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Ralph Windle’s Blog on Science & The Arts

is about some big, interconnected issues:-

The long-running Arts / Science / Two cultures Debate. Why the old clichés have to STOP...

How Creative Synthesis - the bringing together of separated (Arts/Science?) modes of thought is now top-priority for Innovation...

About Ralph Windle

Our Brother, Darwin

Stimulated by excessive hype, and recently re-cycled into political controversy by the American religious right, the Charles Darwin bicentenary season rolls on.

This quiet, caring genius and man of great principle would be amazed, and embarrassed, at much that is still being imputed to his name, and the specious claims on, or against, his achievement, still being made by contending cabals.

So we think it is time for CVN to throw its own cap into the ring and claim, unequivocally on all the evidence, that Charles Darwin was and remains the quintessential champion of our own cause –  the need for a full-blooded interaction between the arts and sciences, as a prime, necessary stimulus to creative thought, sustained innovation and the progress of knowledge. We honour him as our inspiration and intellectual  forebear.

Darwin was a naturalist first, much stimulated ( he tells us in his autobiography) by a youthful interest in poetry and its exciting contemporary links ( Wordsworth, Coleridge, Keats) to the appeal of natural landscape and related sciences.

In much the most perceptive and non-hyperbolic assessment I have read ( by Ashton Nichols: April 2004, as part of the symposium ‘Science, Art and Knowledge: Practising Natural History from the Enlightenment to the 21st Century’) he writes: “ We often assume that Charles Darwin announced a new era in human understanding of the natural world with the publication of On The Origin of Species (1859). In fact, Darwin’s theory was the culmination of decades of scientific speculation about the connections between human beings and non-human nature. Darwin provided a systematic explanation for ideas that had been developing over several centuries. These ideas were reflected not only in the work of natural scientists, philosophers and theologians, but also in the images and ideas of poets, novelists and visual artists.”

This exciting movement of ideas was in both directions. The supposed incorrigible romantic, William Wordsworth, was corresponding with Humphry Davy as the latter made his significant chemical discoveries: electrolysis, magnesium, nitrogen, nitrous oxide (laughing gas, which he tried out on Coleridge). Davy himself was writing and publishing lyric poetry.

Coleridge was an assiduous attender of physiology lectures in London ( ‘ To increase my stock of metaphors’ he said); while Shelley experimented with chemicals and ‘electrical machines’ in his Oxford rooms. Darwin’s own grandfather, Erasmus Darwin, combined professional ‘natural history’ with poetry based, like Wordsworth’s, on meticulous ‘scientific’ observation of plants,insects and other natural phenomena.

The extent to which cross-disciplinary ideas, metaphors, similes can drive the basic processes of hypothesis, experimentation and discovery (“ Every brilliant experiment, like every great work of art, starts with an act of imagination” – CVN homepage) was central to Darwin’s approach and achievement. Yet, 150 years on, it remains ignored or poorly understood by many of our arts, science bureaucracies, funding agencies and professional bodies ( see ‘Innovation Without Change’ below); and, apparently, by one of our most visible and enterprising scientific weeklies – NEW SCIENTIST.

How else are we to rationalise its recent ( 24 January 2009) tabloid-style Cover Headline – ‘DARWIN WAS WRONG - cutting down the tree of life’; picked up again at the beginning of a 6-page article ( by Graham Lawton) – ‘UPROOTING DARWIN’S TREE’.

There seems to be nothing in all 6 pages to justify or explain this gratuitous, sensational tone.The article supplies a brief synopsis of some expected supplements to Darwin’s (150 year old)’ Origins’, made possible by more recent developments in DNA and HGT (horizontal gene transfer) etc, all more seriously reviewed elsewhere. Yet clearly the article’s ‘lead in’ –“one of the iconic concepts of evolution has turned out to be a figment of our imagination”- suggests the author’s failure to note and understand what Darwin himself is quoted as saying, more cautiously and accurately, 2 pages later.” The affinities of all beings of the same class have sometimes been represented by a great tree. I believe this simile largely speaks the truth”. Most of New Scientist’s interviewees seem to agree and understand better the difference between a ‘simile’ and a ‘figment of our imagination’.

In fact, Ashton Nichols (ibid*) understands Darwin’s science, and his meticulous use of language, in a much more incisive way. “ The manuscript draft of the title page of his master-work, which he sent to Lyell on 28th March 1859, reads “ – An abstract of an Essay on the Origin of Species and Varieties Through Natural Selection …”; but “ in the final version of the published work, Darwin omitted the phrase “ and Varieties” – “ suggesting he was not willing to commit to a precise connection between species and varieties”. This is the distinction still under discussion – as Darwin anticipated 150 years ago.

We are lucky to have an insightful, contemporary view from the current radio series ‘Darwin, My Ancestor’ presented by poet and writer Ruth Padel ( Darwin was her great,great grandfather).It is again his ‘sense of wonder’ and ‘imagination’ in childhood which she sees as the impetus for his scientific achievement; his meticulous interest in small, undistinguished organisms; and his respect for the pigeon-fancier and grower in enhancing his emerging ideas.Ruth’s own ‘Tigers in Red Weather’ (Abacus 2005) suggests that a keen eye, sympathetic imagination, and ability to write remain happy components of Darwin’s legacy.

Ralph Windle

 

*(Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society.
September 2005)