Trees, Coral, and Seaweed: An Interpretation of Sketches Found in Darwin\u2019s Papers

Kees Van Putten

doi:10.1007/s10739-019-09591-4

Abstract

The sole diagram in On the Origin of Species is generally considered to be merely an illustration of Darwin’s ideas, but such an interpretation ignores the fact that Darwin himself expressly stated that the diagram helped him to discover and express his ideas. This article demonstrates that developing the so-called “tree diagram” substantially aided Darwin’s heuristics. This demonstration is based on an interpretation of the diagram and of 17 sketches found in Darwin’s scientific papers. The key to this interpretation is the meaning that Darwin assigned to the graphic elements (points, lines, and spaces) he used to construct the preliminary sketches and the diagram. I argue that each of the sketches contributed to the shaping of Darwin’s ideas and that, in their succession, each added new elements that ultimately resulted in the fully developed published diagram.

Highlights

Seventeen Sketches and a DiagramDarwin’s collected papers contain 17 sketches executed before 1859, each one standing in a particular relation to the single diagram that appears in On the Origin of Species (1859).1 It was not until the beginning of the twenty-first century that these1 3 Vol.:(0123456789)K. van Putten drawings attracted careful attention of scholars interested in how Darwin formed his ideas, most prominently Julia Voss, Horst Bredekamp, J
It is my contention that Darwin gained experience over time in assigning meaning to the graphic elements of his sketches, and that historians can interpret the diagram in Origin as the culmination of this long process of diagrammatic thinking
In the “A Multifunctional Diagram (1859)” section, I concluded that Darwin assigned specific meanings to the graphic elements point, line, letter, numeral, and space in the diagram of Origin

Summary

Introduction

Seventeen Sketches and a DiagramDarwin’s collected papers contain 17 sketches executed before 1859, each one standing in a particular relation to the single diagram that appears in On the Origin of Species (1859).1 It was not until the beginning of the twenty-first century that these1 3 Vol.:(0123456789)K. van Putten drawings attracted careful attention of scholars interested in how Darwin formed his ideas, most prominently Julia Voss, Horst Bredekamp, J. In the 1840s, after Darwin had already drawn his first four sketches, Robert Chambers included a tree-like diagram in his Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation to demonstrate how embryological changes could be interpreted in terms of an evolutionary history

Results

Conclusion