Nothing New Under the Sun - Unpublished Selections Explained, Med. VII.49

Meditation VII.49 - Nothing New Under the Sun - Translated by George Long and rewritten by Russell McNeil

Consider the past; such great changes of political supremacies. You may foresee also the things which will be. For they will certainly be of like form, and it is not possible that they should deviate from the order of the things which take place now: accordingly to have contemplated human life for forty years is the same as to have contemplated it for ten thousand years. For what more will you see?⁽¹⁾

Explanation

(1) This is not a peculiarly Stoic stance. Before the scientific revolution history was viewed as a cyclical process. What was, will be again. For the ancients in particular - and especially for the Stoics - historical events and "political supremacies" mirrored the cycles of nature. Those cycles are apparent in the inexorable diurnal risings of the sun, the sequence of the seasons, and in the the orbits of the stars and planets. So too was it with human life and in the rest of nature. We are born; we mature; and we die. What we witness in "forty years" is sufficient for any human being. Nothing is new or will be substantially new in our experience if we were to live for "ten thousand years."

Modern experience has shifted this perspective, but it is doubtful that Marcus would change his stance if he were alive today. The ingrained belief that history is a progressive and "forward" moving train, reflects the belief that Darwinian evolution and natural selection has relevance in the social and political sphere. That may well be so, but if it is so, it would be a serious misreading of Darwin to expect that political evolution is somehow progressive. Natural selection is not and never was a progressive theory. New species emerge in the environment in response to changing environments. We are not getting "better and better every day and in every way" because of evolution, we are simply changing every day in response to changing environments. If sea levels rise in the epochs ahead, there is no evolutionary reason that would preclude mammals now adapted to land to re-adapt to a more extensive marine environment. Human life - if it is able to survive the pressures of massive climate change - might well discover that the trait we call "reason" will afford us less protection in overall survival terms than the ability to adapt to aquatic life!

I suspect also that Marcus would be somewhat appalled by the seduction of modern man by technology. Technologies - he would likely note - have done nothing to make us more virtuous, more compassionate, more forgiving, more courageous, more beneficent. If anything human technology has further alienated humanity by carving disparate schisms between haves and have-nots, North and South, East and West, rich and poor, Islam and Christian, etc. Technologies and the "wonders" of the scientific revolution have been designed to service the body - not the soul. We crave immortality now more than ever before. But this is a fool's game.

The project of living has not changed since the second century. We were designed by nature to serve each other. That is the only service that will bring happiness. History will transform humanity's exterior over the next ten thousand years, but the fundamental truths will ever be the same.

Russell McNeil, PhD, is the author of The Meditations of Marcus Aurelius: Selections Annotated and Explained by Skylight Paths Publishing. The unpublished selections presented in this Blog are provided as supplemental material to the published selections which are annotated and explained in the book. The published selections are referenced in this Blog by page number and section.

The Stoic Science of Anatomy - Unpublished Selections Explained, Med. VIII.21a

Meditation VIII.21a - The Stoic Science of Anatomy - Translated by George Long and rewritten by Russell McNeil

Turn it (the body) inside out, and see what kind of thing it is; and when it has grown old, what kind of thing it becomes, and when it is diseased.¹

Explanation

(1) Before the European Renaissance, most research on human physiology and internal anatomy was based primarily on the work of the Stoic anatomist and physician Claudius Galen (c. 130 CE - 200 CE) - known also as Galen of Pergamum. Galen was the personal physician of Emperors Marcus Aurelius and Commodus. Although anatomy was very important to Galen, "he did not dissect humans because of the negative social and religious stigmas associated with experimentation on the human body, but he did perform dissections and vivisection experiments on many animals including apes, goats, dogs, and pigs" (Hume, University of Dayton). At the age of 28, Galen was appointed as the physician to the gladiators. "Galen's reliance on anatomy and experiment showed his belief in the value of observation in medicine. He argued that diseases were manifestations of impaired anatomical functioning, so in order to diagnose and to treat disease, a fundamental understanding of the human structure was critical" (Hume, University of Dayton).

The detailed anatomical contributions of the Renaissance polymath Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519) and later by Andreas Vesalius (1514-1564) were based on the dissections of human cadavers and documented not only the structures of the body and their functions, but the various effects of diseases and aging. Nonetheless, the scientific impulse for this program of research was really set into motion fourteen centuries earlier by the pioneering work of Galen as reflected in meditations like this one. The Stoics Galen and Marcus Aurelius did not regard the human body as repulsive. It is - like everything else in nature - subject to changes brought about by aging and by disease. Marcus understood that these changes are governed by the laws that govern human biology and as such are part of the laws of nature that all Stoics must come to understand. What aging and disease do to the body might not seem pleasing to the uninformed, but the laws that operate on each of us are - in Stoic parlance - divine, and infallible and perfect. Modern scientists who study the body today do in fact marvel at its structure, economy, and beauty.

This is the underlying intention of the meditation. In studying nature we do begin to unravel mystery. We are filled with awe. We are overwhelmed with wonder. The Stoic takes these observations one step further by attempting to understand what these laws mean on the moral and ethical plane. If it is inevitable that we will age and become diseased, and if these certainties are a product of universal laws which in and of themselves are beautiful and good, then what are we to make of this? The answer for the Stoic is that we ought not fear these changes. We ought not fear death or old age or disease. These things were meant to be. We were meant to die. If this is so, then our priorities in life ought to transcend this ephemeral body. We should listen to our bodies and we should satisfy its demands. But our first priority ought to lie within the realm of that aspect of our existence that is immune from the ravages of decay. The Stoic calls this realm the soul, and the human soul is the divine in us. This embodiment of universal law in each of us is as perfect as the laws that bring change to the body. For this reason the soul must take precedence over the body. This assertion is fundamental to Stoicism and one of its three founding principles (please see Meditation VII.55, p.147, in the book).

Russell McNeil, PhD, is the author of The Meditations of Marcus Aurelius: Selections Annotated and Explained by Skylight Paths Publishing. The unpublished selections presented in this Blog are provided as supplemental material to the published selections which are annotated and explained in the book. The published selections are referenced in this Blog by page number and section.

The Cosmic Genome - Unpublished Selections Explained, Med. IX.08

Meditation IX.08 - The Cosmic Genome - Translated by George Long and rewritten by Russell McNeil

Among the animals which have not reason one life is distributed;¹ but among reasonable animals one intelligent soul is distributed:² just as there is one earth of all things which are of an earthy nature,³ and we see by one light, and breathe one air, all of us that have the faculty of vision and all that have life.⁴

Explanation

(1) In modern genetics this "one life" might be expressed as the genome for a particular species. Individuals will differ, but a single genome defines the life form for the animal species.

(2) The humane genome defines the human animal. In Stoicism, reason is an expression of the active principle of nature. There is nothing transcendent in this. Reason is an expression of electrochemical impulses which are ordered and sequenced and controlled by the humane genome. These electrochemical forces and fields pervade the universe and operate on all matter, and are under the aegis of various physical conservation laws (such as conservation of energy). But the ways in which these forces are harnessed and expressed in sentient animals (humans and other life forms in the universe with similar capabilities) reflects an intelligent ordering which mirrors a universal intelligence with analogous capability - but a capability expressed on a cosmic scale. This understanding of nature far exceeds any modern understanding of how or why sentient beings are capable of reason. But the Stoic position on reason is naturalistic. When we reason we are exercising a trait that is unique to sentient life. This trait is not however something purely accidental. It is a mirroring of a latent law of nature (call it the law of intelligence if you wish) that is embedded in nature and activated in life forms when conditions are right or when natural selection allows for its expression. This does not mean that all sentient life will express itself identically. The animal aspect of sentient life would reflect the conditions prevalent throughout the cosmos. It does mean however that the sequencing within the genetic structures in other sentient life forms that express "reason" would be under the control of the same universal law - or "one intelligent soul," a cosmic genome.

(3) The "earthy nature" is passive. All material things in nature and throughout the universe are in a sense the same in that they are all chemical combinations of atoms from the same periodic table.

(4) In universal terms the vision Marcus refers to here is under the guidance of the universal light of reason.

Russell McNeil, PhD, is the author of The Meditations of Marcus Aurelius: Selections Annotated and Explained by Skylight Paths Publishing. The unpublished selections presented in this Blog are provided as supplemental material to the published selections which are annotated and explained in the book. The published selections are referenced in this Blog by page number and section.

Evolution and Thermodynamics - Unpublished Selections Explained, Med. IX.19

Meditation IX.19 - Evolution and Thermodynamics - Translated by George Long and rewritten by Russell McNeil

All things are changing: and you yourself are in continuous mutation and in a manner in continuous destruction, and the whole universe too.¹

Explanation

(1) This meditation is a clear conjoint articulation of two underlying natural physical principles which are the bedrock of Stoic philosophy. That all things in the universe are changing, and also in continuous destruction, is as clear an expression of the second law of thermodynamics (the entropy principle) as we might expect from the ancient world. Today we would call this the heat death of the universe. The Stoics also noted however that the underlying causality bringing about the dissolution and destruction of the universe also gives rise to its rebirth in fire, in a series of never ending cycles of deaths and births. This ancient idea is not inconsistent with contemporary pulsating cosmological models (big bangs followed in time by big crunches) - the Ekpyrotic model in particular (please see Meditation IX.14, p.29, in the book for a detailed discussion on this).

The idea that everything in nature mutates as well as changes is consistent with the Darwinian modality of natural selection - the underlying mechanism that gives rise to speciation through mutation and adaptation. Stoicism was not saddled with the idea that change should bring about anthropomorphic improvements - that human beings, for example, get better and better with change. Stoic observations focus only on the idea that change is inevitable. We are born; we change continuously; every change is a kind of death; and, in the end we die.

Russell McNeil, PhD, is the author of The Meditations of Marcus Aurelius: Selections Annotated and Explained by Skylight Paths Publishing. The unpublished selections presented in this Blog are provided as supplemental material to the published selections which are annotated and explained in the book. The published selections are referenced in this Blog by page number and section.

Flossie Wong-Staal (1947-)

Flossie Wong-Staal received her Ph.D. in molecular biology from UCLA and conducted postdoctoral work at UCSD. She was a research investigator at the National Cancer Institute and Section Chief of Molecular Genetics of Hematopoietic Cells in the Laboratory of Tumor Cell Biology. Dr. Wong-Staal serves on the editorial board of many journals and is the Florence Riford Professor in AIDS Research.

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Theophrastus (c 371-287 BCE)

The unseasonable man is the sort of person who comes up to you when you are head over ears in work and confides to you all about it. He serenades his mistress when she is ill with fever. He approaches a man who has been cast in a surety case and asks him to stand surety for him. He appears to give evidence after the verdict is given.

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Nettie Maria Stevens (1861-1912)

Modern cytological work involves an intricacy of detail, the significance of which can be appreciated by the specialist alone; but Miss Stevens had a share in a discovery of importance, and her work will be remembered for this, when the minutiae of detailed investigations that she carried out have become incorporated in the general body of the subject. - Tribute by Geneticist Thomas Hunt Morgan (1866-1945), following Nettie Stevens' death in 1912

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Gregor Mendel (1822-1884)

Quotation

The value and utility of any experiment are determined by the fitness of the material to the purpose for which it is used, and thus in the case before us it cannot be immaterial what plants are subjected to experiment and in what manner such experiment is conducted.

Books

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Research

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Biographical

Biologist and botanist born in Heinzendorf, Austria. Mendel's first presentation was on his eight years of experimentation with artificial plant hybridization. He entered an Augustinian cloister in 1843 and was ordained a priest in 1847. His experiments in hybridity in plants led to the laws of segregation and independent assortment. These principles have formed the basis for modern genetics.

During his childhood Mendel worked as a gardener, and as a young man attended the Olmutz Philosophical Institute. In 1843 he entered a Augustinian monastery in Brunn, Austria. He was later sent to the University of Vienna to study. By both his professors at University and his colleagues at the monastery, Mendel was inspired to study variance in plants. He commenced his study in his monastery's experimental garden. Between 1856 and 1863 Mendel cultivated and tested some 28,000 pea plants. His experiments brought forth two generalizations which later became known as Mendel's Laws of Inheritance (see below). Ironically, when Mendel's paper was published on 1866 in Proceedings of the Brunn Society for Natural History, it had little impact. It wasn't until the early 20th century that the enormity of his ideas was realized. In 1902, his work was finally rediscovered by Hugo de Vries, Carl Correns and Erich von Tschermak. Mendel died January 6, 1884 in Brunn, Austria.

Mendelian inheritance

Before Gregor Mendel formulated his theories of genetics in 1865 the prevailing theory of inheritance was that of blending inheritance, in which the spermatozoan and egg of parent organisms contained a sampling of the parent's "essence" and that they somehow blended together to form the pattern for the offspring. This theory accounted for the fact that offspring tended to resemble both parents, but failed to show how diversity could be maintained over many generations without all members of a population eventually averaging themselves out. Mendel proposed instead a theory of particulate inheritance, in which characteristics were determined by discrete units of inheritance that were passed intact from one generation to the next. These units would later come to be known as genes, though Mendel did not coin the term himself. Mendel based his theory on studies of inheritance patterns in garden peas (Pisum sativum), which were useful because they could be both cross-pollenated between two plants or self-pollenated with just one. Based on many years of careful, tedious breeding experiments, Mendel developed several fundamental laws of Mendelian inheritance.

Mendel's Law of Independent Assortment

The most important principle of Mendel's Law of Independent Assortment is that the emergence of one trait will not affect the emergence of another. While his experiments mixing one trait always resulted in a 3:1 ratio between dominant and recessive phenotypes, his experiments with two traits showed 9:3:3:1 ratios. Mendel concluded that each organism carries two sets of information about its phenotype. If the two sets differ on the same phenotype, one of them dominates the other. That way, information can be passed on through the generations, even if the phenotype is not expressed.

Mendel's findings allowed other scientists to simplify the emergence of traits to mathematical probability. A large portion of Mendel's spectacular findings can be traced to his proper usage of the scientific method. His choice of peas as a subject for his experiments was extraordinarily lucky. Peas have a relatively simple genetic structure. Also, Mendel could always be in control of the plants' breeding. When Mendel wanted to cross-pollinate a pea plant he needed only to remove the immature stamen of the plant. In this way he was always exactly sure of his plants' parents. Mendel made certain to start his experiments only with true breeding plants. He also only measured absolute characteristics such as color, shape, and position of the offspring. His data was expressed numerically and subjected to statistical analysis. This method of data reporting and the large sampling size he used gave credibility to his data. He also had the foresight to look through several successive generations of his pea plants and record their variations. Without his careful attention to procedure and detail, Mendel's work could not have had the impact it made on the world of genetics.

Mendel's Law of Segregation

Mendel's Law of Segregation essentially has four parts.

• Alternative versions of genes account for variations in inherited characters. This is the concept of alleles. Alleles are different versions of genes that impart the same characteristic. Each human has a gene that controls height, but there are variations among these genes in accordance with the specific height the gene "codes" for.
  
• For each character, an organism inherits two genes, one from each parent. This means that when somatic cells are produced from two gametes, one allele comes from the mother, one from the father. These alleles may be the same, or different.
  
• If the two alleles differ, then one, the dominant allele, is fully expressed in the organism's appearance; the other, the recessive allele, has no noticeable effect on the organism's appearance. Today, we know several examples that disprove this "law", e.g. Mirabilis jalapa, the "Japanese wonder flower" . This is called incomplete dominance. There is also codominance on a molecular level, e.g. people with sickle cell anemia, when normal and sickle-shaped red blood cells mix and prevent malaria.
  
• The two genes for each character segregate during gamete production. This is the last part of Mendel's generalization. The two alleles of the organism are separated into different gametes, ensuring variation.

During his experiments, Mendel encountered some traits that did not follow the laws he had encountered. These traits did not appear independently, but always together with at least one other trait. Mendel could not explain what happened and chose not to mention it in his work. Today, we know that these traits are close together on the same chromosome.

Mendel's First Law

Each adult pea plant has two genes - a gene pair - for each characteristic. The two memebers of each gene pair separate (segregate) randomly into the eggs or sperm of the plant, so that each egg or sperm contains only one member of each gene pair. The offspring therefore inherits one randomly selected gene from each parent for each characteristic.

Mendel's Second Law

During the formation of sperm and egg, the segregation of alleles for one gene is independant of the segregation of alleles for another gene. This law was slightly more complex to demonstrate, requiring the statistical analysis of offspring of plants that differed in two separate characteristics. [This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License and uses material adapted in whole or in part from the Wikipedia article on Gregor Mendel.]

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Barbara McClintock (1902-1992)

Quotation

There is no question that plants have [all] kinds of sensitivities. But just because they sit there, anybody walking down the road considers them just a plastic area to look at, [as if] they're not really alive.

Books

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Research

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Biographical

Barbara McClintock (June 16, 1902 - September 2, 1992) is an American geneticist who discovered transposable elements while seeking to explain the coloring patters of maize (corn) seeds. Her work was overlooked for many years, because it did not fit the then-accepted models of genetics. McClintock was born in Brooklyn, NY. She earned her B.A. and Ph.D. from Cornell University. She was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1983. [This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License and uses material adapted in whole or in part from the Wikipedia article on Barbara McClintock.]

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Rebecca Craighill Lancefield (1895-1981)

Summary

Born into an Army family at Fort Wadsworth, New York, Rebecca Craighill Lancefield became interested in scientific studies while an undergraduate at Wellesley College. She earned her Ph.D. in immunology and bacteriology at Columbia University, where she was a student of Edmund Beecher Wilson and Thomas Hunt Morgan. While at Columbia, she also worked at the Rockefeller Institute, later to be known as Rockefeller University. It was at this institution that she became a professor of microbiology.

Her basic research, for which she received the Lasker Award, was concerned with streptococcal infections, and her work came to be known as the Lancefield classification system of these infections.

Prior to her findings, the medical world had believed that each type of clinical infection (e.g., scarlet fever, sore throat, erysipelas) was caused by a streptococcal bacterium that was specific for each infection. Dr. Lancefield demonstrated that one group (Group A) of streptococcal bacteria could cause these diseases. Her system of classification of the more than sixty types of Group A streptococcal bacteria continues to be invaluable in the identification and treatment of streptococcal infections. Her outstanding work was also recognized in her election to membership in the National Academy of Sciences.

Her association with the Marine Biological Laboratory began early in her career. In 1920, she was listed as a Beginning Investigator in Zoology. In 1926, she was an Independent Investigator in Zoology. At that time, she was an assistant in the Department of the Hospital at Rockefeller Institute. Her summer attendance at the MBL continued in an almost unbroken line for the remainder of her life. She and her husband, Dr. Donald E. Lancefield, maintained a home in Woods Hole, and both chose to be buried here in the cemetery of the Church of the Messiah. [Adapted from Marine Biological Laboratory]

Books

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Research

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Rosalind Franklin (1920-1958)

Quotation

I think that even Linus [Pauling], who was quite good, I think, about giving people their due, and making references to people, -- he wrote to Wilkins and asked for these photographs just to see them, and of course Watson and Crick decided not to send them. You see, Linus didn't know that they were Rosalind Franklin's pictures. There was no reason for him to write to Wilkins. I have always been furious about the Watson book, and about the treatment of Rosalind Franklin. Largely because of his treatment of Rosalind Franklin, who I didn't know very well, but had met and talked to in the laboratory, and I was very glad when this Ann Sayre wrote the book, Rosalind Franklin and DNA. Which needed to be written by someone with spirit, saying the things that needed to be said. - Ava Helen Pauling [wife of Linus Pauling] interview with Lee Herzenberg, September 1977

Books

Please browse our Amazon list of titles about Rosalind Elsie Franklin. For rare and hard to find works we recommend our Alibris list of titles about Rosalind Elsie Franklin.

Research

Review: Rosalind Franklin: The Dark Lady of DNA
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Biographical

There is probably no other woman scientist with as much controversy surrounding her life and work as Rosalind Franklin. Franklin was responsible for much of the research and discovery work that led to the understanding of the structure of deoxyribonucleic acid, DNA. The story of DNA is a tale of competition and intrigue, told one way in James Watson's book The Double Helix, and quite another first in Anne Sayre's study, Rosalind Franklin and DNA and later in her biography The Dark Lady of DNA by Brenda Maddox. James Watson, Francis Crick, and Maurice Wilkins received a Nobel Prize for the double-helix model of DNA in 1962, four years after Franklin's death at age 37 from ovarian cancer.

Franklin excelled at science and attended one of the few girls' schools in London that taught physics and chemistry. When she was 15, she decided to become a scientist. Her father was decidedly against higher education for women and wanted Rosalind to be a social worker. Ultimately he relented, and in 1938 she enrolled at Newnham College, Cambridge, graduating in 1941. She held a graduate fellowship for a year, but quit in 1942 to work at the British Coal Utilization Research Association, where she made fundamental studies of carbon and graphite microstructures. This work was the basis of her doctorate in physical chemistry, which she earned from Cambridge University in 1945.

After Cambridge, she spent three productive years (1947-1950) in Paris at the Laboratoire Central des Services Chimiques de L'Etat, where she learned X-ray diffraction techniques. In 1951, she returned to England as a research associate in John Randall's laboratory at King's College, Cambridge.

It was in Randall's lab that she crossed paths with Maurice Wilkins. She and Wilkins led separate research groups and had separate projects, although both were concerned with DNA. When Randall gave Franklin responsibility for her DNA project, no one had worked on it for months. Wilkins was away at the time, and when he returned he misunderstood her role, behaving as though she were a technical assistant. Both scientists were actually peers. His mistake, acknowledged but never overcome, was not surprising given the climate for women at Cambridge then. Only males were allowed in the university dining rooms, and after hours Franklin's colleagues went to men-only pubs.

But Franklin persisted on the DNA project. J. D. Bernal called her X-ray photographs of DNA, "the most beautiful X-ray photographs of any substance ever taken." Between 1951 and 1953 Rosalind Franklin came very close to solving the DNA structure. She was beaten to publication by Crick and Watson in part because of the friction between Wilkins and herself. At one point, Wilkins showed Watson one of Franklin's crystallographic portraits of DNA. When he saw the picture, the solution became apparent to him, and the results went into an article in Nature almost immediately. Franklin's work did appear as a supporting article in the same issue of the journal.

A debate about the amount of credit due to Franklin continues. What is clear is that she did have a meaningful role in learning the structure of DNA and that she was a scientist of the first rank. Franklin moved to J. D. Bernal's lab at Birkbeck College, where she did very fruitful work on the tobacco mosaic virus. She also began work on the polio virus. In the summer of 1956, Rosalind Franklin became ill with cancer. She died less than two years later. [Adapted from Women in Science]


Rosalind Franklin - The Dark Lady of DNA
Russell McNeil, PhD (Copyright 2005)
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The Dark Lady of DNA - Book Review by Russell McNeil

Was Nobel laureate James D. Watson fully aware his The Double Helix, the now classic 1968 account of his involvement in the discovery of DNA, would one day explode in his face? Brenda Maddox revisits the genesis of that fateful book in the riveting epilogue of her recent biography of Rosalind Franklin, The Dark Lady of DNA. The book is a bomb shell. The central issue surrounding the life of Franklin and how history remembers Franklin's role in the discovery of DNA, was Watson's memorable but flagrantly disrespectful characterization Rosalind Franklin in The Double Helix. Franklin was of course one of the four principal actors in that discovery, along with Watson, Francis Crick, and Maurice Wilkins. The latter three received a Nobel Prize for their discovery in 1962. Rosalind Franklin died from complications of ovarian cancer in 1958. Maddox, in the newest contribution to this saga, describes Watson's characterization of Rosalind Franklin as, "the termagant who hoarded data she could not comprehend, treated men like naughty little boys and wore dresses even dowdier than those of the average English-woman." Those are fighting words. But that is the unavoidable image of Rosalind Franklin that readers of The Double Helix remember. Maddox dismisses as "pious" Watson's apologetic epilogue in The Double Helix where he limply describes Franklin as a "fine scientist," and how "as a young man, he had not appreciated the difficulties of a woman making her way in a man's world of science." For Maddox, Watson's language is no less than pitiful. In damning Franklin with such "faint praise," Watson ensured that the image he painted of Rosie the shrew, would remain forever fixed in the unconscious collective memory of scientific research. And that is exactly what has happened. This morning I happened to hear a brief CBC Radio News report where a University researcher referred to the discoverers of DNA as "Watson, Crick and Francis!" Watson's "air brushing" of Rosalind Franklin from The Double Helix, from history, and from the annals of 20th century science, has indeed been a success. Maddox may be right. Was this unconscious transformation of "Franklin" into "Francis" simply a modern day manifestation of collective scientific male guilt, expressing itself now on the public air waves as a bizarre gender transformation of Franklin into Francis?

What readers of The Double Helix might not know was that Watson was very much aware of the incendiary implications of his portrayal of Franklin. As Maddox reminds her readers, Harvard University Press had refused to publish Watson's book. In reviewing the draft of Watson's manuscript, Harvard had required the written consent of all of the figures mentioned prominently in the book. Francis Crick and Maurice Wilkins objected strongly. In addition, "[Linus] Pauling condemned the portrayals of himself, his wife, his son, Francis Crick, Sir Lawrence Bragg and Rosalind Franklin." Rosalind Franklin could not defend herself. She died at 37 at the peak of her form, ten years before Watson's work was published. But Rosalind's brother, who also read the transcript, was stunned. Watson later described his reactions, as "'rather hysterical' while dismissing an allusion Rosalind's brother's had made to 'defaming the dead.'"

When Nobel laureates speak, we listen. The Double Helix is a classic. This book, although rejected by Harvard, still has authority. Watson had condemned Franklin. And I heard the echo of that condemnation this morning on CBC Radio. But this was not the first time I had noticed this. Several years ago I experienced a similar reaction after I had recommended to two of my colleagues, that in our plan to assign The Double Helix as one of the readings for a fourth year Liberal Studies course we were teaching together then as a team, that we pair The Double Helix with a reading of Anne Sayre's 1975 book, Rosalind Franklin & DNA. Anne Sayre had been a close personal friend of Franklin and her account of Franklin's role had been well received. In fact, the late chemist Jerry Donahue (1920-1985) had reviewed Sayre's book for the Quarterly Review of Biology. And after all, I reasoned to myself, Watson had named Jerry Donahue in The Double Helix as having offered a critical suggestion to Watson at a critical stage in the emergence of the DNA model. Donahue at the time was working at Cambridge where Watson and Crick were conducting their research. Donahue's timely suggestion had indeed enabled Watson to construct a chemically accurate scale model of DNA. Donahue, like Franklin, might also have a legitimate claim for some belated DNA recognition, beyond Watson's brief mention of him in The Double Helix. Here is what Donahue said on the back cover of Sayre's book: "I must urge, if not insist, that anyone who has read, or is to read, Watson's version of these events (in The Double Helix), must also read this other version [emphasis added] in Sayre's book." That was not the only endorsement I felt at the time was needed to take this suggestion to my colleagues. In an attempt to also use a reputable authority figure I noted that Linus Pauling had described Sayre's book as, 'well written and illuminating.' Alas, this pitch fell on deaf ears. Why, went the forceful counter-argument, cloud our student discussions of a great science classic with issues in feminism by raising questions of the alleged miss-treatment of "Rosie" in The Double Helix? She was after all a minor character in the story. Besides, we would "do feminism later" when we read Simone de Beauvoir's Second Sex. I relented. Watson's authority had won.

Here is my impression of The Dark Lady of DNA. Rosalind Franklin was a important 20th century scientist whose role in the most important biological discovery of the 20th century has been occluded by distortion of facts, professional marginalization, and an appalling failure of professional ethics surrounding the role of the most important data in the DNA story. Maddox refers to Watson's "air-brushing" of Franklin. Maddox presents us with the facts. Rosalind Franklin was a remarkable scientist; she had hit the big leagues; her peer-reviewed list of publications, 37 at the time of her untimely death, gives her that status. She would have been considered an accomplished scientist irrespective of any involvement by her in the story of DNA. In a tribute to Franklin written in the Times on 19 April, 1958, J. D. Bernal, the esteemed crystallographer, communist activist, and scientific mentor to no less than three Nobel Laureates said this of Franklin: 'She was already a recognized authority in industrial physicochemistry when she chose to abandon this work in favour of the far more difficult and more exciting fields of biophysics.' Later in the article Bernal describes Franklin's work on DNA: 'By the most ingenious experimental and mathematical techniques of X-ray analysis, she was able to verify and make more precise the illuminating hypothesis of Crick and Watson on the double spiral structure of this substance. She established definitely that the main sugar phosphate chain of nucleic acid lay on an outside spiral and not on an inner one, as had been authoritatively suggested.' In Bernal's obituary in Nature, Maddox reminds us again of the importance of Franklin's example. Bernal's praise is eloquent: 'As a scientist Miss Franklin was distinguished by extreme clarity and perfection in everything she undertook. Her photographs are among the most beautiful X-ray photographs of any substance ever taken.'

The picture that emerges of Rosalind Franklin from Brenda Maddox's biography, The Dark Lady of DNA, is one of a thoroughly professional and careful scientist. Watson's examination of Franklin's famous "photograph 51" was, by Watson's own admission, the most critical element he needed along the path to DNA. That photograph came to Watson through Wilkins in an innocent enough way. It was not stolen or appropriated as some allege. The problem is this. None of those players ever told Franklin about that moment or even that they had seen her photograph. She was never openly consulted or told about the importance of her photograph in their discovery. She went to her death never knowing the full story. That is what Maddox finds thoroughly appalling. To make matters worse, Watson and Crick and Wilkins were all in frequent contact with Franklin during the five years after the discovery of DNA. None of these men had the courage to let her in on what must have felt like a dirty little secret. Only the boys knew the whole story. Franklin had been labeled by Watson in The Double Helix as being 'anti-helical.' That's the excuse he offered for not taking Franklin into his confidence around the photograph. But notes uncovered after her death, as Maddox reveals in The Dark Lady of DNA, demonstrate otherwise. Franklin was far from being "anti-helical." She was careful. She needed better evidence. Watson had justified his reluctance to engage Franklin as arising from an anti-helical bias that rested in his stubborn bias.

The justifications Watson, Crick and Wilkins have offered for ignoring and isolating Rosalind Franklin have always revolved around the implication that she had no vision. The sequence of stages in the discovery of DNA required several so-called "eureka" moments. One of those moments described in The Double Helix was the discovery that the textbook structure of the unit cell that determined the physical relationships between the four DNA bases, adenine (A), guanine (G), cytosine (C) and thymine(T), was wrong. Watson at the time was attempting to fit these bases into The Double Helix model using cardboard cut outs. An off-the-cuff suggestion by the same Jerry Donahue mentioned above, at this time a visiting chemist at Cambridge from Cal-Tech, asserted that the shape of those DNA bases ought to be the keto form and not the enol form, as the textbooks of the day asserted. Armed now with the memory of Franklin's clear photograph, this next to last step it the emergence of the final model was absolutely crucial. It was not long after Donahue's comment that the now classic paper so often referred to as, "a turning point in scientific history," appeared in Nature. The publication, 'A Structure for Deoxyribonucleic Acid', was published on 25 April, 1953. Maddox recounts a strange follow up story, a curiosity in the history of this saga that Maddox finds "inexplicable." Several months after the Nature publication, Francis Crick contacted Franklin. It was now the summer of 1953. Crick asked Franklin if, in her opinion, the unit cell was, 'truly face-centred monoclinic.' In other words, did Franklin agree with the suggestion offered by Donahue. "The point was important, [Crick] said, 'because if the unit cell is strictly C2, one must have the DNA chains in pairs, running in opposite directions.'" As Maddox reminds her readers, this scientific point was crucial for Watson and Crick. Their historic model could never hold together without the keto structure. In separate papers published that same year, Franklin had said that 'C2 is the only space group possible.' Why, Maddox wonders, had Watson or Crick failed to mention the importance of this and why had they failed to comprehend the importance of this in either of their Nature papers of 1953?

Brenda Maddox has done much in The Dark Lady of DNA to de-construct the image of Rosalind Franklin as portrayed in The Double Helix. There's nothing sugar coated about this biography. Rosalind Franklin was a complex woman. She had strong convictions. She was ambitious for her science and passionate in her research. She had many admirers. She never married but she was loved. She enjoyed trekking in the mountains of Italy and Switzerland. She moved in a circle of free thinking left wing intellectuals but kept her own politics to herself. When Linus Pauling published a paper about DNA before Watson and Crick, it contained a fatal error. Graciously, Franklin wrote to Pauling, politely explaining his mistakes. That took guts - more so in an era where women in science were expected to hold themselves in reserve.

Maddox does not disappoint readers interested in the personal details of Rosalind's Franklin's life. Franklin was conservative in her demeanor and careful in dress and appearance. She was nothing in those areas like the dowdy spinster of Watson's descriptions. Rosalind Franklin had class. Watson and Crick were far too young and far too indiscriminate to notice. She was also a good judge of scientific character. When Franklin died in 1958 she left the residue of her estate to her colleague and former student Aaron Klug. She knew that he had been struggling financially and in her final months wanted to ensure that he would be secure. Years later Aaron Klug was awarded a Nobel Prize in Chemistry. In his 1982 Nobel acceptance Klug acknowledges Franklin. "Had her life not been cut tragically short, she might well have stood in this place on an earlier occasion." As Maddox reminds her readers in The Dark Lady of DNA, in their Nobel acceptance speeches in 1962 Watson and Crick made no mention of Rosalind Franklin at all. It was only Wilkins who "uttered" Franklin's name, mentioning her as one or two people (the other being Alex Stokes), who 'made very valuable contributions to the X-ray analysis.'

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Epicurus (c 341-c 270 BCE)

Quotation

Death does not concern us, because as long as we exist, death is not here. And when it does come, we no longer exist.

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Biographical

In its popular sense, the word stands for a refined and calculating selfishness, seeking not power or fame, but the pleasures of sense, particularly of the palate, and those in company rather than solitude. An epicure is one who is extremely choice and delicate in his viands.

In the other sense, Epicureanism signifies a philosophical system, which includes a theory of conduct, of nature, and of mind.

HISTORY

Epicurus, from whom this system takes its name, was a Greek, born at Samos 341 B.C., who, in 307 B.C., founded a school at Athens, and died 270 B.C. The Stoic School, diametrically opposite to this, was founded about the same time, probably 310 B.C. Thus these two systems, having for their respective watchwords Pleasure and Duty, sprang up within the first generation after Aristotle (d. 322 B.C.), each of them holding a half-truth and by exaggeration turning it into falsehood. The Epicurean School was rather a practical discipline than a habit of speculation. The master laid down his principles dogmatically, as if they must be evident as soon as stated, to any one not foolish. His disciples were made to learn his maxims by heart; and they acquired a spirit of unity more akin to that of a political party, or of a sect, than to the mere intellectual agreement of a school of philosophers. About a century and a quarter after the death of its founder, the system was introduced into Rome, and there, as well as in its native country, it attracted in the course of time a number of adherents such as moved the astonishment of Cicero. It had the fortune to be adopted by the finest of didactic poets, Lucretius (91-51 B.C.), and was expounded by him in a poem (De rerum natura) with a beauty of expression and a fervour of eloquence worthy of a nobler theme. In the latter half of the second century, when Marcus Aurelius was founding chairs of philosophy at Athens, that emperor, himself a Stoic, recognized the Epicurean (together with his own, and the Platonic, and the Aristotelic systems) as one of the four great philosophies to be established and endowed on a footing of equality. In modern times Epicureanism has had many theoretical as well as practical adherents. In the seventeenth century, when Aristoteleanism and Scholasticism were assailed by the champions of the new sciences, Gassendi (q.v.) selected Epicurus for his master; but he seems to have been attracted chiefly by the physics, and to have aimed at reforming the moral theory so as to make it tolerable to a Christian. The numerous editions of the poem of Lucretius which the present age is producing may be taken to indicate a sympathy with the philosophy expounded in it.

EPICUREAN ETHICS

Philosophy was described by Epicurus as "the art of making life happy", and he says that "prudence is the noblest part of philosophy". His natural philosophy and epistemology seem to have been adopted for the sake of his theory of life. It is, therefore, proper that his ethics should first be explained. The purpose of life, according to Epicurus, is personal happiness; and by happiness he means not that state of well-being and perfection of which the consciousness is accompanied by pleasure, but pleasure itself. Moreover, this pleasure is sensuous, for it is such only as is attainable in this life. This pleasure is the immediate purpose of every action. "Habituate yourself", he says, to think that death is nothing to us; for all good and evil is in feeling; now death is the privation of feeling. Hence, the right knowledge that death is nothing to us makes us enjoy what there is in this life, not adding to it an indefinite duration, but eradicating the desire of immortality.His idea of the pleasurable differs from that of the Cyrenaic School which preceded him. The Cyrenaics looked to the momentary pleasures of gaiety and excitement. The pleasure of Epicurus is a state, equably diffused, "the absence of [bodily] pain and [mental] anxiety".

That which begets the pleasurable life is not [sensual indulgence] but a sober reason which searches for the grounds of choosing and rejecting, and which banishes those doctrines through which mental trouble, for the most part, arises.The wise man will accordingly desire "not the longest life, but the most pleasurable". It is for the sake of this condition of permanent pleasure, or tranquillity, that the virtues are desirable. "We cannot live pleasurably without living prudently, gracefully, and justly; and we cannot live prudently gracefully, and justly, without living pleasurably" in consequence; for "the virtues are by nature united with a pleasurable life; and a pleasurable life cannot be separated from these." The virtues, in short, are to be practiced not for their own sake, but solely as a means of pleasure, "as medicine is used for the sake of health". In accordance with this view, he says that "friendship is to be pursued by the wise man only for its utility; but he will begin, as he sows the field in order to reap". "The wise man will not take any part in public affairs"; moreover, "the wise man will not marry and have children". But "the wise man will be humane to his slaves". "He will not think all sinners to be equally bad, nor all philosophers to be equally good." That is, apparently, he will not have any very exacting standard, and will neither believe very much in human virtue, nor be very much surprised at the discovery of human frailty. In this system, "prudence is the source of all pleasure and of all virtue".

The defects of this theory of life are obvious. In the first place, as to the matter of fact, experience shows that happiness is not best attained by directly seeking it. The selfish are not more happy, but less so, than the unselfish. In the next place the theory altogether destroys virtue as virtue, and eliminates the idea and sentiment expressed by the words "ought", "duty", "right", and "wrong". Virtue, indeed tends to produce the truest and, highest pleasure; all such pleasure, so far as it depends upon ourselves, depends upon virtue. But he who practises virtue for the sake of the pleasure alone is selfish, not virtuous, and he will never enjoy the pleasure, because he has not the virtue. A similar observation may be made upon the Epicurean theory of friendship. Friendship for the sake of advantage is not true friendship in the proper sense of the word. External actions, apart from affection, cannot constitute friendship; that affection no one can feel merely because he judges it would be advantageous and pleasurable; in fact he cannot know the pleasure until he first feels the affection. If we consider the Epicurean condemnation of patriotism and of the family life, we must pronounce a still severer censure. Such a view of life is the meanest form of selfishness leading in general to vice. Epicurus, perhaps, was better than his theory; but the theory itself, if it did not originate in coldness of heart and meanness of spirit, was extremely well suited to encourage them. If sincerely embraced and consistently carried out, it undermined all that was chivalrous and heroic, and even all that was ordinarily virtuous. Fortitude and justice, as such, ceased to be objects of admiration, and temperance sank into a mere matter of calculation. Even prudence itself, dissociated from all moral quality became a mere balancing between the pleasures of the present and of the future.

THEOLOGY

Epicurus said that "it was not impiety to deny the gods of the multitude, but it was impiety to think of the gods as the multitude thought"; a sound principle, but one which he wrongly applied, since he got rid of what was true as well as of what was corrupt in the vulgar religion. Fear of the gods was an evil to be eradicated, as incompatible with tranquillity. As to their nature, the gods are immortal, but material, like every other being. He seems to have held that there was one supreme being; but this god was not the creator, scarcely the orderer, of the universe, the gods being only a part of the All. Nor is there a Providence, for an interest in human affairs would be inconsistent with perfect happiness. In short, the gods are magnified Epicurean philosophers.

NATURAL PHILOSOPHY

The physics of Epicurus are in a General sense atomic. He claimed originality for his theory, asserting that it began with his reflections upon a passage in Hesiod. As he read in school that all things came from chaos, he asked, What is chaos?--a question which his teacher could not answer. It is generally held, however, that he really learned his atomism from the Democritean philosophy, modifying it in one important respect; for he supposes that the atoms in falling through empty space collide by virtue of a self-determining power, or rather an indetermination owing to which ii is possible for them by chance to swerve a little from the vertical direction.

BIOLOGY

In this Epicurus simply followed the view of Empedocles, that, first, all sorts of living things and animals, well or ill organized, were evolved from the earth and that those survived which were suited to preserve themselves and reproduce their kind.

ANTHROPOLOGY

The anthropology of Lucretius may be supposed to have been derived, like his physics and biology, from Epicurus. According to the Lucretian theory men were originally savage; the primitive condition was one of mutual war; in this condition men were like the wild beasts in strength and cunning; civil society was formed under the pressure of the evils of anarchy. The reader recognizes here the ideas indicated by the eighteenth-century phrases "state of nature" and "social contract". The "golden age" is a dream.

LOGIC

The Epicurean logic is criterional. The test of truth practically is the pleasant and the painful belief. Theoretically, their criterion is sensation. Sensation never is deceptive; the error lies in our judgment. Dreams, the ravings of fever or lunacy, the delirium of the drunkard are true in their own way. Besides sensation the human mind has also notions, or anticipations (prolepseis), as when, seeing an object at a distance, one wonders whether it is a man or a tree. These notions are the results left by previous sensations. The notion does not appear to differ from the internal sense of a brute, such as enables a dog, for example, to welcome strangers belonging to the profession of his master, and to bark furiously at a beggar that he has never seen before. The understanding, then, does not differ essentially from the internal senses.

PSYCHOLOGY

The human soul is material and mortal, being composed of a finer kind of atoms, resembling those of air or fire, but even more subtle. It is the bodily organism that holds together the atoms composing the soul. Yet the human will is free. "Better were it to accept all the legends of the gods, than to make ourselves slaves to the fate of the natural philosophers." Fatalism, which to minds of a stoical disposition seemed a source of strength, was to those of an Epicurean temper simply a source of unpleasantness and helplessness. The freedom asserted by the Epicureans is not rational freedom in the true sense of the word. It does not consist in the power of choosing the right and the noble in preference to the pleasant. It is little better than physical contingency, and may be described as Casualism. The whole philosophy may well be described in a trenchant phrase of Macaulay as "the silliest and meanest of all systems of natural and moral philosophy". [Adapted from Catholic Encyclopedia (1909)]

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Richard Dawkins (1941-)

Quotation

The theory of evolution by cumulative natural selection is the only theory we know of that is in principle capable of explaining the existence of organized complexity.

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Stoic Meditations as Memes
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Biographical

Born in Nairobi in 1941, English biologist Richard Dawkins is currently (2002) Charles Simonyi Professor of the Public Understanding of Science at Oxford University, and is one of the most prominent biologists alive today.

Dawkins is probably best known for his "selfish gene" theory, first described in his book of the same name. As an ethologist, with a principal interest in animal behaviour and its relation to natural selection, he popularised the idea that the gene is the principal unit of selection in evolution.

Dawkins has been one of the major proponents of sociobiological theory and was the originator of the term meme which spawned the theory of memetics. His books include: The God Delusion (2008), The Selfish Gene (1976; second edition, 1989); The Extended Phenotype (1982); The Blind Watchmaker (1986); River out of Eden (1995); Climbing Mount Improbable (1996); and Unweaving the Rainbow (1998). [This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License and uses material adapted in whole or in part from the Wikipedia article on Richard Dawkins.]

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Erasmus Darwin (1731-1802)

Quotation

Organic life beneath the shoreless waves / Was born and nurs'd in ocean's pearly caves; / First forms minute, unseen by spheric glass, / Move on the mud, or pierce the watery mass; / These, as successive generations bloom, / New powers acquire and larger limbs assume; / Whence countless groups of vegetation spring, / And breathing realms of fin and feet and wing.

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Biographical

Physician, poet, philosopher, botanist, naturalist and grandfather of Charles Darwin. Erasmus formulated one of the first formal theories on evolution in Zoonomia, or, The Laws of Organic Life (1794-1796). Many of his ideas were fully developed by his grandson sixty years later. [Adapted from U. C. Berkeley]

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Charles Darwin (1809-1882)

Quotation

It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent that survives. It is the one that is the most adaptable to change.

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Lecture: Darwin as a Classical Thinker
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Biographical

Charles Robert Darwin (February 12, 1809 - April 19, 1882), British Naturalist. Charles Darwin developed the first theory of a naturalistic mechanism for evolution, that of natural selection, it explains the diversification of life through a lengthy process of change by adaptation. He was born in Shrewsbury, England, the fifth of six children of Robert and Susannah Darwin (nee Wedgwood), and the grandson of Erasmus Darwin, and of Josiah Wedgwood. After finishing school, Darwin studied medicine in Edinburgh in 1825. His dislike for dissection and the brutality of surgery at the time led him to leave the medical school in 1827. Whilst there, however, he was influenced by the Lamarckian Robert Edmund Grant. His father, concerned by his son's apparent academic failure, and fearing that he would become a "ne'er do well", enrolled him at Cambridge to read Theology, with the hopes of Charles eventually becoming a parson. While at Cambridge, he came under the intellectual influence of scientific minds such as William Whewell and John Stevens Henslow which (combined with his interest in collecting beetles, which was encouraged by his cousin, William Darwin Fox) resulted in him pursuing natural history. Darwin planned to visit Madeira with some class-mates upon graduation in 1831. These plans, however, fell through and after Darwin finished his studies, Henslow recommended him for the position of gentleman's companion to Robert Fitzroy, the captain of HMS Beagle, which was departing on a five-year expedition to chart the coastline of South America. Prior to departure, Darwin spent a few weeks with the geologist Adam Sedgwick mapping strata in Wales. It must be noted that (aside from a few lectures that he endured in Edinburgh) this was Darwin's sole exposure to formal geological study.

Darwin's work during the expedition allowed him to study both the geological properties of continents and isles and a multitude of living organisms and fossils. During his voyage, he visited the Cape Verde Archipelago, the Falkland Islands, the South American coast, the Galapagos Islands and Australia, collecting considerable quantities of specimens. After returning from the voyage in 1836, Darwin analyzed the specimens he collected, and noticed similarities between fossils and living species within the same geographic area. In particular, he noticed that every island had its own kind of tortoises and birds that were all slightly different in appearance, favored food etc., but otherwise quite similar. This observation was especially apparent among the specimens collected on the Galapagos Islands. He developed the theory that, for example, all the different turtles had originated from a single turtle species, and had adopted to life on the different islands in different ways.

Based on these thoughts, he formulated his thoughts about the changes and developments of species in his Notebook on the Transmutation of Species, which was in accordance with Lyell's Principles of Geology and Thomas Malthus' Essay on the Principle of Population, which stated that the size of a population is limited by the food resources available. In 1842, Darwin formulated a short "Pencil Sketch" of his theory and by 1844 had written a 240 page "Essay" which provides an expanded version of his early ideas on natural selection. Between 1844 and 1858, when he would prevent his theory to the Linnean Society of London, Darwin would modify his theory in a number of ways. Darwin married his cousin Emma Wedgwood in 1839. After living for a number of years in London, the couple eventually moved to Downe House, in Downe, Kent (which is now open to public visits, south of Orpington). Darwin and his wife had ten children, three of whom died early. Between 1839 and 1843, Darwin's Zoology of the Voyage of H.M.S. Beagle was published in five volumes. On July 1, 1858, Darwin's paper about The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection was read to the Linnean Society in London, on the same day as a paper from Alfred Russel Wallace, who had developed a similar theory independently.

Darwin's book On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection was published one year later, and was of sufficient interest to have the publisher's stocks completely sold to bookstores on the first day. In his later books The Variation of Animals and Plants Under Domestication (1868), The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex (1871) and The Expression of Emotions in Animals and Man (1872), Darwin expanded on many topics introduced in Origin of Species.

In spite of some criticism, the value of Darwin's work was appreciated throughout the scientific community. He became a member of the Royal Society of London in 1839 and of the French Academy of Science (l'Académie des Sciences) in 1878. Darwin died in Downe, Kent, England, on April 19, 1882 and was buried in Westminster Abbey. Darwin was given particular recognition in 2000 when his image appeared on the Bank of England ten pound note, replacing Charles Dickens. Reportedly his impressive and supposedly hard to forge beard was a contributing factor in this choice.

Before Darwin

Before the nineteenth century, the accepted theory for the extinction of species was called Catastrophism, which stated that species went extinct due to catastrophes that were often followed by the formation of new species ex nihilo (out of nothing). The extinct species can then be found as fossils. The new species were considered unchangeable. This theory was in accordance with the story of the Flood in the Bible. In the early nineteenth century, several new theories started to compete with Catastrophism. One of the most important ones was developed by Jean-Baptiste Lamarck (1744-1829). He observed that every new generation inherits the traits of its ancestors. He suggested that traits or organs become enhanced with repeated use and weakened or removed by disuse in each individual, who will pass these improvements or losses directly to their offspring. In 1830, the British geologist Sir Charles Lyell disproved the Catastrophism Theory, but held on to the theory of species staying unchanged during time. Lyell founded uniformitarianism, a theory stating that the surface of earth changed slowly through eons by constant forces.

The Structure of Darwin's Theory

Darwin's theory of evolution states that all individuals of a population are different from each other. Some of them are adapted better for their actual environment than the others and have therefore better chances to survive and procreate. That way, their genetic properties are given to the following generations, becoming dominant among the population throughout time (Fig. 2). This gradual and continuous process results in the evolution of species. The four key points of his theory were : Evolution does occur; Evolutionary change is usually gradual, requiring thousands to millions of years; The primary mechanism for evolution is natural selection; All species alive today originated from a single life form through a branching process called specialization.

The Response to Darwin's Theory

After the publication of Darwin's book, evolution as the means of natural selection was widely discussed, particularly by the religious and the scientific communities. Though Darwin was supported by some scientists (e.g., T.H. Huxley), others hesitated to accept the theory due to the unexplained ability of individuals to pass their special abilities to their offspring. The last point remained a mystery until the existence of genes was discovered. In 1874, the theologian Charles Hodge accused Darwin of denying the existence of God by defining humans to be a result of a natural process rather than a creation designed by God. Even today, many Christian and other religious fundamentalists continue to fight the Darwinian theory of evolution. Darwin's theory is now backed up by the comparison of DNA from different organisms which shows the closeness of their relationship.

Contrary to popular opinion, Darwin did not "discover" evolution as it was accepted by many since the beginning of the 1800's. Instead, he provided the first really coherent theory of how evolution occurs (via the mechanism of natural selection). Other important aspects of Darwin's overall theory were: common descent, sexual selection, gradualism, and pangenesis. It is important to remember that Darwin's version of natural selection was different from that presented by Wallace in that he held that natural selection was continuously operating, whereas Wallace argued that selection only occurred when the environment changed. [This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License and uses material adapted in whole or in part from the Wikipedia article on Charles Darwin.]


Darwin as a Classical Thinker
Russell McNeil, PhD (Copyright 2005)
[Logos Exclusive]

Archaeopteryx lithographica is regarded as one of the most important fossils ever discovered. This isn't because of any uniquely transitional nature, since many transitional forms exist, but due to the fact that Archaeopteryx is such a good example of evolution. The skeleton is essentially reptilian, with close affinities to theropod dinosaurs, with teeth, a long bony tail, abdominal ribs and three digits on each hand - characters absent in birds. However, the specimens also show certain bird characters such as a furcula (wishbone) and a retroverted pubis (characters also shared with some dinosaurs) and a opposable hallux (big toe) for perching. Along with these other avian characters, the most spectacular feature is the distinct impression of feathers around the forelimbs and tail, feathers almost exactly like those of modern birds.


Archaeopteryx lithographica
The original 150 million year old Archaeopteryx fossil was uncovered in 1860 sprawling within a split block of limestone in a Bavarian quarry in Germany. This discovery occurred a year after Darwin's publication of The Origins of Species, and only weeks after a famous Evolution versus Creation debate in Oxford where Bishop Wilberforce is alleged to have asked a defender of Evolution whether he thought he was descended from the ape on his grandmother's side or his grandfather's side. The memory of this debate was still fresh in everyone's minds, as was the fact that a major issue causing some consternation that came up in the debate related to the lack of fossil evidence for intermediate forms. The discovery of the Archaeopteryx on the heals of this debate seemed to fill an important gap, supplying to the delight of evolutionists, a fossil form intermediate between reptiles and birds. Despite rumblings from German experts at the time that this new fossil was a forgery, the then Director of the British Museum, Richard Owen, commissioned its purchase..


Artist's Drawing of Archaeopteryx
The authenticity of Archaeopteryx, or more specifically the authenticity of the feather impressions, was questioned in more recent times in 1985 by a group which included, Fred Hoyle (an astronomer), N. Wickramasinghe (mathematician), L. Spetner (physicist), and Dr. R. Watkins (medical doctor). The issue was explored in a series of four articles published in the British Journal of Photography (Hoyle et al. 1985; Watkins et al. 1985a, 1985b, 1985c).

Fred Hoyle is one of the world's foremost astronomers--the parent of the quasar--he predicted them before they were seen. Chandra Wickramasinghe is one of Britain's foremost astronomers and an international authority on interstellar material.

The claims made by Hoyle and Wickramasinghe were opposed by the British Museum of Natural History and refutations of the original claims were published in the literature. As far as I am aware, Hoyle and Wickramasinghe never reversed or withdrew their claim after these refutations.

What's the point?

Well, more recently (1990) Ian Taylor (1990), a creationist, this time, has revived the old forgery claim citing new evidence based mainly on "unexplained" differences between early engravings, historical photographs, and the modern appearance. However, the evidence presented by Taylor has been soundly discredited.

Taylor's research was nevertheless published in the Journal of the Institute of Creation Research,. This is an the official organ of an organization dedicated to fostering what they refer to as creation science. But mainstream science generally regards creation science as an anti-intellectual activity - primarily because the assertions or hypotheses of creation science are not falsifiable - and falsifiability is the generally accepted criterion for any scientific theory. As a consequence Creation science by definition is considered pseudo-science and thus anti-intellectual.

Now, I am not making any particular claim about Archaeopteryx. I don't know if the thing is a fake or not. The scientist in me hopes it is genuine--good reptilian birds are hard to find. But the journalist in me--I covered this as a science story when it came out in 1985-- was amused then by a respectible British scientific establishment getting egg in its face. My point is that legitimate criticisms of evolutionary theory (Taylor's is not legitimate--Hoyle's was) are in danger of being tarred by the brush of this anti-intellectual charge. Therefore, anyone offering a critique of evolution must be prepared to take some heat - if only because any opposition to any of the theoretical underpinnings of evolutionary theory is suspect. Therefore any radical thinking that hits too close to the core of Evolution theory is always in danger of being dismissed as anti-intellectual. The safe course is to stay out of the kitchen. The very presence of creationist pseudoscience effectively dampens any novel thinking about evolution.

My faith in the fact of evolution does not hang on the authenticity of a bird in a British Museum. In human terms I've never in the least felt diminished by the connectivity and unity of Nature contained in the Idea of Evolution. That I am linked to, part of, connected with, and related to everything in the biosphere makes me feel allied to nature - not alienated! For me it is the old idea of design--the notion that we are somehow unique and special--that makes me feel alienated from nature.

Evolution as an idea is a wonderful gift -- Darwin's logic has affected an important intellectual transformation. Darwin may indeed have moved us away from design and moved us into the realm of chance--and that seems scary to some people--but he in a very real sense Darwin also moved us together--by drawing a tether through all we call life. And for many people that is far more uplifting and enervating than the idea of design--at least the old classic idea of design, including the biblical notion of special creation. That takes takes away, but hands us back something better: a special unity with nature.

In showing us how we are one, Darwin in a sense may have saved us all from extinction--a consequence of the responsibility Darwin's logic introduces into the intellectual life.

I've said two things so far. First: taking issue with Darwin is intellectually risky. Two: Darwin's contribution is intellectually magnificent.

That said I want to take issue with Darwin, specifically with the concept of natural selection. As I understand it, the critical steps around the mechanism of Natural Selection as presented by Darwin in Origen of Species are listed below:

1. All species follow from the struggle for life.

2. Natural Selection [is] the preservation of individual differences and variations, and the destruction of those that are injurious.

3. We see nothing of these slow changes in progress, until the hand of time has marked the lapse of ages, and then so imperfect is our view of long-past geological ages, that we see only that the forms of life are now different from what they formerly were.

4. Natural Selection will generally act very slowly, only on a few individuals of the same region.

5. Varieties are species in the process of formation...incipient species

6. Natural Selection acts exclusively by the preservation and accumulation of variations.

7. The species of large genera present a strong analogy with varieties.

Here is where my question arises. What is this analogy above?

What did Darwin have in mind when he talked about varieties? Did he think about varieties as we might, or was his thinking formed by a conception of variation determined by a different mindset?

For example, did he imagine that the range of possible varieties as large (yet finite) or essentially unlimited (i.e. infinite)?

This is a useful question. Another way of asking the question is this: how many unique potential reproductive outcomes is possible from the sexual pairing of two individuals?

I suspect Darwin would affirm that those possibilities were unlimited.

This means that the Darwinian framework was guided by a non-discreet and effectively analog thought pattern.

So what? What difference does it really make if the number of outcomes from a sexual pairing is finite (because of genetics) or infinite (because the range of variations is a smoothly changing blend of possibilities contributed from both parents.) In the analog case (Darwin's mindset) we would see a smoothly changing normal distribution for any characteristic or trait. In the non-analog case the distribution would still be normal, but the distribution curve would be made by joining the points from a histogram of a large but limited number of possibilities.

An analogy here might be the range of discreet colors available on a digital computer (64,000 or more - but finite) vs. the infinite number of colours produced by mixing of tinted paints.

Now, speciation is really no problem in the Darwinian process and analog mindset: It is simply a matter of time. Competition, environment, struggle and so on push the envelope in any direction and towards whatever configuration is profitable for survival.

But speciation may be more of a problem for the digital scheme because there are prohibitions built into this model. Some variations are prohibited. The envelope is pushable but there are limits as to how far the envelope can be pushed because by definition the possibilities are limited.

What does this mean? It means that to account for speciation in the discreet scheme we need to invoke a mechanism, a process, which allows us to break the rules that hold a discreetly determined model so rigidly in place. What is prohibited must be somehow no longer prohibited.

Well, rules are broken in the real world--things like mutations allow for the variations that a digital scheme would disallow. Darwin himself alludes to other processes, processes other than Natural Selection that might assist Natural Selection--although Natural Selection might be the main process.

What am I getting at? Darwin uses analog thinking to explain a process is inherently quantized or discreet.

Well, rules are broken in the real world--things like mutations allow for the variations that a digital scheme would disallow. Darwin himself alludes to other processes, processes other than Natural Selection that might assist Natural Selection--although Natural Selection might be the main process.

What am I getting at? Darwin uses analog thinking to explain a process is inherently quantized or discreet.

What difference would this make?

I don't know that we really know the full implications of this. In the world of physics there are significantly different world views associated with the classical and quantum world picture. Classical (analog) theories do marvelously well, but fall to pieces when they are used to describe very small things and very big things. Newton's achievements are not diminished by quantum theory--quantum theory explains things Newton's theory could not touch--mainly because it was oblivious to the nature of the small.

Darwin too would be oblivious to the small because he was unaware of its nature.

Darwin's ideas as they come to us here are necessarily limited by the state of knowledge in 1859.

I could say much the same thing of Newton. No one faults Newton today for not having discovered the true nature of physical mechanics two hundred years before Darwin.

I will argue that Darwin -- confined as he was by an essentially classical mind set -- is in part open only to only those possibilities that a classical mind set might allow. The great fallacy of classical models is their failure to accurately describe nature in the small and nature in the large. All early classical thinkers attempted to do that by extrapolating from what is well described to what is not. I see this as similar to what Darwin is attempting to do with speciation. He tries to extrapolate from the observables of macroevolution to the details of microevolution.

What this opens up in my mind is a line of Enquiry directed towards a deeper understanding of how nature works. We do this by taking a second look as Darwin's exquisite reasoning with new questions: questions which -- if Darwin had asked them -- might have augmented, modified, or radically opened up new channels or ways in which speciations might occur.

One possibility might be to explore the idea of life cycle. Individuals are born. They grow old. They die. That phenomenon is independent of natural selection. Some process is at work during the life cycle -- a biological clock -- that ticks on independently of individual action. That process seems to be dictated by biology and not circumstance. There is plenty of data about to support the conclusion that every biological entity on earth is subject to the process. If this biological timing process is so ubiquitous in the individual, is it irrational to suppose that the process may not manifest -- in an analogous fashion (to borrow from Darwin) -- at the level of the species -- as an independent and inexorable cofactor? Species emerge, they mature, they go into decline, they die. Natural selection might intervene to end this inexorable process independently but perhaps a species life cycle (if there is one) is nonetheless unstoppable?

I see advantages and disadvantages in offering an idea like this. The advantage is that if we take the analogy seriously -- then during the life cycle of a species there would be little change seen during the life cycle of a species. There might be lots of variation due to Natural Selection, but no great structural change in the species as a whole (with the possible exception of a decline in species fecundity as is the case in the individual fecundity with increasing age). If the biological life cycle for a species was 30 million years then the fossil record might show little major change over that sort of time frame. Another advantage is that a mechanism like this could account for the so-called poverty of intermediates Darwin is concerned about.

Perhaps we could modify the analogy by invoking the (caterpillar to butterfly) metamorphosis analogy. Species do not die at the end of their life cycle, they transform into other organisms. Is some sort of mild metamorphosis at work at the level of the species?

I think that Darwin could have drawn on other possibilities as well. One possibility he might explore had he been aware of genetics is the notion of threshold response. The idea of critical threshold is mirrored also in nature in other ways: critical mass, black holes, escape velocity, tree lines on mountain sides. etc.

I've picked 1) life cycle, 2) metamorphosis, and 3) threshold as analogy alternatives available essentially only to a mindset schooled in the discreet and limited nature of the biological variation of traits. These and perhaps a much broader range of possibilities would not be available to a classically formed modality of thought - and Darwin's thinking was so formed. Darwin did not and could not explore possibilities still hidden from the human mind.

My suspicion is that in exploring these possibilities now, we may be able to understand more fully what Darwin was attempting to do and hoping to explain--including such things as the paucity of intermediate species in the fossil record.

Not to challenge Darwin does great disservice to the Enquiry. I'd say the same of Newton.

Unfortunately in the intellectual climate surrounding the discussion of Darwin today -- challenging Darwin is interpreted as support for Creationism--an anti-intellectual thesis. It's a poor environment in which to push the envelope. Better to concentrate on other problems. I don't know if that's healthy with the golden age of biotechnology on the threshold of radically altering our world.

Books from Alibris: Charles Darwin