November 24: Darwin Does Crackers

The Crackers. A dated reference, I know, but it still makes me smile.

Today Darwin shows the difficulty of talking about a subject — in this case genetics — before the jargon for that subject has been fully invented. Generally, of course, jargon is odious, but here, swimming through this prose, I kind of feel the lack of it:

Many laws regulate variation, some few of which can be dimly seen, and will hereafter be briefly discussed. I will here only allude to what may be called correlated variation. Important changes in the embryo or larva will probably entail changes in the mature animal. In monstrosities, the correlations between quite distinct parts are very curious; and many instances are given in Isidore Geoffroy St-Hilaire’s great work on this subject.

Even the use of the term “monstrosities” and the reference to the awesomely-named “Isidore Geoffroy St-Hilaire” fails to cheer. Although there is, later, farmers in Virginia are referred to as “crackers”. I didn’t know Darwin used the term “cracker” like this. No wonder they hated him in Tennessee.

Since I am not qualified to talk about genetics — or even to read about it, apparently — I will only note today how carefully Darwin, here and in the other readings from Origin of Species, builds his case. His detractors have always run around with the Drudge siren on their heads talking about how humans is descended from apples and stuff; but Darwin deliberately dulls it down. He spends a lot of time, here and elsewhere, talking about how gardeners and breeders of domesticated animals go about their business — it’s a “evolution is going on all around you!” argument, but without the childlike wonder that’s always so annoying. And every few paragraphs Darwin kinda casually drops in another reference to some other scientist’s study, in order to sensibly protect himself from appearing like a crackpot. You got a problem with Darwin? Then you also have a problem with Isidore Geoffroy St.-Hilaire. And that’s not a name you mess with, my friends.

September 5: Making you feel small

I guess it's always Darwin time, what with a creationist-friendly national candidate and mentions in The Onion and all.

That Darwin would be enjoyable to read is one of the things I've learned on this journey. Today, talking about extinction, he reminds me of a guy whose grill won't light, so he tests various theories -- is the propane connection? But then why would be hearing that propane hiss? Maybe there's a tube blockage? Are we sure we see a spark from the lighter? We have to think of all the causes that might be contributing to this situation:

With respect to the apparently sudden extermination of whole families or orders, as of trilobites at the close of the palæozoic period and of ammonites at the close of the secondary period, we must remember what has been already said on the probable wide intervals of time between our consecutive formations; and in these intervals there may have been much slow extermination. Moreover, when, by sudden immigration or by unusually rapid development, many species of a new group have taken possession of an area, many of the older species will have been exterminated in a correspondingly rapid manner...

Then there's this passage:

We need not marvel at extinction; if we must marvel, let it be at our own presumption in imagining for a moment that we understand the many complex contingencies on which the existence of each species depends.

While this is an appealing attitude to me -- marveling at presumption is an excellent stance for a comedy writer -- I begin to see why a certain type of religious person might hate Darwin. If you have a personal relationship with God, you're Mr. or Ms. Big -- you can get God on the phone. Then there's Darwin, who says we don't know a lot and is unsurprised at extinction -- including, presumably, our own. It isn't literally contradictory -- you can still believe that we are just like the other animals on this tiny wet dot floating through a vast universe and that you can get God on the phone -- but you start to see that God might be a little distracted when he takes your call.

July 1: Dirt on Darwin

Show Darwin's songwriting partner some love, won't you, car bumpers?

Breaking: Darwin was not the first to study evolution! I'm surprised the Conservapedia article about him doesn't sling this mud. And you know how he covered it up? By putting it in the introduction to his book.

There's a lot of Darwin in the Daily Reading Guide, and in the Harvard Classics as well, and I can only think that they were excited to have some cutting-edge, yet equation-free, science in the mix. Also, the liberal, pro-knowledge types enjoyed pretty much total control over the media in 1908, as there were not even radio preachers yet to make them cower and cringe and say "Yes, but..."

As to this selection, Darwin's becoming modesty permeates it, as he gives an exhaustive catalog of others who've had similar ideas. Part of it's CYA, I imagine -- so that he's not out there alone -- but the general tone is one of "I'm just another worker out here in the fields." There's not much else to say about it except to list some of the excellent 19th-century sounding titles of works Darwin refers to:

‘An Account of a White Female, part of whose skin resembles that of a Negro’
‘Horticultural Transactions,’
"Professor Grant's well-known paper... on the Spongilla"
‘Naval Timber and Arboriculture’
‘New Flora of North America’
‘Vestiges of Creation’
‘Nature of Limbs’ (my favorite, I think)
‘Essays on the Unity of Worlds’

I think at least one of these will wind up being a future album title for The Decemberists.

Apr 24: Charles Darwin, excitable boy

What I hadn't realized before today is that there are two different Darwin books in the Harvard Classics -- "Voyage of the Beagle," which the previous Darwin readings had come from, and the big one, "Origin of Species," which is the source of today's reading. Imagine -- those old folks in 1909 doubled down on the greatness, the Classic status, of Darwin. If Harvard were starting this series over again -- of course, there's no need to, you can probably pick up volumes at two-thirds of all yard sales -- I question whether they'd have the guts to be so pro-Darwin today. Gotta move units, etc. It reinforces my basically lazy idea that Culture used to be a more top-down enterprise back in the day; people were expecting to be dictated to by a bunch of Ivy League professors -- that's what they were buying. Today the Ivy League guys have to prove they can bowl.

Anyway this excerpt -- which is from the "Struggle for Existence" chapter -- is more exciting than the Voyage of the Beagle ones, but not in a way I can point to specifically. It's more that Darwin seems so excited about his theory, he sees it everywhere, and he wants to show it to you. The theory, itself, can almost be summarized by its section headings: Geometrical Ratio of Increase, Nature of the Checks to Increase, Complex Relation of All Plants and Animals to Each Other in the Struggle for Existence, Struggle for Life Most Severe between Individuals and Varieties of the Same Species. (Actually, they read like New York Times subheads used to.) But Darwin wants to show you the pains he's taken:

Seedlings, also, are destroyed in vast numbers by various enemies; for instance, on a piece of ground three feet long and two wide, dug and cleared, and where there could be no choking from other plants, I marked all the seedlings of our native weeds as they came up, and out of 357 no less than 295 were destroyed, chiefly by slugs and insects.

Darwin, or someone who works for him, dug a six-square-feet bed just to see the weeds come up. I like the idea that it was someone who works for him, just because I can envision the following dialogue:

Darwin: See here, Murgatroyd, I want you to dig up a piece of ground three feet long and two wide.
Murgatroyd: That's a lovely bit of fluff, innit? And what should I to plant there, guv'nor?
Darwin: Nothing, by Jove. I just want to observe the bloody weeds.
Murgatroyd: 'Allo, 'Allo!

(One of my best qualities as a writer is my great ear for the way people actually speak.)

The "Beagle" excerpts are pretty mellow. But in this excerpt, he's all excited:

...what war between insect and insect—between insects, snails, and other animals with birds and beasts of prey—all striving to increase, all feeding on each other, or on the trees, their seeds and seedlings, or on the other plants which first clothed the ground and thus checked the growth of the trees!

Its opponents find evolution depressing, but Darwin finds it literally marvel-ous. It's hard to come away from this excerpt without finding the opponents of this theory a little tight-assed and afraid to dig up their lawns to see what happens.

Feb 16: Little Ant Slaves

Darwin, finally, today; I was wondering when we'd crack open "Origin of Species." And, perhaps to soften the reactionary critics of Darwin, the editors have chosen a passage about ants who have slaves -- see, natural selection may contradict Genesis, but it least it allows you to rationalize poor working conditions!

I'm not quite sure how to summarize this. First, the goofy stuff -- one of the ant species discussed has the scientific name F. (for "Formica" -- I bet naming firms hire science majors as consultants all the time) flava. "Flava!"

The other thing that leaps out is that, in this four-page passage, Darwin waits until the last paragraph to note its effect on his theory:

By what steps the instinct of F. sanguinea [one of the slave-making species] originated I will not pretend to conjecture. But as ants which are not slave-makers will, as I have seen, carry off the pupæ of other species, if scattered near their nests, it is possible that such pupæ originally stored as food might become developed; and the foreign ants thus unintentionally reared would then follow their proper instincts, and do what work they could. If their presence proved useful to the species which had seized them—if it were more advantageous to this species to capture workers than to procreate them—the habit of collecting pupæ, originally for food, might by natural selection be strengthened and rendered permanent for the very different purpose of raising slaves.

But why the three or four pages of observation beforehand -- more than seems necessary? Because Darwin thinks it's cool, that's why:

During the months of June and July, on three successive years, I watched for many hours several nests in Surrey and Sussex...One day I fortunately witnessed a migration of F. sanguinea from one nest to another, and it was a most interesting spectacle to behold the masters carefully carrying their slaves in their jaws instead of being carried by them, as in the case of F. rufescens.

Another day my attention was struck by about a score of the slave-makers haunting the same spot, and evidently not in search of food; they approached and were vigorously repulsed by an independent community of the slave-species (F. fusca); sometimes as many as three of these ants clinging to the legs of the slavemaking F. sanguinea. The latter ruthlessly killed their small opponents, and carried their dead bodies as food to their nest, twenty-nine yards distant; but they were prevented from getting any pupæ to rear as slaves. I then dug up a small parcel of the pupæ of F. fusca from another nest, and put them down on a bare spot near the place of combat; they were eagerly seized and carried off by the tyrants, who perhaps fancied that, after all, they had been victorious in their late combat.

(I guess you have to be reared as a slave, otherwise it doesn't take.) I like that idea, Darwin, in his long beard, just lying on the ground, looking at ants, perhaps with his own servants to get him food and so forth.