a sketch of the conclusions he thought probable and those notes and research resulted in the celebrated joint Darwin-Wallace paper to the Linnean Society in 1858 and the Origin in 1859.

"On 1 July 1858 Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace [1823-1913] made the first public statement of their theory of evolution by natural selection before the Linnaean Society of London, and their papers were published on 20 August of the same year. The eighteen pages which they covered were among the most pregnant ever printed, and deserve to rank with those of Isaac Newton, since they provide for the realm of living beings the first general principle capable of universal application [stress added]." Sir Gavin De Beer, 1958, Charles Darwin And Alfred Russel Wallace: Evolution By Natural Selection, page 1.

DARWIN AND ORIGIN (1859+)

"The first fossils recognized as Neandertals were found in August 1856. Two quarrymen were shoveling debris from a limestone cave near Dusseldorf, Germany.... The quarrymen were digging in a cave in the Neander Valley. (In the nineteenth century, the German word for valley was thal, but the spelling was changed to tal at the beginning of the twentieth century, since German does not have a th sound.) The valley was named after a seventeenth-century composer and poet named Joachim Neumann (Newman in English), who signed his compositions with the Greek version of his name, Neander. Thus the irony of Neandertal man's literal translation: 'man of the valley of the new man.' The timing of the discovery could not have been better. Three years later Charles Darwin [1809-1882], in his book On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, broached the unthinkable [stress added]." Steve Olson, 2002, Mapping Human History: Discovering the Past Through Our Genes (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company), pages 76-77.

When what is commonly called Origin was published in 1859, it was an immediate (and controversial) success. In attempting to understand Darwin, and the impact of his ideas through time, the following information should be of interest: every edition of Origin published in Charles R. Darwin's lifetime is different! He re-wrote every-single-one and all are different! The reason it is important to point out the various editions of Origin is demonstrated by the following chart, based on information in the excellent 1959 publication of Morse Peckham [Editor] entitledThe Origin Of Species By Charles Darwin: A Variorum Text). The concept of change is definitely vital to an understanding of Darwin, whether you are reading Darwin himself or reading about him and I include the following tabular information on Darwin's Origin in virtually everything I present or write:

YEAR/Ed.	COPIES	Sentences	Sentences	Sentences	TOTAL	% CHANGE
1859/1st	1,250				3,878
1860/2nd	3,000	9 eliminated	483 rewritten	30 added	3,899	7 %
1861/3rd	2,000	33 eliminated	617 rewritten	266 added	4,132	14 %
1866/4th	1,500	36 eliminated	1073 rewritten	435 added	4,531	21 %
1869/5th	2,000	178 eliminated	1770 rewritten	227 added	4,580	29 %
1872/6th	3,000	63 eliminated	1699 rewritten	571 added	5,088	21-29 %

If one is reluctant to read ALL of Darwin's Origin as indicated, there is a delightful book by Maurice Sagoff (1970) which is called to your attention: Shrinklits: Seventy of the World's Towering Classics Cut Down To Size (New York: Workman Publishing) wherein the following appears on page 99:

Incidentally, Charles R. Darwin took great care not to write about Homo sapiens in Origin in 1859 and all he had to say about "man" was the following:

"In the distant future I see open fields for far more important researches. Psychology will be based on a new foundation, that of the necessary acquirement of each mental power and capacity by gradation. Light will be thrown on the origin of man and his history. [Chapter XV: "Recapitulation And Conclusion"]

By the 6th edition of Origin in 1872, Darwin had re-written the above passage as the following:

"In the future I see open fields for far more important researches. Psychology will be securely based on the foundation already well laid by Mr. Herbert Spencer [1820-1903], that of the necessary acquirement of each mental power and capacity by gradation. Much light will be thrown on the origin of man and his history. [Chapter XV: "Recapitulation And Conclusion"]

Even with this passing reference to "man" Darwin caused problems (and inspired individuals!).

"Although Darwin's Origin of Species, published in November 1859, had deliberately avoided speculation about humankind, the question of anthropogenesis was inevitably implicated in the emerging evolutionary debate, and during the next decade a number of influential texts were published on the issue of human origins and antiquity, most notably Thomas Henry Huxley's [1825-1895] Man's Place in Nature (1863), Lyell's [1797-1875] The Antiquity of Man (1863), and John Lubbock's [1834-1913] Pre-historic Times (1865), which covered the matter from the viewpoints of comparative anatomy (and paleontology), geology, and archaeology respectively.... [stress added]." Frank Spencer, 1988, Prologue to a Scientific Forgery. In} Bones, Bodies, Behavior [Edited by George W. Stocking, Jr.] (University of Wisconsin Press), pages 84-116, page 88.

Given all of the above, please remember that attention must also be paid to the aforementioned Alfred Russel Wallace and the following is most appropriate to attempt to summarize Wallace:

"Who was this strong-willed philosophical naturalist? Although Wallace's [1823-1913] best-known claim to fame is as co-discoverer, along with Charles Darwn, of the theory of evolution by natural selection, Wallace's interests ranged so broadly that it is difficult to apply a single label, even that of a naturalist, to him. Describing him as as a natural scientist would do for the early part of his life, but so would geographer and travel writer; one would have to add social critic, spiritualist, and intellectual for the second half. His status within the scientific community is uqually hard to pin down. Historians have called him an outsider, a loner, or the 'other' man who discovered evolution, but these terms reflect the slant of historians more than they describe Wallace. Part of the reason he is difficult to categorize is that his concerns were so encompassing and wide ranging. Wallace wrote for the lay person as well as the specialist, and he wrote about biology, evolution, education, religion, morality, spiritualism, vaccination, eugenics, social values, and political systems [stress added]." Janes R. Camerini, 2002, The Alfred Russel Wallace Reader: A Selection of Writings from the Field (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press), page 2.

Wallace was, indeed, an interesting individual and much more can be written about him; consider if you will the 2002 words of Steven Pinker:

"Wallace parted company from Darwin by claiming that the human mind could not be explained by evolution and must have been designed by a superior intelligence. He certainly did believe that the mind of man could escape 'the blind control of a deterministic world.' Wallace became a spiritualist and spent the later years of his career searching for a way to communicate with the souls of the dead." Steven Pinker, 2002, The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Behavior (NY: Viking/Penguin), page 28.

Darwin-Wallace, Natural Selection-Survival of the Fittest: terms that readily come to mind when thinking about Darwin. Darwin "borrowed" the term survival of the fittest from Herbert Spencer, a prominent individual in his own right. On "Natural Selection" Darwin wrote the following:

"I have called this principle, by which each slight variation, if useful, is preserved, by the term Natural Selection, in order to mark its relation to man's power of selection. But the expression often used by Mr. Herbert Spencer, of the Survival of the Fittest, is more accurate, and is sometimes equally convenient. We have seen that man by selection can certainly produce great results, and can adapt organic beings to his own uses, through the accumulation of slight but useful variations, given to him by the hand of Nature. But Natural Selection, as we shall hereafter see, is a power incessantly ready for action, and is as immeasurably superior to man's feeble efforts, as the works of Nature are to those of Art [stress added]." (Origin, Chapter 3 of the 6th edition of 1872).

It was, however, a gradual process that Darwin undertook in his research and writing. Many years passed from his undergraduate days at Cambridge to the 1859 Origin. Darwin was meticulous in his research and Rebecca Stott has recently published her eminently readable Darwin And the Barnacle: The Story Of One Tiny Creature And History's Most Spectacular Scientific Breakthrough (2003 [NY: Norton]) and has the following: "The barnacle obsession which dominated all Darwin's waking hours between 1846 and 1854 began with a discovery made on the Beagle voyage [stress added] (page xx).

"Darwin's interest in this obscure and somewhat unglamorous creature would seem at first sight to have nothing to do with his main line of research. But by accumulating an enormous number of different species he inadvertently reinforced his belief in natural variety. He was able to demonstrate the enormous number of ways in which a basic plan could be modified in order to meet different circumstances. Moreover, the barnacle exhibited the fundamental importance of embryological evidence [stress added]." Jonathan Miller and Borin Van loon, 1982, Darwin For Beginners (NY: Pantheon Books), page 121.

Darwin published a variety of scholarly articles over many years and he was passionate about his research; he wanted to prove himself to the scientists of the day and continued to think about change in life. Please do consider these words:

"...Darwin remained mystified by what might cause evolution. He considered and rejected dozens of ideas. Natural selection, the engine of evolution, did not become clear to him for another year and a half. The spark that let Darwin fit the pieces together was struck by Thomas Malthus's grim essay about what we now call population pressure. Malthus [1766-1834] was writing about human populations, but Darwin realized that every species produces far more offspring than can survive. He was the first to see that nature does not thin the ranks of a species at random. ... Natural selection is the sieve, and population pressure is the force pushing each generation through it [stress added]." Robert E. Adler, 2002, Science Firsts: From The Creation of Science to the Science of Creation (New Jersey: John Wiley & Sons, Inc.), page 89.

In 1994, Robert Wright wrote The Moral Animal and had the following to say about natural selection:

"All the theory of natural selection says is the following. If within a species there is variation among individuals in their hereditary traits, and some traits are more conducive to survival and reproduction than others, than those traits will (obviously) become more widespread within the population. The result (obviously) is that the species' aggregate pool of hereditary traits changes. And there you have it [stress added]." Robert Wright, 1994, The Moral Animal, page 23.

Living organisms change over time and human beings are living organisms. Once again, Charles R. Darwin did not write about Homo sapiens per se in the 1859 publication of Origin, but the implications were clearly there:

""The idea that evolution by natural selection could account for the origin of man was taken up by others as a direct result of Darwin's ideas. The respected T.H. Huxley [1825-1895] did this explicitly in 1863 in his Evidence As To Man's Place In Nature [stress added]." John Bonner and Robert May, 1981, "Preface" in Charles Darwin, The Descent Of Man And Selection In Relation To Sex [0riginal in 1871], page xi).

Prior to Origin, Darwin learned that the distinguished anatomist Richard Owen (1804-1892), an individual who become a staunch anti-Darwinist (and supporter of Bishop Wilberforce [1805-1873]), had "raised Man to a distinct subclass at the head of creation," Darwin had this to say: "I wonder what a chimpanzee would say to this? [5 July 1857]." In Adrian Desmond, 1979, The Ape's Reflexion, page 11.

"In the Origin Darwin tried to avoid extending his biological explanations into social and moral questions, but the extension was unavoidable and he made it himself in The Descent of Man. From the start Darwinism made the human a part of the natural world and subject to scientific analysis." George Levin, 1988, Darwin And The Novelists: Patterns Of Science In Victorian Fiction, pages 85-86.

Steven Pinker also pointed out the following concerning making the "human a part of the natural world and subject to scientific analysis."

"The refusal to acknowledge human nature is like the Victorians' embarrasment about sex, only worse: it distorts our science and scholarship, our public discourse, and our day-to-day lives. Logicians tell us that a single contradiction can corrupt a set of statements and allow falsehoods to proliferate through it. The dogma that human nature does not exist, in the face of evidence from science and common sense that it does, is just such a corrupting influence [stress added]." Steven Pinker, 2002, The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Behavior (NY: Viking/Penguin), page ix.

The mid-and-late 19th century was a tremendous time for changes in scientific attitudes and in addition to research and publications in geology and the natural sciences which occurred after 1859, the specific (yet generalizing) discipline of "Anthropology" was also changing. Although the term anthropology itself (a combination of Anthropos + logos) appeared as early as 1593 (and please Urbanowicz 1992, "Four Field Comentary" in Anthropology Newsletter, Vol. 3, No 9, page 3). The following should be noted from 1994:

"Anthropology existed before Darwin, but he provided it with its central theme. Meanwhile some anthropologists, jurists, historians, and philosophers did not wait for [the 1871] Descent of Man to act on the cue that Darwin [1809-1882] had given them in the Origin [of 1859], and the following pioneer studies in evolutionary cultural anthropology reflect the effect of his work: Sir Henry Maine's [1822-1888] Ancient Laws (1861), N. D. Fustel de Coulange's [1830-1889] La cite antique (1865), J. F. McLennan's [1827-1881] Primitive Marriage (1865), Sir Edward Tylor's [1832-1917] Researches into the Primitive History of Mankind (1865), Sir John Lubbock's [1834-1913] Origins of Civilization and the Primitive Condition of Man (1870), all of which were published after the first edition of the Origin in 1859 and before the Descent of Man in 1871 [stress added]." Gavin De Beer, 1964, Charles Darwin: Evolution By Natural Selection, page 217.

Darwin was interested in the human condition and in 1839 he married his cousin, Miss Emma Wedgwood. Emma Wedgewood was a very religious woman, one who attended church on a regular basis and she was greatly concerned about her husband's research. One of their daughters wrote that in Emma's youth "religion must have largely filled her life, and there is evidence in the papers she left that it distressed her in her early married life to know" that Charles Darwin did not share her faith (Nora Barlow, 1958, Autobiography of Charles Darwin 1809-1882, page 239). Emma Darwin expressed her concerns to her husband and in a letter she sent his shortly after they were married in 1839, and she wrote that "everything that concerns you concerns me and I should be most unhappy if I thought we did not belong to each other forever." It was a known fact that Darwin was deeply moved by this and Emma found her letter to Charles among his notes after he died in 1892 and she read his following words: "When I am dead, know that many times, I have kissed and cryed over this" (Nora Barlow, 1958, Autobiography of Charles Darwin 1809-1882, page 237). Emma Darwin described Charles Darwin as "the most transparent man" she ever saw and Charles Darwin wrote a note to himself, wherein he carefully weighed the pro's & cons of marriage and he ended the note with the following: "Marry - Marry - Marry Q.E.D." The words that Charles Darwin wrote to Emma in a letter nine days before they were married in 1839 held true for all of their years, for Charles Darwin wrote the following: "I think you will humanize me, and soon teach me there is greater happiness than building theories and accumulating facts in silence and solitude [stress added]." Charles Darwin to Emma Darwin , dated Jan 20th 1839 (More Letters of Charles Darwin: A Record of His Work In A Series of Hitherto Unpublished Letters, Francis Darwin, Editor, 1903, page 29.) There were obviously family and societal problems for Charles Darwin, but he accepted (and overcame) them.

DARWIN AND THE DESCENT OF MAN (1871) AND EXPRESSIONS (1872)

"Darwin considered his Origin of Species to be his life's work, but he continued to work on steadily for the remaining years. Emma did not like his Descent of Man, considering that it took Charles 'further from God'." Edna Healey, 1986, Wives Of Fame: Mary Livingstone, Jenny Marx, Emma Darwin (London: Sidgwick & Jackson), page 177.

Origin, Descent, and Expressions are three extremely interesting publications which all tie together: Origin deals with the struggle for life as it concerns living creatures (or biology), Descent dealt with humanity, and Expressions covered the influence of our primate heritage on present behaviors! As one has written:

"...much of the Descent of Man was taken up with evidence designed to convince the reader that the higher faculties were not unique to mankind. Darwin cited numerous examples of animal behaviour that seemed to indicate that dogs, apes and other higher animals possessed at least rudimentary lements of intelligence and even of the moral sense. ... it was important for Darwin to create the impression that all the human faculties had some origin in the lower animals. Mental evolution would thus consist of an increase in the level of these faculties, not the creation of something entirely new. Darwin devoted another book to making the opposite point that human behaviour shows many relics of our animal ancestry. His Expression of the Emotions in Man and the Animals was published one year later (1872) and was intended to demonstrate that our emotional behaviour follows patterns that are already visible in the lower animals. ... It was the Descent of Man, however, which tackled the critical problem of explaining how the human species had acquired mental powers that were, even by Darwin's admission, lifted far above the level enjoyed by our closest animal relatives [stress added]."Peter J. Bowler, 1990, Charles Darwin: The Man and His influence (Cambridge University Press), pages 186-187.

In 1871 in Descent Darwin postulated an African origin for mankind as follows:

"We are naturally led to enquire, where was the birthplace of man at that stage of descent when our progenitors diverged from the Catarhine stock. The fact that they belonged to this stock clearly shews that they inhabited the Old World; but not Australia nor any oceanic island, as we may infer from the laws of geographical distribution. In each great region of the world the living mammals are closely related to the extinct species of the same region. It is therefore probable that Africa was formerly inhabited by extinct apes closely allied to the gorilla and chimpanzee; and as these two species are now man's nearest allies, it is somewhat more probable that our early progenitors lived on the African continent than elsewhere [stress added]." Charles R. Darwin, The Descent of Man And Selection in Relation to Sex, 1871 [1981 Princeton University Press edition, with Introduction by John T. Bonner and Robert M. May], Chapter 6, page 199.

Please consider the recent following information:

"Humanity's plot thickens. The 'Toumai' skull isn't much to look at: a nearly complete cranium, some jawbones and a few teeth. But scientists are calling him [or her!] the most important discovery since the first fossilized remains of human ancestors were found 75 years ago. Why? Because Toumai pushes back by a million years the date when humanity's family tree is believed to have sprouted. ... Who knows which theories will hold? The only thing Toumai's discovery proves beyond a doubt is that he's a tiny part of a still-mysterious story [stress added]." USAToday "Editorial" on July 12, 2002, Page 8A.

"At between 6 and 7 million years old, this skull is the earliest known record of the human family. Discovered in Chad in Central Africa, the new find, nicknamed 'Toumaï', comes from the crucial yet little-known interval when the human lineage was becoming distinct from that of chimpanzees. Because of this, the new find will galvanize the field of human origins like no other in living memory - perhaps not since 1925, when Raymond Dart described the first 'ape-man', Australopithecus africanus, transforming our ideas about human origins forever. A lifetime later, Toumaï raises the stakes once again and the consequences cannot yet be guessed. Dart's classic paper was published in Nature, as have most of the milestones in human origins and evolution. To celebrate the new find, we are proud to offer a selection of ten of the very best from Nature's archives, including Dart's classic paper [stress added]." FROM: http://www.nature.com/nature/ancestor/ and see http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?articleID=000B16B6-AA5E-1D2C-97CA809EC588EEDF [Scientific American July 11, 2002 and in http://www.sciam.com/, December 26, 2002]

In the 19th century Darwin realized there would be problems with some of his ideas and he wrote the following in 1871:

"Important as the struggle for existence has been and even still is, yet as far as the highest part of man's nature is concerned there are other agencies more important. For the moral qualities are advanced, either directly or indirectly, much more through the effects of habit, the reasoning powers, instruction, religion, &c., than through natural selection; though to this latter agency may be safely attributed the social instincts, which afforded the basis for the development of the moral sense, may be safely attributed. The main conclusion arrived at in this work, namely that man is descended from some lowly-organised form, will, I regret to think, be highly distasteful to many. But.... [stress added]."Charles R. Darwin (1809-1882), The Descent of Man And Selection in Relation to Sex, 1871 [1981 Princeton University Press edition, with Introduction by John T. Bonner and Robert M. May], Part II, Chapter XXI, pages 403-404.

Please consider what Darwin wrote about human beings in 1871:

"Now, if some one man in a tribe, more sagacious than the others, invented a new snare or weapon, or other means of attack or defence, the plainest self-interest, without the assistance of much reasoning power, would prompt the other members to imitate him; and all would thus profit. The habitual practice of each new art must likewise in some slight degree strengthen the intellect. If the new invention were an important one, the tribe would increase in number, spread, and supplant other tribes. In a tribe thus rendered more numerous there would always be a rather greater chance of the birth of other superior and inventive members. If such men left children to inherit their mental superiority, the chance of the birth of still more ingenious members would be somewhat better, and in a very small tribe decidedly better [stress added]." Charles R. Darwin (1809-1882), The Descent of Man And Selection in Relation to Sex, 1871 [1981 Princeton University Press edition, with Introduction by John T. Bonner and Robert M. May], page 161.

In the "Preface" to the 2nd edition of Descent published in 1875, he commented on "the fiery ordeal through which this book has passed." Even though the term "evolution" is associated with the name of Darwin, Darwin actually did not use the specific term "evolution" in the first edition of Origin as Freeman pointed out in 1965; Darwin actually used the term "evolution" in his The Descent of Man publication before he used it in Origin:

"The word evolution occurs for the first time in all of Darwin's works on page 2 of the first volume of the first edition [of The Descent of Man], that is to say before its appearance in the sixth edition of The Origin Of Species in the following year [stress added]." R. B. Freeman, 1965, The Works Of Charles Darwin: An Annotated Bibliographic Handlist, page 29.

Stephen J. Gould also pointed this out some 37 years later in his 2002 publication entitled I Have Landed: The End Of A Beginning In Natural History:

"But we should also note that Darwin himself never used the word 'evolution' in his epochal book of 1859, the Origin of Species, where he calls this fundamental biological process 'descent with modification.' ... Although the word evolution does not appear in the first edition of the Origin of Species, Darwin does use the verbal form 'evolved'--clearly in the vernacular sense and in an especially prominent spot: as the very last word of the book! Most students have failed to appreciate the incisive and intended 'gotcha' of these closing lines, which have generally been read as a poetic reverie, a harmless linguistic flourish essentially devoid of content, however rich in imagery. In fact, the canny Darwin used this maximally effective location to make a telling point about the absolute gloty and comparative importance of natural history as a calling [stress added]." Stephen J. Gould, 2002, I Have Landed: The End Of A Beginning In Natural History (NY: Harmony Books), pages 242-243.

Gould was indeed himself a "canny" individual when it came to writing about Darwin, for whenever he wrote he avoided making reference to editions two through six of Origin and consistently cited the first edition where Darwin did not use the term Creator! Paraphrasing Gould, most students would fail to appreciate tis ommision unless they have read Darwin in the original or have read a great deal about Darwin! In a 1993 publication Gould saw fit to quote Darwin's Origin as follows:

"And I remembered that Charles Darwin had drawn the very same contrast in the final lines of the Origin of Species. When asking himself, in one climactic paragraph, to define the essence of the differences between life and the inanimate cosmos, Darwin chose the directional character of evolution vs. the cyclical repeatability of our clockwork solar system [and Gould then quotes the following from Darwin]: 'There is a grandeur in this view of life.... [these "...." are placed by Gould in his quote, which continues as follows] Whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved.'" S. J. Gould, 1993, Eight Little Piggies: Reflections In Natural History , pp. 216-217.

Gould must have had a reason for not mentioning Darwin's reference to the "Creator" (added by Darwin in his second edition of 1860), but it is not be obvious to the casual reader. One deduces that Gould is quoting from the 1st edition since Peckham's Variorum work points out that in the 1st edition Darwin had a comma between "being" and "evolved" and by the 6th edition of 1872 Darwin changed it to "being evolved" (M. Peckham, 1959, page 105). Indeed, in an essay of 1844, Darwin introduced the term "Creator" into his writing and wrote the following:

"My reasons have now been assigned for believing that specific forms are not immutable creations. ... It accords with what we know of the laws impressed by the Creator on matter that the production and extinction of forms should, like the birth and death of individuals, be the result of secondary means. It is derogatory that the Creator of countless Universes should have made by individuals His will the myriads of creeping parasites and worms, which since the earliest dawn of life have swarmed over the land and in the depths of the ocean [stress added]." Gavin De Beer, 1958, Evolution By Natural Selection: Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace (Cambridge University Press), pages 252-253; and see Charles F. Urbanowicz, 2002, There Is A Grandeur In This View Of Life. In Darwin Day Collection One: The Single Best Idea Ever (2002) Edited by Amanda Chesworth et al. (Albuquerque, New Mexico: Tangled Bank Press), pages 67-70, page 69.

This is why I honestly believe dates are important for an understanding of virtually everything: who influenced whom and when was it done! Darwin's 1871 publication of The Descent of Man, And Selection In Relation To Sex, was reissued in 1981, and the following 20th century words are well worth reading:

"Descent of Man addresses an extraordinary number of problems that are, at this moment [1981], on the minds of many biologists, psychologists, anthropologists, sociologists, and philosophers. It is the genius of Darwin that his ideas, clothed as they are in unhurried Victorian prose, are almost as modern now as they were when they were first published. John Bonner and Robert May, "Preface" to the Princeton University Press Edition of 1981, page vii.

Darwin's 1872 The Expression Of The Emotions In Man And Animals was reissued in 1965 and some words from the "Preface" to that volume by the Nobel Prize Winner Konrad Lorenz (1903-1989) are well worth considering. Lorenz was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1973 in the category of "Physiology or Medicine" and he had this to say about Charles R. Darwin:

"Like all really great scientific discoverers, Darwin possessed an almost uncanny ability to reason on the basis of hypotheses which were not only provisional and vague but also subconscious. He deduced correct consequences from facts more suspected than known, and verified both the theory and facts by the obvious truth of the conclusions reached. In other words, a man like Darwin knows much more than he thinks he knows, and it is not surprising that the consequences of his knowledge reach far and in different directions. ... The branch of behavior study commonly called ethology, which can be defined succinctly as the biology of behavior, has a special right to claim Charles Darwin as its patron saint. ...I believe that even today we do not quite realize how much Charles Darwin knew [stress added]. Konrad Lorenz, 1965, "Preface" in The Expression Of The Emotions In Man And Animals by Charles Darwin, 1872 [1965 University of Chicago Press edition], pages ix-xiii, pages xi-xiii.

 

ON-GOING CONCLUSIONS 

"Man may be excused for feeling some pride at having risen, though not through his own exertions, to the very summit of the organic scale; and the fact of his having thus risen, instead of having been aboriginally placed there, may give him hopes for a still higher destiny in the distant future. But we are not here concerned with hopes or fears, only with the truth as far as our reason permits us to discover it. I have given the evidence to the best of my ability; and we must acknowledge, as it seems to me, that man with all his noble qualities, with sympathy which feels for the most debased, with benevolence which extends not only to other men but to the humblest living creatures, with his god-like intellect which has penetrated into the movements and constitution of the solar system--with all these exalted powers--Man still bears in his bodily frame the indelible stamp of his lowly origin [stress added]." [The final paragraph of Charles R. Darwin (1809-1882), The Descent of Man And Selection in Relation to Sex, 1871 [1981 Princeton University Press edition, with Introduction by John T. Bonner and Robert M. May.], page 405.

In the 1860s and 1870s various events occurred to almost make Darwin's ideas almost passé while he was still alive! There was the 1860 debate at Oxford (between Huxley and Wilberforce) and in 1860, seven English Churchmen published an item entitled Essays and Reviews, wherein certain orthodox religious doctrines were questioned. Other events influenced the view of Darwin (and Darwinian ideas) held by many individuals:

"In 1862 Bishop Colenso started to publish his doubts about the Pentateuch. In 1863 Sir Charles Lyell [1797-1875] produced his evidence on the antiquity of man, which seemed to be inconsistent with the account of creation in the Bible. In 1863 Renan's [1823-1892] humanizing Vie de Jésus appeared. In 1865 J. R. Seeley of Cambridge published another humanizing work on Christ called Ecce Homo. In 1870 the British Association at Exeter generally accepted evolution. [AND] In 1871 Darwin published his Descent of Man. Thus in these ten to twelve years orthodox religion received a series of body blows, which seemed to be aimed at its existence [stress added]." G. Kitson Clark, 1967, An Expanding Society: Britain In 1830-1900, pp. 95-96.

When Descent of Man was published in 1871, the "controversy" was almost over in Darwin's time! A 1984 author had a nice summary statement of Darwin's 1871 publication:

"Despite its more explicitly materialistic interpretation of man's essence, Descent was not met with the rancor that earlier had engulfed Origin . In barely more than a decade the concept of evolution--even human evolution--had become installed as a familiar feature on the landscape of popular ideas. If the scientific community's judgment of the work did not always convey unbridled admiration, rarely did it concede less than sober respect. The reviews of Descent were for the most part favorable (Mivart's [1827-1900] aside, of course), and the tone of criticism politely muted. A number of reviewers took the occasion to deliver the satisfying news that science posed no threat to religion after all [stress added]." Kenneth Korey, 1984, The Essential Darwin, page 286.

In all of my Darwin papers and presentations, I attempt to stress the basic humanity of Charles R. Darwin, a point others have also noted; I also stress the importance of reading items for yourself and forming your own opinions! Do your own research and go back to the "original" whenever possible and not to what some "commentator" says about the "original" (even though that commentator be Gould or Urbanowicz or ....). Darwin was human and was:

"...very sensitive to criticism, and tried hard to satisfy all his critics by making appropriate alterations and accommodating conflicting points of view. This process is far more evident in Origin, where the first edition nowadays seems much superior to the sixth and last edition. John Bonner and Robert May, 1981, "Preface" in Charles Darwin, The Descent of Man And Selection In Relatiuon To Sex, page xxxv.

In reading Darwin, which "Darwin are you reading?" Origin is readily available, but what edition of Origin do you have? Darwin took his critics to heart and the various revisions in Origin (for example) have been documented above:

"...in response to numerous criticisms Darwin undertook constant revisions between the book's first appearance in 1859 and the sixth edition of 1872. The later editions thus differ considerably from the first, and the last edition contains an additional chapter (chapter 7) dealing with objections to the theory. These changes tend to obscure the original argument and the first edition is thus by far the clearest expression of Darwin's insight [stress added]. Peter J. Bowler, 1990, Charles Darwin: The Man And His Influence (Cambridge University Press) page 144.

In a most recent (2003) publication, Bowler points out the following: there was acceptance of natural selection by biologists of the day yet there was also civilized debate:

"By the 1870s most biologists were convinced that evolution did occur, but distrusted Darwin's claim that natural selection was the chief cause. Wallace was one of the few to accept that selection was indeed paramount (although he made an exception to the case of human origins), but even he disagreed with Darwin on a number of technical points. ... The disagreements between Darwin and Wallace always took place in a friendly atmosphere, but there were other scientists determined to reject natural selection altogether. Their opposition to the selection theory was often motivated by religious or moral objections to the idea that competition weeded out the poorly adapted products of random variation. But this does not mean their objections can be dismissed as expressions of mere prejudice, and in some cases the critics identified genuine weaknesses in the way Darwin had formulated his ideas [stress added]." Peter J. Bowler, 2003, Evolution: The History of an Idea , 3rd Edition, Completely Revised and Expanded (University of California Press), pages 196-197.

The distinguished Aldo Leopold (1887-1948) may have been writing tongue-in-cheek when he wrote the following:

"The question is, does the educated citizen know he [and she] is only a cog in an ecological mechanism? That if he will work with that mechanism his mental wealth and his material wealth will expand indefinitely? But that if he refuses to work with it, it will ultimately grind him to dust? If education does not teach us these things, then what is education for? [stress added]." Aldo Leopold, 1949/1953, A Sand County Almanac With Essays on Conservation From Round River (1966 Sierra Club/Ballantine Books Edition), page 210.

We may indeed be "cogs" but we are "thinking cogs" as Blaise Pascal (1623-1662) pointed out: L'homme n'est qu'un roseau, le plus faible de la nature, mais c'est un roseau pensant, or "Man is but a reed, the weakest in nature, but he is a thinking reed." In 2001 Peter J. Bentley wrote Digital Biology: How Nature is Transforming Our Technology And Our Lives and had the following:

"Our societies are not just groups of separate people. They are cooperating, planning, unified entities. Evolution isn't just a bunch of creatures reproducing and dying. It's an amazingly creative process that has enabled the most miraculous of forms to be generated. Your brain isn't just a collection of wineglass-like neurons--it's a conscious, thinking mind [stress added]." Peter J. Bentley, 2001, Digital Biology: How Nature is Transforming Our Technology And Our Lives (NY: Simon & Schuster), page 233.

The words of the distinguished American Anthropologist Gregory Bateson (1904-1980) are worth repeating:

"The unit of survival [or adaptation] is organism plus environment. We are learning by bitter experience that the organism which destroys its environment destroys itself. If, now, we correct the Darwinian unit of survival to include the environment and the interaction between organism and environment, a very strange and surprising identity emerges: the unit of survival turns out to be identical with the unit of mind" [italics in original; stress added]." Gregory Bateson [1904-1980], 1972, Steps To An Ecology of Mind (NY: Ballantine Books), page 483.

There is something known as the "Darwin Industry" (pointed out in previous PHIL presentations) and these include such publication as Merryl Davies's Darwin And Fundamentalism (2000), Gabriel Dover's Dear Mr. Darwin: Letters On The Evolution of Life And Human Behavior (2000), Phillip E. Johnson's Defeating Darwinism By Opening Minds (1997), Randal Keynes's Darwin, His Daughter, and Human Evolution (2002), Janet Browne's outstanding 2002 publication entitled Charles Darwin: The Power of Place (Volume II of a Biography, which is an excellent companion volume to her earlier 1995 volume entitled Charles Darwin: Voyaging (Volume I of a Biography), S. Alter's Darwin and The Linguistic Image (1999), Finding Darwin's God: A Scientist's Search For Common Ground Between God And Evolution (1999 by Kenneth R. Miller), Gerald Weissmann's 1998 Darwin's Audubon: Science and The Liberal Imagination, Matthew Chapman's 2000/2001 Trials Of The Monkey, as well as Darwin and Archaeology: A Handbook of Key Concepts (a 2002 publication edited by John Hart and John Terrell). Indeed, it is in this last item that the editors have an excellent statement, well-summarazing "why" interest in Darwin took off so rapidly after 1859 (and why it continues to this day):

"But what then is evolution? Although it may sound unconventional to say so, Charles Darwin's theory of evolution is above all else a theory of history. While initially offered as an encompassing theory about the origin of new species by means of NATURAL SELECTION, Darwin's insights into the causes of biological evolution and persistence soon proved to be so powerful that many have sought to apply Darwinian theory to human affairs--to use Darwin's ways of thinking about history and evolution to explain not only our own oigins as a remarkably clever kind of animal (see BIOLOGICAL CONSTRAINTS), but also our human ways and the history of human institutions and social practices (major elements of what many anthropologists and others call CULTURE) [stress added]." John Terrell and John Hart, 2002, Darwin and Archaeology: A Handbook of Key Concepts (Westport, Connecticut: Bergin & Garvey), page 2.

The boldness and capitalization of the three terms above appears in the original (since they are dealing with "key concepts") but I have stressed the phrase "Charles Darwin's theory of evolution is above all else a theory of history" and this is what eventually led to Social Darwinism, the eugenics movement in Europe (and in the United States of America), and other ill-conceived ideas which individuals developed to deal with human beings based on ill-applied Darwinian theory. We have the phrase "Social Darwinism" but it actually should be "Social Spencerism."

"Spencer's slogan ["survival of the fittest"] backfired.... It gave the misleading impression that natural selection was an elimination contest. Since nature favoured the strong and exterminated the weal, human affairs would be more efficient if they were conducted on the same principle. This led to a regretable idiocy known as Social Darwinism, according to which the ruthless economic competiton displayed by capitalism should be encouraged in order to obtain an efficiency comparable to the one exhibitedf in nature [stress in original]. Jonathan Miller and Borin Van loon, 1982, Darwin For Beginners (NY: Pantheon Books), p age 171.

Given all-of-the-above, there is (however) some humor to be found in the concept of "Social Darwinism" if one considers the following words:

"All poker is a form of social Darwinism: the fit survive, the weak go broke. Walter Matthau [1920-2000] once said that, 'The game exemplifies the worst aspects of capitalism that have made our country so great [stress added]." Al Alvarez, 2000, The World Series of Poker. Poker Digest, Vol. 3, No. 9, April 21-May 4, 2000, pages 34-37, page 37.

Darwin (and those associated with him) were influential individuals when they were alive and continue to be influential to this day:

"Biology also became historical after the publication in 1859 of Charles Darwin's [1809-1882] theory of evolution by natural selection. He argued that all species were descended from earlier ones, and that all creatures were locked in a struggle for existence which selected for the traits most advantageous for surival at a given time and place. Darwin's ideas were the most revolutionary and powerful scientific propositions of modern times, and posed a direct challenge to religious accounts of the origins of life and humankind. For this reason his views attracted vigorous opposition, especially from those who took the Bible as the literal word of God. ... gradually Darwin's views became--with modifications--universally accepted among the world's scientifically educated [stress added]." J.R. McNeill & William H. McNeill, 2003, The Human Web: A Bird's-Eye View of World History (NY: W.W. Norton & Co.), page 176.

"The Origin of Species is one of the most obvious scientific demonstrations of cause and effect, in that the process it describes rests on a history of the genetic variations of a species as it adapts to the circumstances of its environment. The process of adaptation may be speeded up in the laboratory, but in the main, evolutionary theory retains its validity by tracing the history of such adaptations under natural conditions [stress added]." David L. Wilson and Zack Bowen, 2001, Science And Literature: Bridging the Two Cultures (University Press of Florida), page 64.

Everyone has a particular "history" (and hence evolves or "changes" by adapting to shifts in the environment over time, using the "mind" as Bateson would say) and interest in Darwin is "alive-and-well" and continues to evolve! I try to make my modest contribution to the "Darwin Industry" by presentations such as these as well as professional papers and publications (see references at the end of this paper).

"The great value of Darwinism, it seems to me, was that it jolted modern men into questioning various sentimental beliefs about nature and man's place in it. In this, Darwin's influence closely parallels that of Galileo [1564-1642]. Just as the first modern astronomers and physicists destroyed a naive geocentrism, so Darwin and his successors overwhelmingly displaced what may be called homocentrism, the belief that nature exists for the sake of man [stress added]." Jacob Needleman, 1975, A Sense of the Cosmos: The Encounter of Modern Science and Ancient Truth (NY: Doubleday & Co., Inc.), page 72.

In ending, I attempt to answer the question posed at the beginning of this presentation, namely "Why are there so many different kinds of living things?" In his closing words of the 1860 edition of Origin Darwin had the following:

"Thus, from the war of nature, from famine and death, the most exalted object of which we are capable of conceiving, namely the production of higher animals directly follows. There is a grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed by the Creator into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved [stress added]."

The Darwin Videos:

2001 Charles Darwin: - Part Two: The Voyage. [ ~Twenty-two Minute Video. Darwin from South America, through the Galápagos Islands, and back to England.] [http://rce.csuchico.edu/darwin/RV/darwin3.ram] Edited by Ms. Vilma Hernandez and Produced by Ms. Donna Crowe: Instructional Media Center, CSU, Chico. Available via the Internet with REAL PLAYER [http://www.real.com/player/index.html].

1999 Charles Darwin: - Part One: The Voyage. [ ~Twenty-two Minutes. Darwin sailing from England to South America.] [http://rce.csuchico.edu/darwin/RV/darwinvoyage.ram] Produced and Edited by Ms. Donna Crowe: Instructional Media Center, CSU, Chico. Available via the Internet with REAL PLAYER [http://www.real.com/player/index.html].

1997 Charles Darwin: Reflections - Part one: The Beginning. [ ~Seventeen Minutes: Darwin in England]. [http://rce.csuchico.edu/darwin/RV/darwinreflections.ram]. Produced and Edited by Ms. Donna Crowe: Instructional Media Center, CSU, Chico. Available via the Internet with REAL PLAYER [http://www.real.com/player/index.html]. [THIS IS THE one shown in class on September 29, 2003.]

Others:

in progress http://www.csuchico.edu/~curban/UrbanowiczCitations.html [Urbanowicz Citations On The Web].

2003 http://www.csuchico.edu/~curban/Jan2003Hawai'iDarwin.html [Teaching As Theatre Once Again: Darwin in the Classroom (And Beyond). (For the Hawai'i International Conference on Arts and Humanities, Honolulu, Hawai'i, January 12-15, 2003.) [Also published in The Conference Proceedings, CD-ROM: ISSN#1541-5899.]

2002a, http://www.csuchico.edu/~curban/DarwinDayCollectionOneChapter.html [There Is A Grandeur in This View Of Life. Darwin Day Collection One: The Single Best Idea Ever (2002) Edited by Amanda Chesworth et al. (Albuquerque, New Mexico: Tangled Bank Press), pages 67-70. [NOTE: This is a shortened version of 2002d below.]

2002b http://www.csuchico.edu/~curban/DarwinFA2002Phil108.htm [Charles R. Darwin and John Steinbeck: The Story Continues.] [For CSU, Chico PHIL 108, Ethics And Human Happiness, at CSU, Chico, December 2).

2002c http://www.csuchico.edu/~curban/DarwinSP2002Phil108.htm [Charles R. Darwin: From 2002 to 2008/2009.] [For CSU, Chico PHIL [Philosophy] 108, Ethics And Human Happiness, at CSU, Chico, May 6.)

2002d http://www.csuchico.edu/~curban/DarwinSacFeb2002.html [On Darwin: Countdown to 2008/2009]. For "Darwin Day" activities, sponsored by HAGSA [The Humanist Association of the Greater Sacramento Area], Sacramento, California, February 10, 2002].

2001a http://www.csuchico.edu/~curban/SP2001DarwinPhil108.html (For CSU, Chico PHIL 108, Ethics And Human Happiness, at CSU, Chico, April 30.)

2001b http://www.csuchico.edu/~curban/SelfTesting/DarwinTestTwo.htm (Darwin 2001 Self-Test Two].

2000a http://www.csuchico.edu/~curban/SelfTesting/DarwinTestOne.htm (Darwin 2000-2001 [Self]Test One).

2000b Charles R. Darwin (1809-1882): Spring 2000 Miscellaneous Information.(For CSU, Chico PHIL 108, Ethics And Human Happiness, April 26.)

1999a http://www.csuchico.edu/~curban/DarwinMiscSep99.html (Charles R. Darwin: Fall 1999 Miscellaneous Information For Various Activities; including CSU, Chico ANTH 198 [Anthropology Forum: The Evolution of Digital Darwin, September 23)], CSU, Chico ANTH 300 [Core Seminar in Cultural Anthropology, September 30], and CSU, Chico PHIL 108, Ethics And Human Happiness, [November 17].

1998b Darwin: From The Origin (1859+), To The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation To Sex (1871), And The Expression of Emotions...(1872) To Today! For CSU, Chico PHIL 108, Ethics And Human Happiness, December 2.

1992 Four-Field Commentary. Anthropology Newsletter [American Anthropological Association, Washington, D.C.], Vol. 33, No. 9: 3.

http://www.oum.ox.ac.uk/debate.htm [Oxford Natural History Museum} 1860 Huxley-Wilberforce Debate]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/2236585.stm [The BBC} Neanderthal Skeleton Discovered (4 September 2002)].

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2003-06/uoc--1fs061003.php [June 2003} 160,000 fossilized Homo sapiens skulls from Ethiopia]

http://www.hominids.com/donsmaps/frenchcaves.html [French And Spanish Caves]

http://www.leakeyfoundation.org/foundation/ [The Leakey Foundation]

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/evolution/library/04/3/l_043_01.html [Becoming A Fossil]

http://dsc.discovery.com/convergence/realeve/realeve.html [Interesting "Discovery Channel" Interactive site on Human Evolution]  

http://www.nature.com/nature/ancestor/ [July, 2002} Nature} 6-7 million year old find]

http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?articleID=000B16B6-AA5E-1D2C-97CA809EC588EEDF [Scientific American July 11, 2002]

http://www.sciam.com/ [December 26, 2002]

For-virtually-every web page I do I try to "update" the following information concerning "Darwin" and "Search Engines" on the World Wide Web. The following is provided for your edification:

On September 27, 2003, "search engine hits" for "Charles R. Darwin" resulted in the following information: Google had 278,000 items; Alta Vista Search had 81,607 items; WiseNut had 39,116 items; and AllTheWeb had 463,572 web pages.

On November 27, 2002, "search engine hits" for "Charles R. Darwin" resulted in the following information: Google had 143,000 items; "Power Search" by Northern Light had 2,720 items; Alta Vista Search had 84,274 items; MonkeySweat had numerous items; and WiseNut had 76,294 items (and AllTheWeb had 516,281 web pages for "Charles R. Darwin").

On May 2, 2002, "search engine hits" for "Charles R. Darwin" resulted in the following information: Google had 130,000 items; "Power Search" by Northern Light had 2,623 items; Alta Vista Search had 36,608 items; MonkeySweat had numerous items; and WiseNut had 64,940 items.

On February 6, 2002, "search engine hits" for "Charles R. Darwin" resulted in the following information: Google had 118,000 items; "Power Search" by Northern Light had 2,587 items; Alta Vista Search had 40,131 items; and MonkeySweat had numerous items!

On October 17, 2001, "search engine hits" for "Charles R. Darwin" resulted in the following information: Google had 120,000 items; Northern Light had 51,939 items; Alta Vista Search had 65,975,088 items; and MonkeySweat had numerous items!

Two things should be obvious: (#1) interest in Darwin continues and (#2), obviously, just as with people, all "search engines" are not created equal and there is "cultural selection" involved in everything we do! How does one "evaluate" and "use" this wide range of information? One does it just as Darwin did, carefully, patiently, and slowly, for as Darwin wrote:

"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 R. Darwin, 1871, The Descent of Man And Selection in Relation to Sex[1981 Princeton University Press edition, with Introduction by John T. Bonner and Robert M. May], Chapter 21, page 385.

Source: Caroline Overy, 1997, A Teacher's Guide To Charles Darwin: His Life, Journeys and Discoveries (United Kingdom: English Heritage).

 

Source: Various (and see R.B. Freeman, 1978, Charles Darwin: A Companion [Folkestone, Kent, England: Dawson & Sons, Ltd.], pages 66-68.

1998 Oxford University Press Edition With Introduction, Afterword and Commentaries by Paul Ekman.	Rebecca Stott, 2003 (NY and London: W.W. Norton & Company).

# # #

 [~10,316 words]} 29 September 2003

Copyright © 2003; all rights reserved by Charles F. Urbanowicz

29 September 2003 by cfu