Darwin was also a superb writer in the great Victorian tradition. He loved literature. He constantly rewrote his books, at the proof stage too, driving publishers and printers to distraction with his last-minute changes
It is a common question - what's the most extraordinary scientific legacy of Charles Robert Darwin's vision of life? The answer is simple. Chance variation, juxtaposed by its primary motif of natural selection. A marvellously simple, yet elegant, tale of how organisms are created and extinguished.
Modern biology expresses this fascinating story in terms of a charming, also equally phenomenal and beautiful, voyage of our genes. This is one cogent reason why the word, organism, stayed put in Darwin's biology as the fundamental unit of life. The gene is today the most fundamental and vital component of life in our scientific idiom.
Though Darwin did not foresee how this story of stories would unfold, our sublime, genocentric biology is a perfectly logical consequence of the way Darwin chose to describe evolution in terms of inheritance, random variation, and natural selection, including the survival of adapted species. In this sense alone, Darwin was far ahead of his time. He was no routine experimenter. He researched with an eye for scientific justification. He was his own compass; also, radar. He saw to it that there was no error in his assessment, or reasoning.
Darwin belonged to an age that discovered historical explanations and was becoming preoccupied with change. It goes to his credit, notwithstanding his powerful credo that there was nothing beyond biology, Darwin accepted that nothing was inevitable in science, even with a science informed by interlocking levels of meaning and understanding. Yet, as may be the case with all scientific discoveries, Darwin's foremost critics contend that the great man based his arguments on historical continuity, random studies, a kind of inertia and resistance to change. This is unfair to Darwin and his monumental theory.
Science, after all, is verified, or verifiable, knowledge, produced by conception of precepts and induction of deducts. It is an accepted fact that for scientific imagination, not many percepts are needed. One never wrote a eulogy on Sir Don Bradman by looking at the words in the dictionary. This paradigm holds good for Darwinism too. In our modern age of technology and scientific advance, it would only be folly to miss the woods for the trees.
Most critics of Darwinism hold the profound belief that Darwin, towards the end of his long innings, had metaphysical leanings. Fair enough. Darwin had reasons to keep his powder dry. Metaphysics has a definitive impression on almost everything in life. Even Jungian analysis, in spite of being wholly scientific, has had some predilection for metaphysics. So, also Darwin's psyche. Darwin was plagued by ill-health and personal tragedies - he was, doubtless, not averse to seeking solace in perceptual thought that presupposes the attainment of higher levels of consciousness awareness, or spiritual fulfilment.
What makes Darwin so special? As Francisco Ayala puts it so succinctly in his perceptive paper, "Darwin's Greatest Discovery: Design without Designer," published in the "Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences," "Darwin's greatest contribution to science is that he completed the Copernican Revolution by drawing out for biology the notion of nature as a system of matter in motion governed by natural laws. With Darwin's discovery of natural selection, the origin and adaptations of organisms were brought into the realm of science. The adaptive features of organisms could now be explained, like the phenomena of the inanimate world, as the result of natural processes, without recourse to an Intelligent Designer. The Copernican and the Darwinian Revolutions may be seen as the two stages of one Scientific Revolution. They jointly ushered in the beginning of science in the modern sense of the word: explanation through natural laws."
Darwin was human, no less. He was certainly wrong about the age of our earth. A span of 100 million years seemed quite credible to him. The fact is the earth is 4.5 billion years older than what was the accepted standard during Darwin's time. Darwin was also wrong when he first proposed the theory - 'pangenesis' - to explain for variation among individuals in a species.
Michael White and John Gribbin lucidly explain in their work, "Darwin: A Life in Science," the enormous impact of his thinking on topics, such as natural selection, evolution, and genetics. In so doing, they make readers well informed on how Darwinism has moulded modern scientific thought. They also observe that Darwin, despite his privileged upbringing, was a humanist. He was ambivalent too; he had little self-confidence. But, he had, as White and Gribbin put it, more than just genius to apply to science.
Darwin was also a superb writer in the great Victorian tradition. He loved literature. He was fastidious to a fault. He constantly rewrote his books, at the proof stage too, driving publishers and printers to distraction with his last-minute changes. Yet, his was a clear voice. He 'spoke' to the reader in a straightforward manner. Darwin was, perhaps, the first-ever scientist to take his 'art' into the minds and hearts of the common man.
As White and Gribbin explain, "After all, how many of the original publications describing a revolution in science can be recommended as a good read for non-scientists? And, the writings of the quantum pioneers are not something you would take to while away a train journey. There is only one candidate-Charles Darwin's 'On the Origin of Species'" - which was first published exactly 166 years ago (1859). For a book, on such a subject, Darwin's work has stood the test of time. This isn't quite something that happens often. The inference is obvious - the book is a timeless classic in Darwin's own right and also write.
There is also more than something distinct about Darwin that makes him eternally fascinating. "Darwin: A Life in Science" is a revelation of that vision-a temporal biography that gives a wholesome, new meaning to the great man's life and, in turn, to our own.
Nidamboor is a wellness physician, independent researcher, and author