MB Roberts wrote, in part:
"JOHN, Be very careful at taking Father and Son at face value. I think I am
right in saying that it is not strict autobiog/biog but more fictitious
than usual. Edmund is highly inccurate in his presentation of scientists
other than Father Philip. What he says about Richard Owen is patently
untrue. I reckon this work has done immense damage in imprinting the
conflict scenario for about a century and is the literature equivalent of
Ted Davies' favouritie book Andrew White's The warfare of Science with
Theology!!"
My impression of it, while reading it for the first time last weekend at
the Denver University Library, was that, at least in part, I found it very
strange. The events of 1857, so carefully described by Edmund Gosse,
happened when he was eight years old; he wrote about them nearly fifty
years later. While I might concede that his memory might be a lot better
than some folks, mine for instance, I just don't think at that
remote-in-time distance a person would be all that accurate in what he
remembered.
I also got the impresion that the son was at best a pale shadow of his
father. Even if he was a "Sir."
Roberts also writes: "There is a very simple reason why ICR types won't
like Omphalos. It takes the apparent appearance of history to its logical
conclusion in that he would accept the Cambrian Explosion in 555 my but
actually it only appeared
the other day. All oppoistion to "Unif " geology and evolution has gone as
has Flood geology etc. And one cannot get away from Charles Kingsley's
charge that Gosse makes God a liar."
I'm going to take issue with that set of observations. I'm writing a review
on the recent republishing of OMPHALOS by the Ox Bow Press. I know that
both arguments, "last Thursdayism" and "God is a liar" have been made
against Gosse's thesis, even by his friend (good friend?) Kingsley shortly
after the book appeared in 1857. My reading of OMPHALOS, however, and I
have read it several times over the past twenty years, is that Gosse
successfully defends against both those arguments, and that is what my
review will say. It appears to me that Kingsley (and others) never read the
book carefully enough to understand Gosse's arguments in this respect.
Whatever -- it is still a fascinating book after all these years.
best
Burgy
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