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Examining the History of Paleoanthropology Using BHL

In the middle of the nineteenth century, the scientific community was engrossed in discussions about evolution and the origin of species. The publication of Darwin’s On the Origin of Species in 1859 fueled extensive scientific debate and prompted further questions regarding human evolution. A key figure in these debates was Thomas Henry Huxley, an English biologist and comparative anatomist.

A close friend of Charles Darwin and a staunch public supporter of the theory of natural selection, Huxley used his expertise in embryology, paleontology and comparative anatomy to demonstrate an evolutionary relationship between humans and apes. In a series of public lectures between 1860-62, he presented research on anatomical similarities between humans and apes and discussed hominin fossil discoveries, including a skullcap from the first recognized Neanderthal Man which was unearthed in Germany in 1856.

These oral discourses were collected into a single volume and published in 1863 as Evidence as to Man’s Place in Nature.


Paige Madison, a PhD candidate studying the history of paleoanthropology at Arizona State University, identifies this publication as a vital reference for her doctoral research.

“This was one of the pioneering works in the history of paleoanthropology,” explains Madison. “Huxley’s argumentative strategy is wonderful. At a time when it was hard to get away from preconceived notions about human evolution, Huxley asks his readers to take a step back and imagine they were visitors from Saturn, ‘happily free from all personal interest.’ He lays out the facts concerning humans’ similarities to other apes and then asks the impartial scientific Saturnians, ‘Is Man so different from any of these Apes?'”

For her dissertation, Madison is examining a series of case studies on the history of paleoanthropology spanning well over a century. This research requires examination of numerous historic publications, such as Huxley’s Man’s Place in Nature. Thanks to the Biodiversity Heritage Library, she has easy access to the necessary references.

“BHL has been central to my research,” asserts Madison. “It allows me to quickly access a wealth of material online, so I can spend my time researching rather than running back and forth to the University library.”

After first being introduced to BHL by fellow graduate students five years ago, Madison now uses the library almost weekly to access the research of key scientists in her field. By downloading entire PDFs of relevant publications or selecting specific pages using BHL’s custom PDF generator, she is able to guarantee easy offline access to important references. She also uses the library to gather images, which she finds useful both for her research and when creating presentations.

“The images I can download from BHL are high quality,” says Madison. “I know exactly where they came from and how they were used to illuminate a particular aspect of a scientist’s overall argument.”

While she finds BHL’s collections invaluable, Madison notes that the consolidation of duplicate author names would greatly improve the user experience. As a request voiced by many users, name authority control is indeed high on BHL’s list of development priorities.

For Madison, exploring the history of hominin fossils and our understanding of their place in the evolution of Homo sapiens is a passion that is greatly facilitated by the Biodiversity Heritage Library. We are proud to know that BHL’s open access collection is helping to illuminate the history of science to accelerate research today and empower future discoveries.

You can follow Paige Madison’s research on Twitter at @FossilHistory.

Reference

Hauserman, Samantha. 2013. “Thomas Henry Huxley (1825-1895).” The Embryo Project Encyclopedia, November 26. Accessed December 5, 2017. https://embryo.asu.edu/pages/thomas-henry-huxley-1825-1895.

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This post may contain the personal opinions of BHL users or affiliated staff and does not necessarily represent the official Biodiversity Heritage Library (BHL) position on these matters.

January 11, 2018by michelle.underhill
Blog Reel, User Stories

Heterostyly Before Darwin: Tracing Early Observations of Primula Floral Morphs

In 1860, Charles Darwin had an epiphany.

This was not an epiphany on the origin of species, as his monumental publication on the subject had been published one year earlier in 1859. This epiphany, which Darwin shared in a letter to his friend Joseph Dalton Hooker, was that flowers in the genus Primula display two distinct forms which differ in the length of the pistil’s styles and the height of the stamen’s anthers.

The condition of having multiple, distinct floral forms within a species is called heterostyly. Darwin coined the term distyly to describe the presence of two forms, or morphs. These morphs are called pin and thrum flowers, with pin flowers possessing long styles and low anthers and thrum flowers possessing short styles and high anthers. Each individual plant contains only flowers of the same morph, and the presence of heterostyly promotes insect-mediated out-crossing. In addition, a self incompatibility system is associated with heterostyly, which inhibits self-pollination. This ensures higher genetic diversity in future generations.

Darwin articulated his ideas on heterostyly within the paper ‘On the two forms, or dimorphic condition, in species of Primula, and on their remarkable sexual relations,’ which he read at the Linnean Society on 21 November 1861 and published a year later in the Journal of the Proceedings of the Linnean Society, Botany.

Darwin published further research on heterostyly fifteen years later within the monograph Different Forms of Flowers on Plants of the Same Species (1877). Within this work, he cites earlier observations of the condition in Primula species. It was not until Darwin, however, that the reproductive significance of these morphs was understood.

Dr. Philip M. Gilmartin has been interested in Primula floral morphs for decades.

A Professor of Plant Molecular Genetics at the University of East Anglia, Gilmartin has been studying gene expression and plant development for thirty years. For the past twenty years, his lab has been focused on understanding the molecular basis of heterostyly in Primula.

Gilmartin’s interest in Primula heterostyly isn’t restricted to genetics. While examining a print of Primula vulgaris from William Curtis’ Flora Londinensis (1777-98), Gilmartin realized that the copper-plate engraving clearly depicted both pin and thrum flower morphs. This realization sparked an exploration into historical observations of heterostyly.

“I sought to track down original references to identify the earliest observations on heterostyly. The Biodiversity Heritage Library resources were invaluable in this study,” affirms Gilmartin.

To conduct his historical review, Gilmartin referred to the cited sources in Darwin’s Different Forms of Flowers, as well as botanical images in early herbals, floral books, and florilegia. He accessed BHL several times each week while tracking down these references, using the scientific name finding tool and thumbnail view in the book reader to identify and navigate to relevant pages. He also downloaded whole PDFs and select pages of relevant material for future reference.

BHL also proved instrumental in helping Gilmartin resolve a perplexing citation error.

“For one reference cited in Darwin’s Different Forms of Flowers on Plants of the Same Species, the author (Kerner) and journal (Osterreichische Botanische Zeitshcrift) did not match the cited date (1835),” recalls Gilmartin. “I was eventually able to uncover the correct journal article from 1875 to find Darwin’s intended reference. Online access to the scanned journals was invaluable.”

As a result of this research, Gilmartin uncovered other 19th century illustrated representations of heterostyly in Flore Medicale (1818) and Hand-Atlas sämmtlicher medizinisch-pharmaceutischer Gewächse (1848), in addition to the 18th century Curtis image. Additionally, the earliest printed usage of the terms “pin-eyed” and “thrum-eyed” that Gilmartin was able to identify during his research appeared in Curtis’ Flora Londinensis.

The earliest published description of heterostyly, however, occurred much earlier, within Carolus Clusius’ Rariorum Aliquot Stirpium (1583). Gilmartin discovered this reference after consulting a 1943 French paper by van Dijk on historical observations of floral heteromorphy.

“Although Clusius was describing the two forms of flowers in different Primula varieties rather than within the same variety, this is the earliest description to my knowledge of the two forms of pin and thrum flowers which Darwin later studied,” explains Gilmartin.

Gilmartin presented the results of his historical review within the article “On the Origins of Observations of Heterostyly in Primula“, publishing in New Phytologist in 2015. Thanks to the Biodiversity Heritage Library, which is acknowledged in the paper, Gilmartin not only traced the published record of heterostyly but also gained historical context for his genetic research.

As for Darwin’s epiphany, while he was not the first to observe heterostyly, he was the first to study and articulate the reproductive significance of Primula floral morphs. It was an achievement that Darwin took great personal pride in. As he revealed in his autobiography:

“No little discovery of mine ever gave me so much pleasure as making out the meaning of heterostyled flowers.”

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This post may contain the personal opinions of BHL users or affiliated staff and does not necessarily represent the official Biodiversity Heritage Library (BHL) position on these matters.

September 14, 2017by ulib-libraryjobs
Blog Reel, User Stories

Poetic Botany: A Digital Exhibition Celebrating the History of Botany

‘Queen of the dark, whose tender glories fade
In the gay radiance of the noon-tide hours.’

‘That flower, supreme in loveliness, and pure
As the pale Cynthia’s beams, through which unveiled
It blooms, as if unwilling to endure
The gaze, by which such beauties are assailed.’

These elegant lines are quoted in Curtis’s Botanical Magazine (v. 62, 1835) as part of the description for the Night-blowing (Blooming) Cereus (Selenicereus grandiflorus) and serve as an artful conveyance of the species’ nocturnal blooming. But these lines represent more than just a whimsical representation of plant behavior. They are a reflection of the eighteenth century Poetic Botany movement that saw botany become the subject of poetry.

The Poetic Botany movement began with Erasmus Darwin, grandfather of Charles Darwin, who, in 1789, published The Loves of the Plants, a poem that in essence was a versification of Linnaean botany, where each plant in the garden is personified as a Greek god or goddess whose characteristics and interactions are meant to elucidate the Linnaean sexual system of plant classification. This highly successful poem was eventually republished along with a second poem by E. Darwin, The Economy of Vegetation, in 1791 as The Botanic Garden, A Poem in Two Parts, thus launching a movement that was proliferated by such authors as Frances Arabella Rowden, Charlotte Smith, and Robert John Thornton.

Selenicereus grandiflorus is one of nine species featured in the online exhibition Poetic Botany. Using these plants as a lens through which to highlight the Poetic Botany movement, the exhibition introduces the botanists and works that constituted this period. These botanists were concerned with not just the art of their verse but also with the scientific study of their plant subjects, and thus the Poetic Botany movement reflects a beautiful union of art and science.

The Poetic Botany exhibition was created by Ryan Feigenbaum as part of a 2015-2016 Andrew W. Mellon Fellowship at the Humanities Institute of the LuEsther T. Mertz Library of The New York Botanical Garden. NYBG, a founding BHL Member who has contributed over 3.9 million pages to the BHL collection, hosts the exhibit.

Feigenbaum, who has a BA in philosophy from DePaul University in Chicago, an MA in philosophy from Villanova University, and is currently completing a PhD in philosophy at Villanova University, researches the history and philosophy of biology. As evidenced through Poetic Botany, this research eventually led him down a botanical path.

“My dissertation, ‘The Epistemic Foundations of German Biology, 1790–1802,’ analyzes the emergence of biology as a science by tracing the genealogy of the organism concept,” explains Feigenbaum. “I came to the history of botany as an offshoot of this project; specifically, I was interested in the eighteenth-century opinion of plants, i.e., their ontological status. Whereas plants had long been regarded as devoid of intelligence, sensitivity, and locomotion, naturalists like Erasmus Darwin began to challenge these views, spurred on by the ‘discovery’ of plants like the Drosera and Mimosa pudica that challenged longstanding prejudices.”

Feigenbaum’s interest in the “life sciences” and the history of botany grew naturally out of his research on philosophy, for these two subjects have historically been intimately connected.

“The separation of philosophy and science is a relatively recent phenomenon,” affirms Feigenbaum. “Descartes, for instance, contributed to mathematics and physics beyond his cogito ergo sum, and much of Aristotle’s corpus focuses not on metaphysics or ethics but natural science. In this vein, I’ve been committed to studying not only eighteenth-century philosophy, but also its life science for the past five years or so. I say ‘life science’ because biology did not yet exist; the word ‘biology,’ in fact, was not used in its modern meaning until 1802. The how and why of biology’s emergence at this time is one focus of my dissertation.”

It was this extension into the ‘life sciences’ that eventually brought Feigenbaum to BHL.

“As my study of the history of philosophy incorporated more and more of the study of the history of science, BHL became a resource I relied on time and again,” asserts Feigenbaum. “At first I would search via Google for a particular eighteenth-century text, but I found it so often on BHL that I ended up using its website portal directly, sparing me the trouble of having to sift through Google results.”

BHL played an important role in the development of Poetic Botany, allowing Feigenbaum to discover and access relevant texts, many of which are linked from the exhibit.

“BHL provides smart access to knowledge that wouldn’t be otherwise available,” lauds Feigenbaum. “My favorite feature is the ability search by species. Since the digital exhibition is organized around species, this ability revealed new sources of which I’d been unaware. It is quite amazing that you can instantly see in which texts a species like Canna indica appeared according to date and then be taken to the exact pages of the reference. Without this resource, my workflow would have been much slower; it would’ve required me to visit multiple archives and search through texts one by one. While such an approach isn’t without its benefits, it inevitably limits what the researcher can do and extends the time required to do it.”

While there are many texts featured in Poetic Botany, one of Feigenbaum’s favorites is John Thornton’s New Illustration of the Sexual System. According to Feigenbaum,

“This perennial favorite is often acclaimed for its indisputably beautiful illustrations, perhaps some of the most iconic in existence. However, the accompanying text is also marvelous, giving the reader insights into eighteenth-century botany, snippets of poetry, and whole disquisitions on culture, religion, and other topics.”

This title is also consistently a favorite among BHL’s online audiences. Thanks to the citizen science efforts of Michelle Marshall, this entire work has also been taxon tagged in Flickr, making it easy for you to identify and search for the species contained within it.

We encourage you to take some time to explore Poetic Botany and marvel at the elegant and profound union of art and science represented in the exhibit and texts. Who would have thought that poetry and science could fit together so naturally?

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This post may contain the personal opinions of BHL users or affiliated staff and does not necessarily represent the official Biodiversity Heritage Library (BHL) position on these matters.

December 8, 2016by michelle.underhill
Blog Reel, Featured Books

Darwin’s Early Love

Charles Darwin, the famous naturalist known around the world for his publication On the Origin of Species and contributions to evolutionary theory, was born on February 12, 1809. As such, February 12 is known as International Darwin Day – a celebration with a vision to:

“Inspire people throughout the globe to reflect and act on the principles of intellectual bravery, perpetual curiosity, scientific thinking, and hunger for truth as embodied in Charles Darwin. It will be a day of celebration, activism, and international cooperation for the advancement of science, education, and human well-being.”

February 12 also happens to be just days before Valentine’s Day, a holiday now associated with love and the presentation of valentines as expressions of affection. How might these two, seemingly disparate holidays, be brought together? Why not by thinking about who Darwin himself might give a valentine to in the natural world?

Many people, when thinking of Darwin, might associate him with finches, mockingbirds, rheas, or Galápagos tortoises. But when Darwin began to investigate natural history while studying medicine in Edinburgh in the 1820s, it was marine invertebrates that first sparked his interest. While still a teenager, Darwin became a member of the Plinian Society, which was dedicated to the study of natural history amongst Edinburgh students. The zoologist Robert Edmond Grant nurtured Darwin’s interest in natural history, especially marine invertebrates, and taught him how to collect and rear specimens. Darwin’s first scientific paper, which was presented to the Plinian Society in March of 1827, was about bryozoan larvae and the black spots sometimes seen on oyster shells, which he demonstrated were the eggs of marine leeches. Sadly, Darwin’s mentor Grant had presented these same findings just days before Darwin at another venue, leading Darwin to feel betrayed and prompting his exodus from Edinburgh (Stiassny, 83).

Time passed, Darwin spent some time at Cambridge, and eventually he joined the voyage of the HMS Beagle thanks to a recommendation from his new mentor, botanist and geologist John Stevens Henslow. Darwin’s observations and research during the voyage would fuel his later revolutionary theories. But, as Dr. Melanie L.J. Stiassny, a curator at the American Museum of Natural History, points out in her article on Darwin within the book Natural Histories: Opulent Oceans, Darwin felt somewhat hesitant about his ideas during the early stages of their development. After all, they represented an entirely new way of looking at the natural world and thinking about its origins. So, while he fleshed out his theories on natural selection, Darwin also turned his attention back to, as Stiassny calls it, “his early love” – marine invertebrates. It was his work on barnacles that arguably helped pave the way for the acceptance of his later theories. As Stiassny states on page 84 of Opulent Oceans:

“It was the study of one group, the barnacles (Cirripedia), that would solidify his credentials as a taxonomic expert and provide him with empirical evidence for many of his evolutionary ideas…such as the loss of unnecessary structures (barnacles have no trace of the abdominal segments and swimming appendages of other crustaceans), and evidence that features inherited from a common ancestor can transform in anatomy and function (the typical walking limbs of crustaceans are modified into specialized feeding cirri in barnacles).”

 

Darwin spent eight years working on his barnacle studies, and from 1851-54 finally published his work in a four-part series: A monograph on the sub-class Cirripedia, with figures of all the species. Within the work, Darwin provides a classification for the crustacean Subclass Cirripedia, making it “the first based on the evolutionary principle of common descent” (Stiassny, 85). His On the Origin of Species, published in 1859, five years after his Cirripedia work, references cirripedes twenty-six times, demonstrating the impact this research had on Darwin’s evolutionary ideas.

Darwin’s name is arguably the most well-known from the world of natural history. Knowing Darwin’s history with the Cirripedia, one might wonder if he would have realized the heights of his scientific achievements without his barnacles.

So, we think, if Darwin were to give a Valentine to someone in the non-human animal kingdom, there’s a good chance it would go to a barnacle.

 

Reference:
Stiassny, Melanie L.J. (2014). Darwin’s “Beloved Barnacles.” Natural Histories Opulent Oceans: Extraordinary Rare Book Selections from the American Museum of Natural History Library (pp. 82-85). New York: Sterling Publishing.

February 12, 2016by ulib-libraryjobs
Blog Reel, Featured Books

Happy Darwin Day!

Today in 1809, Charles Darwin, remembered for his theory of Evolution by means of Natural Selection (which was so eloquently outlined in the 1859 publication On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection) was born. We celebrate this day as Darwin Day.

In 2011, BHL released Charles Darwin’s Library, a collection of books found in Charles Darwin’s personal library, with his hand-written annotations marked-up and indexed. We made a selection of these books available for free download in iTunes U. This year, we’ve selected images from these books and created a Darwin collection in Flickr. As with all BHL content, these images are free for download and reuse.

As we continue our celebrations of this great man of science, we highlight another project (headquartered at the American Museum of Natural History) which is dedicated to providing free access to Charles Darwin’s scientific manuscripts – the Darwin Manuscripts Project.

In this two-part post, Darwin Manuscripts Project Director, David Kohn, examines four of Darwin’s manuscripts that show the development of his evolution theory. Let’s begin with excerpts from “Ornithology Notes” and Darwin’s “Transmutation Notebook.”

Celebrating Darwin Day. By David Kohn. Director, Darwin Manuscripts Project

The Darwin Manuscripts Project has the admittedly ambitious goal of publishing all of Darwin’s scientific manuscripts. When digitized this will come to well over 100,000 high-resolution images, which we aim to faithfully transcribe and edit to the exacting standards of contemporary textual and historical scholarship. Among all these manuscripts my first love has always been those items that reveal—or at least allow us to glimpse at—the development of Darwin’s commitment to transmutation (his term for evolution) and the insights that led him to natural selection and eventually to the Origin of Species. Beyond their intellectual content, what appeals to me is how passionate are these manuscript glimpses of Darwin deeply in the midst of theory creation. So I’ve selected three items that capture chronological high points in what must be the most crucial intellectual journey in the history of natural history. And then I’ve selected two manuscript pages from the end point of the journey—the Origin itself. The entirety of this  journey can easily be followed on the DMP site by going to Edited Manuscripts (in the left-hand navigation) and then selecting ‘Creation of the Origin’, where the reader will find all the many surviving documents that are relevant to this process from 1835 to 1859.

Ornithology Notes, Summer 1836

(Cambridge University Library, DAR 29.2: 73-74)

I want to focus on the following passage about the slightly different forms of mocking birds Darwin found as he travelled from island to island. This was written in the summer of 1836 and is a significantly revised version of notes written in 1835, shortly after the Beagle left the Galapagos.

“When I see these Islands…tenanted by these [mocking] birds…I must suspect they are only varieties. … If there is the slightest foundation for these remarks the Zoology of Archipelagoes, will be well worth examining; for such facts «would» undermine the stability of Species.”

What a tantalizing passage. What does he mean by the concluding remark: ‘undermine the stability of Species’?

Undoubtedly, this remains one of the most controversial passages in the Darwin manuscript corpus. And I am offering a part of my humble, yet accurate, interpretation. By ‘stability’ Darwin means immutability. For stability of species is the exact term that Charles Lyell used when he discussed Lamarck’s evolutionary theory at length in the Principles of Geology. By 1836, Darwin had almost four years to read Lyell. And we know definitively he had read and indeed thought about Lyell’s anti-evolutionary views by February 1835. While there are several ways that Darwin was exposed to evolution before the voyage, Lyell’s deep exposition of Lamarck was, I believe, the most important exposure. For reading Lyell gave Darwin a major and thorough injection of evolution theory at the very time when Darwin was actively collecting specimens. But this belief has to be a matter of guess work because Darwin did not begin annotating his books until after the Beagle voyage. (If you really want to have some fun browse through the heavy marginalia on Darwin’s immediately post-Beagle copy of the 1837 edition of Lyell’s Principles in the Charles Darwin’s Library collection at BHL: http://biodiversitylibrary.org/item/105893 and http://biodiversitylibrary.org/item/105574.)

So to me ‘undermine the Stability of species’ translates as to ‘negate immutability’. Logically, to negate immutability equates to assert evolution. But in this passage Darwin did not assert evolution—not yet. We learn that the logic of discovery can proceed more gradually than mere logic.  However, this passage is an extremely important index of Darwin’s intellectual development. For while it shows that Darwin was not yet an evolutionist, it also shows that he was thinking about evolution and indeed thinking that evidence he had collected could destroy the received view that species are perpetually immutable.

Some more context is necessary.  When he wrote this passage, Darwin was in the midst of an important transition. South America and the years of specimen collecting were long behind him. So as a scientific expedition, the voyage itself was behind him. Yet with the ship homeward bound in the Atlantic, the voyage had not yet ended. But Darwin is already looking to the near future, when he would make a powerful entrance into London’s scientific scene by delivering his Beagle specimens to specialists to identify, describe, and evaluate. For these are the people who will determine whether or not his evidence on the ‘Zoology of Archipelagoes, will be well worth examining’. But now, while still sailing, Darwin was prepared to speculate, and indeed to set the grounds for his future evolutionary theorizing.

 

Transmutation Notebook D 134e-D135e, 28 September 1838

(Cambridge University Library, DAR 208: 73-74, http://darwin.amnh.org/viewer.php?eid=75168 and http://darwin.amnh.org/viewer.php?eid=75169.  For the whole Notebook D see http://darwin.amnh.org/viewer.php?mid=7.)

 

 

28th. «I do not doubt, every one till he thinks deeply has assumed that increase of animals exactly proportiona[l] to the number that can live.—» We ought to be far from wondering of changes in number of species, from small changes in nature of locality. Even the energetic language of ‹Malthus› «Decandoelle» does not convey the warring of the species as inference from Malthus.— … population in increase at geometrical ratio in FAR SHORTER time than 25 years— yet until the one sentence of Malthus no one clearly perceived the great check amongst men.— … One may say there is a force like a hundred thousand wedges trying force ‹into› every kind of adapted structure into the gaps ‹of› in the œconomy of Nature, or rather forming gaps by thrusting out weaker ones. «The final cause of all this wedgings, must be to sort out proper structure & adapt it to change.—»

These two pages from the third of Darwin’s ‘Notebooks on the Transmutation of Species’ give us a window into another crucial moment, for here we see Darwin’s profound excitement as he responds to reading Malthus’ Essay On Population. Visually, I have always been struck by Darwin’s uncharacteristically small, yet very well formed, handwriting here. And notice how there seems to be at least two layers of writing. Indeed the pages are so densely packed that in some places scholars have difficulty cleanly separating the layers.

But, what is Darwin saying?  Well, you need to know that by September 1838, Darwin was deeply engaged in what became the two branches of his life’s work. One branch was the constant weighing of the evidence for and against evolution, though by March 1837—so about six months after the Ornithology Notes, he was convinced that the mutability of species was the way nature is organized—evolution is a correct theory. The other branch was Darwin’s search to define mechanisms that explain two things: how species acquire adaptations and how new species are formed.  In these two pages Darwin is, for the very first time,  beginning to formulate the essence of the mechanism for adaptive evolution, namely: by natural selection. No wonder he writes with so much energy, and yet with so much precision. What he does here is grasp the power of Malthus’ population pressure—‘the energetic language of Malthus,’ which he then harnesses as a natural agent that through the differential survival of the fittest—‘forming gaps by thrusting out weaker ones’ can thereby ‘sort out proper structure & adapt it to change’. This is the essence of natural selection. Not the  grown tree in full bloom. But it is more than just a seed, for if theories are like trees, at this stage Darwin’s was a healthy sapling.

(To Be Continued…View part 2 of this blog post.)

Images in this post reproduced with the permission of the Syndics of Cambridge University Library.

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Explore Darwin on BHL and the Darwin Manuscripts Project:

Charles Darwin’s Library
Charles Darwin’s Library on iTunes U
Charles Darwin’s Library on Flickr
Darwin Manuscripts Project
Official Darwin Day Website

 

February 12, 2015by ulib-libraryjobs
Blog Reel, Featured Books

Voilà! Evolution by Means of Natural Selection
Portrait version of the Biodiversity Heritage Library logo.

Exploring Darwin’s Journey Towards the Theory of Evolution,

Part 2 (View Part 1)

In our previous post, David Kohn, Director of the Darwin Manuscripts Project, discussed two Darwin manuscripts illustrating the development of his theory of evolution: excerpts from “Ornithology Notes” and his “Transmutation Notebook D.”

In this installment, we explore two additional manuscript excerpts: “Principles of Divergence” and Darwin’s “Origin Manuscripts.”

Celebrating Darwin Day. By David Kohn. Director, Darwin Manuscripts Project, Part 2

Principle of Divergence. Natural Selection Portfolios II

(Cambridge University Library, DAR 205.5: 148 http://darwin.amnh.org/viewer.php?history=&eid;=21139. For the whole of DAR 205, Darwin’s divergence portfolio, see http://darwin.amnh.org/viewer.php?mid=143)

Darwin finished his last notebook in 1839 and waited until 1842 to write a first short essay and until 1844 to write a much longer essay. Then it isn’t until 1854 that he returned in earnest to work on what became the Origin, published in 1859. There are many reasons for all these obvious intervals and gaps. But let’s focus on one big reason, namely: as a comprehensive explication of evolution, the theory even in 1844 was incomplete. For all that Darwin had fully worked out natural selection—which explains the origin of adaption—between 1838 and 1842, yet we can see in retrospect that natural selection wasn’t sufficient to explain how new species are formed. Nor did natural selection explain the principle behind the irregularly branched tree of life that Darwin first drew back in 1837.  According to his autobiography, this big intellectual gap did not dawn on Darwin until the 1850s.

I overlooked one problem of great importance; and it is astonishing to me, except on the principle of Columbus and his egg, how I could have overlooked it and its solution. This problem is the tendency in organic beings descended from the same stock to diverge in character as they become modified. That they have diverged greatly is obvious from the manner in which species of all kinds can be classed under genera, genera under families, families under sub-orders, and so forth; and I can remember the very spot in the road, whilst in my carriage, when to my joy the solution occurred to me; and this was long after I had come to Down. The solution, as I believe, is that the modified offspring of all dominant and increasing forms tend to become adapted to many and highly diversified places in the economy of nature.  (Autobiography 120-121)

What intrigues me about this explanation of how the principle of divergence originated is Darwin’s memory of ‘the very spot in the road, whilst in my carriage, when to my joy the solution occurred to me’.  Did this really happen? Did he have a eureka moment riding in his carriage? For good reason, historians don’t like to trust autobiographical accounts. Darwin’s memory has been proven inaccurate more than once. And yet, let me rush in where wiser scholars may fail/fear to rush. In Darwin’s Natural Selection Portfolios II, there is a series of 15 loose notes, all related to divergence, all dated October to November 1854, and all written on identical grey paper. But one of these notes is written in pencil rather than ink. Unlike any of the other notes in the 1854 series, Darwin’s hand writing here is exceedingly ‘jumpy’.  Could this be the manuscript record of the carriage ride? The text reads:

We include all in class, as «in» Crustacea, which are connected, but yet no definition will define, — a proceeding explicable on descent.—

I suggest that this passage parallels the bolded sentences above from the Autobiography.  What I’m proposing as the carriage-ride note is a succinct statement of the problem or challenge of divergence—how to make the apparent “connectedness” of “all in class” more than just “heraldic”, but actually “explicable” on descent. The succeeding flood of grey-paper notes contain elements of Darwin’s solution—that is, the principle of divergence, which probably began to come into focus for him after he stepped down from his carriage. I think in this scrap of paper, we’ve again caught Darwin in the act of being Darwin.

Surviving draft manuscript sheets of the Origin of Species

(American Philosophical Society Library, BD 25.57 and Cambridge University Library, DAR 185: 109a (6v). For the entire known collection of Origin sheets see http://darwin.amnh.org/viewer.php?mid=2.)

The first edition of the Origin is a book of 490 pages. So Darwin’s hand-written draft must have been a respectable pile of paper. Yet for all the voluminous size of the Darwin archive, only some 30 sheets of the Origin survive. Happily, my favorite passage in the book is one of the five sheets owned by the American Philosophical Society Library in Philadelphia. Here is the passage:

Natural selection tends only to make each organism as perfect «as», or slightly more perfect than, the other inhabitants of the same country, with which it has to struggle for existence. And we see that this is so in nature.

This comes from Chapter VI, entitled ‘Difficulties on Theory,’ which perhaps could be more aptly called ‘Difficulties Conquered.’ The difficulty Darwin sought to overcome here was the appearance of perfection in nature, a concept invoked in the natural theology that Darwin encountered as a student in the work of William Paley. I am drawn to this passage because here Darwin pursues a metaphysical implication of his theory. He argues, rather slyly, that natural selection undoes the prevailing view that adaptations are perfect. He does this by introducing a contradiction in terms. How can anything be ‘slightly more perfect’. Perfect should be perfect. But Darwin shows that the concept of natural selection makes perfection relative. To be adapted organisms need only be ‘slightly more perfect than, the other inhabitants of the same country.’ But that renders perfection in nature a baseless and useless idea.

Finally, let’s consider one of the reasons that so few Origin sheets have survived. This picture on the back of an Origin sheet in Cambridge University Library is one of several with drawings like this one showing a battle between soldiers, who we may call knights of the aubergine and the carrot. The artist was Darwin’s son Francis, who evidently was given access to pages from the manuscript version of the great book. Indeed the manuscript only survives because Francis used it for drawing paper. His father didn’t seem to care!

Images in this post reproduced with the permission of the Syndics of Cambridge University Library and the American Philosophical Society Library.
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We hope you’ve enjoyed our exploration into the insights that Darwin recorded in his manuscripts, all of which ultimately led to the publication of his theory of Evolution by means of Natural Selection. We extend a special thanks to David Kohn, Director of the Darwin Manuscripts Project, for contributing these posts, and to Cambridge University Library and the American Philosophical Society Library for the use of the manuscript images included within these posts.

Read Part 1 of this Blog Post, discussing “Ornithology Notes” and “Transmutation Notebook D.”

Explore Darwin on BHL and the Darwin Manuscripts Project:

Charles Darwin’s Library
Charles Darwin’s Library on iTunes U
Charles Darwin’s Library on Flickr
Darwin Manuscripts Project
Official Darwin Day Website

February 12, 2015by Grace Costantino
Blog Reel, Featured Books

Wallace, Darwin, and Evolution: The Real Story

Book of the Week: The Malay Archipelago, by Alfred Russel Wallace

In 1858, Journal and Proceedings of the Linnean Society: Zoology published a paper proposing what would later be recognized as a revolutionary scientific concept: the theory of Evolution by means of Natural Selection. If we were to ask you who penned this publication, chances are your response would be Charles Darwin.

You would, however, only be half right.

While it is true that this 1858 publication represented 20 years of Darwin’s contemplation and conclusions on the process of natural selection (which culminated in the monumental work On the Origin of Species published just one year later in 1859), the Linnean Society piece was actually co-authored by Alfred Russel Wallace, who independently conceived of the theory of natural selection.

While Wallace, an avid explorer, collector, and natural historian, had long been seeking the cause of speciation during his 14 years of exploration in South America, Malaysia and Indonesia, it was in the midst of a fever in 1858, during his expedition to the Malay Archipelago, that inspiration struck: in the form of the theory of natural selection. Wallace expanded on this idea in a detailed article which he subsequently sent to Charles Darwin for review, unaware that Darwin himself had come to the same conclusion, though had yet to publish his theory.

At the suggestion of Darwin’s friends Charles Lyell and Joseph Hooker, Wallace’s article, together with unpublished writing by Darwin on the subject of natural selection and evolution, were presented to the Linnean Society in 1858 and subsequently published in the Society’s journal as “On the Tendency of Species to Form Varieties; and On the Perpetuation of Varieties and Species by Natural Means of Selection.”

2013 marks the 100th anniversary of Wallace’s death (in November, 1913). The Natural History Museum, London, has organized Wallace100, with a year’s worth of events and writings on the life and legacy of this great man.  This week, we explore the significant contribution Wallace made to natural history, with particular attention to Wallace’s account of his Malay expedition – the adventure that triggered a fever that fanned the flames of genius.

Great Things from Small Beginnings

Alfred Russel Wallace was born in 1823 in Usk, England, the seventh of nine children. While in his twenties, Wallace took a job as a schoolteacher in Leicester, during which time he met and befriended Henry Bates, a promising young entomologist. The two were invigorated by Darwin’s account of his voyage on the Beagle, and in 1848 set out on an expedition of their own to South America. The duo hoped to determine the mechanism driving the transmutation of species, the precursor to the theory of Natural Selection.

Over the four years of this exploration, Wallace gathered thousands of specimens, largely insects. The untimely death of his younger brother, however, who had traveled to South America to join the expedition, prompted Wallace, together with his entire collection of specimens and notebooks, to return to England. It was a fateful voyage. The ship caught fire and sank, along with most of Wallace’s collections and notebooks.

Undaunted, Wallace used the insurance money he collected from his specimens to organize a new expedition to the Malay Archipelago (today Malaysia and Indonesia). Wallace departed from England in 1854 to embark on his eight year journey through the exotic East Indies.

The Malay Archipelago and the Fever that Changed Science

Over the course of the Malay Expedition, Wallace gathered 125,660 specimens, more than a thousand of which were new to science. Six years after returning from the expedition, Wallace began writing an account of his adventure, which was published in 1869 in the two-volume masterpiece, The Malay Archipelago. The work, which provided readers (scientists and laymen alike) a rare window into the exotic depths of the “wild East,” became one of the most popular books on scientific exploration in the 1800s. Wallace dedicated the work, which has never been out of print, to Charles Darwin, “not only as a token of personal esteem and friendship but also to express…deep admiration for his genius and his works.”

The work was particularly note-worthy for its descriptions of birds of paradise, orang-utans, and native peoples. During the course of the expedition, Wallace obtained the distinction of being the first European to study apes in the wild. He shot and skinned several for the British Museum, and even raised an orphan orang-utan in his field camp. Apparently, his interaction with the orang-utans was particularly troubling to the natives, who viewed them as the “men of the woods.” Alarmed by Wallace’s collection of the apes, they feared that they, too, would be shot and skinned.

Despite this tension, Wallace made a point of understanding local customs and respecting the native people’s beliefs. Before the expedition, Wallace learned Malay and other tribal languages, expressing an interest in the “manners, customs, and modes of thought of people so far removed from European races and European civilization.” His work constituted pioneering efforts in ethnology and linguistics.

The expedition was a critical period for Wallace’s conceptualization of natural selection. Taking his first step towards the realization of this theory, Wallace published “On the Law which has Regulated the Introduction of New Species” in 1855, in which he hypothesized about when and where species originate. In what would later become known as the Sarawak Law, he observed that “every species has come into existence coincident both in space and time with a pre-existing, closely-allied species,” which “clearly pointed to some kind of evolution.” The “how” was still a mystery.

In the midst of a fever in 1858, the mystery was solved. While contemplating Malthus’ “Essay on Population,” which described how factors such as disease, accidents, and war keep human population in check, Wallace conceived of the idea of survival of the fittest, leading him to the conclusion that “in every generation the inferior would inevitably be killed off and the superior would remain.” Bingo. Natural Selection. It was this epiphany that Wallace communicated to Darwin via letter. This letter, together with some of Darwin’s unpublished works on the subject, was presented to the Linnean Society in 1858.

The Truth Behind Evolution

Darwin and Wallace’s co-attributed theory of evolution by means of Natural Selection published in 1858, and a year later, prompted by Wallace’s letter, Darwin published On the Origin of Species. Throughout his lifetime, Wallace expressed only extreme gratitude at being given recognition for the theory along with Darwin. When Wallace sent his letter to Darwin in 1858, he did so without expectation of publication, and indeed, Darwin approved of the publication without consent from Wallace, as the delay in sending and receiving postage from the Malay Archipelago was considerable. When informed of the publication, Wallace wrote that he “happily and graciously approved.” According to Wallace biographer Richard Milner, Wallace “maintained that even if his only contribution was getting Darwin to write his book, he would be content.”

During the time of Darwin, Wallace was widely-acknowledged as the co-discoverer of the evolutionary theory. Today, most do not even know Wallace’s name, let alone associate him with Evolution. Why is this? According to George Beccaloni, public favor in the early twentieth century holds the key. In the late 1800s and early 1900s, natural selection as a theory became unpopular as other theories like neo-Lamarckism, orthogenesis, and the mutation theory took root. The generation of scientists that understood natural selection and recognized Wallace and Darwin died out. In the 1930s and 40s, natural selection again gained favor as a new generation of scientists rediscovered On the Origin of Species. Embracing natural selection through that avenue, the name of Wallace faded from scientific recognition.

Remembering Wallace

Today, we recognize the contribution Wallace made to science, evolution, and natural selection. Wallace was awarded a multitude of medals, including the Darwin-Wallace and Linnean Gold Medals of the Linnean Society of London, the Copley, Darwin and Royal Medals of the Royal Society, and the Order of Merit. As we remember the 100th anniversary of Wallace’s death this year, let us remember that the great advances in science are often the work of many more men and women that are given general acclaim for the accomplishment.

Here’s to you, Alfred Russel Wallace. We have not forgotten you.

Links of Interest

We hope you enjoyed this post. Interested in guest-blogging for BHL? We’d love that! Natural history, biodiversity and conservation topics are especially welcomed. Email us your ideas at [email protected].

January 24, 2013by michelle.underhill
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