Darwin, not such a great man

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DeletedUser16008

This is not about Religion or Evolution but rather the man Darwin. Was he such a great man or just manipulated his way into the poll position of current thinking gaining momentum and being considered by others at the time ?

Darwin is widely considered an iconic figure of science, he is taught in virtually all schools and his theory on natural selection is what hes most famous for. He was not however a scientist but a merely a naturalist and one who based his ideas on the thoughts and findings of others.

However he is also less known for the flawed morality racism and beliefs he attempted to justify in his works. So much so that it has been used and twisted by many since then to justify all manner of racism bigotry and even class divide. It seems to me it includes a blueprint and justification of modern society to subject others to the rule and demands of the few. Who after all would go against Darwin in this modern age ? The fact is the man was anything but a nice old guy, he was racist, unforgiving, vain and not the icon hes been made out to be.

In his less know work the Decent of Man we can see this is very apparent and below are some quotes from this work.

“As man advances in civilization, and small tribes are united into larger communities, the simplest reason would tell each individual that he ought to extend his social instincts and sympathies to all members of the same nation, though personally unknown to him. This point being once reached, there is only an artificial barrier to prevent his sympathies extending to the men of all nations and races.”

“At some future period, not very distant as measured by centuries, the civilised races of man will almost certainly exterminate and replace throughout the world the savage races. At the same time the anthropomorphous apes, as Professor Schaaffhausen has remarked, will no doubt be exterminated. The break will then be rendered wider, for it will intervene between man in a more civilised state as we may hope, than the Caucasian and some ape as low as a baboon, instead of as at present between the negro or Australian and the gorilla.”

“With savages, the weak in body or mind are soon eliminated; and those that survive commonly exhibit a vigorous state of health. We civilised men, on the other hand, do our utmost to check the process of elimination; we build asylums for the imbecile, the maimed, and the sick; we institute poor-laws; and our medical men exert their utmost skill to save the life of every one to the last moment. There is reason to believe that vaccination has preserved thousands, who from a weak constitution would formerly have succumbed to small-pox. Thus the weak members of civilised societies propagate their kind. No one who has attended to the breeding of domestic animals will doubt that this must be highly injurious to the race of man."

Indeed this did not stop with his second publication The Origin of Species whos original title was in fact up until the sixth edition thirteen years later. It was titled On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life.

"The reckless, degraded, and often vicious members of society, tend to increase at a quicker rate than the provident and generally virtuous members."

"With civilised nations, as far as an advanced standard of morality, and an increased number of fairly well-endowed men are concerned, natural selection apparently effects but little; though the fundamental social instincts were originally thus gained. But I have already said enough, whilst treating of the lower races, on the causes which lead to the advance of morality, namely, the approbation of our fellow-men the strengthening of our sympathies by habit example and imitation reason experience and even self-interest instruction during youth, and religious feelings.

Darwin was most scathing and dismissive of the Irish, who came at the very bottom of his list of well civilised nations.

Darwin often credited his cousin Thomas Malthus in his diary's with influences and stimulation on his thinking and opinions, maybe with quotes such as

"The power of population is indefinitely greater than the power in the earth to produce subsistence for man."

"The histories of mankind are histories only of the higher classes."
Thomas Malthus

This is clearly an early take on population control and its belief that some have a right over others to thrive and the chosen ones are only those on the top. Darwins family Wedgewood was hardly lower class. It was Malthus that Darwin gave this credit to for his work.

As Darwin later wrote in his autobiography;

In October 1838, that is, fifteen months after I had begun my systematic enquiry, I happened to read for amusement Malthus on Population, and being well prepared to appreciate the struggle for existence which everywhere goes on from long-continued observation of the habits of animals and plants, it at once struck me that under these circumstances favourable variations would tend to be preserved, and unfavourable ones to be destroyed. The result of this would be the formation of new species. Here, then, I had at last got a theory by which to work..."

Darwin was not a wonderful human being and as flawed morally and socially as anyone of his time. The question is has he given humanity an excuse to superimpose a very dangerous excuse of might is right and a very wrong idea that evolution in the human species is and should be based not on natural adaptation and biological survival but by the use of power, class and artificial manipulation.

It is even in question if he actually used Wallace's ideas and take the credit.

While Darwin was slowly preparing On the Origin of Species for publication, he received, supposedly on June 18, 1858, a letter from Alfred Russel Wallace. And that letter contained an essay (written in Frebruary of that year) outlining Wallace’s theory of evolution by natural selection, which of course was something Darwin had been ruminating about for years. Wallace’s piece, “On the tendency of varieties to depart indefinitely from the original type,” has become known as the ”Ternate” essay from the Indonesian island where it was supposedly penned.

Darwin was, of course, upset. He’d been mulling over his ideas, and collecting evidence to support them, for two decades, and all of a sudden some upstart naturalist had stolen his thunder. Moreover, Wallace asked Darwin to pass the essay on to the geologist Charles Lyell if he found it interesting.

What could Darwin do to preserve both his integrity and his ideas? He sent Wallace’s essay to his friends Charles Lyell and botanist Joseph Hooker, who brokered a solution: Darwin would write a short precis of his own ideas, which, along with Wallace’s essay, would be presented at a meeting of the Linnean Society of London. A letter from Darwin to Hooker on June 19, 1858, shows how distraught Darwin was about the possibility that he’d lost the priority of his great ideas.

My dear Hooker

I have just read your letter, & see you want papers at once. I am quite prostrated & can do nothing but I send Wallace [i.e., Wallace’s manuscript] & my abstract of abstract of letter to Asa Gray, which gives most imperfectly only the means of change & does not touch on reasons for believing species do change. I daresay all is too late. I hardly care about it.—

But you are too generous to sacrifice so much time & kindness.—It is most generous, most kind. I send sketch of 1844 solely that you may see by your own handwriting that you did read it.—

I really cannot bear to look at it.—Do not waste much time. It is miserable in me to care at all about priority. . .

Darwin’s cobbled-together contribution, and Wallace’s essay, were read at the Linnean Society on July 1, 1858, and the essays were published. That was the gentlemanly solution to a thorny problem. Darwin, of course, is now the name associated with evolution and natural selection, for Wallace did not capitalize on his ideas, while Darwin rushed The Origin into print, securing his place in history.

Is Darwin such an icon and genius as modern teaching would have you believe ? certainly not morally or socially. History is littered with those that had their ideas and findings stolen by those with power and funding and standing, is Darwin just another example ? very possibly.

Darwinism has been used as an excuse for many atrocities, Eugenics for one thing based itself on Darwinism, a terrible ideal, Hitler and pure racial cleansing another. Whilst breaking the monopoly of religion on humanity it is very possible Darwin has been instrumental in damaging the natural evolution of the human species simply by including his clearly very often flawed opinions into his venerated works taught throughout the modern world and used by many since to further personal agendas under the guise of simply Darwinism at work.
 

DeletedUser

You'll find that the most revered of writers of that time, of nearly any inclination, had some thoughts that we consider abominable, primitive, arrogant, or just plain morally wrong.

We've come a long way in our ... evolution, if you will, of our morality, and thought process.
 

DeletedUser

I wanted to add a few thoughts and quotes about the time period you mention. Keep in mind that this is not a defense of Darwin per se, just as I suspect that your criticism of Darwin is not a wholesale attack on the idea of evolution.

For example, you mention Darwin as quoting Malthius

Darwin often credited his cousin Thomas Malthus in his diary's with influences and stimulation on his thinking and opinions, maybe with quotes such as

"The power of population is indefinitely greater than the power in the earth to produce subsistence for man."

"The histories of mankind are histories only of the higher classes."
Thomas Malthus

Keep in mind what the USA was like in the 1860s...Slavery was still widespread, and our conceptualization of the world, of race, and of... "species" is different now, than it was then.

In light of this comment that, "The histories of mankind are histories only of the higher classes." In many ways, this is because only the higher classes had access to reading, writing, and such through public education.

http://fisher.lib.virginia.edu/cgi-local/censusbin/census/cen.pl?year=870

For what that's worth.

Now, I will not disagree with you that the writings of Darwin, viewed today, have the appearance of barbarism and outright racism. Nevertheless, it was in many ways progressive, and led the way for things down the line such as allowing women and races other than white into schools, not to say that such things had not been happening already...But his work helped to pave the way for more of that to spread.

It's downright liberal in comparison to something from a few hundred years earlier...

Take for example, the Papal Bull Romanus Pontifex, of 1455.

http://www.nativeweb.org/pages/legal/indig-romanus-pontifex.html

Here's the relevant excerpt

We [therefore] weighing all and singular the premises with due meditation, and noting that since we had formerly by other letters of ours granted among other things free and ample faculty to the aforesaid King Alfonso -- to invade, search out, capture, vanquish, and subdue all Saracens and pagans whatsoever, and other enemies of Christ wheresoever placed, and the kingdoms, dukedoms, principalities, dominions, possessions, and all movable and immovable goods whatsoever held and possessed by them and to reduce their persons to perpetual slavery, and to apply and appropriate to himself and his successors the kingdoms, dukedoms, counties, principalities, dominions, possessions, and goods, and to convert them to his and their use and profit

In other words, "go ahead, capture them, take their stuff, and make them slaves."

We've changed our views on what we call, "human," over the years, and Darwin's work did help to widen that range, believe it or not.
 
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