Niles Eldredge - The Darwin Blogs

The Darwin Blogs – December 19, 2006.

Mr. Darwin Explodes in Rage over Defamation of His Name,
and Muses on the Celebration of Christmas by "Atheists"

I had not heard from Charles Darwin—my internet ether correspondent for the past several months—for nearly six weeks, raising the slight worry that perhaps he had forsaken our dialogue altogether. In our last exchange, published in my previous blog, I had proposed to him that I and my traveling companions might become his "eyes and ears" on our upcoming visit to the Galapagos. Darwin, you may recall, had visited the Galapagos digitally while I had been in Italy in November. I suggested to him that he might give us specific pointers on what to look for on the various different islands—and we in turn would report back to him on the present state of wildlife and the physical environment in the present-day Galapagos.

Well, I have heard from him just today (Sunday the 17th)—and his outrage is so palpable that I hasten to post his letter ASAP. Time to discuss the Galapagos when things settle down a bit:

December 17, 2006

My Dear Eldredge--

Forgive, if you will, my unpardonably long absence from our correspondence—left at the point where I was to take up the issue of my potential involvement in your forthcoming visit to my dear Galapagos Islands—the "Islas Encantadas," as you so rightly call them. I must beg your further indulgence in my delaying further still my response to your intriguing suggestion on how I might contribute to your experiences there this coming January (as I believe).

But more pressing matters intrude. You will recall that my very presence in the American "digital ether" (and hence my presence on your website, which more than ever I now see as a boon to my quest) came about when I found I could no longer rest—having been particularly disturbed by reports of how I am remembered in the modern world—most especially in the United States. While my name is held with respect (and with no little honor—a source, as I have said, of some personal embarrassment), I am vilified to the point of being called the devil incarnate in other—especially in some religious—quarters.

I have just read a particularly outrageous reference to myself in the pages of The New York Times. (I have discovered a way to access that newspaper's digital edition—without paying the customary subscriber fee; there are some perquisites, it would seem, to being dead!). I had understood that The New York Times considers itself "the paper of record"—not just for New York, but for your entire country. In my day, I have of course seen much scurrilous matter in newspaper broadsheets—but I am surprised to find myself so vilified in what passes to be a dignified, nay even cerebral, purveyor of news and information. Pity that it is not illegal to slander the dead—else I would consider bringing suit in a court of law over this matter.

I had at first considered writing in protest to The New York Times, until, recalling my present state and the unlikelihood that my letter should be taken as bona fide, I have turned instead to you. I should be most grateful if you post this present letter in one of your "blogs"—as I feel my grievances are justified and worthy of publication.

I refer to the article most prominently displayed in the upper portion of Page 1 of the "Week in Review" section of today's edition of The New York Times. Entitled "The Whispers and the Why Nots," the article addresses private conversations and rumors in your capital city of Washington, D.C. pertaining to the (I gather increasingly desperate) need to find some solution to the disastrous outcome so far of the war your country launched in Iraq (a country that did not exist per se in my time—though of course such cities as Baghdad and Samara are among the most ancient in the world). As an observer particularly focused on social issues in America attendant to my own theories, I shall forebear commentingat any length on this War itself—although I must say that the reckless manner in which it was conceived and initiated, and the amateurish way in which it has been thus far conducted, would seem to poise the world on the brink of deeper conflagration and turmoil than was in prospect beforehand—the shocking events of September 11, 2001 to the contrary notwithstanding.

Yet it was with no particular animus that I began to peruse this article—until I found my name invoked in a most unaccountable and disgusting manner. For the author in an effort, one fears, to be droll, says of one particular suggestion currently mooted sotto voce in Washington, that it "is worthy of a certain mid-nineteenth British naturalist with a fascination for natural selection." And then the very next paragraph—consisting of but a short, chilling sentence, reads "We shall call it the Darwin Principle"—needlessly makes it abundantly clear which "mid-nineteenth British naturalist" she had in mind.

She invoked my name (audaciously even coining her nonsensical "Darwin Principle") in conjunction with her account of one particular Washington rumor (attributed to Vice-President Cheney's office—and quite possibly to Cheney himself) that the United States would consider supporting the numerically dominant Shiites over the Sunnis as a way out of the morass. The Darwin Principle in this case is simply the survival of the numerically dominant; never mind that Hussein was a Sunni with an iron grip over the "numerically dominant" Shiites—and never mind all the strong reasons why such a course would simply deepen the disastrous situation in Iraq and in the entire Middle East (as I understand current affairs—not really my forte!). This benighted reporter seems not to grasp the point that natural selection sorts through myriad conflicts and tradeoffs in the natural world—and is by no means a simple sledgehammer-like Principle of Survival of the Numerically Dominant. Dinosaurs, after all, greatly outnumbered mammals for 150 million years. Only ill-fortune, and not some ineluctable Law, drove the dinosaurs to extinction—thus allowing the eventual diversification of mammals.

My dear Eldredge, you have read much about me—and more to the point, have apparently read deeply in my journals (both scientific and of a more personal nature) as well as my correspondence. I ask you—is there any record of me whatsoever advocating the subjugation of one people by another? Have I ever promulgated war—or expressed the desire to see any nation or portion thereof annihilate another?

Yes, I did tend to sympathize with the North in your Civil War; I had, after all, been raised to be anti-slavery [and, I must admit as well, I had been entertaining, however fleetingly, the notion of perhaps removing my household to your shores—so less hostile to my transmutational views did your country seem to me to be at that time; how ironic that in these times I am so routinely demonized in the United States, while (once again, to my embarrassment) my image appears on the British 10£ note as if I am being accorded heroic status in my natal country I once considered abandoning!].

It upsets me to the core of my (non-corporeal!) being to be seen routinely as an advocate of murder, mayhem—and the imposition of violent will of one people over another. It is not fair, it is not right—and the reporters and others who so abuse my name do so in willful error. Such people are neither witty, nor wise. Such people are instead fools—and newspapers that print such (sadly, legal) slander of the dead have no right to consider themselves intellectually respectable.

And thus it is not mere religious opposition to my views that has me so especially unhappy this day. Having thus gotten my outrage to some degree off my chest, it occurs to me that the deeper problem is not so much what this or that scientist (or other form of scholar) might have to say about the implications for human society as he might see them in his Work—as it is the often mindless, careless misapplication of poorly grasped scientific principles by others. True, some savants are indeed vocal on social issues tied in with their work: even old Malthus, I recall, railed against alms for the poor in the fear that giving aid and succor to the indigent would merely forestall their deaths, and thus contribute to increasing their numbers—raising the specter of even greater catastrophes the next time that the crops fail and famine stalks the land. But, at least in my time, such examples are rare compared to the flagrant and all-too-common misuse of scientific findings to further one's own social policy goals (or, as in the present case, merely to find a metaphor on which to fashion an evanescent newspaper article).

This misuse of science to further social policy goals seems particularly concentrated around my theory of transmutation through natural selection—and, by extension, to me personally. There appears to be something called "social Darwinism"—which, as near as I can ascertain, is not so much a coherent body of thought (pertaining, e.g., to the careful application of concepts such as my natural selection to human society)—but rather a mélange of postulates united seemingly solely by the vitriolic thought that human life is nothing but a vicious contest in which the strongest—in mind, body, spirit, and perhaps above all else, wealth—are said to naturally prevail over the less fortunately endowed. (Ironic in this connexion that the poor vastly outnumber the rich in all social settings I can think of—so much for the inevitable power of sheer numbers to prevail, as proposed in this vacuous "Darwin Principle" in today's newspaper!). "Nature Red in Tooth in Claw"—or so wrote the Poet Alfred Lord Tennyson. And that other contemporary of mine, Herbert Spencer, did not help matters when he coined the phrase "Survival of the Fittest"—which even in my lifetime was affixed inexorably to my idea of Natural Selection.

This is but to say that even in my lifetime I was familiar with the propensity that some had to ascribe especially the worst aspects of human behavior to me—or, rather, to my views on transmutation—but rather as if I myself were somehow responsible for Nature and Her Works. Worse, my principles poorly applied seem so often to have been used to justify human social policy—as if the architects of such policy were merely following out the dictates of Nature Herself. Thus my very own cousin Francis Galton's encouragement of what came to be known as "eugenics"—the movement, in itself of dubious worth, suggesting that we ourselves should take our own transmutation into our own hands by circumventing the palliatives of medicine and letting the feeble and impaired die off to the betterment of our Race, while encouraging the "fit" to marry and produce quantities of offspring—has been, as I understand it, the rallying cry behind at least some of the most horrific episodes of "ethnic cleansing" which, if I understand correctly, reached its acme (or should I say nadir) in the systematic extermination of millions of Jews, as well as others, in Europe during what has been called "World War II."

And consider how ironic it is that I, whose views have been (and continue to be, of course) so steadfastly resisted on religious grounds, should have seen these very same views be invoked as the basis of the "natural" gulf between rich and poor. I recall the words of the hymn "All Things Bright and Beautiful"—which to my chagrin began, as I recall, with the words:

All things bright and beautiful,
All creatures great and small,
All things wise and wonderful:
The Lord God made them all.

The hymn also contained these words:

The rich man in his castle,
The poor man at his gate,
He made them, high or lowly,
And ordered their estate.

Be damned if you do, be damned if you don't!! By the time I first heard these words sung in Church (which I attended occasionally for the sake of family harmony) I had long since developed my transmutational theory—though I had yet to publish it. Naturally the first four lines made me (silently!) gnash my teeth.

But more arresting in the present context in which I write are the other four lines I have also long since committed to memory. For it was a commonplace in my time to see the social order as directly ordained by God Almighty. But by the time that my life was drawing to a close, it had become fashionable in some circles to see this very same social order, this "rich man in his castle, the poor man at his gate," to be seen still to be wholly fitting, just and proper—in a word "natural"—yet not through the Hand of God, but rather through the agency of Natural Selection! I believe some wag characterised it as "cream floating to the top," or some such careless witticism.

Seemingly so great a difference—God or natural law—in our explanation for social order. Yet they are blatantly cut from the very same cloth—as both are but flimsy rationales endorsing the status quo. Don't trouble yourself with the miseries of poverty, both shout out to us—there is little to be done about it in either case. In the case of the seemingly contradictory, yet in reality identical, issue of "All Things Bright and Beautiful" vs. survival of the richest, it is far more a simple way of saying that it is just "The Way Things Are."

Malthus (and now, supposedly and all too plausibly, Cheney) simply want to give God, or Nature, a helping hand as the inevitable unfolds, whether ensconced in God's Plan or following Nature's Law. If we cannot labor to right the iniquities and inequalities of the Natural Order, we are evidently at liberty to give God or Nature a helping hand to deepen and perpetuate those very iniquities and inequalities.

Why is the application of Science to human social conditions so often couched in such awful, destructive ways—most often by those who are not themselves scientists, but rather politicians bent on justifying their actions—their rationales for their choices of Means to an End?

And how sad to see this reporter parrot the conventional view of me as Architect of such perverse and muddled thinking!

On a lighter note, before closing this jeremiad, I cannot help but draw attention to the other article on that very same first page of "The Week in Review"—this one entitled An Atheist Can Believe in Christmas. More tripe, I fear—but this not so injurious (or, I should say, at least not directed against me: though I could have been, mercifully I was not, made mention of in this article!)

I have become aware that certain Evolutionists—including authors who routinely invoke my name—have taken to proclaiming that evolution in particular, and science in general, logically precludes the existence of God. I might add that long before the end of my life, I had reached a similar conclusion.

Yet with a difference: I do not believe that the demonstration of the truth of Transmutation logically necessitates the non-Existence of some sort of a God. Suffice to say that when I embarked on my career, science had already made known that Extinction of Species is a real phenomenon—and proceeds by Natural Law; in other words, changes in conditions are sufficient to account for the loss of species, and no one need invoke the Supernatural to explain extinction. Even the illustrious Cuvier seems to have felt this way—and Lyell as well (though Lyell did maintain in his Principles that God knew all, and in particular knew in advance which species would be lost to extinction).

And everyone—savant and layman alike—acknowledged that the birth and death of individuals (whether dog or human person) likewise proceeded through Natural Causes. Whatever underlying Divine Plan there might be imagined to be attendant to the birth of any one Person, the facts of the matter were nonetheless clear: conception was achieved firstly by union of man and woman; growth and development of the foetus proceeded regularly (and repeatedly throughout the species) within the womb of the female—for however long the gestation period peculiar to a given species might be. And birth itself—with its associated perils—was likewise seen to be a wholly natural event.

Thus I see my great contribution to Science the completion of the analogy: just as births and deaths of individuals can be understood to occur through wholly Natural Causes; and so too can the Death of Species be likewise understood in terms of Natural Law; then so too can the Births of Species be seen to proceed under wholly natural law. Species in that sense are wholly analogous to Individuals—a point I well remember occurring to me while I was still on the Beagle voyage.

Such views do not so much render God "extinct" as they render Him superfluous. So long as a phenomenon can be understood solely through recourse to Natural Law, God need not enter into the explanatory picture. Or so I believe.

Put another way, the concept of God did not seem necessary for me to understand any aspect of the world around me.

As to the subject of this second article, the idea that non-believers can and do celebrate the Yuletide Season—"Christmas" if you will—strikes me as amusing. Neither of my Grandfathers was a Believer, yet tales of their merriment at Christmas-time were legend in our Family.

Here the concept of "cultural Christian" (as quoted in the article from Richard Dawkins, celebrated modern evolutionist currently, I gather, enjoying much success as a promulgator of scientifically-inspired Atheism) seems to me to have much merit. Many of us might not find the Concept of God necessary to conduct their lives to its fullest—yet many have long since acknowledged that in terms of our conduct, our codes of ethics, indeed the very basis of our social mores, we are indeed "cultural Christians"—and that most certainly includes celebrating Christmas. The folly of this article is the idea that this is something new!

You have written that I, increasingly alone among the historical figures of my time, remain prominent in your modern world (including your newspapers!) precisely because I have not yet been (as you put it) wholly "metabolized" by Western Culture. That would seem, sadly, to be the case: most of us may well be Cultural Christians; far fewer would seem to be "cultural Darwinists"—except, alas, in the very nasty sense of social Darwinism, where I am invoked purely in the name of doing evil—whether in Iraq or elsewhere.

For all of these troubling thoughts to the contrary, I close by wishing you and your family (enhanced, as I understand it, by the recent arrival your newest grandchild, Anna Eleanor!!) the very Happiest of Christmases and a Joyous and Most Prosperous New Year!

Yr. Grateful Correspondent,

C. Darwin

Naturally I picked up my copy of The Week in Review as soon as I received Darwin's email. Sad to say—but not unexpectedly, alas—I found everything Darwin said about these two articles to be perfectly true.

My reply was brief:

December 17, 2006

Dear Darwin:

At the risk of flippancy, all I can think of to say at the outset is "Welcome to America."

It is utterly true that the field of evolutionary biology that you founded once and for all is still broadly resisted in the United States (and, increasingly, elsewhere) on religious grounds.

It is utterly true, as well, that the predominant manifestation of your thinking in the secular culture at large is through "social Darwinism" in its various guises. Where evolution really is important in considering implementation of social strategies—as in fighting Malaria, AIDS, or warding off the still-prospective avian flu pandemic—all but the medical and scientific establishment pretty much persist in turning a blind eye and a deaf ear.

It is utterly true that Social Darwinism is united only by mean-spirited proponents wishing either to endorse some iniquitous form of status quo—or to help Nature along with the task of vanquishing the disadvantaged—be those disadvantages cultural or behavioral human traits, the elimination of ethnic groups, or the vanquishing of entire nation-states.

And I personally agree that God is rendered not so much non-existent as irrelevant to those of us—whether scientists or not—who believe that natural phenomena have natural causes.

And I do also agree with your riveting assessment of your major scientific achievement: seeing species as analogous to individuals, at least in the sense that both kinds of entities have deaths and births that can be understood purely in reference to Natural Law. It was you who added that missing piece—resisted by nearly all who came before you: the natural causes underlying the birth of species. You had indeed made that analogy while still on the Beagle, no later than in early 1835.

As to The New York Times…well, no one, nor any institution, is perfect. Though in this instance the combination of articles on the first page of the most recent edition of The Week in Review took on the flavor and character of what one more likely expects to find in The New York Post, I still find it on the whole the better publication. To err is human…..

And lastly, though I realize that you wander the Internet Ether alone, may I wish you in turn a Very Merry Christmas and above all, a New Year in which you might find some measure of enjoyment—and perhaps that even more elusive state, Peace.

Yours,

Niles Eldredge

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