Abstract
Patrick Matthew’s (1831) prior-publication of the complete hypothesis of natural selection “anticipated” Darwin’s Origin of Species by 28 years and Darwin’s and Wallace’s (1858) Linnean papers on the same topic by 27. Founded on the premise that no naturalist read it before 1860, Darwin’s and Wallace’s claims of duel independent discovery of Matthew’s hypothesis have been accepted by the scientific community. However, the central premise upon which those claims have been accepted — that no naturalist read Matthew’s ideas before 1858 — is a proven fallacy, because the famous and hugely influential naturalist Loudon reviewed Matthew’s book in 1832, commenting that it appeared to have something original to say on “the origin of species”. The fact that Loudon was a naturalist has been totally ignored until now. Furthermore, it is newly discovered that after reviewing Matthew’s book he went on to edit the journal that published two of Blyth’s highly influential papers on organic evolution. Blyth was Darwin’s most prolific and helpful correspondent on the topic. Further new discoveries reveal that, besides Loudon, whose work was well known to Darwin and his associates, six other naturalists read Matthew’s book and then cited it years before 1858. One, Selby, sat on several scientific committees with Darwin, and was a friend of his father. Selby went on to edit Wallace’s famous Sarawak paper on organic evolution. Another, Robert Chambers, a correspondent of Darwin, who met with him, went on to write the influential Vestiges of Creation, which both Darwin and Wallace admitted was an influence on their work. Undeniable potential knowledge-transfer routes did exist before 1858, therefore, between those who read Matthew’s ideas and commented upon them in the literature, and Darwin and Wallace. In light of the fact that influential naturalists, known to both Darwin and Wallace, did read Matthew’s original ideas before 1858, veracity in the history of discovery requires now an investigation into the possibility of cryptomnesia or deliberate pre-1860 plagiarism by Darwin and Wallace. In that regard, the notion of “knowledge contamination” is proposed and presented in a three-fold typology of escalating culpability for replicators of prior published work with citation. Future research in this area should turn to the neglected correspondence and private journal archives of those naturalists known to Darwin and Wallace who read Matthew’s ideas before 1860.
Highlights
See respectivelyThe Oxford Library of Words and Phrases, vol 1., The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations, 2nd ed., Guild Publishing, London 1990, p. 81; A
A 1831! F Darwin (1859) opened the first chapter of the Origin of Species with Matthew’s original “Artificial versus Natural Selection” explanatory analogy of differences: When we look to the individuals of the same variety or sub-variety of our older cultivated plants and animals, one of the first points which strikes us, is, that they generally differ much more from each other, than do the individuals of any one species or variety in a state of nature
By way of just one among many possible examples, which prove Matthew’s prolific published output on diverse topics, in the very same edition of the journal that contains Douglas’s obituary, 77 we find Matthew mentioned on page 196
Summary
Following that “glory stealing” falsehood that the original ideas in Matthew’s book had not been read by any naturalists and that Matthew’s book had not been cited, in the third edition of the Origin of Species (1861) and in every edition thereafter, the eminent and powerfully networked Darwin did no less than corrupt the history of discovery of natural selection Because, knowing it to be untrue, at least since Matthew’s two letters of 1860, he continued to refer to natural selection as “my theory”, despite admitting elsewhere that Matthew had priority for it. Let us name the testable proposition, that such a note or letter will be found, the: “New Data-Led Hypothesis”
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