A little more whine for your Darwin Day

From his instance that human evolution has halted to his rather crummy review of Stephen Jay Gould: Reflections on His View of Life (see my thoughts on the book here), Steve Jones has been raising the hackles of his colleagues more than usual lately. Given that I am not a scientist I cannot count myself among his frustrated peers, but I was aggravated by Jones' latest op-ed "Can we please forget about Charles Darwin?"

Jones is worried that this year's celebration of Darwin's work will overshadow modern evolutionary science. Jones writes;

I hope that, by its end, its subject's beard, his gastric troubles and even his voyage on HMS Beagle will have faded from public consciousness. I would be even happier if the squabbles about the social, moral, legal, political, historical, ethical and theological implications of his work were to find, at last, their long-delayed demise. In 2009 we should celebrate the science rather than the man - the fact rather than the anecdote.

This is a valid concern, but Jones' article reads seems to be little more than a cranky rant that contributes to the very problem it is complaining about! Rather than tell us why studying and celebrating modern evolutionary science (or even the history of evolutionary science after 1859 to the present) is important Jones would rather keep our discussion of Darwin limited to his contributions to modern science.

This was the sort of approach I encountered in high school biology. Evolution was the last topic to be covered, almost as if it were an afterthought, and the class was fed the usual textbook cardboard about Lamarck's giraffes and Darwin's finches. This led me to feel rather cheated when I cultivated an interest in the history of science and learned more about who Darwin was and why On the Origin of Species caused such a stir. History is important, and while I agree that it is all to easy to discuss Darwin and Darwin alone, I do not think the solution to whatever ill Jones is railing against is to make the textbook version of Darwin the one we most readily recognize. (The fact that Jones has a new book out about Darwin, Darwin's Island, and has previously written Almost Like a Whale as an update to On the Origin of Species, seems incongruous with the point he's trying to make.)

I was also befuddled by Jones' reading of Darwin's work. In the latter half of the article he writes;

The Origin of Species is, as its author described it, a "long argument". It begins with the familiar, in the form of pigeons and dogs; moves on to the less so, with instincts, islands and embryology; nods at the dangerous notion that what is true for pigeons might be true for humans; and builds up to its last word, "evolved", which appears nowhere else in the book. It lacks any mention of the social, political and historical context of its daring ideas. Darwin's later volumes, on topics ranging from insectivorous plants to pollinators to earthworms, are equally devoid of speculation about the larger implications, such as they are, of his discoveries.

Should we have expected Darwin to do an intellectual self-dissection so all our queries about the social context, motivation, etc. for his work would be answered? Of course not, and I am not sure why Jones would expect otherwise. I also find it strange that he so curtly derides the rest of Darwin's works, which are in many ways complementary to On the Origin of Species. What of the famous Descent of Man and the minutely-detailed Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication (not to mention the rest of the Darwinian catalog)? I see Darwin's work after On the Origin of Species as an expansion of his ideas about natural selection, the nature of gradual change, and continuity in nature. They are not Darwin's b-sides but a collection of work that needs to be read carefully and in the context of Darwin's other work.

The inconspicuous point that set me to writing here, however, is buried higher up in Jones' editorial;

But what [Darwin] did could, as is true for all other scientific research, have been done by anyone.

Is this really true? I have heard it often from curmudgeons who care little for history and are simply tired of hearing about Darwin, and somewhere under the crankiness is a good point. If science really is accurately describing natural phenomena then someone, eventually, would describe evolution by natural selection. The fact that Darwin and A.R. Wallace simultaneously developed very similar notions of the mechanism for evolution speaks to the power of this concept, but I'm not convinced that Jones' statement is accurate.

What did Darwin really do? First, he recognized (like Wallace) that natural selection was central to evolution. Other naturalists had considered natural selection before but they ascribed little significance to it; they did not fully understand the power of the idea the way Darwin & Wallace did. Darwin introduced the idea that evolution by natural selection was not limited to the production of races or small variants but was behind the evolution of all life on earth and produced a branching tree of diversity. Second, for reasons that can only be understood by studying Darwin as a scientist, Darwin made his ideas on evolution accessible to the public. As historians like Martin Rudwick have commented if Darwin was given unlimited time he probably would have produced a dense monograph that would have been of interest to professional scientists but would not have caused the same public stir over evolution. (It is also important to note that the public had already been "primed" to receive Darwin's work by books like Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation by Robert Chambers and debates about higher criticism of the Bible).

Indeed, even non-Darwinian scientists like H.F. Osborn admired that Darwin had popularized the concept that evolution was a reality. Would Wallace, or another naturalist, have done the same? All else being equal, if Wallace had written On the Origin of Species it would have been a different book. The central place of natural selection would have remained but Wallace differed from Darwin in some important ways. Wallace, for instance, did not think that artificial selection was a good example of how natural selection could produce permanent changes, and perhaps Wallace's spiritualism would have caused him to hold back on the implications of evolution of humans. But what if Wallace and Darwin never developed their ideas on evolution? Would Richard Owen, then, have felt free to expound upon his notions of evolutionary archetypes? Would we celebrate him as the founder of evolutionary science? It is impossible to know, but I bristle at the notion that Darwin's work is somehow diminished because "someone else would'a done it."

Please do not misunderstand: I am not advocating a focus only on Darwin this year. In fact, I am gratified to see a number of lectures, programs, and books dedicated to what we now understand about evolution. Yes, some may carry Darwin's name, but I do not think that the "Darwin Celebrations" are as narrowly-focused as Jones supposes. Philadelphia has declared 2009 the Year of Evolution, the National Geographic Channel has launched a series about evolutionary transitions, and books like Evolution: The First Four Billion Years will appear on bookseller's shelves. These are still celebrations of Darwin's legacy and I hope they are not ignored.

As I have stated elsewhere, though, whatever we do to celebrate Darwin or evolution this year is going to be ephemeral. Much of it will be forgotten and eventually outdated, but that is a good thing. Not only does it keep historians employed, but it reflects that there is still much to learn about the natural world. The best way that we can honor Darwin, Wallace, Huxley, Owen, Haeckel, and other naturalists is to keep interrogating nature and make the results of our queries accessible to all who are curious about them.