The Red Notebook

A few years ago, I added the mysterious phrase Nothing For any Purpose to the bottom of the Red Notebook blog’s sidebar. I’ve never bothered to explain it before, as it was intended to be my own private little joke—and to act as a reminder that it doesn’t matter if nothing useful comes out of this blog.

The phrase is, as if you couldn’t have guessed, a Darwin quote. It is to be found in—or, more correctly, on the back of—the original Red Notebook. I will let Darwin scholar Sandra Herbert explain:

The Red Notebook is one of a series of notebooks kept by Charles Darwin during and immediately following his service as naturalist to the 1831-1836 surveying voyage of H.M.S. Beagle. It forms part of the collection of Darwin manuscripts at Down House in Kent, Darwin’s former home, and, since 1929, a museum in his honour. The notebook came to Down House by arrangement with the Darwin family following Sir George Buckston Browne’s purchase of the house for use as a museum. It is a well-made but otherwise ordinary pocket notebook, measuring 67/16″ × 315/16″ (164 mm × 99 mm), leather bound with a metal latch, which still works, and, as the name suggests, red in colour, although the original brilliance has faded. The leather cover is embossed with a border design on both sides. The front cover of the notebook bears the initials ‘R.N.’, written on a rectangular piece of white paper. On the back cover is pasted a similar piece of paper with the identical initials and the additional phrase ‘Range of Sharks’, referring to an entry within the notebook. There is also an ominous epigram written in larger letters across the back of the notebook: ‘Nothing For any Purpose’. All of these inscriptions are written in brown ink in Darwin’s handwriting.

Darwin clearly thought that his own Red Notebook did not contain anything useful. What better tribute could I pay the great man than ensuring that my own red notebook is equally unproductive?

I just spent a couple of highly enjoyable hours (I know, I really should get out more) surfing Darwin Online. It really is a stonking resource. Someone should give John van Wyhe and his colleagues a medal.

For some bizarre reason, it had never occurred to me before to see if Darwin’s original Red Notebook—the one from which this weblog takes its name—is available on the site. It is, of course.

Editor Sandra Herbert’s excellent introduction puts Darwin’s Red Notebook in context, explaining how he began it towards the end of the Beagle voyage—before he was a believer in evolution—where he used it as a field notebook. On returning to England, however, he turned the book through 90 degrees (for ease of writing), and began making his first notes on transmutation.

Herbert makes a convincing case for supporting the chronology recorded retrospectively in Darwin’s personal ‘Journal’, which states:

In July [1837] opened first note Book on “transmutation of Species”. — Had been greatly struck from about month of previous March on character of S. American fossils—& species on Galapagos Archipelago. — These facts origin (especially latter) of all my views.

The notebook referred to by Darwin was not his Red Notebook, but one of the two books which immediately followed it—his first notebook dedicated to transmutation. But Darwin’s first notes on transmutation begin on pages 129—130 of the Red Notebook (my emphasis added):

Should urge that extinct Llama [Macrauchenia patachonica, collected by Darwin during the Beagle voyage] owed its death not to change of circumstances; reversed argument. knowing it to be a desert. — Tempted to believe animals created for a definite time: — not extinguished by change of circumstances:

The same kind of relation that common ostrich bears to (Petisse. & diff kinds of Fourmillier): extinct Guanaco to recent: in former case position, in latter time. (or changes consequent on lapse) being the relation. — As in first cases distinct species inosculate, so must we believe ancient ones: [therefore] not gradual change or degeneration. from circumstances: if one species does change into another it must be per saltum — or species may perish. = This inosculation representation of species important, each its own limit & represented. — Chiloe creeper: Furnarius. Caracara Calandria; inosculation alone shows not gradation; —

Darwin had a long way to go. At the time he made these preliminary notes—in all likelihood, 170 years ago this month—he had only just begun to believe in evolution. He was yet to have his eureka moment and work out the mechanism for evolution (Natural Selection), believing that transmutation must occur per saltum—through leaps—an idea he was later to reject. Furthermore, he did not yet believe that species could become extinct through change of circumstances. But this Red Notebook entry does mark a key moment in Darwin’s life: his first tentative step on the road towards On the Origin of Species.