Malthus, a leading British scholar, competition was an important factor regulating the growth of societies. Darwin conceded to his readers that his ideas were not original: in the introduction to The Descent of Man he emphasized: ‘The conclusion that man is the co-descendant with other species of ancient, lower, and extinct forms is not in any degree new.’ Darwin knew that; modern scholars, intent on mindless magnification of the man, have forgotten the fact. This is how science is taught to us all. Reality is somewhat different.
Just as we imagine that Richard Owen gave us dinosaurs, we have been taught to hero-worship Charles Darwin as the originator of evolutionary theory. Yet we can now see that evolution was far from being Charles’ original idea. Not only had it been summarized by his own grandfather in a previous century, but the essential notion of natural selection was omitted from his early accounts of evolutionary mechanisms, even though it had been published decades earlier by an experimenter whose work Darwin knew. Today, we know Charles Darwin for the crucial concept ‘survival of the fittest’, and most authorities say that the theory is Darwin’s own – yet ‘survival of the fittest’ was not even his phrase. It was coined by Herbert Spencer in his own book on biology. Wrote Spencer: ‘Survival of the fittest, which I have here sought to express in mechanical terms, is that which Mr. Darwin has called ‘natural selection’, or the preservation of favoured races in the struggle for life.’11
So you can see that evolution by natural selection was thought up long before Darwin began to write about it, and his most famous phrase – survival of the fittest – was coined by somebody else. Indeed the phrase did not enter Darwin’s own writings until the Origin of Species appeared in its fifth edition. Even by this time, he had not mentioned the word ‘evolution’ to describe his views, for that term did not appear until the Origin of Species was in its sixth edition.
Belief in Darwinian evolution has since become an academic requirement. The question: ‘Are you, or are you not, a Darwinist?’ is used to mark out real biologists from those beyond the pale. It is rich in resonances of Senator Joseph McCarthy and the famous question: ‘Are you now, or have you ever been, a member of the Communist Party?’ If you don’t espouse Darwinism, then the biological establishment won’t want you. Yet we have now seen that Charles Darwin didn’t discover evolution. He was not the first to introduce the idea of ‘natural selection’, and he wasn’t even the HMS Beagle’s naturalist. When it came to evolution, Charles Darwin was a latecomer on the scientific scene – during his lifetime his book on earthworms outsold the volume on evolution. Modern-day science likes to worship remote figureheads; but much of this tendency is simply science’s cult of celebrity. Don’t be taken in.
It is clear that the person who triggered Darwin’s interests in evolution was a brilliant young explorer named Alfred Russel Wallace. Wallace worked as a watchmaker, a surveyor and then a school teacher before setting out to explore the Amazon in 1848. His intention was to collect specimens for commercial sale to collectors back in Britain, but his ship was destroyed by fire on the way home to England and all the collections went up in flames. You might think that this costly disaster would have ended his career, but Wallace had been fully insured. He claimed for the value of the lost specimens and suddenly was wealthy, without the need to sell everything that he had discovered. With the proceeds safely in his bank, he wrote up his findings on palm trees and on monkeys, and set off again, exploring and collecting in Southeast Asia.
While staying on Borneo, Wallace wrote a paper ‘On the Law which has Regulated the Introduction of Species’ that was published in the Annals and Magazine of Natural History in September 1855. He asserted that ‘Every species has come into existence coincident both in space and time with a closely allied species’ and noted (as he had done in a book he had written on the Amazon monkeys) that geographical separation seemed to lead to species becoming distinct, a finding that Darwin confirmed with his observations of the Galápagos finches. Wallace then wrote another great paper entitled ‘On the Tendency of Varieties to Depart Indefinitely from the Original Type’. Before seeking a publisher, he mailed it to Darwin to ask for his scholarly opinion. Darwin received it on June 18, 1858 and realized that here, set down in writing in detail, was a theory of evolution by natural selection. There was nothing new in the idea. Remember, it had been casually circulating for centuries and the concept had been part of the vernacular currency of biological science since Erasmus Darwin’s publications of 1784. For decades, Charles Darwin (along with so many others) had assumed that evolution proceeded through natural selection, and now Wallace had set it out formally in a scientific paper. Evolution had been studied by Wallace as a mechanism operating among wild organisms in nature, whereas Darwin had mostly studied artificial breeding by farmers and horticulturists. This was a suitable time for the theory to be discussed, and Alfred Russel Wallace was the man who triggered the debate. Darwin decided to discuss the paper with his friends. Some of his circle were professional men of science, like Joseph Dalton Hooker; others were struggling to find a position, including Thomas Henry Huxley who had won the gold medal of the Royal Society but still could not find employment. Huxley wrote at the time: ‘Science in England does everything but pay. You may earn praise, but not pudding.’12
Darwin was also acquainted with a range of independent-minded investigators, including John Tyndall, who was a self-taught physicist; Thomas Hirst, an amateur mathematician; Edwin Lankester, a builder’s son who taught himself medical biology; and Arthur Henfrey, who had qualified in medicine but became prominent as a self-taught botanist. Darwin gathered some of these friends together to discuss how he should react to Wallace’s detailed article, and it was eventually agreed that a summary of Darwin’s ideas could be appended to a formal reading of Wallace’s paper. Darwin had set down a few thoughts in a letter to Hooker written in 1847, and there were more in a letter he had written to Asa Gray in 1857. These would make the basis of a submission. A suitable opportunity arose when the Linnean Society suddenly announced the date of a special meeting; there would be time for the reading of new research papers. The Society’s president, Robert Brown (the person who named the cell nucleus, and after whom Brownian Motion is named), had suddenly died, and July 1, 1858 was chosen as the date to elect a successor. Since there was time available for additional scientific presentations, it was agreed that the Honorary Secretary would read Wallace’s paper on evolution, followed by the extracts from Darwin’s letters on the subject. Neither Wallace nor Darwin was present. This launched the theory of evolution for discussion in the world of science, yet it did not catch anyone’s attention at the time. The new president of the Society thought it unimportant. In his annual report for 1858, he said that the year ‘had not been marked by any of those striking discoveries which at once revolutionize, so to speak, our department of science.’ That puts him in the same category as the A & R man at Decca who turned down The Beatles.
Today you can visit Charles Darwin’s house as a museum, just 9 miles (15 km) southeast of the Crystal Palace dinosaurs. The building is Down House, and it lies in the village of Downe. Today it looks just the same as it did when Charles Darwin lived there, with the rooms rich in original décor and authentic furnishings – but the back-story is very different. In 1907, the premises were sold and re-fitted to become Downe School for Girls. It remained so until 1922, when another girls’ school took over and ran until 1927. By this time, the rooms that Darwin used had all been stripped out, repainted in grey and converted into classrooms. The school building was then purchased in 1929 by a surgeon, Sir George Buckston Browne, with the idea of turning it into a museum. Down House was eventually acquired by English Heritage in 1996 and it reopened to the public after extensive refurbishment in April 1998. I have visited it many times and chaired meetings there. My friend Stephen Jay Gould flew over to speak at a conference I was organizing at the house. Original items from Darwin’s time have been returned over the years, and other items that are similar to the original furnishings have been purchased. Walking through the house today, it is hard to imagine it stripped bare and repainted as hordes of pubescent women tramped through its hallowed corridors for so many years – at that time, the interior was unrecognizable. The home now is a latter-day reconstruction, though the visitor may not easily discover the fact.13
Another frequent misconception is
