I also kept my adoring Facebook public informed of this. When I included a link to the aforementioned story, someone commented, asking 'Are you absolutely sure about what Darwin actually did in the process of deriving his theory? Just curious.'
I am not exactly sure how to respond to this. I'm sure that Darwin studied a bit more than snow peas and Galapos animals, but I don't want to overextend myself. Any ideas?
* Darwin carried out various experiments (though not on snow peas, that was Mendel!): for example, as his theory was originally intended to explain facts in biogeography, he was interested in the transport of seeds, and performed a large number of experiments to see how long various seeds could remain fertile and buoyant in salt water.
* He read voraciously. This is from the famous "like confessing a murder" letter to Hooker, fifteen years before the publication of the
Origin of Species:
I have been now ever since my return engaged in a very presumptuous work & which I know no one individual who wd not say a very foolish one. I was so struck with distribution of Galapagos organisms &c &c & with the character of the American fossil mammifers, &c &c that I determined to collect blindly every sort of fact, which cd bear any way on what are species. I have read heaps of agricultural & horticultural books, & have never ceased collecting facts At last gleams of light have come, & I am almost convinced (quite contrary to opinion I started with) that species are not (it is like confessing a murder) immutable. Heaven forfend me from Lamarck nonsense of a tendency to progression adaptations from the slow willing of animals &c,but the conclusions I am led to are not widely different from histhough the means of change are wholly so I think I have found out (here’s presumption!) the simple way by which species become exquisitely adapted to various ends.
* He was also able to pursue more directed lines of curiosity. Remember that he was already considered an eminent naturalist long before the publication of the
Origin. Consequently, he could and did write to all the other eminent naturalists asking for this or that piece of information having a bearing on his developing ideas. His voluminous correspondence is
full of this stuff.
For example (since I'm feeling lazy today) in the same letter to Hooker he asks:
Would you kindly observe one little fact for me, whether any species of plant, peculiar to any isld, as Galapagos, St. Helena or New Zealand, where there are no large quadrupeds, have hooked seeds,such hooks as if observed here would be thought with justness to be adapted to catch into wool of animals.
With the benefit of hindsight we can see why he wanted to know this. Hooker would have been baffled.
I hope this helps.
19-1-14-9-20-25
Sanity?
Edited by Dr Adequate, : No reason given.
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