Andrew Brown suggests that atheists are turning Muslims into creationists

March 28, 2013 • 5:53 am

It seems to me that the only reason the Guardian still employs Andrew Brown is that his ridiculous columns elicit blog traffic by those who wish to refute him. I read him for the same reason I smell the milk when I know it’s gone bad, and I’m rarely disappointed.  His latest piece, “Atheists need to run an Alpha course of their own,” suggests that militant atheists like Richard Dawkins, who publicly equate evolution with atheism, are responsible for much of creationism in the Islamic world.

What apparently inspired Brown was a tweet from Richard Dawkins one week ago:

Picture 1

In response, Brown produces an entire column based on this tweet and a talk in England by Islamic astronomer Salman Hameed.  If Brown had done any more research on Islam and creationism, he would have found that virtually everything he said was wrong:

The fact that [Dawkins’s] question might have answers he has not grasped seems never to trouble him. The result is purely comic if you don’t care about science education, as most people in this country don’t. But if you do think scientific literacy is valuable his tweet is depressing because there is increasing evidence that the Dawkins approach is actually cementing creationism as a mark of Muslim identity in the west.

At a conference last week at the Centre for Social Relations at Coventry University, I listened to Salman Hameed, an astronomer who has moved into sociology and conducted large-scale research across five countries on why and how Muslims are creationist. The overwhelming answer is not that they reject the fact of evolution but that they reject the name Darwin, because he is associated in their minds with atheism, racism, and imperialism. None of these associations are strictly justified, of course. But the association with atheism is still popular.

The idea that you cannot be a biologist, or even a proper scientist, and still believe in God is palpably false but energetically believed by Dawkins and his acolytes.

I’ve read quite a bit on Islam and creationism in the past few months, and it’s palpably clear that the roots of Islamic creationism are nourished by adherence to the Qur’an (which has a creation story), which—unlike the Bible—is universally seen as inerrant and not subject to metaphorical interpretation. In fact, Islamic “accommodationism” consists largely of showing how every fact of modern science was anticipated by the Qur’an. Atop this is a general distrust of Western science, which is seen as corrosive of Islamic values.  While bigots like Brown can tout Dawkins’s atheism as an excuse for Muslims to remain creationists, I’ve found that it actually has little to do with the persistence of creationism in the Islamic world. (I note, though, that in a few Muslim countries, like—suprisingly—Iran, evolution is taught in the public schools, but humans are inevitably an exception to the evolutionary process.)

But Brown is simply talking out of his nether parts when he says things like the following:

There are such Muslim creationists but they are not found among the educated.

That’s simply wrong. Many educated Muslims are creationists, and if Brown had done the least research he would have found that.  Even Adnan Oktar, the infamous Harun Yahya who disseminates Islamic creationism worldwide, is university educated. In the book Atoms and Eden, which I discussed recently, one of the interviewees was Nidhal Guessom, an Algerian professor of astrophysics at the University of Sharjah (United Arab Emirates). Guessom is a brave man, for he regularly speaks out against Islamic creationism, an action that could lead to his death.  Here are three quotes from his interview (pp. 221, 222 and 226):

“The culture of authority, which is Islamic culture today, is dominated by religious figures. The religious dimensions of society are crushing and stifling inquiry, and we have had too many people who were declared heretics.”  One was consider heretical and said that there was a human element in the writing of the Quran and its meaning had evolved.”

“But in Islam, everybody is required to believe that every word in the Quran was revealed by God.”

. . .“evolution is being rejected equally by educated and uneducated Muslims.”

If Brown wants more examples of educated Muslims rejecting evolution, I will be glad to send him a list.

Brown is so bent on defaming Dawkins and the New Atheists, though, that he insists that Muslims are embracing creationism simply because militant atheists won’t shut up:

However, this is where Dawkins’ scorn does some real damage, even among people who have never otherwise heard of him. Because there is a self-consciously oppositional culture among young poor Muslims, who feel themselves stigmatised and disadvantaged, they can tend to embrace creationism simply because they know it’s wrong by the lights of the majority. Dawkins’ dismissal of Muslim creationism as “alien rubbish” was not only found as a YouTube clip on the EDL website for a while, but also used in the propaganda of Harun Yahya, the Turkish creationist and self-publicist. The emotional logic is clear: if this rich, sneering white man is against it, it must be good for disaffected young Muslims who feel that they are themselves treated as “alien rubbish”.

Shades of Chris Mooney! Brown’s prescription for curing Islamic creationism is to engage creationist Muslims in constructive dialogue. What a joke! Has anyone seen the YouTube videos of P. Z. Myers or Richard Dawkins trying to do just that?

There is a scientific approach possible to the problem of creationism. You ask what people mean by the word, both intellectually and emotionally; then you listen the answers carefully and try to translate them into terms both sides can accept. Only then is it possible to disentangle the social and philosophical uses of the term from its status as a quasi-scientific explanation and to promote, so far as possible, the scientific truth.

But that would require actual contact with real Muslim creationists, and a willingness to engage in dialogue with them, not matter how wrong they are. That is the same sort of process that the Alpha course forces on evangelical Christians. It works only to the extent that they can pretend to take seriously the objections to their own belief. So perhaps what Dawkinsite atheism needs today is its very own Alpha course – if it is ever to be more than increasingly hysterical sermons to the converted.

Of course one can try to educate Muslims about evolution—I’ve been trying, and have just succeeded, in getting Why Evolution is True translated into Arabic. But I am under no illusion that it will cause a sea change in Islamic attitudes towards evolution.  If Brown thinks he can bring Islamic creationists to Darwin by “constructive dialogue,” I have a bridge in Saudi Arabia I’d like to sell him. It would be like trying to convert lions to vegetarianism by showing them cabbages.

Brown

The death of Annie Darwin

March 28, 2013 • 4:53 am

Apropos of yesterday’s post on Darwin’s private life and emotional side, reader DermotC sent me a picture of the tombstone of Darwin’s daughter Anne (“Annie”), who died in 1851 the age of 10.  She was the second of Charles and Emma’s ten children, and, as many of us know, her loss was a severe blow to her parents.  Two other offspring died young (typical of those days), but note that one of them, Leonard, lived until 1943!

Anne Elizabeth Darwin (1841-1851)
Anne Elizabeth Darwin (1841-1851)

The cause of her death isn’t known. It used to be thought that she died of scarlet fever, but she’d been ill for two years and, as a recent scientific article speculates, it was more likely tuberculosis. Darwin had taken her to the spa town of Great Malvern for the famous “Gully water cure,” a regimen of drinking, dousing, and perambulation that Darwin himself had tried in a vain attempt to cure his own chronic illness (still unknown, but possibly “cyclic vomiting syndrome“).

It was at Great Malvern that Annie died, and there she was buried. The photo was taken at the Great Malvern Priory churchyard, and here are DermotC’s notes on the photo:

As you’re running posts about Darwin’s private life, I thought I’d send you my photo of the gravestone of his daughter Anne who died aged 10.  There’s plenty on the net about it, but my brother and I found this on a pilgrimage to the lovely Great Malvern.
OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA
The inscription, I think, demonstrates a compromise between his growing atheism and the Christianity of his wife.  It reads:
IHS
Anne Elizabeth Darwin
Born March 2 1841
Died April 28 1851
A dear and good child
No mention of God or being called to the after-life, as one might expect in this era; and starkly sad.
It is in Malvern Priory in Worcestershire (pronounced Wusstersher) and a beautiful graveyard it is (btw. Kierkegaard means graveyard!).  She went there, with her father, for the waters as her condition deteriorated.  You probably know that her death affected him deeply.
It’s often said that the death of Annie pushed her father towards nonbelief in God (the older Darwin was at best a deist, but perhaps an agnostic), I suspect because he couldn’t comport the death of his lovely daughter with the existence of a loving God. That is supported by a famous letter he wrote to the American biologist Asa Gray in 1860, saying that he couldn’t understand how the sufferings produced by natural selection could be countenanced by “a beneficent & omnipotent God.”
Darwin wrote a touching memorial to Anne a week after her death; below are few excerpts from the Darwin Correspondence Project. They make me tear up, for Darwin was not an effusive man, and must have been in great agony to write what’s below.

From whatever point I look back at her, the main feature in her disposition which at once rises before me is her buoyant joyousness tempered by two other characteristics, namely her sensitiveness, which might easily have been overlooked by a stranger & her strong affection. Her joyousness and animal spirits radiated from her whole countenance & rendered every movement elastic & full of life & vigour. It was delightful & cheerful to behold her. Her dear face now rises before me, as she used sometimes to come running down stairs with a stolen pinch of snuff for me, her whole form radiant with the pleasure of giving pleasure. Even when playing with her cousins when her joyousness almost passed into boisterousness, a single glance of my eye, not of displeasure (for I thank God I hardly ever cast one on her,) but of want of sympathy would for some minutes alter her whole countenance. This sensitiveness to the least blame, made her most easy to manage & very good: she hardly ever required to be found fault with, & was never punished in any way whatever. Her sensitiveness appeared extremely early in life, & showed itself in crying bitterly over any story at all melancholy; or on parting with Emma even for the shortest interval. Once when she was very young she exclaimed “Oh Mamma, what should we do, if you were to die”.

. . .Her health failed in a slight degree for about nine months before her last illness; but it only occasionally gave her a day of discomfort: at such times, she was never in the least degree8 cross, peevish or impatient; & it was wonderful to see, as the discomfort passed, how quickly her elastic spirits brought back her joyousness & happiness. In the last short illness, her conduct in simple truth was angelic; she never once complained; never became fretful; was ever considerate of others; & was thankful in the most gentle, pathetic manner for everything done for her. When so exhausted that she could hardly speak, she praised everything that was given her, & said some tea “was beautifully good.” When I gave her some water, she said “I quite thank you”; & these, I believe were the last precious words ever addressed by her dear lips to me.But looking back, always the spirit of joyousness rises before me as her emblem and characteristic: she seemed formed to live a life of happiness: her spirits were always held in check by her sensitiveness lest she should displease those she loved, & her tender love was never weary of displaying itself by fondling & all the other little acts of affection.—We have lost the joy of the Household, and the solace of our old age:— she must have known how we loved her; oh that she could now know how deeply, how tenderly we do still & shall ever love her dear joyous face. Blessings on her.—

April 30. 1851.

An old favorite

March 27, 2013 • 2:16 pm

Why, oh why, did Gary Larson stop doing cartoons? He was terrifically funny and creative, much beloved by biologists, and all of us had at least one Larson cartoon on our office door.  Nobody has replaced him, and our doors are bereft.

Since a day without cats is like a day without sunshine, I offer this old Far Side cartoon, one of my favorites:

Far side

And speaking of Jane Goodall, she had a connection with Larson, as described by Wikipedia:

One of Larson’s more famous cartoons shows a chimpanzee couple grooming. The female finds a blonde human hair on the male and inquires, “Conducting a little more ‘research’ with that Jane Goodall tramp?” The Jane Goodall Institute thought this was in bad taste and had their lawyers draft a letter to Larson and his distribution syndicate, in which they described the cartoon as an “atrocity”. They were stymied by Jane Goodall herself, who was in Africa at the time. When she returned and saw the cartoon, she stated that she found the cartoon amusing and later personally met Larson. Since then, all profits from sales of a shirt featuring this cartoon go to the Goodall Institute. Goodall wrote a preface to The Far Side Gallery 5, detailing her version of the “Jane Goodall Tramp” controversy. She praised Larson’s creative ideas, which often compare and contrast the behavior of humans and animals. In 1988, Larson visited Gombe Streams National Park and was attacked by Frodo, a chimp described by Goodall as a “bully.” Larson sustained cuts and bruises from the encounter.

Is the notion of “God” coherent?

March 27, 2013 • 12:06 pm

There’s been some discussion on this site and others whether it’s even useful to ask if there can be evidence for a god, given that the very notion of God is incoherent.  I’ve maintained that there can indeed be evidence that would provisionally convince at least me of the existence of a divine being. But others disagree.

One of these is the Dutch philosopher Herman Philipse, whose new book God in the Age of Science? I am much enjoying. It’s a bit of a tough slog, as it’s academic and heavily philosophical, but I can still understand it. Philipse’s thesis is that the notion of God is indeed incoherent, but he also allows that even if you think it’s coherent, there’s no evidence supporting God’s existence.  It’s a deeply thoughtful and powerful argument for atheism.

I’m not yet convinced that the question of God’s existence is incoherent, but Philipse makes some excellent points. Today’s lesson is how he argues for God’s incoherence.

Philipse takes as his starting point a widely-accepted concept of God, and it’s one adumbrated by a very respected theologian and philosopher of religion, Richard Swinburne. If it’s from Swinburne, it has street cred among philosophers. The quote below is from Swinburne’s book The Existence of God (2004, p. 7):

“I take the proposition ‘God exists’ (and the equivalent proposition ‘There is a God’) to be logically equivalent to ‘there exists necessarily a person without a body (i.e. a spirit) who necessarily is eternal, perfectly free, omnipotent, omniscient, perfectly good, and the creator of all things.’ I use ‘God’ as the name of the person picked out by this description.”

Most theists do indeed conceive of God as having such humanlike traits. Given that, Philipse then begins to take the notion apart (pp. 101-103):

“How can one meaningfully say that God listens to our prayers, loves us, speaks to us, answers (or does not answer our supplications, etcetera, if God is also assumed to be an incorporeal being? For the stipulation that God is an incorporeal being  annuls the very conditions for meaningfully applying psychological expressions to another entity, to wit, that this entity is able in principle to display forms of bodily behaviour which resemble patterns of human behaviour. In other words, the very attempt to give a meaning and a possible referent to the word ‘God’ as used in theism must fail, because this attempt is incoherent. . .

. . . If this is so, one might object, how are we to explain the fact that the word ‘God’ and sentences such as ‘God loves me’, appear to be used meaningfully in monotheistic language? But explaining this is not difficult. The religious uses of the putative proper name ‘God’ are parasitic upon, and resemble to a large extent, the ordinary uses of proper names and psychological  expressions for human beings. What religious believers fail to notice is that by substituting ‘God’ for an ordinary proper name in sentences such as ‘John loves me’, or ‘Paul will condemn him’, they cancel the conditions for using meaningfully the words ‘loves’ and ‘condemns’.

Monotheistic believers often are vaguely aware that the meaning of words eludes them when they utter sentences containing the word ‘God’. But they misinterpret this fact as symptomatic of the spiritual depth of religious discourse. They think that the profoundly mysterious nature of monotheistic language points to a transcendent reality, which cannot be grasped by us, limited human beings. In this case, however, the impression of profoundness is caused by a mere misuse of language. As Wittgenstein aptly remarked, ‘[t]he problems arising through a misinterpretation of our forms of language have the character of depth.”

I love the last paragraph: it reminds me so much of the rambling, discursive, and incoherent theology of people like John Haught. By larding their apologetics with a bunch of numinous words (“depth” is one of Haught’s favorites), they think they’re saying something meaningful.

There’s a lot more to Philipse’s argument (he goes on to dispel Swinburne’s argument—in The Coherence of Theism—that the idea of a “bodiless person” is coherent), but this section is powerful.

A fish with a see-through head

March 27, 2013 • 10:02 am

Here’s one weird fish: the Pacific barreleye (Macropinna microstoma), a deep-sea fish (600-800m) recently filmed by National Geographic in its natural habitat.  It’s been described for a while, but its transparent head shattered when it was dragged up to the surface, so biologists didn’t really know whether it could move its eyes when alive.  The answer is yes.

Note that the “eyelike” structures at the front of the head aren’t eyes, but olfactory organs. The eyes are those big green jobs inside the head.

Why is the head transparent? Well, the eyes are inside the head, presumably for protection, and so its head has to be transparent. Of course not all deep-sea fish use that design, but not all deep-sea fish steal food from stinging siphonophores—one speculation of how this thing makes a living. It just wouldn’t do to have your eyes stung.

The link in the first sentence gives some information, and the Wikipedia entry is short enough to reproduce in its entirety:

Macropinna microstoma is the only species of fish in the genus Macropinna, belonging to Opisthoproctidae, the barreleye family. It is recognized for a highly unusual transparent, fluid-filled dome on its head, through which the lenses of its eyes can be seen. The eyes have a barrel shape and can be rotated to point either forward or straight up, looking through the fish’s transparent dome. M. microstoma has a tiny mouth and most of its body is covered with large scales. The fish normally hangs nearly motionless in the water, at a depth of about 600 metres (2,000 ft) to 800 metres (2,600 ft), using its large fins for stability and with its eyes directed upward. In the low light conditions it is assumed the fish detects prey by its silhouette. MBARI researchers Bruce Robison and Kim Reisenbichler observed that when prey such as small fish and jellyfish are spotted, the eyes rotate like binoculars, facing forward as it turns its body from a horizontal to a vertical position to feed. Robison speculates that M. microstoma steals food from siphonophores.

If this thing didn’t exist, you couldn’t make it up.  If frogs didn’t exist, you couldn’t imagine them, either. That’s why studying evolution is so much fun.

 

Jane Goodall apparently guilty of plagiarism and sloppy science writing

March 27, 2013 • 6:17 am

Jane Goodall’s observations of the chimps at Gombe is perhaps the most famous work in primatology in the 20th century, and she’s rightly famous for her meticulous observations, her absolute dedication to her fieldwork, her discovery of many traits in our closest relatives that were thought unique to humans, and her tireless work on biological conservation (now 78, she still travels 300 days a year raising money and consciousness). My admiration was only slightly tempered when I found out recently that she was a goddie, and has spoken many times about her faith and the lack of conflict between science and religion.

But nobody, no matter how loved or revered, is immune from criticism; and in the case of Goodall, an iconic figure in primatology, the criticism has become particularly serious. She’s now accused of not only plagiarizing from other sources in her new book, Seeds of Hope (a book about the importance of plants, co-authored with Gail Hudson), but also of conveying inaccurate information about GMO food—serious accusations for a professional scientist.

The accusations were first leveled in an article by Steven Levingston in the March 19 “Book” section of The Washington Post, after a prospective reviewer (a botanist) noticed the problems and declined to review the book.  Levingston highlights the following instances of plagiarism (i.e., unattributed copying):

  • In the book, Goodall extols the benefits of sustainable farming. She expresses her shock at learning of dangerous conditions for workers who harvest tea.“According to Oxfam,” she writes, “a British nonprofit agency working to put an end to poverty worldwide, the spraying of pesticides on tea estates is often done by untrained casual daily-wage workers, sometimes even by children and adolescents.”That paragraph appears word for word on the Web site of Choice Organic Teas, a company dedicated to ethical labor practices. Choice Organic Teas was selected in 2010 to carry the Jane Goodall “Good for All” brand on a new line of products, and it donates a slice of its profits to the Jane Goodall Institute.
  • Goodall explains the toxic dangers in some detail, writing: “Most of these chemicals — such as Aldrin 20E, Carbofuran 30, Endosulfan 35 EC, Malathion 50 EC, Tetradifon 8 EC, Calixin 80 EC — are listed as hazardous and toxic, and a number of them are banned in Western countries. Despite dangers of exposure to these poisons, the workers are frequently barefoot and in shorts rather than protected by recommended aprons.”
    This material is replicated nearly verbatim from the same Web site page. Both passages also appear in nearly identical language on other organic tea Web sites and in the 2008 book “Big Green Purse: Use Your Spending Power to Create a Cleaner, Greener World” by Diane MacEachern. The language can be traced to a 2002 draft report, “The Tea Market — A Background Study,” which lacks an authorship credit.

The following is especially bizarre. Wikipedia? Really?

  • “Seeds of Hope” contains language from Wikipedia in its discussion of 18th-century Philadelphia botanist John Bartram, who shipped boxes of seeds to Europeans. Goodall writes: “ ‘Bartram’s Boxes,’ as they came to be known, were regularly sent to Peter Collinson for distribution to a wide list of European clients.”The Wikipedia entry reads: “Bartram’s Boxes as they then became known, were regularly sent to Peter Collinson every fall for distribution in England to a wide list of clients.”

  • Goodall marvels at the majesty of trees. “In ancient Egypt,” she notes, “the sycamore was especially revered — twin sycamores were believed to stand at the eastern gate of heaven through which Ra, the sun god[,] came each day.”

    Nearly identical words are found on a Web site called “Find Your Fate,” which covers astrology, numerology, palm reading and matters relating to love and life.

  • The phrasing Goodall uses to describe the tobacco habits of Indians in South and Central America is very similar to what is found on a Web site of tobacco history. The boldfaced words in this passage from the book echo language on the Web site: “In South and Central America the Indians smoked tobacco in pipes of many shapes and sizes, often elaborately decorated. It was sometimes chewed or used as snuff to ‘clear the head.’ Tobacco was also used as a remedy for such varied conditions as asthma, bites and stings, urinary and bowel complaints, fevers, convulsions, nervous ailments, sore eyes, and skin diseases. Some tribes cultivate tobacco as an insecticide to protect themselves against parasites.”

There’s also the possibility that Goodall, like Jonah Lehrer, made up quotations. As the Post reports:

“Seeds of Hope” tells the tale of botanists at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, in London germinating 200-year-old seeds preserved in the Millennium Seed Bank. The seeds were shipped from Cape Town, were seized by the British and spent time in the Tower of London before winding up at the bank. Goodall concludes the story with a comment she says botanist Matt Daws made to her: “If seeds can survive that long in such poor conditions, then that’s good news for the ones that are stored under ideal conditions in the Millennium Seed Bank,’ Matt Daws said to me.”

Virtually the same quote from Daws appears on the Gardens Web site in a 2009 article with the headline “Plant story — 200 year old seeds spring to life”: “If seed can survive that long in poor conditions, then that’s good news for those in the Millennium Seed Bank stored under ideal conditions.” Asked in an e-mail whether he ever had a conversation with Goodall, Daws replied: “To be perfectly honest I have no recollection of speaking to her.”

An analysis of Goodall’s book by Michael Moynihan in The Daily Beast suggests there are many other plagiarized passages not uncovered by the Post, as well as another partially fabricated quote:

  • In my quick look through Seeds of Hope, I found what appears to be a similar example of plagiarism. Dave Aplin, a British botanist, is quoted telling Goodall of his discovery of seeds belonging to a long-extinct plant: “‘During my research,’ he told me, ‘I discovered a handful of preserved seeds hidden deep in the vaults of our seed bank.’ He felt a sense of awe.’ It was clear that I was probably looking at the last few seeds of this species in existence,’ he said.”

    But here is Dave Aplin quoted in a 2005 article from BBC News: “It was clear that I was probably looking at the last few seeds of this species in existence, and so some of the seeds were also dispatched to Britain so that both institutes could try to germinate them.” An added sentence—possibly from an actual interview Goodall conducted with Aplin—followed by a pilfered (and truncated) one.

Remember that Jonah Lehrer was fired from The New Yorker and disgraced for similarly fabricating quotes.

  • A quick check of other passages, randomly selected, suggest that there are many more instances of plagiarism that went undiscovered by the Post. Describing a study of genetically modified corn, Goodall writes: “A Cornell University study showed adverse effects of transgenic pollen (from Bt corn) on monarch butterflies: their caterpillars reared on milkweed leaves dusted with Bt corn pollen ate less, grew more slowly, and suffered higher mortality.”

A report from Navdaya.org puts it this way: “A 1999 Nature study showed adverse effects of transgenic pollen (from Bt corn) on monarch butterflies: butterflies reared on milkweed leaves dusted with bt corn pollen ate less, grew more slowly, and suffered higher mortality.”

The list of “unintentional borrowings” goes on, but you get the idea. Also disturbing are the many errors that Moynihan found, including attributing Confessions of an English Opium Eater to Samuel Taylor Coleridge instead of Thomas de Quincey.

That’s a small one, but there are several others. More serious is Goodall’s apparent dislike of GMO crops—which appear to be perfectly safe—and her citing of several dubious studies that appear to show their dangers (she cites, for instance, a CDC study as apparently showing that GM corn causes allergic reactions, but the CDC itself concluded that there was no effect).

As Moynihan notes, perhaps some of these errors and scientific distortions can be attributed to Goodall’s co-author, but that hardly applies to quotes from interviews supposedly conducted by Goodall—quotes that either were not uttered (since Goodall may not have spoken to the person indicated) or were partially fabricated. At any rate, Goodall is the book’s first author, and is responsible for the contents.

How bad is all this? Given the combination of distorted presentation of scientific studies, fabricated quotes, and plagiarism—and yes, by any standards it’s plagiarism—it looks pretty bad. In fact, if the book had been by a less revered person I suspect it would have been withdrawn from publication, as were two of Jonah Lehrer’s books that contained fabricated quotes or other unattributed material. Seeds of Hope was scheduled for release on April 2, but this has apparently been postponed indefinitely while the publisher, Hachette, allows Goodall to “correct any unintentional errors.”

“Unintentional errors” is the same excuse I’ve gotten in the past from students who copied material, but those students were still disciplined for plagiarism.

This is all very sad, and the scandal will surely dog Goodall as she treks around the world giving talks. It’s almost surely sloppiness and not cheating, but if we can’t trust Jane Goodall to report things accurately, who can we trust?

“Dear Old Darwin”: Hooker-Darwin correspondence to be published

March 27, 2013 • 5:03 am

The BBC News reports that a collection of 1400 letters between Charles Darwin and his pal and colleague Joseph Hooker, many of them personal and intimate (no, not that way!), will soon be published by The Darwin Correspondence Project.  This site, set up by people at Cambridge University, is a gold mine for Darwiniana: you can search for letters or topic using phrases, and the site is beautifully set up. For example, there are several letters referring to “cats”: here’s one of them expressing Darwin’s lack of interest in felids (he liked d-gs).  Darwin had an extensive correspondence, and letters are still being added to the site; I think they’re up to 1871 now (Darwin died in 1882).

At any rate, the newly published letters show a more emotional side of Darwin, although we always knew that he had one. Hooker, a famous botanist, was perhaps Darwin’s closest confidante.

But in contrast to what the BBC implies, some of their correspondence has already been published, including this famous letter from 1844 (15 years before The Origin was published), in which Darwin admits to Hooker that disclosing his ideas about evolution via natural selection was like “confessing a murder”. Darwin knew well the ruckus that publishing his ideas would arouse! An excerpt (my bold):

Besides a general interest about the Southern lands, I have been now ever since my return engaged in a very presumptuous work & which I know no one individual who wd not say a very foolish one.— I was so struck with distribution of Galapagos organisms &c &c & with the character of the American fossil mammifers, &c &c that I determined to collect blindly every sort of fact, which cd bear any way on what are species.— I have read heaps of agricultural & horticultural books, & have never ceased collecting facts— At last gleams of light have come, & I am almost convinced (quite contrary to opinion I started with) that species are not (it is like confessing a murder) immutable. Heaven forfend me from Lamarck nonsense of a “tendency to progression” “adaptations from the slow willing of animals” &c,—but the conclusions I am led to are not widely different from his—though the means of change are wholly so— I think I have found out (here’s presumption!) the simple way by which species become exquisitely adapted to various ends.— You will now groan, & think to yourself ‘on what a man have I been wasting my time in writing to.’— I shd, five years ago, have thought so.— I fear you will also groan at the length of this letter—excuse me, I did not begin with malice prepense.

But there were lots of personal exchanges as well:

  • A few years earlier [before 1876], Hooker had written to him of the death of his own daughter, addressing him as “Dear old Darwin,” and going on to say: “I have just buried my darling little girl and read your kind note.” Darwin is at pains to remember his friend’s feelings in their shared grief.

He writes: “I thank you for your most kind and feeling letter. When I wrote to you at Glasgow (which letter I have heard was sent too late) I did not forget your former grief, but I did not allude to it, as I well knew that it was wrong in me to revive your former feelings, but I could not resist writing to you.”

A letter from Darwin to Hooker, who of course lived at Kew
A letter from Darwin to Hooker, who of course lived at Kew
  • In one poignant letter, written in 1876, Darwin writes of the death in childbirth of his son Francis’ wife.

    “Poor Amy had severe convulsions due to wrong action of the kidneys; after the convulsions she sunk into a stupor from which she never rallied,” he writes.

    “It is an inexpressible comfort that she never suffered and never knew she was leaving her beloved husband for ever. It has been a most bitter blow to us all.”

Darwin and Hooker were friends for four decades, and Darwin’s life was never easy. He was almost always ill; he lost a daughter and other relatives, and he fretted constantly about publishing his theories. But Hooker was a great friend and source of solace. Their friendship was undergirded by Hooker’s role as a sounding board for many of Darwin’s “heretical” ideas. The letters will be a goldmine for historians of science, as well as for us interested tyros.

The BBC adds this:

The two men saw each other occasionally, but their friendship was mainly conducted through letters. According to Paul White, editor and research associate at the Darwin Correspondence Project, the letters provide an intimate window onto Darwin’s emotional life.

“It’s a wonderful set of documents not only about Victorian science but about the social bonds that could be forged in correspondence, and the emotional bonds that could flow between two men,” he says.

. . . Mr White suggests the letters help “to give a different picture of both Darwin and the scientific enterprise, in showing it as intensely collaborative, and that it is not divorced from private life”.

In part, this was a result of the very different characters of the two men, says Mr White.

He says: “Hooker seems quite irascible, he comes across as being hot tempered and gossipy, and Darwin really loved that stuff – there was a liberating quality to their letters. He was more reserved – he had a formality and politeness. But possibly because of this he expressed things he wouldn’t have otherwise.”

It is this openness – as well as the light they shed on Darwin’s work – that give the letters their fascination.

In 2009 I was asked by Oxford University Press and the BBC to write my own letter to Charles Darwin in honor of his 200th birthday, and I put down the things I’d like to tell CD about how evolutionary biology had progressed since his time. The printed version of my letter is here, and the BBC show where I read it is here.

Letters between the two men
Letters between the two men

h/t: Geoff