Gibburt

It’s Charles Darwin’s 200th birthday in a couple of weeks. No wonder then that there are currently many events in London to commemorate the seminal scientist. The Natural History Museum, for example, is hosting a small exhibition featuring many of his original notebooks, items from the Beagle (the ship that took him to the Galapagos Islands) and models of some of the animals he studied (including his greatest passion, barnacles). I had the chance to see it yesterday evening with the Central London Humanist Group.

Even more interesting than the exibition itself, however, was the preceding talk by Adrian Desmond and James Moore. The historians gave a brief run-through of their new book, “Darwin’s Sacred Cause: Race, Slavery and the Quest for Human Origins”. In this, they argued that Darwin grew up in a family deeply committed to the abolition of slavery. He ingested the belief that all humans are brothers with his mother’s milk, so to speak. The authors claim that it was this belief in the unity of all human races that, directly or indirectly, inspired Darwin’s theory of evolution; that it was this that enabled him to make connections that other naturalists examining similar evidence couldn’t or didn’t wish to see.

I haven’t read the book yet (though I may do so soon), so I can’t comment on the solidity of the evidence presented. Desmond and Moore’s thesis certainly sounds plausible, though, and might provide an interesting new insight into the great man’s life.

Filed under: History, Science by Ralf Damaschke | Social tagging: books > Charles Darwin > evolution > slavery