The Road to the Theory of Evolution

As it became evident that mass extinction events had happened in the past, Christianity scrambled to explain them. Yes, they were cataclysmic events, but they were “directional and purposeful” went the argument, writes David Quammen in his wonderful book The Tangled Tree.

 

In the 1800’s, a geologist, Charles Lyell, published a book that said the processes and events that shaped the earth were erosion, deposition, and volcanic eruptions. And he added that those forces also led to extinctions. Edward Hitchcock was aghast at this view of a planet that could “exclude a Deity from its… government”. Lyell was a believer in God, not an infidel, but the risk Hitchcock saw was that the theory might drive others into godless ideas…

 

He was right. Well, at least in the case of one particular reader. His name was Charles Darwin and he combined three points to form his famous theory:

•        Offspring resemble their parents - inheritance
•       But offspring also differ slightly from their parents - variation
•       Population growth always tends to “outrun the available means of subsistence” - overpopulation

 

After some time, Darwin realized how the three points fit into each other:

“You’ll get differential survival. Based on what? Based on which variations are most advantageous. And those variations will tend to get inherited.”

He decided to call the entire process as “natural selection”. And then Darwin just sat on the idea. For twenty years.

 

Eventually, his hand was forced because Alfred Wallace stumbled onto the same idea. Independently. Wallace was a poor man’s son, not well educated or well connected. Who happened to be a pen pal of Darwin. Wallace sent Darwin a draft of his idea, seeking help to get it published:

“(The idea) hit Darwin like a galloping ox. He felt crushed, scooped, ruined – but also honour-bound to grant Wallace’s request.”

Darwin sent the packet to Lyell, the geologist from above, for publishing, also “communicating yelps of his own anguish along with it”. Lyell took both the paper and the hint. He went on to propose a “posture of sensible fairness rather than self-abnegating honour”, and brokered a compromise of shared credit.

 

When the idea was first presented formally, it barely made an impression:

“The night was hot, the language was obscure, the logic was elliptical, and the big meaning didn’t jump forth.”

A year later, Darwin published it as his famous book, On the Origins of Species. It was presented as one long argument, with endless data, in daily language and anyone could understand it. The rest, as they say, is history.