TV Eye: Darwin Bicentenary
Published in 18th-19th Century Social Perspectives, 18th–19th - Century History, Issue 3 (May/Jun 2009), Reviews, Volume 17
Sir David Attenborough beside Charles Darwin’s statue in the Natural History Museum, London. The examples used in Charles Darwin and the tree of life to explain and illustrate the development of the theory of evolution were culled from Attenborough’s vast TV output over three decades.
Last November the Irish Times published a highly disingenuous article by the DUP’s Mervyn Storey implying that the schoolchildren of Northern Ireland were being subjected to the ‘insidious indoctrination’ of ‘Darwinian evolutionists’, despite the fact that there were ‘huge swaths of scientific data that point in another direction’ (Irish Times, 3 November 2008). Storey did not openly state what the other direction was—one can guess—but his reference to unspecified scientific data was troubling. What are they? Where are they? Why not refer to them? After all, the ‘theory’ that they supposedly disprove was originally derived from the vast amounts of information that Charles Darwin initially began to accumulate in the course of his five-year sojourn on the Beagle (1831–6), data added to and contemplated for decades before the eventual publication of On the origin species (1859). Darwin was an empiricist before he was an evolutionist; his opponents should really do likewise if they can. Despite such brickbats, Darwin remains one of the most significant thinkers of the past 200 years; perhaps only Karl Marx can rival his influence. So it seems perfectly reasonable for the BBC to mark the bicentenary of his birth with a genuinely daunting deployment of its resources.
The obvious starting point was to introduce the subject and his significance and, appropriately enough, this task was left to the august figure of David Attenborough. Charles Darwin and the tree of life was an ideal introduction to both Darwin and the development of his thought, culminating in a coherent statement of what this had implied: the ultimate interconnectedness of all life on earth, through the collective and infinitely variegated process of evolution. The means by which Darwin (who, in his youth, had considered joining the Church of England) arrived at this is arguably the single greatest intellectual journey of the nineteenth century. In terms of where it ended, the presenter’s position was at one with that of his subject, and, in a striking touch, the examples used to explain and illustrate the development of the theory of evolution were culled from Attenborough’s vast output over three decades. His powers of exposition—seemingly effortless, deeply informed and unfailingly engaging—remain undimmed, and if, as seems likely, this was to serve as a professional valediction for Attenborough, it was heartening to see one of the great educators of our time at work once again.
Attenborough was never the star of his documentaries; he was never supposed to be, and he knew it. His subject-matter always took centre stage, and in this case it was Darwin and his revolutionary theory. Unlike so many ideas thrown up throughout human history, Darwinian evolution is still very much with us; by definition it has to be. Its importance to humanity cannot be overstated, not least because of the challenge it posed, and continues to pose, to other patterns of belief. In any discussion of Darwin, one inevitably has to move from the man to his legacy, which was the subject of Darwin’s dangerous idea. Presented by Andrew Marr, this three-part series dealt with the implications of Darwin’s theory in terms of its broader significance over the course of the last 150 years.
Evolution inevitably challenged beliefs in natural hierarchies. This inevitably had implications in religious terms (more of this later), but the logical outcome of a belief in ‘natural selection’ (the term had in fact been coined by the economist Thomas Malthus) was that the process of evolution could and should be manipulated. And who better to manipulate it than those humans who assumed themselves to be the most advanced of their kind? Anthony Trollope (and many more besides) used such assumptions to justify British imperialism; surely it was the prerogative of a supposedly superior race to master the wretched of the earth? But the logical development of this was even worse: eugenics became the darkest and most dangerous consequence of Darwin’s idea, as humans sought to encourage the process of evolution by weeding out those deemed inferior. The fact that this reached its horrific apogee in Nazi Germany should not blind one to the fact that eugenics was not the twisted prerogative of one country alone: Winston Churchill was an enthusiastic advocate of sterilising the ‘inferior’, and both Sweden and the United States engaged in large-scale eugenics programmes. But the story of the ‘dangerous idea’ is not wholly negative: the assumption that humanity had a common origin has been the strongest basis for a belief in a common humanity. In this reading the Universal Declaration of Human Rights must also be counted amongst Darwin’s legacies.
Andrew Marr gets to grips with ‘Darwin’s dangerous idea’ in Cambridge.
And then there is religion, the subject of Did Darwin kill God? Belfast-born theologian Conor Cunningham set out to determine whether a belief in evolution is incompatible with religious conviction. The answer is: no. Why should these ideas be mutually exclusive? Indeed, the radical literalist creationism exemplified by Kentucky’s frankly ludicrous Creation Museum is a relatively new phenomenon. There was a strong tradition of Christian belief—‘old earth creationism’—that was quite happy to accept evolution: the biblical story of the creation could be read as allegorical, and often was. Yet the essential dichotomy between evidence and faith that underpins the evolution v. creation debate is perhaps not as simple as it seems. William Jennings Bryant, who represented the prosecution in the famous Scopes Monkey Trial, did so as a Christian socialist who feared that Darwinism could be used, à la Trollope, to justify the social inequality and injustice that he so vehemently opposed. There is a case to be made that the aggressively secular stance of figures such as Richard Dawkins can be taken to arrogant and ultimately self-defeating extremes, which mirror those of their opponents. Cunningham, who was quite open about his belief in both Christianity and evolutionary science, provided a quietly thoughtful intervention into a debate characterised by its shrillness. HI
John Gibney is an IRCHSS Government of Ireland fellow at the Moore Institute for Research in the Humanities and Social Studies, NUI Galway.
Personal Histories
On this Day
April 24
- 1951 Enda Kenny, TD for Mayo West (1975–97) and Mayo (1997–2020), leader of Fine Gael (2002–17) and taoiseach (2011–17), born in Derrycoosh, Islandeady, near Castlebar, Co. Mayo.
- 1945
Above: The steamship Monmouth Coast—torpedoed by a German U-boat near Tory Island on 24 April 1945. (Paul Johnson Collection)
During the last week of the Second World War, the Monmouth Coast, an unescorted steamship en route from Sligo to Liverpool with a cargo of barytes ore from the mines of Ben Bulben, was torpedoed by a German U-boat some seven miles north-east of Tory Island. The captain and fifteen crewmen (including two Irishmen) lost their lives, but one managed to survive, thanks to two locals from Arranmore. Two days later, whilst beachcombing on the north-eastern coast of the island, they spotted a life-raft floating in a remote sandy inlet; they rowed out to it and lifted the tarpaulin, to discover a wide-eyed teenager, Derek Cragg (17) from Liverpool, the mess-room boy from the Monmouth Coast. He explained that the ship had gone down very quickly and that those of the crew who managed to leap clear were sucked down after it. He, too, was dragged down but somehow managed to make it back to the surface, where he spotted the life-raft and clambered on board. He was given every assistance by the islanders and safely repatriated, but had the north-easterly wind that drove him 25 miles blown him into the adjoining inlet, his raft would have been smashed to pieces. Over 30,000 Allied merchant seamen, of every nationality, lost their lives during the war. Despite our neutrality, Irish Shipping lost two ships. The Irish Pine was torpedoed off Greenland in November 1942 with the loss of all 33 on board, and the Irish Oak was sunk in the North Atlantic in May 1943, though her entire crew was rescued by a sister-ship, the Irish Plane.
- 1912 Justin McCarthy (82), Home Rule politician, leader of the anti-Parnellite faction (1891–6), historian and novelist, died.
- 1916 The Easter Rising began.Sir Ernest Shackleton and five of his crew set out on their epic 720-nautical-mile rescue mission in the James Caird, from Elephant Island to South Georgia.
- 1974 The Electricity Supply Board (ESB) announced that Carnsore Point, Co. Wexford, would be the site of its planned nuclear power station.
May 19
- 1935
Above: ‘Lawrence of Arabia’—his father was in fact Sir Thomas Chapman of South Hill, Delvin, Co. Westmeath.
T.E.—Thomas Edward—Lawrence (46), the legendary ‘Lawrence of Arabia’, died as a result of a motorcycle accident in Dorset. For much of his adult life Lawrence was a troubled man. Though his key role in the British-inspired Arab revolt (1916) against Ottoman Turkish rule earned him international celebrity, he was torn by guilt over Britain’s post-war betrayal of the Arabs with the implementation at Versailles of the notorious Sykes–Picot Agreement. Then there was the issue of identity. At the tender age of ten he discovered that his parents were not married, meaning that he and his four brothers were illegitimate. Later he was to learn that ‘Mr Lawrence’, his father, was, in fact, Sir Thomas Chapman of South Hill, Delvin, Co. Westmeath, who, though married with four daughters, had fled with their governess, Sarah Lawrence, first to Wales—where ‘Ned’ was born—and finally to London. He was eventually to find himself increasingly drawn to his father’s homeland. A close friend of George Bernard Shaw and his wife Charlotte—GBS had helped him to edit his major work, Seven pillars of wisdom (1926)—he mentioned his desire in his surviving letters to visit Ireland and often referred to the works of Seán O’Casey, James Joyce and J.M. Synge. Indeed, he hoped to write a biography of Sir Roger Casement. It seems that he never did try to make contact with his half-sisters. In 1954, almost twenty years after his death, some of his old friends visited the two surviving ones, who were living at 39 Northumberland Road, Dublin. They told them that they had followed their half-brother’s career with great interest but likewise had made no attempt to contact him.
- 1870 The Home Government Association of Ireland was founded by Isaac Butt with the aim of establishing a federal system for the United Kingdom, which would grant Ireland a parliament responsible for national affairs. Succeeded by the Home Rule League (1873).
- 1868 Sir Benjamin Lee Guinness, son of Arthur Guinness (1725–1803), brewer and writer who restored St Patrick’s Cathedral (1860), died.