Darwin’s notes
By the end of this month, most of the notes that Charles Darwin used to write “On the Origin of the Species” will be available in digital form.
A team of software engineers and hackers began putting together 25,540 images of Darwin’s torn-up notes last November, in the shadow cast by a replica of a 122-foot-long dinosaur’s tail in a museum in Manhattan. Thanks to their efforts—and those of another team that transcribed Darwin’s scrawled notes 10 years ago—anyone interested can read how the great naturalist wrestled with one of life’s biggest questions: how did life begin?
“With the notes newly assembled digitally, Darwin’s work can now move into the 21st century,” Constance Gustke wrote last week in The New York Times (“How Darwin Evolved: 25,540 Paper Fragments Tell the Story”). Some 16,300 pages may already be viewed on the Darwin Manuscripts Project page of the American Museum of Natural History website (www.amnh.org). These will give researchers a better chance of understanding “fully the long arc of Darwin’s research and the gradual maturation of his thinking.”
We don’t have to be science enthusiasts to appreciate how valuable Darwin’s notes will be. Some 158 years after his most famous work saw print, anyone with access to an internet connection can see some of the groundwork that led to it, false starts and futile questions included. The scribbles include notes from his many experiments; the questions he wanted to raise while attending scientific lectures; and inspirations behind his many projects. In one such note, Darwin reminds himself to sow apricot seeds on a certain material; what, exactly, isn’t clear. “See what comes up,” he scrawled.
That willingness to question the received wisdom, when most of the leading thinkers around him favored supernatural explanations, was part of what set Darwin apart as a first-rate mind. Another was his willingness to present all the information that had led him to form his theories. The first few paragraphs of “Origin” includes this promise: “No one can feel more sensible than I do of the necessity of hereafter publishing in detail all the facts, with references, on which my conclusions have been grounded; and I hope in a future work to do this.”
These days, we take for granted the ease with which we can spread ideas or find other people’s thoughts that may sustain or contradict our own. Not all of these ideas yield gold. Most are reports of what one saw or ate or wore. Some fan of Darwin’s maintains a parody account on Twitter, through which some 22,200 followers are fed snippets of the great naturalist’s account of his voyage on The Beagle. “We have crossed the Equator,” @cdarwin has tweeted. “I have undergone the disagreeable operation of being shaved.”
The actual Darwin, however, was in no rush to let some of his ideas out into the world. It was truth, not trivia, he was after. He was 50 when “Origin” saw print, and he had already spent the better part of two decades methodically refining his core ideas: first, that living organisms change over time; second, that these changes take place so gradually; third, that all living organisms have branched out from one origin; and fourth, that organisms that change to adapt to their altered environments are the ones most likely to survive.
Darwin’s ideas have survived, though not without opposition. As recently as 2005, an American school board fought to have “intelligent design” taught alongside Darwin’s theory of evolution. They lost. Judge John Jones III ruled (in Kitzmiller vs. Dover Area School District): “While supernatural explanations may be important and have merit, they are not part of science.” To qualify as science, an explanation must be “based upon what we can observe, test, replicate, and verify.”
May we draw from Darwin’s notes a reminder to keep challenging ourselves and conventional wisdom, to keep asking the necessary questions. (@isoldeamante)