Niles Eldredge - The Darwin Blogs

The Darwin Blogs – October 1, 2006.

Welcome to My (Your?) Website, Mr. Darwin!

Things have heated up. Not only has someone purporting to be Charles Darwin been writing emails to me at this website—but I have begun to hear from others as well. More of that later: the first order of business is to come to grips with the content of Darwin's (for, as you will see, I have little choice at this point but to refer to him as such) most recent email:

September 29, 2006

My dear Eldredge:

Have read your blog posted on the 26th inst. (though I suspect written a few days prior; odd that these days of the Internet require a longer time literally to be "posted" than we experienced back in my day in England—where letters written in the morning were commonly delivered locally by the afternoon—or at the very latest the next morning, virtually anywhere in England).

You can perhaps sense from my tone that I am not wholly satisfied by the nature of our correspondence as it so far has developed. I concede that you are within your rights to publish my letters ("emails") verbatim (I should be used to this by now, as I am aware, as I made clear in my previous letter, that a prodigious number of the letters written by and to me have been conserved—and that many have already found their way "online" at various internet "websites"). And I do of course grasp the point that we can veritably in some sense "converse" through the digital medium (though, my dear sir, may I request that you reply in like kind—i.e., instead of such solecisms as "OK, Mr. Darwin, if that's really your name," you address me more politely and with more respect—and, please, in the same format as a proper letter, the manner in which I write to you. Surely this is not too much to ask).

I must confess that the real source of my current somewhat choleric state is your constant hounding me for bona fides of my identity. My dear Eldredge, I gave you precisely what you wanted: a piece of evidence of my experiences that has been all but lost in the annals of what you call "Darwiniana"—a piece of trivia that, however arresting in hindsight, played no explicit part in the further development of my views on transmutation. Nor has it been the focus (as far as can be judged from my Internet searches) of any subsequent historian's analysis of my lifetime work.

This is my experience with the snake known as Trimerocephalus—a clear intermediate form between the Vipers of my country and the rattlesnakes of America. You have verified that account. We should then be done with your worries about my true identity. But, instead, still troubled lest I not be who I claim to be, you had the temerity to pose a further test—this time turning the tables by posing a challenge to my own memory. It is almost too much to bear—and I briefly considered never addressing you again at your website.

But my curiosity has the better of me. I am visiting America—where I appear to be a devil to so many, whilst a hero to others—because I am not at peace. I had hoped that I could find the answers to many questions—answers that may help me understand the modern world (in particular, its obsession with me and my ideas), and therefore perhaps to gain some measure of peace. In return, I shall entertain such questions as you may have for me pertaining to my own dead and buried past.

Thus, perforce, I shall endeavor to answer your latest challenge. You asked upon what gentleman I had prevailed to do me a favor—to produce a list of some mammals I encountered on the Beagle voyage. You asked that I should recall what mammals those might have been—and where and when this event occurred.

My dear Sir, you of all people must realize that one of my highest priorities (nay, scientifically, it was my very HIGHEST priority) once I had arrived back in England was the proper identification of my specimens—my plants, my insects, my invertebrates, my fossils, my birds and my mammifers (I confess I usually called the latter simply "animals" back then). To be plain, I diligently badgered MANY different experts, and unless you had specified mammals, I might not have been able to recall the exact incident to which you have made reference.

But I do recall that sometime in the Fall of 1837 (immediately upon opening the first of my "Transmutation Notebooks") I attended a meeting, I believe it was of the Zoological Society of London. There unexpectedly I chanced upon George Waterhouse—the man who was, five years later, to publish an account of the sundry species of living Mammals brought home after five years' collecting whilst on the Beagle.

I was (as, I gather from your various postings, you already realize) especially interested in species that are peculiar to the South American continent—the better to gauge the manner of their births and deaths. Among the most striking are the various species of the Order Edentata—which include the armadillos, the sloths, anteaters and the like. I had a particularly keen interest in these species throughout the trip, but also especially in 1837, as I was writing my inmost thoughts on transmutation. For my great fossil finds at Bahia Blanca—in addition to some species of native Rodentia—were primarily of fossil Edentata—forms like the giant ground sloth and something I took to be (though not without some doubt) the remains of the outer bony shell of some extinct form of armadillo. I was aware, as well, that as many as four species of Armadillo occurred in Mendoza—and lesser numbers of the same species elsewhere.

Thus edentate mammals were very much in my thoughts when I saw Waterhouse at the meeting. After a brief discussion on the subject, I asked Waterhouse if he could perhaps jot down the known edentate species of the World from his prodigious and wholly admirable memory. When he agreed, we both fumbled for a pen and something to write upon. One of us eventually found a pen, but no suitable paper came to hand—so, in desperation, I offered him the small meeting card I had in my pocket that listed the dates of the meetings of the Society in 1837. The obverse was, mercifully, blank—and there Waterhouse jotted down for me the various species of living armadillo; the sloth species, etc. He also wrote that five species occur outside South America—which greatly disappointed me at the time, given my keen interest in species wholly restricted to South America; I was relieved later to learn that Waterhouse's inclusion of the Old World species was erroneous.

My dear Sir, I hope this answer shall suffice. No more tests—I find them undignifying, if not wholly insulting.

And now, if I may (moved by the assumption that you will adjudge my answer sufficiently satisfactory to continue our dialogue), I shall pose a question to you—a question that cuts to the heart of my current malaise.

There seems to be something different about America. Of all the countries surveyed, only Bulgaria seems to encompass a smaller percentage of its populace who accept the scientific principle of evolution as the explanation for the history of life—including the origin of our own species—than the United States.

I had hoped that by now my theory would have eventually been reconciled against religious objections—much as happened with the early Astronomers, once proclaimed as heretics, whose notions were eventually incorporated into prevailing views, including those of both the leaders and the common practitioners of the various forms of Christianity.

But this has not happened to my idea of evolution—and most especially, among the more highly developed nations, this has not happened in America. This in itself is striking—but this is not my current question. I shall leave to later letters (if such there be) to ask Why there is still such religiously based opposition to evolution—whether here in America or indeed in nearly the entire world over.

Rather, my question to you now, Eldredge, refers to the actual battles that seem incessantly to be fought in the United States over evolution vs. religiously-inspired "creationism," (or, as it now appears to be designated, "intelligent design") in your political arena—in your legislatures and perhaps most especially in your courtrooms. One does not see the presence of the theory of evolution in similar political venues in other countries—regardless of the consensus of opinion for and against evolution in these other places.

Can you explain this to me: How can it be that a scientific theory—however entwined with religious doctrine it may have become in the minds of certain segments of a populace—has become so commonly and routinely encountered in the political arena—and especially in the formal legal system—of your country? Nearly all of this legislative and legal activity seems centered directly around your education system.

I wonder over this, as in my day, in my country, it was not considered odd or otherwise inappropriate in the least to include religious doctrine in the school curricula.

I hope, should you choose to respond, that you can shed some light on these matters.

And I also hope that the ill-grace and intemperate spirit with which I began this missive, my dear Eldredge, has not put you off. Though no longer plagued with my myriad pains of the flesh, it seems I am still prey to intermittent bouts of dyspepsia.

I look forward to your response.

Very truly yours,

Charles Darwin

Needless to say, I found this latest communication unsettling—though it seemed to end on a friendlier note. On the one hand, I felt (and still feel) that I have a perfect right to my initial skepticism over the identity of the author of these incoming emails. Question authority—especially when it purports to come from the Great Beyond!

On the other hand, I already admitted my no-longer-secret hope that somehow it could all be true—that a Darwinian Sentience that finds itself adapted to the digital ether, who can read and write on the Internet, actually might exist—for what fun, to say the very least, it would be to be able to go straight to the horses' mouth (as it were—just a figure of speech Mr. Darwin!), getting his take on the past, and also what he makes of our world today.

Darwin's reluctantly-given answer to my second "test" of his identity is completely correct. There is a small cardboard card—about the size of a modern business card—included with Darwin's papers in the rare book and manuscript collection of the Cambridge University library. It is a list of dates of meetings of the Zoological Society of London for the entire year 1837. On the front, the date "September 7" is underlined in wavy fountain-pen ink; on the back, 19 species of South American Edentata are listed in someone's (presumably George Waterhouse's) handwriting; Five Old World species "including Monotremata" are added—none of which are now considered members of the Order Edentata, which are indeed restricted to the New World.

I cannot take the chance of ignoring—or even of further alienating—this writer who says he is the Sentient Spirit of Charles Robert Darwin. There is far too much potentially to lose by not taking the leap of faith that is required. From now on—until such time as it seems no longer wise or prudent to do so—I accept this correspondent as indeed Charles Darwin himself.

After all, anyone who can see the link between our own mindset and that of Bulgaria—rather as the reporter Borat has seen the connections between the U.S. and Kazakhstan—deserves an answer. And thus my first open letter to Mr. Darwin, written in the style he has requested:

September 29, 2006

Mr. Charles Darwin

Dear Mr. Darwin:

My profound thanks for your decision to respond—and to answer in detail that last test I put to you in order to be absolutely certain of your identity. Please forgive me for being so persistent; thank you for having had the courtesy to respond so fully—and so correctly.

And my apologies are also due for any lack of respect I may have shown you in our interchanges so far. I am, after all, an American—and we are an informal, though not inherently disrespectful, people. Please be assured that my respect for you borders on reverence. I hope you will see that my recent role in producing the American Museum exhibition Darwin, as well as the book I wrote in conjunction with that exhibition, is reason enough to conclude that my admiration for you is wholly genuine.

I say this, too, as someone whom you know has been accused as anti-Darwinian—not only by creationists, but also by colleagues within the discipline of evolutionary biology. It is true, of course, that I have criticized some aspects of the work of my colleagues that are commonly—and often correctly—attributed in their source directly to you. In preparing my book Darwin. Discovering the Tree of Life, I was especially pained to see how much I agreed with your treatment of the fossil record in your earliest, youngest (and, dare I say, most creative?) days when the idea of evolution was so fresh to you. It was sad for me to see you apply natural selection ex post facto to the fossil record—and then conclude that the fossil record is no longer to be trusted as its patterns simply do not seem to fit your vision of the way that the results of natural selection should look like in evolutionary history.

But, throughout my career, and especially now—more than ever—I hold you in the highest possible esteem. I may have disagreed with some of your conclusions—especially as articulated later in life. But, as you of course know, that is only to be expected. You had to disagree with all your mentors (Henslow and Lyell especially leap to mind!) when you were developing your transmutational views; disagreement is a necessary ingredient of all growth in human knowledge. Thus my disagreement with you was strictly intellectual—and I have never been an anti-Darwinian!

I have never encountered a more open and honest mind than yours—one more dutifully and relentlessly engaged in ferreting out the truth—and doing so in astonishing detail and with admirable rigor. That scholars have uncovered such a feast of notes, letters and manuscripts, in addition to your published books, may indeed be causing you unrest as you visit the United States these days. But it has given us who are still living an unparalleled, unprecedented glimpse into the workings of the human mind at its creative best, as we are able to follow your physical and mental footsteps as you developed one of the most important ideas in the history of western culture—indeed, in the entire history of our species. That a majority of us—in the United States and Bulgaria alike—reject your explanation of how we have come to be is simply a signal of how profoundly your idea (an idea not of course wholly original with you—but an idea developed by you in such a way that it could no longer be ignored) has shaken the very foundations of our beliefs. You are uneasy precisely because you still make so many in the living world so uneasy.

You ask about the reasons our courts and legislatures have been so embroiled in the issue of creationism and evolution in the classroom—so much more so than anywhere else (including Bulgaria—or for that matter Kazakhstan). You actually seem to get close to the answer yourself when you say that, in your day in England, there was never an issue about religion in the classroom.

I hope you will not mind that I defer a more complete answer to your query until I have occasion to write you directly again. Suffice it to say, however, that in our modern world, where religious fundamentalism pervades the political arena virtually everywhere, evolution is always there, at least as an undercurrent. Evolution is anathema as much to the right-wing Christian Bush regime as it is to the Islamic clerics who, following the ambitious lead of the late Ayatollah Khomeini in Iran, increasingly are in charge of matters in their countries. At least that is one issue on which they—the currently sitting American President and any Shiite or Sunni Imam—agree!

That said, it is something very special about the laws of this country—beginning with the Constitution and its first Ten Amendments (the "Bill of Rights")—that has given special character to the creationism/evolution controversy in the United States that seems never to go away. I'll discuss this further when next I write.

Mr. Darwin, I am so glad to have this opportunity to converse with you. That we must do so in a public venue such as the "Darwin Blogs" (who knew they would turn out to be so aptly named?!) is a price we both must pay simply to be able to talk with one another.

I look forward to many more such exchanges.

Sincerely,

Niles Eldredge

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