"It is unfair and incorrect to hang the albatross of=20
dialectical materialism of Oparin and Haldane on the=20
neck of Charles Darwin. "
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From: hpyockey@charm.net (Hubert P. Yockey)
Newsgroups: bionet.info-theory
Subject: Also Sprach Charles Darwin (Apologies to Nietzsche)
Date: Mon, 06 Nov 1995 20:38:14 +0500
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Subject: Also Sprach Charles Darwin (apologies to Nietzsche)
Tom Schneider, always a stickler for accuracy, questioned my quotations
from Origin of Species, in a recent post on mutual entropy and mutual
information. He found an edition of the Origin on
http://www.wonderland.org/Works/Charles-Darwin/origin/. I looked that up
and it proved to be an unknown edition, not the sixth and latest edition,
published January 1872. I am using the sixth edition published by Mentor
Books. There were 15 chapters in the sixth edition and only 14 in the
edition on the WEB.=20
The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection or the Preservation of
Favored Races in the Struggle for Life, first published on November 24
1859, is one of perhaps ten most influential books ever published. [ My
list is as follows: The Bible, The Odyssey of Homer, The Iliad of Homer,
Plato=B9s Socratic Dialogs, Works of Aristotle, Euclid=B9s Geometry,=
Newton=B9s
Principia, Darwin=B9s Origin of Species, Einstein=B9s Special and General
Theories of Relativity, Quantum Mechanics.] Although much of the biology
is out dated (and some of it is wrong), nevertheless there is much that is
worthwhile for the modern reader.
Here are some quotations I believe are still pertinent to the modern
biologist. From Chapter XV sixth edition:
On evolution: "Although I am fully convinced of the truth of the views
given in this volume under the form of an abstract, I by no means expect
to convince experienced naturalists whose minds are stocked with a
multitude of facts all viewed, during a long course of years, from a point
of view directly opposite to mine. It is so easy to hide our ignorance
under such expressions as the "plan of creation," "unity of design,=B2 &c.,
and to think that we give an explanation when we only re-state a fact. Any
one whose disposition leads him to attach more weight to unexplained
difficulties than to the explanation of a certain number of facts will
certainly reject the theory. A few naturalists, endowed with much
flexibility of mind, and who have already begun to doubt the immutability
of species, may be influenced by this volume; but I look with confidence
to the future,=8B=8Bto young and rising naturalists, who will be will be=
able
to view both sides of the question with impartiality. Whoever is lead to
believe that species are mutable will do good service by conscientiously
expressing his conviction; for thus only can the load of prejudice by
which this subject is overwhelmed be removed.
Although Father Gregor Mendel's Versuche ueber Pflantzen-Hybriden
(Researches on Plant Hybrids) had been published in 1866, Darwin never saw
it. He did not read German very well and he was a total disaster in
mathematics. Mendel reported his results both in German and in
mathematics. Even if Darwin had had the paper in his hand, he, like Carl
von Naegli, (who understood the German but not the mathematics) and who
had read the paper but did not understand it. He and many others in the
19th century were bemused by the blending theory. Mendel=B9s paper was of
course exactly what Darwin needed to support his theory of evolution.=20
On the origin of life:=20
Darwin kept his distance from the origin of life controversy. The fact
that he thought about it is shown by a passage in a private letter to
Hooker (1817-1911) in 1871:
=B3It is often said that all the conditions for the first production of a
living organism are now present, which could ever have been present. But
if (and oh! what a big if!) we could conceive in some warm little pond,
with all sorts of ammonia and phosphoric salts, light, heat, electricity,
&c. present, that a proteine (sic) compound was chemically formed ready to
undergo still more complex changes, at the present day such matter would
be instantly absorbed, which would not have been the case before living
creatures were found.=B2
Notice =B3It is often said=8A=B2 so that, even in this private=
correspondence,
Darwin did not take credit for the =B3warm little pond=B2, which is=
identical
with that of Oparin and Haldane, nor did he ask for Hooker=B9s opinion.=20
Sir William Gilbert (1836-1911), in his famous comic opera The Mikado has
Pooh-Bah, a comic, greedy and conceited character whose degrading (sic)
duty it was to serve in all the posts of Titipu except Lord High
Executioner say: =B3I am in point of fact, a particularly haughty and
exclusive person, of pre-Adamite ancestral descent. You will understand
this when I tell you that I can trace my ancestry back to a protoplasmal
primordial atomic globule. Consequently, my family pride is something
inconceivable. I can=B9t help it. I was born sneering.=B2 Pooh-Bah The=
Mikado,
Act 1, W. S. Gilbert. (1887)
Of course these words in the mouth of Pooh-Bah would not have been funny
or understood by the audience if they had not been familiar with
=B3protoplasmal primordial globules=B2.=20
This is a recognition that the conditions for the emergence of Pooh-Bah=B9s
most ancient ancestors were being discussed by scientists and theologians
and were familiar to Hooker and to the public. The proposal that life
emerged from colloids and coacervates was not due to Oparin and/or
Haldane, neither of whom was born at the time.
Darwin wrote this about the origin of life in the 1872 edition of The
Origin, Chapter XV : =B3It can hardly be supposed that a false theory would
explain, in so satisfactory a manner as does the theory of natural
selection, the several large classes of facts above specified. It has
recently been objected that this is an unsafe method of arguing; but it is
a method used in judging of the common events of life, and has often been
used by the greatest natural philosophers. The undulatory theory of light
has thus been arrived at; [The double slit diffraction experiments of
Thomas Young.] and the belief in the revolution of the earth about its own
axis was until lately supported by hardly any direct evidence. [No doubt
he is referring to the Foucault pendulum, demonstrated in 1851.] It is no
valid objection [to the theory of evolution through natural selection]
that science as yet throws no light on the far higher problem of the
essence or origin of life. Who can explain what is the essence of the
attraction of gravity? No one now objects to following the results
consequent on this unknown element of attraction; notwithstanding that
Leibnitz formerly accused Newton of introducing =B3occult qualities and
miracles into philosophy.=B2
Here is the last sentence in Chapter XV of the sixth edition: =B3There is
grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been
originally breathed by the Creator into a few forms or into one; and that,
whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of
gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most
wonderful have been, land are being evolved.=B2
I noted in Journal of Theoretical Biology (1995) v176, 349-355 that,
although Darwin knew about the =B3protoplasmal primordial globules=B2 that
were Pooh-Bah=B9s ancestors, he did not believe in them, and his views on
the origin of life presaged those of Niels Bohr =B3Light and Life=B2 Nature
v131, 421-423 (1933)
It is unfair and incorrect to hang the albatross of dialectical
materialism of Oparin and Haldane on the neck of Charles Darwin.=20
Best regards Hubert P. Yockey
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Brian Harper | =20
Associate Professor | "It is not certain that all is uncertain,
Applied Mechanics | to the glory of skepticism" -- Pascal
Ohio State University |
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