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• The Letters
• Darwin's life in letters

Darwin in letters, 1844–1846: Building a scientific network

Darwin correspondence project.

• About Darwin overview
• Family life overview
• Darwin on childhood
• Darwin on marriage
• Darwin’s observations on his children
• Darwin and fatherhood
• The death of Annie Darwin
• Visiting the Darwins
• Voyage of HMS Beagle
• What Darwin read overview
• Darwin’s student booklist
• Books on the Beagle
• Darwin’s reading notebooks
• On the Origin of Species overview
• The writing of "Origin"
• Abstract of Darwin’s theory
• Alfred Russel Wallace’s essay on varieties
• Charles Darwin and his publisher
• Review: The Origin of Species
• Darwin's notes for his physician, 1865
• Darwin’s photographic portraits
• Have you read the one about....
• Six things Darwin never said – and one he did overview
• The evolution of a misquotation
• Portraits of Charles Darwin: a catalogue overview
• 1.1 Ellen Sharples pastel
• 1.2 George Richmond, marriage portrait
• 1.3 Thomas Herbert Maguire, lithograph
• 1.4 Samuel Laurence drawing 1
• 1.5 Samuel Laurence drawing 2
• 1.6 Ouless oil portrait
• 1.7 Ouless replica
• 1.8 anonymous drawing, after Ouless
• 1.9 Rajon, etching after Ouless
• 1.10 Rajon etching, variant state
• 1.11 Laura Russell, oil
• 1.12 Marian Huxley, drawing
• 1.13 Louisa Nash, drawing
• 1.14 William Richmond, oil
• 1.15 Albert Goodwin, watercolour
• 1.16 Alphonse Legros, drypoint
• 1.17 Alphonse Legros drawing
• 1.18 John Collier, oil in Linnean
• 1.19 John Collier, oil in NPG
• 1.20 Leopold Flameng etching, after Collier
• 1.21 window at Christ's College Cambridge
• 2.1 Thomas Woolner bust
• 2.2 Thomas Woolner metal plaque
• 2.3 Wedgwood medallions
• 2.4 Wedgwood plaque
• 2.5 Wedgwood medallions, 2nd type
• 2.6 Adolf von Hildebrand bust
• 2.7 Joseph Moore, Midland Union medal
• 2.8 Alphonse Legros medallion
• 2.9 Legros medallion, plaster model
• 2.10 Moritz Klinkicht, print from Legros
• 2.11 Christian Lehr, plaster bust
• 2.12 Allan Wyon, Royal Society medal
• 2.13 Edgar Boehm, statue in the NHM
• 2.14 Boehm, Westminster Abbey roundel
• 2.15 Boehm terracotta bust (NPG)
• 2.16 Horace Montford statue, Shrewsbury
• 2.17 Montford, statuette
• 2.18 Montford, Carnegie bust
• 2.19 Montford, bust at the Royal Society
• 2.20 Montford, terracotta bust, NPG
• 2.21 Montford, relief at Christ's College
• 2.22 L.-J. Chavalliaud statue in Liverpool
• 2.23 Hope Pinker statue, Oxford Museum
• 2.24 Herbert Hampton statue, Lancaster
• 2.25 Henry Pegram statue, Birmingham
• 2.26 Linnean Society medal
• 2.27 William Couper bust, New York
• 2.28 Couper bust in Cambridge
• 3.1 Antoine Claudet, daguerreotype
• 3.2 Maull and Polyblank photo 1
• 3.3 Maull and Polyblank photo 2
• 3.4 William Darwin, photo 1
• 3.5 William Darwin, photo 2
• 3.6 William Darwin, photo 3
• 3.7 Leonard Darwin, photo on verandah
• 3.8 Leonard Darwin, interior photo
• 3.9 Leonard Darwin, photo on horseback
• 3.10 Ernest Edwards, 'Men of Eminence'
• 3.11 Edwards, in Illustrated London News
• 3.12 Edwards, second group of photos
• 3.13 Edwards 'Representative Men'
• 3.14 Julia Margaret Cameron, photos
• 3.15 George Charles Wallich, photo
• 3.16 Oscar Rejlander, photos
• 3.17 Lock and Whitfield, 'Men of Mark'
• 3.18 Elliott and Fry photos, c.1869-1871
• 3.19 Elliott and Fry photos c.1880-1
• 3.20 Elliott and Fry, c.1880-1, verandah
• 3.21 Herbert Rose Barraud, photos
• 4.1 Albert Way, comic drawings
• 4.2 Augustus Earle, caricature drawing
• 4.3 Alfred Crowquill, caricature
• 4.4 Thomas Huxley, caricature sketch
• 4.5 William Beard, comic painting
• 4.6 Thomas Nast, cartoon
• 4.7 'Vanity Fair', caricature
• 4.8 'Vanity Fair', preliminary study
• 4.9 'Graphic', cartoon
• 4.10 'Hornet' caricature of Darwin
• 4.11 'Fun' cartoon, 'A little lecture'
• 4.12 'Fun', Wedding procession
• 4.13 'Fun' cartoon by Griset, 'Emotional'
• 4.14 'Fun' cartoon, 'That troubles'
• 4.15 George Cruikshank, comic drawing
• 4.16 Joseph Simms, physiognomy
• 4.17 'Figaro', unidentifiable 1871
• 4.18 'Figaro' chromolithograph 1
• 4.19 George Montbard, caricature
• 4.20 Frederick Waddy, caricature
• 4.21 Gegeef, 'Our National Church', 1
• 4.22 Gegeef et al., 'Our National Church', 2
• 4.23 Gegeef, 'Battle Field of Science'
• 4.24 'Daily Graphic', Nast satire
• 4.25 'Punch' 1877 re. Cambridge doctorate
• 4.26 Christmas card caricature, monkeys
• 4.27 'Four founders of Darwinismus'
• 4.28 'English celebrities' montage
• 4.29 Richard Grant White, 'Fall of man'
• 4.30 'La Petite Lune', Gill cartoon
• 4.31 'La Lune Rousse', Gill cartoon
• 4.32 Anis liqueur label
• 4.33 'Harper's Weekly', Bellew caricature
• 4.34 'Punch', Sambourne cartoon 1
• 4.35 Frederick Sem, caricature
• 4.36 Sem, Chistmas card
• 4.37 'Mosquito' satire
• 4.38 Franz Goedecker, caricature
• 4.39 'Moonshine' magazine cartoon
• 4.40 'Phrenological Magazine'
• 4.41 'Punch', Sambourne cartoon 2
• 4.42 'Punch' Sambourne cartoon 3
• 4.43 'Illustrated London News' article
• 4.44 'Puck' cartoon 1
• 4.45 'Puck' cartoon 2
• 4.46 'Puck' cartoon 3
• 4.47 'Puck' cartoon 4
• 4.48 'Puck', cartoon 5
• 4.49 Alfred Bryan, caricature
• 4.50 Cigar box lid design
• 4.51 Frederick Holder 'Life and Work'
• 4.52 'Wasp' caricature
• 4.53 Claud Warren, 'Outlines of Hands'
• 4.54 jubilees of Queen Victoria
• 4.55 Harry Furniss caricature
• 4.56 'Larks' cartoon
• 4.57 silhouette cartoon
• 4.58 'Simian, savage' . . . drawings
• 4.59 'Simplicissimus' cartoon
• Darwin and the experimental life overview
• What is an experiment?
• From morphology to movement: observation and experiment
• Fool's experiments
• Experimenting with emotions
• Animals, ethics, and the progress of science
• Fake Darwin: myths and misconceptions
• Darwin's bad days
• Darwin’s first love
• The letters overview
• Darwin's life in letters overview
• 1821-1836: Childhood to the Beagle voyage
• 1837-43: The London years to 'natural selection'
• 1844-1846: Building a scientific network
• 1847-1850: Microscopes and barnacles
• 1851-1855: Death of a daughter
• 1856-1857: The 'Big Book'
• 1858-1859: Origin
• 1860: Answering critics
• 1861: Gaining allies
• 1862: A multiplicity of experiments
• 1863: Quarrels at home, honours abroad
• 1864: Failing health
• 1865: Delays and disappointments
• 1866: Survival of the fittest
• 1867: A civilised dispute
• 1868: Studying sex
• 1869: Forward on all fronts
• 1870: Human evolution
• 1871: An emptying nest
• 1872: Job done?
• 1873: Animal or vegetable?
• 1874: A turbulent year
• 1875: Pulling strings
• 1876: In the midst of life
• 1877: Flowers and honours
• 1878: Movement and sleep
• 1879: Tracing roots
• 1880: Sensitivity and worms
• 1881: Old friends and new admirers
• 1882: Nothing too great or too small
• Darwin's works in letters overview
• Journal of researches
• Living and fossil cirripedia
• Before Origin: the ‘big book’ overview
• Dates of composition of Darwin's manuscript on species
• Rewriting Origin - the later editions overview
• How old is the earth?
• The whale-bear
• Origin: the lost changes for the second German edition
• Climbing plants
• Insectivorous plants
• Forms of flowers
• Cross and self fertilisation
• Life of Erasmus Darwin
• Movement in Plants
• About the letters
• Lifecycle of a letter film overview
• Editing a Letter
• Working in the Darwin archive
• Capturing Darwin’s voice: audio of selected letters
• Correspondence with women
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• Full notes on editorial policy
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Darwin's letters: a timeline

• Darwin's letters: World Map
• Have you read the one about...
• Charles Darwin: A Life in Letters
• Darwin in Conversation exhibition
• Diagrams and drawings in letters
• Favourite Letters overview
• Be envious of ripe oranges: To W. D. Fox, May 1832
• That monstrous stain: To J. M. Herbert, 2 June 1833
• My most solemn request: To Emma Darwin, 5 July 1844
• Our poor dear dear child: To Emma Darwin, [23 April 1851]
• I beg a million pardons: To John Lubbock, [3 September 1862]
• Prize possessions: To Henry Denny, 17 January [1865]
• How to manage it: To J. D. Hooker, [17 June 1865]
• A fly on the flower: From Hermann Müller, 23 October 1867
• Reading my roommate’s illustrious ancestor: To T. H. Huxley, 10 June 1868
• A beginning, & that is something: To J. D. Hooker, [22 January 1869]
• Perfect copper-plate hand: From Adolf Reuter, 30 May 1869
• Darwin’s favourite photographer: From O. G. Rejlander, 30 April 1871
• Your letter eternalized before us: From N. D. Doedes, 27 March 1873
• Lost in translation: From Auguste Forel, 12 November 1874
• I never trusted Drosera: From E. F. Lubbock, [after 2 July] 1875
• From Argus pheasant to Mivart: To A. R. Wallace, 17 June 1876
• Wearing his knowledge lightly: From Fritz Müller, 5 April 1878
• Terms of engagement: To Julius Wiesner, 25 October 1881
• Intellectual capacities: From Caroline Kennard, 26 December 1881
• Darwin plays overview
• 'Emma' audio play
• 'Frank' audio play
• 'Like confessing a murder' audio play
• 'Re: Design' dramatisation overview
• Dramatisation script
• Browse all Darwin letters in date order
• List of correspondents
• Commentary overview
• Evolution overview

Natural selection

• Sexual selection
• Inheritance
• Correlation of growth: deaf blue-eyed cats, pigs, and poison
• Natural Selection: the trouble with terminology Part I
• Survival of the fittest: the trouble with terminology Part II
• Darwin’s species notebooks: ‘I think . . .’
• Geology overview
• Darwin and geology
• Darwin’s introduction to geology
• The geology of the Beagle voyage
• Darwin and coral reefs
• Darwin’s earthquakes
• Darwin and the Geological Society
• Darwin and Glen Roy
• Bibliography of Darwin’s geological publications
• Life sciences overview
• Darwin and Down overview
• Darwin’s hothouse and lists of hothouse plants
• Species and varieties
• The evolution of honeycomb
• A tale of two bees
• Beauty and the seed overview
• Mauro Galetti: profile of an ecologist
• Casting about: Darwin on worms
• Was Darwin an ecologist?
• Dipsacus and Drosera
• Darwin and barnacles overview
• Darwin’s study of the Cirripedia
• Darwin and vivisection overview
• Vivisection: draft petition
• Vivisection: BAAS committee report
• Vivisection: first sketch of the bill
• Vivisection: Darwin's testimony
• 'An Appeal' against animal cruelty
• Biodiversity and its histories
• Human nature overview
• Darwin on human evolution
• The expression of emotions overview
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• The origin of language overview
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• Language: Interview with Gregory Radick
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• Darwiniana – Preface
• Essay: Design versus necessity
• Essay: Natural selection & natural theology
• Essay: Evolution and theology
• Essay: What is Darwinism?
• Essay: Evolutionary teleology
• Science and religion Interviews overview
• Interview with Emily Ballou
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• Cordillera Beagle expedition
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Hooker-j-d-02-02357.jpg.

The scientific results of the  Beagle  voyage still dominated Darwin's working life, but throughout these years he broadened his continuing investigations into the nature and origin of species and varieties. In contrast to the received image of Darwin as a recluse in Down, the letters show him to be an established and confident naturalist at the heart of British scientific society, travelling often to London and elsewhere to attend meetings and confer with colleagues, and involved in the social and political activities of the community of savants as well as in its philosophical and scientific pursuits. At home, time was filled with copious natural history work, writing, and gathering information from an ever-expanding network of correspondents. Down House was altered and extended to accommodate Darwin’s growing family and the many relatives and friends who came to stay; and, with his father’s advice, Darwin began a series of judicious financial investments to ensure a comfortable future for all those under his care.

The geological publications

In these years, Darwin published two books on geology,  Volcanic islands  (1844) and  Geological observations on South America  (1846), which completed his trilogy on the geological results of the  Beagle  voyage, and extensively revised his  Journal of researches  for a second edition in 1845, having already provided corrections in 1844 for a German translation of the first edition. He continued as an officer of the Geological Society of London, acting as one of four vice-presidents in 1844 and remaining on the council from 1845 onwards; he was a conscientious member of the Royal Geographical Society and the Royal Society; he regularly attended meetings and refereed papers for all these organisations. Between 1844 and 1846 Darwin himself wrote ten papers, six of which related to the  Beagle  collections. Among these were some studies of invertebrates that at first had been intended for publication in  The zoology of the voyage of H.M.S. Beagle  (1838–43) but were deferred when the Government grant was exhausted ( Correspondence  vol. 2, letter to A. Y. Spearman, 9 October 1843, n. 1).

Darwin's inner circle: first discussions of species change

In addition, Darwin threw himself into analysing the results emerging from the examination of  Beagle  plant specimens by the young botanist and traveller, Joseph Dalton Hooker. More than 1200 letters between the two men survive, fully documenting a life-long friendship.

species are not (it is like confessing a murder) immutable

Darwin’s earlier scientific friendships were not neglected either, as the correspondence with Charles Lyell, George Robert Waterhouse, John Stevens Henslow, Leonard Horner, Leonard Jenyns, Edward Forbes, and Richard Owen shows. These friends, with the addition of Hooker, were important to Darwin for—among other things—they were the first people he turned to when he wished to discuss the problems and various scientific issues that arose out of his work on species. Darwin discussed his ideas on species mutability with Hooker, Horner, Jenyns, Lyell, Owen, and Charles James Fox Bunbury; he may well have broached the subject with others. Only two months after their first exchange, early in 1844, Darwin told Hooker that he was engaged in a ‘very presumptuous work’ which had led to the conviction that ‘species are not (it is like confessing a murder) immutable’ ( letter to J. D. Hooker, [11 January 1844] ). Nine months later, in his letter of 12 October [1844], he explained to Jenyns: 'I have continued steadily reading & collecting facts on variation of domestic animals & plants & on the question of what are species; I have a grand body of facts & I think I can draw some sound conclusions. The general conclusion at which I have slowly been driven from a directly opposite conviction is that species are mutable & that allied species are co-descendants of common stocks. I know how much I open myself, to reproach, for such a conclusion, but I have at least honestly & deliberately come to it.'

It is clear from the correspondence that his close friends were not outraged by Darwin’s heterodox opinions and later in the year both Jenyns and Hooker were invited to read a manuscript essay on his species theory (DAR 113;  Foundations , pp. 57–255), an expanded version, completed on 5 July 1844, of a pencil sketch he had drawn up some two years earlier. But although eager for the views of informed colleagues, Darwin was naturally protective of his untried theory and seems to have shied away from the risk of pushing it too early into the open. In the event, it was not until the beginning of 1847 that Hooker was given a fair copy of the essay of 1844 to read (see  Correspondence  vol. 4, letter to J. D. Hooker, 8 [February 1847]). Darwin can be seen as a cautious strategist, sometimes confident, but often uneasy about his work, and always attempting to gauge the kind of response that his theory of transmutation would generate. In particular, he anxiously watched the controversy seething around an evolutionary book,  Vestiges of the natural history of creation , published anonymously in 1844. His old friend Adam Sedgwick attacked the work vehemently in the  Edinburgh Review  (1845), while other colleagues like Edward Forbes ridiculed the theories employed there, caring only to join in the popular guessing-game about the identity of the author. One candidate, known to be working on species and varieties, was Darwin himself: as he told his cousin William Darwin Fox in a letter of [24 April 1845] , he felt he ought to be both ‘flattered & unflattered’ to hear that other naturalists attributed the book to him. But, as his letters to Hooker show, Darwin carefully considered and then rejected almost all of the contents of  Vestiges , and he feared that the reaction to his own work would be prejudiced by the arguments aroused by its skilful but scientifically unsound reasoning.

Perhaps the most interesting letter relating to Darwin’s species theory, which also bears on his concern for the future, is that addressed to his wife Emma, dated 5 July 1844 , just after Darwin had completed the final draft of his essay on the subject. He asked her to ensure that the essay would be published in the event of his death and stipulated a sum of money to be bequeathed, together with his extensive library and portfolios of notes on species, to an editor who would undertake to see the work through the press. Darwin also listed possible editors: at first he proposed any one of Lyell, Henslow, Edward Forbes, William Lonsdale, Hugh Edwin Strickland, or Owen—the last with the caveat that he would probably not wish to take on the work. But the list was subsequently altered after Darwin’s second, and possibly third, thoughts on the choice of the right person. The names of Lonsdale, Forbes, and Owen were deleted, Henslow’s was queried, and J. D. Hooker’s was added. Much later, by the autumn of 1854 when Darwin began sorting out his notes in preparation for writing up his ‘big book’ on species ( Natural selection ), he had decided that Hooker was by far the best man for the task and added a note on the cover to that effect.

The full consideration that Darwin gave to the future editing and publication of his essay, and the way in which he wrote to colleagues and friends about his work, show clearly his intention to publish his theory. His instructions to Emma may, perhaps, as some scholars have thought, indicate a reluctance to take the responsibility for publishing upon himself, but, more plausibly, they portray a man faced with the task of establishing a theory and its consequences, and fearful lest both the energy and time necessary to achieve this end should be denied him. After prolonged illnesses in 1841 and 1842, years poorly represented in the  Correspondence  because he was for much of the time too ill even to write letters, Darwin felt that his life was only too likely to be cut short. Moreover, even when at his best, Darwin could never work as intensively as he felt he ought to, or needed to, for fear of inducing another breakdown in his health.

Volcanoes, rocks, and fossils

Darwin’s published work during this period secured his position as one of Britain’s foremost naturalists. His study of the volcanic islands visited during the  Beagle  voyage was based on a wide range of rock and mineral specimens, including his own, and considerable research into contemporary theories of volcanic activity, mountain formation, and the elevation of extensive tracts of land relative to the sea. Darwin put forward a new explanation of the origin of so-called ‘craters of elevation’, which formed the basis of discussions with Charles Lyell and Leonard Horner in letters in this volume. His observations on the lamination of volcanic rocks prompted an exchange with James David Forbes on the analogous structure of glacier-ice. In South America he proposed that the tension generated in molten rock before final consolidation, which he believed gave rise to this lamination, could also explain and link the widespread phenomena of cleavage and foliation, observable in some metamorphic rocks. His description and explanation of cleavage and foliation in the clay-slates and schists of South America benefitted from the mathematical expertise of William Hopkins and aroused the interest of Daniel Sharpe, whose subsequent work led to the general acceptance of Darwin’s views.  South America  drew together all the geological and palaeontological results of Darwin’s travels through that area and, like  Volcanic islands , demonstrated how the structure of the land could best be explained by elevation. Darwin presented a wholeheartedly Lyellian picture of the geology of this vast area, reflecting the influence of Lyell’s  Principles of geology  (1830–3) and a commitment to Lyell’s idea of gradual geological change taking place overimmensely long periods of time; a commitment that transcended Darwin’s purely geological thought and influenced his speculations in all fields of natural history. But despite this clear and acknowledged debt, Darwin’s independence of mind was never in doubt and is well evidenced by the skilled and determined defence of his theories he invariably made against rivals of whatever standing. Through the pages of South America Darwin pursued an argument against the French palaeontologist Alcide d’Orbigny, insisting that the vast pampas formation could not have been laid down at a single moment through the action of a great  débâcle , as Orbigny proposed. Darwin not only used his personal notes and records but, by letter, marshalled the resources of experts such as palaeontologists Edward Forbes and George Brettingham Sowerby, and the German naturalist Christian Gottfried Ehrenberg, to support his own opinion that the pampas formations had been deposited successively under mostly brackish or estuarine conditions.

Journal of researches : Darwin's story of the Beagle voyage

In addition to writing up his geology, Darwin undertook the revision of his  Journal of researches  for a second edition in 1845. At Lyell’s recommendation, arrangements were made for the rights of the work to be transferred from Henry Colburn, the original publisher, to John Murray, and throughout 1845 Darwin worked hard to provide manuscript copy to be published in three parts during the year. Though the text was reduced in volume, Darwin went to considerable trouble to add the latest descriptions of the  Beagle  collections, to alter and expand some of his previous suggestions about the causes of extinction, and to supplement the original account of the three Fuegians carried on board the Beagle  back to Tierra del Fuego. By 1845, Darwin was in full command of a sophisticated theory of species transmutation and there is much interplay between the information supplied in letters to Darwin, the contents of the new edition of the  Journal of researches , and his species work.

Joseph Hooker and the Beagle plant collections

The botany of the  Beagle  voyage was a topic still relatively unexplored by Darwin, even though he had collected plants extensively. Henslow, who had undertaken to describe the collection, was overwhelmed by ever-increasing parish and local concerns in Cambridge and Hitcham and apparently relieved to handover Darwin’s plants to Hooker, who had just returned from accompanying James Clark Ross’s Antarctic surveying expedition and who hoped to publish a detailed account of the flora of the Southern Hemisphere. Darwin was quick to spot in Hooker a man he judged could become the ‘first authority in Europe on that grand subject, that almost key-stone of the laws of creation, Geographical Distribution’ ( letter to J. D. Hooker, [10 February 1845] ) and quick to make use of the young man’s already large fund of botanical knowledge and his extensive connections with other British and European botanists. Darwin’s questions challenged Hooker to apply his particular knowledge to more general problems, always relating, directly or indirectly, to the question of the origin and nature of species. There is little in contemporary botany and botanical systematics that is not touched upon in their correspondence. Hooker’s observations on classification provided Darwin with a professional judgment on the plant world to place beside that of Waterhouse with respect to the animal kingdom. Hooker was also ready to discuss contemporary ideas on transformism in Britain and France and was a constant source of useful references and books. Some indication of the intellectual value that both men placed on their correspondence is found in the fact that they independently kept practically all the letters received from each other. The letters also document aspects of Hooker’s life: his search for a paid position, involving an unsuccessful campaign for the chair of botany at Edinburgh University and a period of half-hearted work with the Geological Survey of Great Britain. Like Darwin, he obtained Government aid to publish the results of his own four-year voyage and struggled to keep up to the time-table. And like Darwin, he was deeply committed to philosophical natural history.

Mr Arthrobalanus - Darwin's work on barnacles

It was also Hooker who helped Darwin in the first stages of his barnacle work, a study commenced towards the end of 1846. Hooker, ready with advice on microscopes and microscopic technique, assisted Darwin with drawings of his first dissection. The barnacle—‘M r  Arthrobalanus’ in Hooker’s and Darwin’s letters—was a minute, aberrant species collected by Darwin in the Chonos Archipelago, off southern Chile, which lived inside the shell of the mollusc,  Concholepas . Unusual sexual dimorphism, with the male virtually a parasite on the female, a complex life-cycle, and difficult taxonomic considerations, combined to intrigue Darwin, and he launched himself into a survey of related species to elucidate some of the problems presented by the animal. The cirripedes were to remain central to Darwin’s working life for the next eight years.

In this section:

• 1837-43: The London years to 'natural selection'
• 1856-1857: The 'Big Book'

Related people

Forbes, edward, forbes, j. d., henslow, j. s., hooker, j. d., horner, leonard, jenyns, leonardblomefield, leonard, lyell, charles, murray, john (b), owen, richard, waterhouse, g. r., about this article.

Based on the introduction to The correspondence of Charles Darwin , volume 3: 1844-1846

Edited by Frederick Burkhardt, Sydney Smith. (Cambridge University Press 1987)

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Notes to Darwinism

1. So described, Darwinism denotes not so much a theory as a ‘research tradition’ (Laudan, 1976) or a ‘scientific practice’ (Kitcher 1993); that is, at any given time in its history Darwinism consists of a family of theories related by a shared ontology, methodology and goals; and through time, it consists of a lineage of such theories. The word ‘theory’ above is being used in the very broad sense in which, from early on in his notebooks, Darwin kept referring to ‘my theory’.

2. The word ‘scientist’ was coined by William Whewell during Darwin’s lifetime, but very few of Darwin’s contemporaries owned up to it.

3. An entertaining account of the culture of the key members of this group can be found in Uglow 2002.

4. I.e., A Preliminary Discourse on the Study of Natural Philosophy , initially the introductory volume to Dionysius Lardner’s Cabinet Cyclopedia . It was published during Darwin’s final semester at Cambridge.

5. It is worth noting here that in chapter VI. of his Preliminary Discourse , a chapter devoted to induction and the discovery of causes, Herschel’s first two extended examples are taken from the first volume of Lyell’s Principles of Geology , which was published in 1830, the same year as the Preliminary Discourse . It is also worth noting that Lyell’s work is first and foremost a defense of a new method in geology, a new set of principles for the fledgling science. Thus Lyell’s work is held up as exemplary in a treatise on philosophy of science (as we would call it), and its influence on Darwin was as much on the philosophical as on the scientific level (as we would say).

6. Two puzzles are worth noting about Darwin’s reaction to Herschel’s letter. First, though Darwin’s unpublished diary of the Beagle voyage does comment on the personal importance to him of meeting and talking with Herschel at the Cape, the published Journal of Researches , based on the diary, completely omits mention of his days (June 8-15) in Cape Town. Though I can see no relevance to the fact, the published version of the diary appeared in 1839, two years after Babbage’s Bridgewater Treatise , and Darwin’s ‘Hurrah’. Second, the reference at the beginning of the Origin to ‘one of our greatest philosophers’ would be opaque to all but a group of insiders, those familiar with the excerpts of Herschel’s letter to Lyell that had been published in Babbage’s Bridgewater Treatise . Given that the passage had been published, why not name the philosopher who called species origins ‘that mystery of mysteries’? It would be interesting to know at what point Darwin decided to use that phrase to introduce his ‘big species book’.

In sum, Darwin appears reluctant to name Herschel in print in connection with ‘the species question’. Whether this is evidence that they discussed the content of that letter when they met in June of 1836 I do not know. However, there is strong evidence that they did. One of the early entries (p. 32; p. 38 of the Herbert edition) in ‘The Red Notebook’, which Darwin began the day the Beagle left Cape Town, refers to “Sir J. Herschels [sic] idea of escape of Heat prevented by sedimentary rocks, and hence Volcanic action…”. As Herbert’s note to the passage says: “Months before [meeting Darwin] Herschel had described his new notion of the cause of volcanic action in a letter to Charles Lyell dated 20 February 1836. Probably he repeated the same explanation to Darwin in June.” Another possibility is that he showed him a copy of the entire letter; since both were professional geologists who had been reading Lyell carefully, it could have served as the basis for their discussions. (Cf. Herbert 1980, pp. 38, 86.)

7. A more recent phenomenon than is usually appreciated. In Dobzhansky 1937, after describing Ronald Fisher’s ‘extreme selectionism’, he quotes, as a ‘good contrast’, the following remark of selection skeptics G. C. Robson and O. W. Richards 1936: “We do not believe that natural selection can be disregarded as a possible factor in evolution. Nevertheless, there is so little positive evidence in its favor…that we have no right to assign to it the main causative role in evolution.”

8. On which see Beatty 1990 and Lennox 1993.

9. Darwin was examined as an undergraduate on John Locke’s Essay on Human Understanding . As far as I know he never discusses whether this had any impact on his willingness to articulate the views expressed in this quote.

10. There is a very important, and under explored, tension here at least in Lyell and Herschel, both of whom seem to be in many other respects orthodox followers of Scottish empiricism.

11. Dov Ospovat (1980, 51-53), of course, argues persuasively that Darwin only gradually gave up a roughly Lamarckian view of the origins of variation.

12. Cf. Shanahan 1991, 249-269. Compare Eble 1999, 76-78, who notes a number of the same uses of ‘random’ and ‘chance’ as those discussed here, but sees their relationships quite differently. The ideas in Eble 1999 are nicely elaborated in Millstein (2000, 608-613).

13. Cf. Barrett et al. 1987, 279; and notes 1-4 to notebook page C133.

14. It should be stressed here that this discussion is restricted to explanations of adaptation within the Darwinian framework, i.e. by reference to natural selection. Whether other sorts of explanation in other aspects of biology are teleological or not, and whether, if they are, the explanation would take the same form, is left entirely open. For a good survey of this question, and a defense of a distinct understanding of biological function in the domain of comparative morphology, see Amundson and Lauder, 1998.

15. Mayr (1987) acknowledges this as an extension of his ideas.

Copyright © 2019 by James Lennox < jglennox+ @ pitt . edu >

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Library of Congress Catalog Data: ISSN 1095-5054

The Early Evolutionary Imagination pp 69–100 Cite as

Darwinism in Literature

• Emelie Jonsson 4  
• First Online: 29 September 2021

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Part of the book series: Cognitive Studies in Literature and Performance ((CSLP))

This book’s argument about the clash between Darwinism and human psychology assigns a special place to the arts. Literary authors not only engaged with the theoretical ideas of Darwin, Huxley, Spencer, and Haeckel but also mirrored and expanded the evolutionary myth-making of those thinkers. Literary authors writing in vastly different genres extrapolated the evolutionary myths into fictional worlds. Historically, literary scholars have not attended to the psychological aspect of that influence. This chapter outlines the history of previous literary scholarship on Darwinism and explains how evolutionary literary theory advances on previous criticism. Traditional humanists have catalogued Darwinian influences on fiction without aiming for explanation, and poststructuralist literary scholars have explained the influences mainly through ideology. Evolutionary literary theory returns the human mind to the equation.

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Darwinism and other Essays

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TO readers of NATURE there is nothing new and little very striking in these essays, and it is only justice to Mr. Fiske to remark that the title of the first which gives its name to the volume, claims nothing of the sort. The most interesting consideration in the four papers upon the subject is the marvellous way in which every science and line of thought, both in natural history and in human history, have entirely changed their aspect and started in a new direction since the publication of “The Origin of Species.” One fourth of the book is a review of Mr. Buckle's “History of Civilisation,” written and published by Mr. Fiske when he was nineteen years old: the object of reprinting which now it is hard to see. Yet it is interesting read in immediate juxtaposition with the chapters on Darwinism, for nothing could show so distinctly how high and dry the stream of knowledge has left the whole theory of a work most celebrated only twenty years ago. Buckle's book, the theorem of which was that there is a science of history, the laws of which are as uniform and invariable as those of mechanics or astronomy, if only we could discover and measure all the various forces at work, was an energetic effort in the right direction, and was gladly welcomed by many scientific men of the day. But the key to the puzzle had not then been found. Had Buckle lived in these days, when the works of Darwin, Herbert Spencer, and Sir H. Maine are familiar, he would, no doubt, have built up a far more coherent theory than he did.

Darwinism and other Essays.

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