The Red Notebook

Reminiscing about his father, Charles Darwin’s son Francis wrote:

In the evening, that is, after he had read as much as his strength would allow, and before the reading aloud began, he would often lie on the sofa and listen to my mother playing the piano. He had not a good ear, yet in spite of this he had a true love of fine music. He used to lament that his enjoyment of music had become dulled with age, yet within my recollection his love of a good tune was strong. I never heard him hum more than one tune, the Welsh song “Ar hyd y nos,” which he went through correctly;

Ar hyd y nos—better known to us heathen English as All Through the Night—is a classic Welsh folk tune. Perhaps Darwin was familiar with it having been brought up near the Welsh border.

I think it’s delightful that we know which tune Darwin used to hum to himself. Especially since it is such a wonderful, moving tune:

Happy 201st birthday, Mr D.

Iechyd da!

Colin Purrington FCD of the Axis of Evo has requested examples of Darwin/evolution-related postal art for Darwin Day. So I put together this post card:

Colin, the card’s in the post.

So that was Darwin Year, was it? I was unsurprisingly correct this time last year when I said that we were going to be hearing an awful lot about Charles Darwin over the next twelve months, ranging from the enlightening to the utter bollocks. True to my word, I did my best to ignore the party-poopers. I hope they didn’t spoil your celebrations either.

The United Nations has declared 2010 to be the International Year of Biodiversity. Good for them: I endorse this decision wholeheartedly.

But the UN isn’t the only organisation which gets to classify years. To mark the centenary of the death of Florence Nightingale, some have chosen to promote 2010 as the International Year of the Nurse, while the South African Sports Minister has dubbed it the International Year of African Football. The Chinese, as is their wont, will be referring to most of 2010 as the Year of the Tiger.

So how will the Friends of Charles Darwin be referring to 2010, I hear you ask. Silly question, if I might say so…

The Friends of Charles Darwin hereby declare 2010 to be Darwin Year.

As all true Darwin groupies know, every year is Darwin Year.

Take a short trip as the lapwing flies 14 miles north-east of where I am writing these words, crossing Brontë Country, past Keighley, and over the legendary Ilkley Moor, then head back in time exactly 150 years to the day, and you might well chance upon Charles Darwin taking the waters at White Wells Bath House.

But, as we all know, 24th November, 1859 was no typical day in Darwin’s quack water treatment. It was the day on which his most famous book was published. On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life sold out on its first day, and has never been out of print since. It is a classic text. Arguably one of the most important books in the history of science. And, rather surprisingly, it is still remarkably accessible to the lay reader…

What do you mean, you’ve never read On the Origin of Species? Surely you jest! Really? You really haven’t read On the Origin of Species? Trust me, it’s not that hard. OK, so maybe it isn’t exactly a page-turner, but we’re talking about one of the great revolutionary books here—and it’s written in plain English, for ordinary mortals like you and me. You certainly can’t say that about Newton’s Principia. In fact, I’m struggling to think of another revolutionary scientific text you can say that about.

Yes, Origin is dated in one or two places—and plain wrong in one or two more—but Darwin’s great work has withstood the trials and tribulations of the last 150 years remarkably well. The gentle genius’s long argument still hold true. More so than ever, in fact, as we now have 150 years of extra evidence to back it up.

So if you consider yourself a Darwin groupie, or simply well-read, yet you still haven’t read the great man’s most important work, why not make today’s 150th anniversary of its publication the perfect excuse to start reading the damn thing?

You never know, you might just learn something.

Marina Warner (LRB 09-Apr-2009) states that Edward Heron-Allen ‘wrote the definitive work on barnacles’. Polymath that Heron-Allen undoubtedly was, as is usually the case in matters biological, the definitive work on barnacles is by Charles Darwin, namely his series of monographs on living and fossil cirripedia (1851-55).
–
Richard Carter, FCD
The Friends of Charles Darwin

See also: Royal Society podcast – The Singular Life of Edward Heron-Allen FRS (mp3)

There is none so blind as those who will not see, but those who are absolutely determined to see something will often do so, even when it’s not there. Psychologists call it confirmation bias, and it manifests itself in almost any situation in which one truly wants to believe something: canals on Mars; the blatant off-sidedness of the goal against your team; the utter adorability of your children; the latest ‘evidence’ in support of your favourite conspiracy theory. If you’re after evidence to bolster your existing beliefs, seek and ye shall almost certainly find!

Of course, the classic example of confirmation bias is the countless sightings of the Virgin Mary in pieces of toast, cappuccino foam, wood grain, and just about every other bizarre location you might care to mention. If such manifestations are indeed the Lord’s work, then He really does move in mysterious ways. In reality, these ‘sightings’ are nothing more than vague, coincidental likenesses blown out of all proportion by people who have a very particular way of looking at the world.

In fairness to those who think they see the Virgin Mary in the stains on their bathroom wallpaper, the human mind is very much programmed to recognise facial features, so it’s hardly surprising that we occasionally see faces when they’re not really there. The British comedian Dave Gorman has an excellent set of photographs of ‘faces’ he has spotted in inanimate objects. There is also a Flickr Grilled Cheese Virgin photo pool.

Even us hoary, old sceptics aren’t immune from recognising human faces where they are clearly not. In my own case, I have never spotted the Virgin Mary—well, OK, there was that one time in that pub in Wales—but, last month in Cambridge, I did clearly discern the face of none other than Charles Darwin in a cluster of brachiopods in the Sedgwick Museum:

The image of Darwin in some brachiopods recently

What do you mean you don’t see it? And you have the cheek to call yourself a Darwin groupie! The brachiopods do not lie!

It’s the dawn of a new era!

As a 100%, card-carrying, take-no-prisoners atheist, Richard Dawkins, like myself, must rue the fact that he will never get to meet his hero Charles Darwin in any sort of afterlife. Unlike me, however, Dawkins can console himself with the fact that he appears to have met the great man in a previous existence.

On Ash Wednesday, 20th February, 1828, five young men from Christ’s College, Cambridge signed their names in the Registrary’s book, thereby becoming undergraduates at the university. John van Wyhe‘s excellent little booklet Darwin in Cambridge includes an image of their signatures:

Darwin’s and Dawkins’s signatures

That’s right, 181 years ago, Charles Robert Darwin and Richard Dawkins stood shoulder-to-shoulder and confirmed in writing that they were fully paid-up members of the Church of England.

I think Prof. Dawkins has some explaining to do.

Darwin’s wen

I have a bit of a soft spot (no pun intended) for Charles Darwin’s wen: that fleshy little bump slightly to the right of his nose—or to the left of his nose as you look at it. You must have noticed it. You were just too polite to point it out, that’s all.

One reason I have a soft spot for Darwin’s wen is that I have a similar wen in almost exactly the same location. In my case, you really might not have noticed it, because it is considerably less pronounced than Darwin’s. If it’s pronounced wens you’re interested in, it’s far more likely that your eye will have been drawn to the far more substantial wen on the left side of my forehead—although you’ll no doubt have been too polite to ask for a closer look. But I digress.

Wens are benign, little tumours which you should keep an eye on, just in case they decide to stop being benign. They can be removed through a simple operation under local anaesthetic, but I’ve held on to mine as I’m rather attached to them (and vice versa).

Darwin’s wen should be a cause of minor celebration. It is the one noticeable blemish breaking the otherwise perfect bilateral symmetry of his physiognomy. To put it another way, it is the one facial feature which can give us cast-iron proof that an image of the great man has been tampered with. If Darwin’s wen appears to the right of his nose (or to the left as we’re looking at him), all is well and good with the world. If, however, the wen appears on the wrong side of Darwin’s nose (i.e. his left side, our right), we are looking at a mirror image of the great man—an image which has no doubt been turned around by some graphic designer to make it fit more aesthetically into some artty-farty context or other.

I have previously written about how you can use Darwin’s buttons to spot when you’re dealing with his mirror image. But the wen provides an important indicator when it is not possible to discern Darwin’s buttons.

Take, for example, this poster from the recent Darwin exhibition, hanging in pride of place on this Darwin groupie’s study wall:

Wen graphic designers attack! Darwin mirrored!

Shame on you, Natural History Museum! We all realise that the hand was Photoshopped in (and we’ll let you off the fridge magnet howler), but was it really necessary to turn Darwin’s face round the wrong way?

The University of Cambridge Zoological Museum has a rather wonderful box of beetle specimens collected by Charles Darwin when he was at the university. The young Darwin had an inordinate fondness for beetles.

Darwin’s beetle collection

Darwin’s son, Sir Frances Darwin, donated his father’s beetles to the university. The collection was originally in a cabinet. Unfortunately, in the 1870′s, one G. R. Crotch began sorting some or all of the collection into boxes, all but one of which was later lost/misplaced.

• More of my photos of Darwin’s beetle collection
• View as slideshow
• Michael Barton’s photo of me taking the beetle photos

Charles Darwin to John Stevens Henslow (18-May-1832):

St Jago [modern-day Porto Praya in the Cape Verde Islands] is singularly barren & produces few plants or insects.—so that my hammer was my usual companion, & in its company most delightful hours I spent.—

On the coast I collected many marine animals chiefly gasteropodous (I think some new).— I examined pretty accurately a Caryophyllea & if my eyes were not bewitched former descriptions have not the slightest resemblance to the animal.— I took several specimens of an Octopus, which possessed a most marvellous power of changing its colours; equalling any chamaelion, & evidently accommodating the changes to the colour of the ground which it passed over.—yellowish green, dark brown & red were the prevailing colours: this fact appears to be new, as far as I can find out.

Darwin was hopelessly wrong about the colour-changing ability of octopuses being a new observation. But never mind: the good news is that one of Darwin’s St Jago octopuses is still alive and kicking preserved for posterity in Cambridge, and I have photos to prove it:

Darwin’s octopus

The accompanying label

Dr John van Wyhe, FCD on his Darwin groupie bike yesterday

Heart-felt thanks to Dr John van Wyhe, FCD, who kindly showed Michael Barton, FCD and me around Charles Darwin’s old room at Christ’s College, Cambridge yesterday. Dr van Wyhe recently oversaw the refurbishment of the room, recreating how it would have looked in Darwin’s day. The result is rather special—down to the basket for Darwin’s dog!

And the really good news was that we were allowed to take photographs!

More on Darwin’s college rooms here. My photos from Darwin’s room below:

Those frankly wonderful people at the Darwin Correspondence Project have announced the publication of volume 17 of their stupendously researched series of books. The latest volume contains the full texts of more than 500 letters Darwin wrote and received during the year 1869. The project has also announced that volume 15 of the correspondence is now online.

Forget all the biographies, and Darwin’s own Autobiography; if you want to get to know the real Charles Darwin, you should be reading his correspondence.

I don’t have many ambitions in life, but one of them is to live long enough to read the complete set of Darwin’s correspondence. To be frank, it’s touch-and-go whether I’ll make it: they aren’t exactly knocking these books out once a fortnight. It has taken 23 years to publish the first 17 volumes, and there will be approximately 30 volumes in the complete series. The final volume is due to be published around 2025.

My suddenly (and alarmingly) incomplete set of volumes of Darwin’s Correspondence

I’ll be off to my local bookshop to order my copy of volume 17 this morning.

I was at an all-day conference today. At lunchtime, the caterers entered the conference room bearing food of a distinctly buffetty nature. But I wasn’t looking at the food: I was staring open-mouthed at one of the gentlemen bringing it in. For he was none other than Charles Robert Darwin, scientist, explorer, and originator of the single greatest idea anyone has ever had.

What on earth was Charles Darwin doing serving me lunch? It was unmistakeably he: the bushy beard, the bald head, the distinctly ape-like brow. I couldn’t believe what I was seeing.

After a while, I realised that it couldn’t possibly be Charles Darwin, because Charles Darwin has been dead for almost 127 years. But it was a truly uncanny likeness. I wanted to rush over to the very distinguished elderly gentleman and ask, “Do you know that you’re the spitting image of Charles Darwin?”, and show him my Charles Darwin key-fob to prove my point. I didn’t do that, of course, for I am British, and that is not how we Brits do things. Besides, I was supposed to be taking minutes.

Over lunch, I asked my boss if he had noticed Charles Darwin serving us lunch. He hadn’t. But he did see him a short while later when Charles Darwin came back to collect the empty plates. Nobody else had noticed. Only my boss and I realised that we were in the presence of greatness.

It was like something out of The Blues Brothers (my all-time favourite film, incidentally). The London Natural History Museum yesterday afternoon:

Cue the celestial music! Statue of Charles Darwin, bathed in heavenly light!

If I’m totally wrong, and there really is someone up there, He’s probably trying to tell us something…

Looks as if God endorses Darwin!

I just came across this pint-sized video biography of Charles Darwin. There’s a very short advertisement at the beginning.

… Courtesy of this BBC video. (Spot the howler.)

Oh, and it turns out Peter from the Beagle Project and I made the Yorkshire Post last week.

• Darwin in Ilkley
• Nice one, Yorkshire!

I just popped down to my local post office and bought an entire sheet of the new Darwin stamps.

A sheet of the new Darwin stamps.

I’m going to have them framed and hung on my study wall.

Before planting

After planting

I have just planted what shall henceforth be known as the Darwin Bicentennial Oak in my garden.

Darwin explained how the whole of life on earth can be represented by a magnificent tree. What better tribute to the great man could there be on the 200th anniversary of his birth, therefore, than to plant a magnificent (albeit rather short) English oak? (Apart from making a donation to build a replica of HMS Beagle, obviously.)

Who knows, in another 1,000 years, perhaps the Darwin Bicentennial Oak will have grown in stature to rival the majestic oaks of the great Wild Wood which once covered this fair island.

Or perhaps it will perish in the winter snows, or fall foul of woodpeckers, or contract a deadly disease.

Any of these results would be rather appropriate.

See also: A straggly bush

Charles Darwin set great store in modesty. In September, 1845, he wrote to his great friend Joseph Dalton Hooker:

I have never perceived but one fault in you, & that you have grievously, viz modesty;—you form an exception to Sydney Smith’s aphorism, that merit & modesty have no other connexion, except in their first letter

A classic example of the pot praising the kettle for its blackness, if ever I heard one. Throughout his correspondence, Darwin is quick to chastise himself for being immodest when deriving pleasure from favourable comments about his work. He seems positively embarrassed even to refer to them. It’s a particularly British and particularly Victorian trait—and, in Darwin’s case, it was totally genuine. He frequently downplayed the revolutionary nature of his Theory of Evolution by means of Natural Selection, and the amount of work that had gone into it. A couple of years before the publication of On the Origin of Species, he wrote to his American friend Asa Gray:

I thank you for your impression on my views. Every criticism from a good man is of value to me. What you hint at generally is very very true, that my work will be grievously hypothetical & large parts by no means worthy of being called inductive; my commonest error being probably induction from too few facts.

Grievously hypothetical? Too few facts? Darwin had spend the preceding 20 years amassing thousands of facts in support of his theory.

Darwin’s modesty was still going strong (with his detractors being given the benefit of the doubt) towards the end of his life when he wrote in his autobiography:

My views have often been grossly misrepresented, bitterly opposed and ridiculed, but this has been generally done, as I believe, in good faith. On the whole I do not doubt that my works have been over and over again greatly overpraised.

All of which makes the oft-quoted, wonderful first eight words of the closing sentence of ‘On the Origin of Species’ so remarkable:

There is grandeur in this view of life…

Finally Darwin allows himself a moment’s pride! His view of life has grandeur: a word meaning both magnificence and nobility. There is nothing shameful about evolution; it is something capable of inspiring awe. In more modern parlance, Darwin might have said:

My theory is awesome…

And he would be right. Darwin’s Theory of Evolution by Means of Natural Selection was—and remains to this day—totally awesome. Every creature on this planet, every animal, plant, fungus and bacterium, living or dead, is descended from a common, ancient ancestor. There is nothing special about mankind; we are just one fascinating species amongst the millions of other equally fascinating species that have evolved over billions of years on Planet Earth. We are not above Nature; we are part of Nature.

Happy 200th birthday, Mr Darwin. Thanks for all your hard work. And thanks for putting us in our rightful place.