Touring with Mr. Darwin

I've been meaning to blog this for a while, but have been too busy. I went to see the exhibition on Darwin at the National Museum of Australia, here in Canberra. It's good. It's very good!

The exhibits cover the world before Darwin, the young Darwin, the Beagle trip, the development of the theory, the theory and aftermath, and evolution today.

It's not large exhibition, but it does cram a fair amount in. The displays include writings, specimens, a mock up of Darwin's study, and AV displays - including three short films featuring evolutionary scientists such as Francisco Ayala, Francis Collins, Niles Eldredge, and Kenneth Miller. They also feature Genie Scott from the NCSE (join the NCSE today).

By far the most impressive pieces (and worth the price of admission on their own), are the writings of Darwin - notebook entries, manuscript pages and letters. Not copies, the real thing, pages, hand-written by Darwin himself. And not only from Darwin, there were letters from Hooker, FitzRoy, Wallace, and one from Huxley - that features the famous lines,

As for your doctrines I am prepared to go to the Stake if requisite... I trust you will not allow yourself to be in any way disgusted or annoyed by the considerable abuse & misrepresentation which unless I greatly mistake is in store for you... And as to the curs which will bark and yelp - you must recollect that some of your friends at any rate are endowed with an amount of combativeness which (though you have often & justly rebuked it) may stand you in good stead - I am sharpening up my claws and beak in readiness.

It's sad that, after 150 years, the curs still bark and yelp, but it's good to see that Darwin still has friends endowed with an amount of combativeness.

There were also family letters by Darwin, Emma Darwin, and Darwin's father.

The imagery and linkage they provoked was so palpable, it was almost like being in the room when they were written. I got positively goose-bumpy.

The highlight for me though, was the actual notebook, open to the page with the famous I think evolutionary tree (right). The actual notebook!

Wow! Like. Wow!

It's a good job it was in a plastic display case, because I think I was drooling à la Homer Simpson! To be so close to an image right out of the pages (literally) of science history!

The notebooks were amazingly small, no more that around 15 cms by 7 cms.

Interesting fact: Darwin wrote over 300 notebook pages on animals and plants, but over 1300 on geology.

One of the largest displays was a reconstruction of Darwin's study in Down House. This was very well done, and you almost expected Darwin to walk into the room at any moment! Quite poignant, was a shawl draped over the chair in the corner of the study. Late in life many images of Darwin have him wearing such a shawl.

This exhibit also had a brief description of Darwin's daily schedule, including his early morning walks around the Sandwalk - the walk behind Down House that Darwin used almost every day.

There was also a video of the Sandwalk, composed of still photos taken at 5 metre intervals all the way around the Sandwalk. So I took a stroll. I didn't see Larry Moran there though!

Interesting fact: only some 80 pages of the Origin manuscript survive. Darwin gave many of the manuscript pages to the children so that they could use the blank side to draw on!

The section on evolution today also carried the theme of controversy from when the Origin was released to the present. There was a short video describing the difference in use of the term 'theory' in science compared with everyday use. Genie Scott was front and centre again, along with a number of other scientists.

I noticed that, with the exception of Genie and Francisco Ayala (who could be dragged through a hedge backwards and still look elegant), there was a certain amount lacking in the dress sense department. Richard Fortey did look he'd just been pulled through a hedge backwards, and Niles Eldredge looked like he'd borrowed somebody else's suit! However, that really didn't matter, because science places more importance in substance than style, whereas ID creationism places style over substance - because they have no substance.

There was some coverage of ID creationism in the section on evolution today. It included an actual disclaimer from Cobb County Georgia,

This textbook contains material on evolution. Evolution is a theory, not a fact, regarding the origin of living things. This material should be approached with an open mind, studied carefully and critically considered.

I have to say it was much more disturbing in the flesh. Of course I've been aware of such disclaimers, and the litany of failures they have had in court, but to see one up close made it somehow more real, and not just something that was happening a long way away (even more reason to join the NCSE today).

All up, an excellent way to spend a couple of hours, and highly recommended.

Darwin is at the National Museum of Australia until the 29th of March.

Darwin and (Lake) Wallace

For Darwin Day, I wrote about Darwin's visit to Australia, and in particular his stay at Wallerawang homestead on his way from the Blue Mountains to Bathurst in January 1836.

It was at his stay at Wallerawang that he saw his first live - or at least recently dead (the homestead owner shot one for him) platypus. Which, he remarked, was very different from the dried specimens available in Britain.

It was here, on a river bank, that he noted the local Lion-Ant, and made some comments in his diary that some have equated with the first evidence of his thinking on the theory of evolution.

At the end of that post, I mentioned that the spot where he probably encountered the Lion-Ant, and the homestead, has subsequently been drowned to make Lake Wallace.

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I know, I know. There has to be some connection, right?

Sadly, no.

It took me some time to find out the details, but the lake was formed to provide cooling water for the local power station, and was named after the manager of a local colliery, not Alfred Wallace.

However, the application to dam the Cox River there, and flood the homestead, was the second such application. The first application, made in 1948 was for the lake to be called Lake Darwin. This was superseded by a second application, with the name change, which was granted, and the dam was built in the late 1970s.

Given the 200th anniversary of Darwin's birth and 150th of the publication of 'Origin' maybe there's a case to be made to consider renaming the lake.

Darwin 200 - Australia, 19 January 1836

Darwin visited Australia in January 1836 and stopped for several days in Sydney. During this time he made a trip inland as far as Bathurst. On his way through the inland from the Blue Mountains to Bathurst, Darwin spent a day and a night at a property called Wallerawang. There he wrote what is probably the most discussed of his diary entries recorded in Australia.

Earlier in the evening, I had been lying on a sunny bank and was reflecting on the strange character of the animals of this country as compared to the rest of the World. A Disbeliever in everything beyond his own reason, might exclaim, “surely two distinct Creators must have been [at] work; their object however, has been the same & certainly in each case the end is compete”.-
Whilst thus thinking, I observed the conical pitfall of a Lion-Ant:- a fly fell in & immediately disappeared; then came a large but unwary Ant; His struggles to escape being very violent, the little jets of sand described by Kirby (Vol I P 425) were promptly directed against him.- his fate however was better than that of the poor fly’s:- without a doubt this predacious Larva belongs to the same genus, but to a different species from the European one – Now what would the Disbeliever say to this? Would any two workmen ever hit on so beautiful, so simple & yet so artificial a contrivance? I cannot think so. – The one hand has worked over the whole world. –A Geologist perhaps would suggest, that the periods of Creation have been distinct & remote, the one from the other; That the creator rested in his labor.

Some have claimed that this is the first evidence of Darwin’s doubts about a creation, and the first inklings of his thoughts on evolution – his doubts (the Disbeliever/the Geologist), deep time (the Geologist), and convergence (Lion-Ants).

Much as I would like to claim that Australia was where it all started to come together for Darwin, I’m not convinced. It’s all a bit vague. While Darwin certainly took copious geological notes, I don’t think that “the Geologist” was code for himself, and, sorry Australia, I don’t think that this was the ‘eureka‘ moment.

But then I don’t think there was a ‘eureka moment’. I think the theory was painstakingly crafted from years of observation, collecting, study, hypothesising, testing and writing. It was more a series of mini ‘eurekas’ as the ideas flowed, the evidence came and the testing proceeded.

The theory of evolution is truly a global theory. The evidence is all around us, and Darwin gathered information from around the globe to build the theory. From North Wales, from Patagonia, from Tierra del Fuego, from Chile, from the Galapagos Islands, from Australia, from Keeling Island. From the minds of philosophers, economists, geologists, botanists, zoologists.

As global theory, there is no one point, no one place, that can lay claim to it.

It belongs to everyone.

Having said that though, just where was he when he had these thoughts?

Well, we know he was as the Wallerawang homestead and on a sunny bank. In other notes Darwin mentions the Cox River (Coxes River to be exact). The Wallerawang homestead was on the Cox River, and since he was alone, it's fair to assume that he wouldn't have gone far, so it was probably the Cox River. He mentions that "earlier in the evening I had been lying on a sunny bank". In the evening, the sun would be in the west, which means that he was probably on the east bank.

So putting all this together, Darwin was probably on the east bank of the Cox river, close to the Warrerawang homestead.

Exactly where? well, further south of the homestead, the Cox river enters a region of shallow, but steep sided gorges.

Unfortunately, the Warrerawang homestead was flooded in 1957 to produce Lake Wallace, so in all probability, Darwin's sunny bank is now below Lake Wallace just to the east of present day Warrerawang.


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Happy Birthday Charlie.

Dawkins talks Darwin

Larry Moran at Sandwalk has a link to several short videos by Richard Dawkins on Darwin and evolution.

I don't agree with Dawkin's stance on natural selection, but as a science communicator there are few better.