Darwin's Life Research Articles

Colonies that conquer

A landmark book documents how social insects form highly successful colonies that mimic a single organism, explains Manfred Milinski. February 2009 sees the 200th anniversary of the birth of Charles Robert Darwin and November 2009 the 150th anniversary of the publication of his great work, On the Origin of Species. In the intervening two centuries, no single scientist has matched Darwin's impact on the sciences, politics, religion, philosophy and art. This issue of Nature brings together news, research and analysis of Darwin, his life, his science and his legacy. Darwin saw the eye — so complex and seemingly useless with any of its components part-formed — as an obstacle to the acceptance of natural selection. Today we know it as one of evolution's crowning glories — celebrated with a fold-out pictorial feature and current research that refers right back to the 'protoeyes' hypothesized by Darwin. In later writings (Descent of Man, 1871), Darwin touched on a topic that still divides evolutionary biologists — group selection. Does natural selection work for individuals against the interests of the group? Or is such thinking a historical mistake? We report on the debate and why it is important, and review a 'landmark book' on the superorgansims of the insect world, where the group looms large. Extinction comes with the evolutionary territory. But is it for ever? With the publication of the genome sequence of the long-gone woolly mammoth, some researchers are even claiming that mammoths will one day be recreated. Biologists tend to see evolved living systems as finely tuned machines, prone to failure if one component is faulty. But, as Tanguy Chouard reveals, this is not what happens in the real world. Plenty for biologists to celebrate and plenty of places to do it: we have trawled the world for events commemorating Darwin's life and works and trawled the publishers' lists for books doing the same. Not quite everybody will be in celebratory mood. The scientists we spoke to mostly are, but past celebrations have had to tread carefully. The Darwin-related content from this issue — and extra online-only material — can be accessed via: http://www.nature.com/darwin .

Birthdays to remember

Anniversaries of Charles Darwin's life and work have been used to rewrite and re-energize his theory of natural selection. Janet Browne tracks a century of Darwinian celebrations.

All things Darwin: an encyclopedia of Darwin's world

Nearly 200 years after his birth in 1809, and nearly 150 years after the publication of his groundbreaking book The Origin of Species, Charles Darwin remains a controversial figure in science and society. But how much does today's student really know about Darwin and his times? This A-to-Z reference work provides users with an understanding of the intellectual, social, and material world in which Darwin lived. This culture profoundly influenced Darwin's work in biology and geology, in general, and his theory of natural selection, in particular. Understanding this period and Darwin's life and times is essential for understanding the development of evolution and biology. In essence, this encyclopedia will cover everything that made Darwin one of the most influential figures of the last 150 years. All Things Darwin covers all the important ideas, voyages, people, and things that influenced the life and work of Charles Darwin and, through him, the subsequent history of science and society. In addition, the volume includes entries on people and ideas that Darwin's work influenced.

Mind the gap: did Darwin avoid publishing his theory for many years?

It is widely believed that Charles Darwin avoided publishing his theory of evolution for many years. Many explanations have been proposed to identify Darwin's reasons or motives for doing so. This essay demonstrates that Darwin's delay is a recent historiographical theme for which there is no clear evidence, and indeed is overwhelmingly contradicted by the historical evidence. It is also shown that Darwin's belief in evolution was not a secret before publication. Instead of a man afraid of his secret theory's being revealed to his prejudiced contemporaries, it is demonstrated that Darwin was understandably very busy and began his species book when he had completed work in hand, just as he had intended all along. This essay therefore rewrites a fundamental chapter in the story of Darwin's life and work as usually told.

A Fresh Look at Darwin

The Reluctant Mr. Darwin . An Intimate Portrait of Charles Darwin and the Making of His Theory of Evolution. By David Quammen . Norton, New York, 2006. 304 pp. $22.95, C$30. ISBN 0-393-05981-2. The author's concise account of Darwin's life and discoveries is both fresh and insightful.

Darwin: discovering the tree of life

Charles Darwin's ideas resonate deeply in Western culture today, and his theory still lies at the heart of modern scientific evolutionary research. As other nineteenth-century figures fade, Darwin's theory of evolution still provokes controversy, spilling over into curriculum battles at state and local school boards in the United States and around the world. In exploring the everyday artifacts of Darwin's life, his notebooks, and early manuscripts, Niles Eldredge candid, no-punches-pulled interpreter of the core ideas of evolutionary biology (Science News) provides a rare glimpse into the mind of this highly intuitive, creative scientist. The celebration of Charles Darwin's 200th birthday in 2009 begins in November 2005 with the opening of a major exhibition at the American Museum of Natural History in New York, curated by Eldredge, that will travel across the nation. More than a companion book to the exhibit, Darwin is a rich and inspiring reconstruction of Darwin's life through his writings and discoveries.

Darwin and the Barnacle: The Story of One Tiny Creature and History's Most Spectacular Scientific Breakthrough (review)

Reviewed by: Darwin and the Barnacle: The Story of One Tiny Creature and History’s Most Spectacular Scientific Breakthrough Peter C. Grosvenor Darwin and the Barnacle: The Story of One Tiny Creature and History’s Most Spectacular Scientific Breakthrough. By Rebecca Stott. New York: Norton, 2003. Pp. 309. $24.95. The prolific scholarship on Darwinism has diversified and specialized, and there are now detailed studies of Charles Darwin's research on Galapagos finches, his contemplation of the evolutionary development of human emotions, his investigation of pollination in varieties of orchids, and his work on coral reefs. Over the past 15 years or so, these studies of Darwinism have been supplemented very usefully by a substantial body of biographical treatments of Darwin himself. Adrian Desmond's and James Moore's Darwin: The Life of a Tormented Evolutionist (1994) was well received for its location of Darwin's ideas in the context of his life experience. This was followed by Janet E. Browne's monumental two-volume study Darwin: Voyaging (1995) and Darwin: The Power of Place (2002). Randall Keynes—a descendent of both Darwin and of the economist John Maynard Keynes—produced perhaps the most successful human portrait of his subject in Darwin, His Daughter, and Human Evolution (2001). Darwin's personal life also has received fictional treatment, with the publication of Roger MacDonald's Mr. Darwin's Shooter (2000). Rebecca Stott's Darwin and the Barnacle: The Story of One Tiny Creature and History's Most Spectacular Scientific Breakthrough is a welcome addition to the [End Page 624] study of both the idea and the man. Stott heads the Department of English and Drama at Anglia Polytechnic University in Cambridge, and is an Affiliated Research Scholar in the Department of History and Philosophy of Science at Cambridge University. A scholar of Victorian letters, Stott has previous published books on Elizabeth Barrett Browning and Alfred, Lord Tennyson, in addition to numerous articles on Victorian science and society in edited volumes and journals. Her study of Darwin's immersion in barnacle classification between the years of 1846 and 1854 is a daunting undertaking, but the result in a highly readable rendition of a relatively neglected, though demonstrably pivotal, stage in the theorization of natural selection. It was in 1835, when he was the naturalist on board the HMS Beagle, that the 24-year-old Darwin first encountered the barnacle that was to take over his life. Darwin nicknamed the barnacle "Mr. Arthrobalanus" (curiously written as "Mr. Anthrobalanus" on the dust jacket), which later became the official classification of Crytophialus. This particular specimen was then entirely new to biology—an extremely rare barnacle, almost invisible to the naked eye, that did not secrete its own shell. The discovery led Darwin to challenge the existing zoological taxonomy of barnacles, in the process uncovering and illustrating the evolutionary development of adapted species from common ancestry—"The Universe in a Barnacle Shell," as Stott titles her final chapter. The core thesis of the book is stated with admirable concision and clarity in the preface, and supported throughout the rest of the text with narrative flair and an authoritative use of sources. In 1846, Darwin had written an essay containing the essential elements of the natural selection theory and placed the essay in a locked drawer. Stott argues that Darwin's eight-year obsession with barnacles—which seriously eroded his physical and mental health—confirmed the contentions that were to be published in The Origin of Species (1859) but delayed the publication of that text until the findings of the barnacle studies met the emerging standards of scientific verification in the mid-19th century. Stott has abundant justification for concentrating her study of Darwin on his investigation of marine invertebrates. As she convincingly argues, this period in Darwin's life illustrates important features of Darwin's personality, of the intellectual and cultural climate in which he was functioning, and of the state and composition of the scientific community at the time. In terms of Darwin's personality, Stott finds in the barnacle research "an instinct for postponement" (xxiii). As early as 1832, Darwin had expressed to J. S. Henslow his fear of being dismissed as "a Baron...

Fossils, finches and Fuegians: Darwin's adventures and discoveries on the Beagle

When Charles Darwin, then age 22, first saw the HMS Beagle, he thought it looked like a wreck than a vessel commissioned to go round the world. But travel around the world it did, taking Darwin to South America, Australia, New Zealand, Tahiti, and of course the Galapagos Islands, in a journey of discovery that lasted almost five years. Now, in Fossils, Finches and Fuegians, Richard Keynes, Darwin's great grandson, offers the first modern full-length account of Darwin's epoch-making expedition. This was the great adventure of Charles Darwin's life. Indeed, it would have been a great adventure for anyone-tracking condor in Chile, surviving the great earthquake of 1835, riding across country on horseback in the company of gauchos, watching whales leaping skyward off Tierra del Fuego, hunting ostriches with a bolo, discovering prehistoric fossils and previously unknown species, and meeting primitive peoples such as the Fuegians. Keynes captures many of the natural wonders that Darwin witnessed, including an incredible swarm of butterflies a mile wide and ten miles long. Keynes also illuminates Darwin's scientific work-his important findings in geology and biology-and traces the slow revolution in Darwin's thought about species and how they might evolve. Numerous illustrations-mostly by artists who traveled with Darwin on the Beagle-grace the pages, including finely rendered drawings of many points of interest discussed in the book. There has probably been no greater or more important scientific expedition than Darwin's voyage on the Beagle. Packed with colorful details of life aboard ship and in the wild, here is a fascinating portrait of Charles Darwin and of 19th century science.

Down but not out

Darwin's extraordinary life continues to attract attention. A long-awaited new biography looks at his mature years and how his rural refuge and secured place in English society helped him cope with the intellectual upheavals that followed the publication of the Origin of Species. Nigel Williams reports.

Darwin's Down house.

Six years after his return from the voyage of the Beagle, Darwin moved his family to the country, where he spent the rest of his life conducting experiments, writing, and raising a family. English Heritage recently purchased Down House and is restoring the house and grounds to look as they did during Darwin's life.

B. B. Warfield (1851-1921). A biblical inerrantist as evolutionist.

The theological doctrine of biblical inerrancy is the intellectual basis for modern creation science. Yet Benjamin Breckinridge Warfield of Princeton Theological Seminary, the theologian who more than any other defined modern biblical inerrancy, was throughout his life open to the possibility of evolution and at some points an advocate of the theory. Throughout a long career Warfield published a number of major papers on these subjects, including studies of Darwin's religious life, on the theological importance of the age of humanity (none) and the unity of the human species (much), and on Calvin's understanding of creation as proto-evolutionary. He also was an engaged reviewer of many of his era's important books by scientists, theologians, and historians who wrote on scientific research in relation to traditional Christianity. Exploration of Warfield's writing on science generally and evolution in particular retrieves for historical consideration an important defender of mediating positions in the supposed war between science and religion.

Darwin's House: A Monument to a Theory

LONDON-- The house and grounds where Charles Darwin spent the last 40 years of his life--and where he drew together his crucial theoretical work on evolution--has benefited from a $4 million conservation program designed to provide an insight into Darwin's mingling of science and domestic life. The restored house opens to the public next month with a new exhibition on the upper floor explaining Darwin's earlier life and the significance of his theory of natural selection, which shook the foundations of 19th century society and transformed biological thinking.

The Family ManCharles Darwin: Voyaging. Janet Browne

Historians are now accustomed to treating Charles Darwin and his ideas in the light of Victorian social arrangements. Peter Bowler as well as Adrian Desmond and James Moore adopt this approach in their recent biographies of Darwin. Numerous scholarly books and articles have set out to demonstrate one way or another in which Darwin owed his success to the support of his family, his colleagues, the organization of science, and the British class structure. Janet Browne's new book, which describes Darwin's life and career to 1856, is no different in this respect. Browne repeatedly documents the ways in which networks of friends and associates from varied walks of life contributed to Darwin's earliest achievements and continued to do so as his career blossomed and flourished. Indeed, Browne confesses that at one point she feared the book should be entitled Darwin: Another Biography, meaning, presumably, a biography in which Darwin and his science appear yet again against the background of Victorian customs and mores. Fortunately, her fears were unjustified. Browne has done her research so well and treated her material in such a perceptive way that even familiar stories begin to look fresh, and stereotyped images of Darwin, his family, and his friends assume a more personal form. The overall framework of this book will be of no surprise to most historians of science, but the skill and persistence with which Browne has unearthed new, telling details about Darwin's life and the artfulness with which she illuminates well-known events allow us to understand Darwin better than we ever did before and to speak about his world with greater confidence that we really have it right. Take Darwin's family: in Browne's account Darwin's father, Robert, appears as the same prominent figure and formidable physician that we have come to know in other biographies-only not quite. As Browne explains, the sensitive Robert never felt entirely comfortable with the grimmer features of medical study. He had to be dragooned through his excellent medical education by a grief-stricken father who hoped he could somehow carry on the family profession in the place of a brilliant older brother who died young. Then, at the very moment he was ready to begin his practice, his disappointed father abandoned him financially and left him to prosper however he might. This story speaks volumes about Robert's patient attitude when Charles quailed before the awful side of medicine and his generous persistence in supporting Charles on a voyage around the world that initially appeared to Robert as "a wild scheme." Browne tells us exactly what the Beagle voyage cost Robert-about twice what it would have taken to maintain his son in England-and she explains that he bore the cost with only the most perfunctory grumbling.

Getting started: Charles Darwin's early steps toward a creative life in science

Charles Darwin's original and important contributions to science resulted from commitment, persistence, and hard work throughout his adult life. How, when, and where Darwin developed these prerequisites for creative thinking is the focus of this paper. Using a cognitive case study approach to examine the rich record of Darwin's life and work indicates that the 1 ½ years he spent in Edinburgh as a medical student when he was 16–18 years old was the major turning point in his transformation from a hobbyist into a scientist. Darwin first found hisvoice in science in Edinburgh during late adolescence.

Darwin: The theory years

The period from January of 1837 to December of 1846 -the period covered by these two volumes of the Darwin correspondence -encompasses by all measures the most creative era of Darwin's scientific life. Freshly returned from five years aboard the HMS Beagle, in December of 1836 Darwin moved to Cambridge to sort the materials collected during the five years away from England. From all available evidence -and this is now considerable -he was at that time still some months away from the conceptual developments which would move him in the direction of a novel version of transformism. 1 A decade later, Darwin was comfortably ensconced as the master of Down House, married, with a growing family, with his mature natural selection theory polished off in a preliminary form, an accomplished geologist, and just on the edge of turning a minor paper on an aberrant parasitic barnacle into an eight-year inquiry which would establish him as a foremost invertebrate zoologist. The main outlines of Darwin's development in this period have been so often told that they almost cease to provoke interest. These two volumes of the correspondence, presenting 532 (76% of total) previously unpublished letters, fill in many details, and flesh out Darwin-as-person with intimate details of his personal and family life in this creative decade. Along with the issuing of the re-edited early notebook covering essentially the same period, the Darwin industry has produced as rich a documentary history as exists on any major scientific figure during their primary theoretical years. The scholarship that has gone into these volumes leaves little to be desired -indeed it is standard-setting. Useful appendices translate the foreign language letters, details are found on every individual mentioned, the relevant portions of the pocket Journal for the years covered are presented, the early autobiographical sketch of 1838, the "Old and

The evolution of Darwin's theism

The photographs taken of Charles Darwin late in life (indeed, from his fifties on) make him seem a kind of sage, venerable and enigmatic. It is an impression no doubt created partly by his imposing figure and by the copious, untrimmed beard hiding much of his face.' But while Darwin seems to have relished looking sage,2 he did not fancy himself particularly wise in metaphysics or religion. In these matters he was deeply and designedly reticent. Nevertheless, his legacy undeniably has been religious as well as scientific. And the fact remains that although he lived in relative seclusion and was by nature a private person, Darwin was also a public figure and a representative Victorian an illustrious "modern" trying at a crucial moment in history to make emotional and intellectual sense of the world. His views on God and religion quite naturally are of special interest, not only to scientists and religion scholars but also to the public at large.3 It is unfortunate, therefore, that the various pictures we have been given of Darwin's life and thought are less subtle and suggestive with regard to his religious attitudes than the photographs are with regard to his general demeanor. It may be true, as Michael Ruse says, that "Darwin simply cared less about religion than many other men."4 Yet Darwin's religious concerns were in fact more

Turning points in Darwin's life

Journal Article Turning points in Darwin's life Get access KEITH STEWART THOMSON, KEITH STEWART THOMSON 1Department of Biology, γale University, New Haven, Connecticut 06520, U.S.A. Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar STAN P. RACHOOTIN STAN P. RACHOOTIN 1Department of Biology, γale University, New Haven, Connecticut 06520, U.S.A. Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Biological Journal of the Linnean Society, Volume 17, Issue 1, February 1982, Pages 23–37, https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1095-8312.1982.tb02011.x Published: 28 June 2008

Wallace, Darwin, and the theory of natural selection

On 1 July 1908 the Linnean Society of London commemorated the reading before the Society fifty years earlier of the DarwinWallace joint papers, "On the Tendency of Species to form Varieties; and on the Perpetuation of Varieties and Species by Natural Means of Selection." 1 On the first occasion only some thirty Fellows and guests had been present at a quiet, unheralded meeting; the authors themselves were absent. Now there was a large and distinguished gathering celebrating the historic event. Two of the original cast were present, the naturalist Alfred Russel Wallace (1823-1913) and the botanist Sir Joseph Dalton Hooker (1817-1911). The other two, the biologist Charles Robert Darwin (1809-1882) and the geologist Sir Charles Lyell (1797-1875) had been dead for many years. Hooker, now a venerable nonagenarian, spoke of his "halfcentury-old real or fancied memories" of that June in 1858 when his old friend Darwin received Wallace's paper on natural selection. He based his account on Sir Francis Darwin's Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, remarking with some uneasiness that, beyond the letters from Darwin to himself and to Lyell, no other documentary evidence existed of the events of those turbulent weeks before the reading of the papers. Despite a search, the letters to Darwin from Hooker and Lyell could not be found, "and, most surprising of all, Mr. Wallace's letter and its enclosure have disappeared." 2

Economic plants encountered on the voyage of the beagle

The literature regarding Charles Darwin's life, publications and letters is extensive. Nevertheless, apparently no one has attempted a botanical analysis of the Beagle voyage. For this reason, an account of the economic plants enumerated by Darwin on his five-year journey around the world has been prepared. The data have been obtained largely from five sources (Darwin, 1839, 1846, 1870; Barlow, 1933, 1946). Additions and deletions have been made to each of Darwin's works; hence, none is complete, at least botanically speaking. This is probably due to two facts. First, Darwin, on the voyage of the Beagle, was primarily a geologist, then a zoologist and an anthropologist, and only lastly a botanist. He admitted this himself by saying several times, "I am not botanist enough to say . " Secondly, Darwin published his observations, taken from his journals, in a "piecemeal" fashion, and he allowed at least three professional botanists to work up various special aspects of the Beagle's botany (Berkeley, 1857; Henslow, 1838; Hooker, 1847, 1851). The following presentation is organized by categories of uses. Consequently the reader is forewarned that the discussion, which is limited to those plants which Darwin found particularly important or interesting, will often change from one geographic area to another. However, a checklist of all identifiable economic planits encountered has been included also. In some cases, where no name was mentioned by Darwin and only a description was given by him, "reasonable" assumptions as to their correct genus and species have been made. These are indicated by an asterisk.

The Evolution of Evolutionary Thought

A hundred years ago come next November, Englishmen queued up to buy a book, and a book of science at that. They knew its author, for Charles Darwin had a wide reputation as a naturalist and man of letters. They knew the subject for the book bore the main title The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, and the trailing subtitle, The Preservation of Favored Races in the Struggle for Life. Besides, those Londoners who rushed to purchase the Origin on November 24, 1859, and the disappointed late-comers who stalked stationers and railway bookstalls had heard of the Darwin-Wallace paper of the year before. A major intellectual event had transpired in England, and the literate public wanted to become informed. Since that day a century ago, a small stack of books has been written about Darwin and evolution. Victorian authors penined numerous volumes about, for, and against organic evolution, and further described Charles Darwin, M.A., LLD, F.R.S. of Kent. With outstanding exceptions, like Francis Darwin's Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, Osborn's From the Greeks to Darwin, and Romanes' Darwin and After Darwin, these older works gather dust today. The early years, (1859-1900) were rarely propitious either for biography or evaluation. Then, for the next three decades classical Darwinism became overshadowed by the evolving science of genetics, and interest in evolutionary mechanisms temporarily waned. There is at present no standard biography of Darwin; all scholars refer to the autobiographical chapter in the Life and Letters still available on the second-hand stalls, newly in an inexpensive abridged edition by Dover, and in several more expensive editions (variously edited or introduced) by Basic Books and other publishers. The Autobiographical