What Darwin Really Said: An Introduction to His Life and Theory of Evolution

by Benjamin Farrington

With a foreword by Stephen Jay Gould
 
First published in 1859, Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution inalterably transformed our view of the history of life on the planet—and along with it, how we understand ourselves, our origins, and our place in the world. As we stand before the dawn of a new century, this theory is still the source of heated debate. In medicine, psychology, sociology, and politics, controversial new ideas are being espoused to claim Darwin for their legitimacy, while religious opponents continue to press for their alternative theory of “creationism” to be taught in the public schools. To being light where there has been much heat, What Darwin Really Said offers an excellent introduction to this great thinker’s discoveries, his view of human development, and the endurance of his theories against the test of time.

Genres: Science, Nonfiction, History, Evolution, Biology

144 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1970

About the author

Scholar and professor of Classics, teaching in Ireland (1916–1920), South Africa (1920–1935), and Great Britain (1935–1956). Although his academic career spanned several disciplines, he is most well known for his contributions to the history of Greek science. Moreover, within the development of the discipline his books were some of the first written in the English language that focused specifically on Greek science. In addition to his professional academic career he was also active in socialist politics, using his intellectual capabilities to speak and write on it. While beginning his academic career in South Africa in 1920 he became heavily involved in the Irish Republican Association of South Africa. In the process he wrote several articles for local South African newspapers about the need for Ireland to separate from England. In addition he was instrumental in forming the Irish Peace Conference in Paris in 1922. Such political commitments inevitably influenced his teaching style, giving him the reputation in South Africa of being an intellectual Marxist. However, from the perspective of some critics, his Marxist commitments overshadowed his scholarly work, heavily tainting his work. One of his better known pamphlets on socialism, written in 1940, is The Challenge of Socialism.

Reviews

[Kevin · Rating 2 out of 5]

"It is interesting to contemplate a tangled bank, clothed with many plants of many kinds, with birds singing on the bushes, with various insects flitting about, and with worms crawling through the damp earth, and to reflect that these elaborately constructed forms, so different from each other, and dependent upon each other in so complex a manner, have all been produced by laws acting around us." ~Charles Darwin

It's fairly obvious that Benjamin Farrington has a love/hate relationship with Charles Darwin. What begins as a succinct and reverent biography detailing Darwin's youth, his time at Cambridge, and his voyage on the H.M.S. Beagle, starts to morph into disparaging critique in the chapter detailing On the Origin of Species [Chapter Six]. And by the time Farrington synopsizes The Descent of Man [Chapter Seven], this is less "What Darwin Really Said" and more "What Farrington Really Thinks."

"The most brilliant observer still needs to have a mental grasp of the subject of his investigations. This Darwin had in a unique degree in the geological and biological sphere: he was a superb naturalist. But it deserted him in the human sphere. He was a poor philosopher."

It's not that Farrington is necessarily wrong, but being a theist professor of philosophy writing in 1966, with 1966 sensibilities, certainly slanted his critique of an agnostic naturalist writing in 1871, with 1871 sensibilities.

"His enthusiasm for nature is infectious, but when [Darwin] strays beyond the bounds of natural philosophy, his opinions are feeble and fluctuating. More often than not he resorts to hollow-sounding platitudes which are a poor substitute for firm convictions."

I don't think anyone disputes the assertion that Darwin's ideas were sometimes flawed, but one could make the same assertion about Newton, Copernicus, Galileo... Farrington himself proselytizes theories and terms that have now been abandoned or fallen into disuse [*see: homo faber]. He'd be an easy target, should one chose to nitpick and castigate.

If you're looking for biased criticism of Charles Darwin without reverting to full blown evangelical lunacy, this might be a good place to start.

[Halina Hetman · Rating 4 out of 5]

Книга-огляд на роботи Дарвіна, яка розповідає про його дитинство, юність та подорожі, а також визначає місце Дарвіна серед інших вчених (бо сам він цього не зробив). Я могла би натомість прочитати статтю в Вікіпедії, але цей диявольський сайт кожного разу заманює мене в свої надра і залишає копирсатися серед статей на зовсім інші теми, ніж ті, за якими я туди заходжу, тож я пішла безпечнішою стежкою.

Автор книги критикує Дарвіна за:
- ненауковий стиль написання робіт й нестачу визначень тим поняттям, які він вживав;
- те, що він не вказував на інших вчених, послідовником яких він був в своїй теорії, а це ускладнювало на момент публікації його роботи її суспільне сприйняття і, в подальшому, коректне розуміння унікального вкладу Дарвіна в розвиток науки без приписування йому заслуг інших людей;
- його незатність до наукових експенриментів, що призвело до помилкових теорій в його книгах щодо генетичного наслідування (автор ставить у приклад Менделя з його законами спадковості, які були відкриті завдяки простим, але структурованим і дуже логічним експериментам);
- його незацікавленість в історії культури й культурі в цілому, що призвело до екстраполяції теорії природнього добіру на всі аспекти життя людей та людського суспільства (і його особистих ментальних проблем як наслідку такої екстраполяції).

Книга написана наприкінці 60х, тож в ній самій є помилки (наприклад, автор пише, що homo sapiens is less than fifty thousand years old, тоді як сучасна наука стверджує інше), але я ставлю високу оцінку завдяки авторському гумору й різкості суджень (наприклад, автор вважає, що Дарвін not a profoundly original thinker, not a great mind). Я вважаю останнє чеснотою в науковій спільноті, бо це дозволяє мені як читачці, не обтяженій науковою освітою, яскравіше побачити протиріччя між різними думками різних дослідників та сформувати свою.

[Jeremy · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very brief, but clear account of Darwin's work on natural selection.
The strongest part of the book is the first ~5 chapters. Farrington provides an exciting sketch of the intellectual influences on Darwin: the pioneering work of geologists in the generation before Darwin, which motivated his early geological work and provided one of the key components of his later biological thinking (the idea that large changes on long timescales in nature could be described in terms of processes observed to act in the present day). Farrington then proceeds to explain the existing biological work on the problem of speciation (descent with modification was an observation predating Darwin) and discusses some of the attempts by Lamarck and others to explain it.

There's a very thrilling moment in this book where Farrington quotes Darwin's own reading of Malthus, and then demonstrates how this led Darwin to put forth the hypothesis of natural selection. It's absolutely the high point of the book, and, one gets the sense, of Darwin's career. The components (as I see them) are descent with modification, variability within one generation of the population, and a selective pressure (a constraint that allows organisms with a favourable characteristic to contribute to the subsequent generation to a greater degree than organisms lacking that favourable characteristic).

The later chapters address the limitations of Darwin's work (both on biological selection, which I found instructive as a working biologist, and on 'social Darwinism' / the evolution of human characteristics, which is absolutely correct / valid criticism, but tedious). The "modern biology" in the book is obviously no longer modern, but the contrast between Mendel and Darwin is illuminating, especially for the practicing biologist.

I would have preferred more excerpts / analysis from Darwin's 5 years of data gathering and more detailed exposition of the sorts of data he collected and what can be deduced from it. But I suppose I could get that by reading On the Origin of the Species.

Overall, I'd definitely recommend this book, purely on the strength of the first five chapters.

[Oscar Angeles · Rating 4 out of 5]

Libro leído: el evolucionismo