3. 19th Century Britain
Anglican church (acceptance of Thirty-nine
articles for Oxbridge lecturers)
Industrial Revolution lead to poverty
Calls for suffrage for Catholics, women and the
poor
“The rich man in his castle ...”
Tory versus Whig
4. Josiah Wedgewood
1730 - 1795
Founder of Wedgwood pottery
works in Etruria, Staffordshire.
Friend of Joseph Priestly, Joshua
Reynolds, Maria Edgeworth
Socially respectable -
supporter of philanthropic,
scientific and artistic causes
12. Charles Robert Darwin
Born February 12th 1809
Named after deceased uncle.
Marianne
Charlotte Sarah
Susan Elizabeth
Erasmus Alvey
Charles Robert
Emily Catherine
@7
13. “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. During my
whole life I have been singularly incapable of mastering
any language.”
14. “You care for nothing but
shooting, dogs, and rat-
catching, and you will be a
disgrace to yourself and all
your family.”
24. Robert Grant
Zoologist & physician, FRS
1836
Professor of Zoology &
Comparative Anatomy
(UCL 1827 - 1874)
Expert on sponges
Francophile / Lamarckian
25. Plinian Society
Nov ‘26; Darwin elected
Apr ‘27; Darwin reads paper on Flustra.
“That the ova of Flustra posess organs of
locomotion
That the small black globular body hitherto
mistaken for the young of Fucus loreus is in
reality the ovum of Pontobdella muricata”
26. William Browne’s paper
“On organization as connected
with Life and Mind”
“That mind as far as one
individual sense, &
consciousness are concerned,
is material”
Materialism!
27. Cambridge
Christ’s College, Oct 1827 -
Jun 1830.
Degrees in Classics or
Mathematics
Honors or hoi polloi
28.
29.
30.
31.
32.
33. Cambridge
Purpose of education?
Self-contained enclave
Gowns as badges or rank
Proctors as enforcers of
academic law
Public hangings (200 crimes)
34.
35. Adam Sedgwick
1785 - 1873
Woodwardian Professor
of Geology (1818)
A popular lecturer and
academic liberal reformer.
36. Taylor and Carlile
May 1829
Blasphemy was a capital
crime
Robert Taylor (1784 - 1844)
- “The Devil’s Chaplin”
Richard Carlile (1790 –
1843) - Social agitator &
radical Republican -
Universal sufferage
37. “The Rev. Robert Taylor, A.B., of Carey Street,
Lincoln's Inn, and Mr. Richard Carlile, of Fleet-
street, London, present their complements as infidel
missionaries to … invite discussion on the merits of
the Christian religion, which they argumentatively
challenge, in the confidence of their competence to
prove, that such a person as Jesus Christ, alleged to
have been of Nazareth, never existed; and that the
Christian religion had no such origin as has been
pretended; neither is it in any way beneficial to
mankind; but that it is nothing more than an
emanation from the ancient Pagan religion.”
38. Darwin @ Cambridge
Erasmus Darwin
William Darwin Fox
The Glutton Club
“But no pursuit at Cambridge
was followed with nearly so
much eagerness or gave me
so much pleasure as
collecting beetles.”
40. John Stevens Henslow
1796 - 1861
Professor of Mineralogy
(1822-’27) and Botany
(1827-’61)
Hosted Friday evening
gatherings (Sedgwick,
Whewell etc)
Darwin was “the man who
walked with Henslow”
41. 1831
Received BA (Classics),
ranking tenth in hoi polloi
(of 178)
August 1831; geological
tour of Wales with Adam
Sedgwick
Future?
@ 21
43. Robert Fitzroy
1805 - 1865
Hydrographer &
meteorologist
Commanded HMS Beagle
after suicide of Captain
Stokes (1828 - ‘30)
Nephew of Lord Castlereagh
44.
45.
46.
47.
48.
49.
50.
51.
52.
53.
54.
55.
56.
57.
58.
59.
60.
61.
62.
63. Time of Change
1830 - Whigs come to power
1832 - First Reform Bill
1833 - Abolition of Slavery
1834 - New Poor Law
64. After the Voyage
Secretary of Geological Society
Describe zoology of Beagle
expedition
Networking
John Gould (Birds)
Charles Bell (Reptiles)
Richard Owen (Mammals)
Member of Athenaeum
73. Darwin in London
Lived near Erasmus
Whig intelligentsia
Charles Babbage
George Elliot
Thomas Malthus
Harriet Martineau
74. Publications
The Zoology of the Voyage of
H.M.S. Beagle (1838-’42)
Journal of Researches (1839)
Structure and Distribution of
Coral Reefs (1842)
Geological Observations on
Volcanic Islands (1844)
Geological Observations on South
America (1846)
76. Political Change
1837 - The People Charter
1837 – Victoria ascends to the throne
1839 - Newport Rising
1842 - Chartists march on London
1845 - Irish Potato Famine
1847 - Ten Hour Factory Act
1848 - Cholera epidemic
80. “Mental
Rioting”
Series of notebooks started
in July ‘37 (Zoonomia)
“Life sprawled through time,
budding and branching like a
tree - erupting in new
species adapted to slowly
changing environments.”
81.
82. Mind and Man
“man, wonderful man … with divine face, turned towards
heaven … he is not a deity, his end under present form
will come … he is no exception … he possesses some of
the same general instincts and feelings as animals”
Thoughts are “as much a function of organ as bile of liver”
“Love of the deity [is the] effect of organization, oh you
materialist!”
“Once grant that species may pass into each other and
the whole fabric totters and falls”
83. Marry
Children (if it Please God)
Constant companion (and friend in old age) who will feel interested in one
Object to be beloved and played with. Better than a dog anyhow
Home, & someone to take care of house
Charms of music and female chit-chat
These things good for one’s health—but terrible loss of time
My God, it is intolerable to think of spending one’s whole life, like a neuter bee, working,
working, and nothing after all—No, no, won’t do
Imagine living all one’s day solitary in smoky dirty London House
Only picture to yourself a nice soft wife on a sofa with good fire and books and music perhaps
Compare this vision with the dingy reality of Great Marlboro Street, London
84. Not Marry
Freedom to go where one liked
Choice of Society and little of it
Conversation of clever men at clubs
Not forced to visit relatives and bend in every trifle
Expense and anxiety of children
Perhaps quarrelling
Loss of Time
Cannot read in the evenings
Fatness and idleness
Anxiety and responsibility
Less money for books etc.
If many children forced to gain one’s bread (But then it is very bad for one’s health to work too
much)
Perhaps my wife won’t like London; then the sentence is banishment and degradation into
indolent, idle fool
Marry, Marry, Marry Q.E.D.
85. Emma Wedgewood
Married 1839
William Erasmus (1839)
Anne Elizabeth (1841)
Mary Eleanor (1842)
Henrietta Emma (1843)
George Howard (1845)
Elizabeth (1847)
Francis (1848)
Leonard (1850)
Horace (1854)
Charles Waring (1856)
107. Barnacles
1843 – 1851
Monograph of the Ciripedia
(1851, 1854)
Monograph of the Lepadidae
(1851, 1854)
Deviant barnacle sex
Why barnacles?
108. Birth of a Theory
Notebooks of 1837 – 1840
Pencil Sketch (1842, 35 pages)
Joseph Hooker suggests
study of variation
Essay (1844, 240 pages)
Show to Hooker and Lyell
Natural Selection (1856 -
1858)
@ 40
109.
110. Vestiges
Universal law of
development
Spontaneous generation
gave rise to life which
transmuted due to simple
protraction of gestation,
along paths pre-programmed
by a Divine programmer.
113. Platypus
“[B]elongs to a class at the
bottom of the mammalia, and
approximating to birds, and in
it behold the bill and web-
feet of that order!”
Changes could occur “in a
goose to give its progeny the
body of a rat, and produce”
the platypus
114.
115. Reaction
“An assemblage of all that is most venturous and
most fanciful in modern speculation” (W.H. Smith)
“As a work of science [it] is on a par with the
Metamorphoses of Ovid. It is equally absurd,
unnatural, and illogical.” (Edward Newman)
“a breath of fresh air to the workmen in a
crowded factory” (Edward Forbes)
116. David Brewster
“Prophetic of infidel times, and indicating the
unsoundness of our general education, [Vestiges]
has started into public favour with a fair chance
of poisoning the fountains of science, and sapping
the fountains of religion.”
Had the author “performed one single chemical
experiment, and endeavoured to understand its
import ... he would never have presumed to
write this book”
117. Sedgwick Against Vestiges
'[T]he world cannot bear to be
turned upside down; and we are
ready to wage an internecine
war with any violation of our
modest principles and social
manners. It is our maxim, that
things must keep their proper
places if they are to work
together for any good'
118. William Whewell
“Hypotheses which have, thus
been advantageous to science
have been tentative hypotheses
admitted into the mind for trial
and rejected, if the facts were
found to contradict them; not
dogmatic hypotheses published
to the world.”
119. Popularizing Science
“If the mere combining chemistry, geology,
physiology, and the like, into a nominal system, while
you violate the principles of each at every step of
your hypothesis, be held a philosophical merit [by
the general public], because the spectator is seeking
a wilder law than gravitation, I do not see what we
[scientists], whose admiration of the discovery of
gravitation arises from its truth, and the soundness
of every step to the truth, have to do, except seek
another audience.”
120.
121. Thomas Henry Huxley
‘Time was, that when the brains
were out, the man would die.”
‘once attractive and still notorious
work of fiction … shown to be a
mass of pretentious nonsense’ yet
survived due to the ‘utter
ignorance of the public mind as to
the methods of science and the
criterion of truth.’
122. Darwin
“Mr Vestiges” has “in his absurd though clever
work ... done the subject [of mutability of
species] harm”
Sedgwick’s review was “a grand piece of
argument against mutability of species, and I read
it with fear and trembling, but was well pleased
to find that I had not overlooked any of the
arguments”
123. Fear of Popularization
Darwin asked Asa Gray “not to mention my
doctrine; the reason is, if anyone like the Author
of the Vestiges, were to hear of them, he might
easily work them in, & then I [should] have to
quote from a work perhaps despised by
naturalists & this would greatly injure any
chances of my views being received by those
alone whose opinions I value.”
124. Robert Chambers
1802 - 1871
Authorship revealed in 1854
Publisher of Chambers’
Edinburgh Journal
125. Robert Chambers
1802 - 1871
Popularizer (c.f. Huxley &
Miller)
Old-fashioned views
Amateur at a period when
specialization was on the
rise
127. 1856
“What a book a
devil’s chaplain could
write on the clumsy,
wasteful, blundering,
low and horridly
cruel works of
nature”
128.
129.
130.
131.
132. On the various contrivances by which British and foreign
orchids are fertilised by insects (1862)
133. Darwin @ 59 (1868)
Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication
1868
134. 1872
Descent of Man and
Selection in Relation to
Sex
Expression of Emotion in
Man and Animals
135. 1875 - Insectivorous Plants
1875 – Movement and Habits of
Climbing Plants (orig, 1865)
1876 - The Effects of Cross- and Self-
Fertilization
1876 – Autobiography (pub. 1888)
1877 - The Different Forms of Flowers
on Plants of the Same Species
1877 - “A Biographical Sketch of an
Infant” Mind
1880 - Power of Movement in Plants
1881 - The Formation of Vegetable
Mould through the Action of Worms
136.
137.
138.
139.
140. “Happy is the man who finds
wisdom, and the man who gains
understanding;
For her proceeds are better than
the profits of silver, and her gain
than fine gold;
She is more precious than
rubies, and all things you may
desire cannot compare with her;
Her ways are ways of
pleasantness, and all her paths
are peace
She is the tree of life to those who
take hold of her, and happy are
those who retain her.”
Proverbs 3: 13 - 17 & 18
A hugely evolutionary theory – constant change from the very beginning – lawful process – opposed to the literal dogmatism of the likes of the SGs\n\n
