As a child Darwin was a stammerer.
“He was so quiet that relatives found it difficult to say
anything about his character beyond an appreciative nod
towards an exceedingly placid temperament. To them he was
a self-sufficient youngster, content to wander the country
paths around Shrewsbury searching for birds, watching a
fishing-float for hours from the banks of the Severn, or
trailing helpfully after Abberley, the elderly gardener at The
Mount, in his well-regulated cycle of horticultural duties.”
(Browne, Vol. 1, page 10)
A schoolboy friend said he was reserved and did not join
in play with the other boys, but went straight home after
school. But he had a kind disposition.
Darwin particularly liked the outdoors: riding ponies,
shooting and fishing, collecting pebbles and plants and
birds’ eggs (and, curiously, wax seals on letters).
He would go on long, solitary walks.
He collected interesting stories and liked to tell
anecdotes.
He was constantly proposing theories for almost
everything which occurred, especially in nature.
He was close to his brother Erasmus (five years older
than Charles) and to his younger sister Catherine.
1817:
In July, at the age of 52, Darwin’s mother
Susannah Wedgwood Darwin died.
At the age of 8 ½ years Darwin went to “Mr.
Case's school," a day-school at Shrewsbury kept
by the Rev G. Case, Minister of the Unitarian
Chapel.
1818 – 1825
Darwin is sent to Shrewsbury School, a boarding school in
the center of town – only 15 minutes away.
Shrewsbury school – today an expensive
“public” school – was run by the noted classical
scholar, Dr. Samuel Butler, grandfather of the
writer Samuel Butler (Erewhon, The Way of All
Flesh).
The school has a top-notch reputation. Of the
54 boys who entered in Darwin’s class of 1818,
12 eventually went to Cambridge and 4 to
Oxford; these included most of Darwin’s close
friends. One acquaintance was Thomas Butler,
the headmaster’s son and father of the writer
Samuel Butler.
Darwin on Dr. Butler’s School …
“Nothing could have been worse for the development of
my mind than Dr. Butler’s school, as it was strictly
classical, nothing else being taught except a little ancient
geography and history. The school as a means of
education to me was simply a blank. … Especial
attention was paid to verse-making, and this I could
never do well. I had many friends, and got together a
grand collection of old verses, which by patching
together, sometimes aided by other boys, I could work
into any subject.” – Autobiography
Darwin was quiet, inward-looking, good-natured,
according to classmates who remembered him in
later years (many didn’t).
He was not much interested in his studies, but
survived. Rather, he was becoming increasingly
interested in natural history, and a busy collector of
beetles, butterflies, birds’ eggs, rocks, minerals, etc.
He was close to his older brother Erasmus (who
attended Shrewsbury School 1815 – 1822), and the
two became very interested in chemistry and
furnished a small laboratory to carry out
experiments; they owned William Henry’s Elements
of Experimental Chemistry (1819).
“When I left the school I was for my age neither
high nor low in it; and I believe that I was
considered by all my masters and by my father as a
very ordinary boy, rather below the common
standard in intellect. To my deep mortification my
father once said to me, ‘You care for nothing but
shooting, dogs, and rat-catching, and you will be a
disgrace to yourself and all your family.’ But my
father, who was the kindest man I ever knew and
whose memory I love with all my heart, must have
been angry and somewhat unjust when he used
such words.” – Autobiography
Darwin’s father thought long and hard about what
might happen to Charles, and what he should do in
life.
As an unbeliever (though his wife had been a
believer) he did not think in terms of Charles
becoming a clergyman. Since Charles disliked
ancient languages (Latin and Greek) he wouldn’t
make a good lawyer. Since he was poor at
mathematics, natural philosophy did not seem to be a
good choice of a career.
But medicine should work out well, and let Charles
continue to maintain natural history as a hobby.
To Edinburgh University in October 1825
“As I was doing no good at school, my father wisely took
me away at a rather earlier age than usual, and sent me
(Oct. 1825) to Edinburgh University with my brother,
where I stayed for two years or sessions. My brother was
completing his medical studies, though I do not believe he
ever really intended to practise, and I was sent there to
commence them. But soon after this period I became
convinced from various small circumstances that my father
would leave me property enough to subsist on with some
comfort, though I never imagined that I should be so rich a
man as I am; but my belief was sufficient to check any
strenuous efforts to learn medicine.” – Autobiography
Edinburgh University, attended by Darwin 1825-1827.
“The instruction at Edinburgh was altogether by lectures,
and these were intolerably dull, with the exception of those
on chemistry by Hope; but to my mind there are no
advantages and many disadvantages in lectures compared
with reading. Dr. Duncan's lectures on Materia Medica at
8 o'clock on a winter's morning are something fearful to
remember. Dr. Munro made his lectures on human
anatomy as dull as he was himself, and the subject
disgusted me. It has proved one of the greatest evils in my
life that I was not urged to practise dissection, for I should
soon have got over my disgust; and the practice would
have been invaluable for all my future work. This has
been an irremediable evil, as well as my incapacity to
draw.” – Autobiography
“I also attended regularly the clinical wards in the hospital. Some
of the cases distressed me a good deal, and I still have vivid pictures
before me of some of them; but I was not so foolish as to allow this
to lessen my attendance. I cannot understand why this part of my
medical course did not interest me in a greater degree; for during
the summer before coming to Edinburgh I began attending some of
the poor people, chiefly children and women in Shrewsbury: I wrote
down as full an account as I could of the case with all the symptoms,
and read them aloud to my father, who suggested further inquiries
and advised me what medicines to give, which I made up myself. At
one time I had at least a dozen patients, and I felt a keen interest in
the work. My father, who was by far the best judge of character
whom I ever knew, declared that I should make a successful
physician, – meaning by this one who would get many patients. He
maintained that the chief element of success was exciting
confidence; but what he saw in me which convinced him that I
should create confidence I know not.” – Autobiography
“I also attended on two occasions the operating theatre in
the hospital at Edinburgh, and saw two very bad
operations, one on a child, but I rushed away before they
were completed. Nor did I ever attend again, for hardly
any inducement would have been strong enough to make
me do so; this being long before the blessed days of
chloroform. The two cases fairly haunted me for many a
long year.” – Autobiography
Anesthesia is generally considered to have begun with
ether in 1846 and chloroform in 1847 – about 20 years
after Darwin was at Edinburgh University
At Edinburgh, Darwin attended meetings of the Plinian
Society and read papers there, becoming a member in November
1826. Some of the papers presented were controversial
In February, 1827, a certain Mr. Grey had submitted his
theory “that the lower animals possess every faculty and propensity
of the human mind,” a point of view to which Darwin subscribed in
later years.
In March, 1827, a member named W. A. Browne proposed
that mind and thus consciousness had an entirely material basis. This
was a very unorthodox proposal, and the members found it so
offensive and even blasphemous that the Society expunged from its
records all trace of the paper and the ensuing discussion, and even
Browne’s announcement of this paper at the previous meeting of the
society! Darwin was present at this meeting and presumably heard
the presentation.
Leonard Horner, Lyell’s father-in-law, once took Darwin
to a meeting of the Royal Society of Edinburgh, where
the famous novelist Sir Walter Scott was presiding:
“Sir Walter Scott [sat] in the chair as President, and he
apologised to the meeting as not feeling fitted for such a
position. I looked at him and at the whole scene with
some awe and reverence… If I had been told at that time
that I should one day have been thus honoured, I declare
that I should have thought it as ridiculous and
improbable, as if I had been told that I should be elected
King of England.”
“By the way, a Negro lived in Edinburgh, who had
travelled with Waterton, and gained his livelihood
by stuffing birds, which he did excellently: he gave
me lessons for payment, and I used often to sit with
him, for he was a very pleasant and intelligent
man.” – Autobiography
Waterton was Charles Waterton (1782-1865), a noted (and
eccentric) naturalist and expert taxidermist who had visited
South America and written about it.
The Negro is known to have been John Edmonstone, a freed
slave originally from Guyana, who had been taught
taxidermy by Waterton.
Burke and Hare
By leaving the medical school at Edinburgh University in
the fall of 1827, Charles Darwin just missed being there
during the infamous Burke and Hare “body-snatching”
episode of November 1827 to November 1828.
William Burke and William Hare, who lived in Edinburgh,
discovered that the medical school would pay up to £15 for
fresh cadavers for medical students to use in their studies.
They sold about 17 cadavers to Robert Knox, lecturer in
anatomy at Edinburgh, some of them old persons who had
died but most of them persons (old persons, prostitutes,
etc.) they had murdered. They were found out in November
1828.
“Burke the Butcher, Hare the Thief,
Knox the boy who buys the beef.”
Burke was tried, convicted, and sentenced to death. He was
hanged on January 28,1829. Hare was given immunity for
testifying against Burke and was released in February 1829 and
disappeared from the history books.
Robert Knox was not prosecuted because there was no
evidence that he knew that Burke and Hare were killing to
secure the corpses, but his career was ruined and he was
dismissed from the University, eventually becoming a doctor in
London.
Knox had a young assistant, Thomas Wharton-Jones, whose
career was not affected by the Burke-Hare affair. He would
later exert a powerful positive influence on Thomas H. Huxley.
1828:
Began residence at Christ's College, Cambridge.
“I went to Cambridge early in the year 1828, and
soon became acquainted with Professor [John
Stevens] Henslow...Nothing could be more simple,
cordial and unpretending than the encouragement
which he afforded to all young naturalists.”
“During the three years which I spent at Cambridge
my time was wasted, as far as the academical
studies were concerned, as completely as at
Edinburgh and at school.”
Christ’s College, Cambridge, attended by Darwin 1828-1831.
Darwin’s room at Christ’s College, Cambridge (1909 photo).
“I attempted mathematics, and even went during the
summer of 1828 with a private tutor (a very dull man)
to Barmouth, but I got on very slowly. The work was
repugnant to me, chiefly from my not being able to
see any meaning in the early steps in algebra. This
impatience was very foolish, and in after years I have
deeply regretted that I did not proceed far enough at
least to understand something of the great leading
principles of mathematics, for men thus endowed
seem to have an extra sense. But I do not believe that
I should ever have succeeded beyond a very low
grade.” – Darwin’s Autobiography
John Stevens Henslow (1796 – 1861)
A very popular professor of mineralogy and of botany at
Cambridge, and also a clergyman. He had a tremendous influence
on Darwin’s development as a naturalist (recommending him for
the naturalist position on the Beagle, for instance).
Adam Sedgwick
(1785 – 1873)
One of the founders of
modern geology. The
Woodwardian
Professor of Geology
at Cambridge from
1818 to his death 55
years later in 1873.
Worked on (and
proposed) Devonian
and Cambrian periods.
Charles Darwin was one of Sedgwick’s geology students,
and the two were close friends for nearly half a century,
until Sedgwick’s death in 1873 at the age of 88.
Sedgwick was a catastrophist and believed that God was
continually creating throughout history. He was a very
religious man, though not a fundamentalist as the term is
understood today.
He strongly opposed Darwin’s theory of evolution and
attacked his books: “It repudiates all reasoning from final
causes; and seems to shut the door on any view (however
feeble) of the God of Nature as manifested in His works.
From first to last it is a dish of rank materialism cleverly
cooked and served up.” Yet they remained friends!
1831:
“In order to pass the B.A. Examination, it
was...necessary to get up [William] Paley's ‘Evidences
of Christianity’ and his ‘Moral Philosophy’ ... The
careful study of these works, without attempting to
learn any part by rote, was the only part of the
academical course which...was of the least use to me in
the education of my mind."
Darwin passed the examination for the B.A. degree in
January.
“I gained a good place among the oi polloi or crowd of
men who do not go in for honours.”
William Paley
(1743 – 1805)
Noted Anglican clergyman,
writer and philosopher;
Archdeacon of Carlisle.
Major books:
Principles of Moral and
Political Philosophy
View of the Evidences of
Christianity
Natural Theology
William Paley’s Natural Theology; or, Evidences
of the Existence and Attributes of the Deity (1802)
A well-written, easy-to-read book on “natural theology” (as
opposed to “revealed theology”), more or less what is now
referred to as “intelligent design.” It popularized the
Watchmaker Analogy still discussed today.
“I am convinced that I could have written out the whole of
the 'Evidences' with perfect correctness, but not of course in
the clear language of Paley. The logic of this book and, as I
may add, of his 'Natural Theology,' gave me as much delight
as did Euclid. … I did not at that time trouble myself about
Paley's premises; and taking these on trust, I was charmed
and convinced by the long line of argumentation.” –
Darwin’s Autobiography
The first sentences of Paley’s Natural Theology:
“In crossing a heath, suppose I pitched my foot against a
stone, and were asked how the stone came to be there; I
might possibly answer, that, for any thing I knew to the
contrary, it had lain there for ever: nor would it perhaps be
very easy to show the absurdity of this answer. But suppose
I had found a watch upon the ground, and it should be
inquired how the watch happened to be in that place; I
should hardly think of the answer which I had before given,
that, for any thing I knew, the watch might have always
been there. Yet why should not this answer serve for the
watch as well as for the stone? why is it not as admissible
in the second case, as in the first?
… continued
“For this reason, and for no other, viz. that, when we
come to inspect the watch, we perceive (what we could
not discover in the stone) that its several parts are
framed and put together for a purpose, e. g. that they
are so formed and adjusted as to produce motion, and
that motion so regulated as to point out the hour of the
day; that, if the different parts had been differently
shaped from what they are, of a different size from what
they are, or placed after any other manner, or in any
other order, than that in which they are placed, either
no motion at all would have been carried on in the
machine, or none which would have answered the use
that is now served by it.”
David Hume (1711 – 1776)
Scottish historian and philosopher
Well-known atheist; did not give
“miracles” much credit.
Posthumously-published
Dialogues Concerning Natural
Religion has three persons
arguing about the existence of
God, especially the argument
from design, to which one person
(Philo – presumably Hume) gives
counterarguments, including one
that is suggestive of natural
selection.
Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion
Philo is apparently the speaker representing Hume’s
thoughts. At one point he says, “But were this world ever
so perfect a production, it must still remain uncertain,
whether all the excellences of the work can justly be
ascribed to the workman. If we survey a ship, what an
exalted idea must we form of the ingenuity of the
carpenter who framed so complicated, useful, and
beautiful a machine? And what surprise must we feel,
when we find him a stupid mechanic, who imitated others,
and copied an art, which, through a long succession of
ages, after multiplied trials, mistakes, corrections,
deliberations, and controversies, had been gradually
improving?
continued …
Hume continued …
“Many worlds might have been botched and bungled,
throughout an eternity, ere this system was struck out;
much labour lost, many fruitless trials made;and a slow,
but continued improvement carried on during infinite
ages in the art of world-making. In such subjects, who
can determine, where the truth; nay, who can conjecture
where the probability lies, amidst a great number of
hypotheses which may be proposed, and a still greater
which may be imagined?”
Hume continued …
“It is observed by arithmeticians, that the products of 9,
compose always either 9, or some lesser product of 9, if
you add together all the characters of which any of the
former products is composed. Thus, of 18, 27, 36, which
are products of 9, you make 9 by adding 1 to 8, 2 to 7, 3
to 6. Thus, 369 is a product also of 9; and if you add 3, 6,
and 9, you make 18, a lesser product of 9. To a
superficial observer, so wonderful a regularity may be
admired as the effect either of chance or design: but a
skillful algebraist immediately concludes it to be the
work of necessity, and demonstrates, that it must for ever
result from the nature of these numbers. . . .”
Hume continued …
“ . . . Is it not probable, I ask, that the whole economy of
the universe is conducted by a like necessity, though no
human algebra can furnish a key which solves the
difficulty? And instead of admiring the order of natural
beings, may it not happen, that, could we penetrate into
the intimate nature of bodies, we should clearly see why it
was absolutely impossible they could ever admit of any
other disposition? So dangerous is it to introduce this
idea of necessity into the present question! and so
naturally does it afford an inference directly opposite to
the religious hypothesis!”
The Bridgewater Treatises (1833 – 1840)
Eight treatises published between 1833 and 1840 stating the case for
“natural theology.”
Funded in 1829 by an 8,000-pound-sterling grant to the Royal
Society of London by Francis Henry Egerton, the 8th Earl of
Bridgewater, given to publish works “On the Power, Wisdom, and
Goodness of God, as Manifested in the Creation.”
Authors: Thomas Chalmers (mathematician, clergyman), John Kidd
(medical doctor, chemist, geologist), William Whewell (scientist
and clergyman and historian of science), Sir Charles Bell (surgeon
and physiologist), Peter Mark Roget (physician and thesaurus
author), William Buckland (geologist), William Kirby (1759-1850,
“father of entomology”), William Prout (medical doctor and
chemist, author of “Prout’s hypothesis”).
The Ninth
Bridgewater Treatise
Written in the 1830s by
Charles Babbage, the Lucasian
Professor of Mathematics at
Cambridge. He argued that
God the Creator had not
created species, but laws (or
programs), like a legislator,
and that these laws produced
new species at the appropriate
time, making ad hoc miracles
of special creation unnecessary.
Charles Babbage . . .
Babbage drew up plans for mechanical calculators and
started construction of some, always thinking of
improvements. None were finished until after his death,
when it was found that they worked fine. They included
a difference engine and an “Analytical Engine” that
would be programmable and had many features of
modern computers.
Babbage intensely disliked organ grinders and other
street noise-makers, and wrote tracts against them. He
also made a study of the ways in which warehouse
windows were broken.
In 1842 Alfred Tennyson published a new poem, "The
Vision of Sin," which included the line “Every moment
dies a man, /Every moment one is born.” Babbage wrote
him a letter praising the poem, but suggesting that this line
needed to be corrected.
“It must be manifest that, were this true, the population of
the world would be at a standstill,” Babbage pointed out,
but, since the human population was growing slowly, “I
would suggest that in the next edition of your poem you
have it read: ‘Every moment dies a man,/Every moment 11/16 is born.’ ” This was not quite correct, Babbage
admitted, “but I believe 1-1/16 will be sufficiently
accurate for poetry.”
“Creationists”
There have always been different types of “creationists” who
regarded the universe as being created by God.
“Young-earth creationists” believed God created the earth
about 6000 years ago, based on the chronology of the Bible.
“Old-earth creationists” believed God created the earth all at
once millions or billions of years ago.
Some biologists and geologists before Darwin believed there
had been several or even many creations, with destructions of
all life from time to time.
Some scientists, like Babbage and many today, thought God
had only created the laws of nature, setting things in motion.
A Modern Creationist
Kurt Wise was raised as a religious fundamentalist and
creationist; he studied paleontology and earned a Ph. D. from
Harvard University, where Stephen Jay Gould was one of his
teachers.
“Creation isn’t a theory. The fact that God created the
universe is not a theory – it’s fact. However, some of the
details are not specifically nailed down in Scripture. Some
issues – such as creation, a global flood, and a young age for
the earth – are determined by Scripture, so they are not
theories. My understanding from Scripture is that the
universe is in the order of 6,000 years old. Once that has
been determined by Scripture, it is a starting point that we
build theories upon.”