Monkey Business

ALREVIEW 57 struggles of the day rather than the nihilism which too many folks take wonder Rousseau wept—ony he was polar ice of night. postmodernity to mean. Black's still crying for himself. Foucault's mes hip, as it always has been for sage, by comparison, is dry-eyed. The problem here is not with Foucault bohemians—but it may be better now There is still hope that we can do bet but with us. The problem now is for radicals to fade to pink, even ter. whether there exists a sufficient will to against a background almost certainly think Foucault in this way, against the turning a greyer shade of blue. Little PETER BEILHARZ teaches in dominant current of fin-de-siecle sociology at La Trobe University. Monkey Business Darwin by Adrian Desmond and excerpt, the repetition of 'gutter', and James Moore (Penguin/Michael the salacious metaphors.) Jose Bor- Joseph). Reviewed by Darwin is an entertaining and (in the ghino. best sense) journalistic work which deliberately distances itself from the This massive 828-page block previous biographies that Desmond buster opens with a rhetorical and Moore see as "curiously blood rollercoaster. The preface less". By contrast, they try to "re-lo- smacks more of a Hollywood cate Darwin in his age" by writing a "defiantly social portrait", and they adventure movie (I was largely succeed. reminded of the first 15 minutes of Raiders of the Lost Ark) than The science in the book is fairly synop the normally staid and anaes tic—which is understandable for a thetised prose of 'straight' populist work; but too often Desmond science: and Moore assume a detailed knowledge of 19th Century British history. At one point, for instance, we It is 1839. England is tumbling are told that Cambridge, where Dar towards anarchy, with countrywide win was studying in 1831, was unrest and riots. The gutter presses "gripped by election fever". The his are fizzing, fire-bombs flying. The torical importance of this particular shout on the streets is for revolution. General Election is emphasised and Red evolutionists denounce the open a secret notebook and with a we are told that the two Whig can props of an old static society: priestly devil-may-care sweep, suggest that didates for Cambridge were defeated, privilege, wage exploitation, and the headless hermaphrodite molluscs but the narrative immediately swer workhouses. A million socialists are were the ancestors of mankind? ves towards Darwin's preparations castigating marriage, capitalism, and for his voyage on HMS Beagle. It takes the fat, corrupt Established Church. The 'gentleman' in question, of more than 10 frustrating pages (and Radical Christians join them, hymn- course, was Charles Robert Darwin: six months of narrative time) for Des singing Dissenters who condemn the Cambridge-trained, once destined for mond and Moore to let slip paren 'fornicating' Church as a 'harlot', in the cloth, well-heeled and 'imper thetically that the Whigs had been bed with the State. turbably Whig' as Adrian Desmond returned to power. This is not and James Moore, the authors of this suspense, it's an editorial slip— espe Even science must be purged: for the biography, describe him. The son of a cially when all that was needed was a gutter atheists, material atoms are all Shropshire squire, Darwin can rightly three-word sentence, 'The Whigs that exist, and like the 'social be included with Marx and Freud in a won'. atoms'—people—they are self-or troika of 19th century thinkers whose Desmond and Moore have utilised the ganising ... The science of life—biol- work still profoundly affects our flood of primary material recently un ogy—lies ruined, prostituted, turned value-systems today. leashed by the Darwin Industry: into a Creationist citadel by the cler Darwin's secret notebooks have been gy. Britain now stands teetering on Despite some moments of boys-own transcribed and his published Cor the brink of collapse—or so it seems bravado and rhetorical swashbuckle, respondence has reached Volume 7 of to the gentry, who close ranks to the rest of the book rarely redeploys the 14,000 known letters from and to protect their privileges. the cinematic gusto of the preface. him. (Just as well, I can hear Darwin say— At this moment, how could an am he would have been greatly troubled This new material reveals a fascinat bitious thirty-year-old gentleman by the sensationalist tone of the above ing picture of science as an institution ALR : AUGUST 1992 58 ALR£V/£W in the 19th century. Science, at the evidence from everywhere and sickly constitution. Far from focusing beginning of that century, was the anywhere. The way he won over con exclusively on the public results of his domain of the dilettante or self-financ temporaries such as Lyell, Hooker and theorising/Desmond and Moore con ing gentleman-scholar, and it was not Huxley, and then used them as the trast Darwin's reclusive, essentially until mid-century that youngbloods vanguard in his assault on boring lifestyle against his brilliant like T H Huxley could begin constitut- Creationism and other theories of and tenacious work on (believe it or ing themselves as professional evolution is described in con not) barnacles, pigeons and 'scientists'; a respectable white-collar spiratorial terms worthy of Vlad Lenin earthworms, as well as his manic body providing the public with a ser and the lads in November 1917. (Or is rushes to local quacks for 'water vice—instruction—and a com the better analogy Stalin on the inside therapy', and the profound grief he modity—knowledge. worming his way to the top?) felt at the death of his children. Early 19th century science lay in the In 1859 Darwin finally went public Publishers have recognised their ap hands of country curates and lecturing with his theory after 20 years of sub peal for years, but what is it that draws parsons whose excursions into biol terfuge. Desmond and Moore's 'social readers to massive biographies like ogy or geology were financed by the relocation' of Darwin highlights two this one? The Colombian writer remnants of a feudal system of things at this moment. First, the Gabriel Garcia Marquez once said that privilege, inheritance and elitism. The ground had been prepared and the every human has three distinct lives: young Turks like Huxley wanted to time was exactly right; second, the public, the private and the secret. sweep the academies clean of the old, Darwin's theory would have been im Biographies always weave the public amateur spider-stuffers once and for possible to conceive without the tech and the private together, but I think all. This was a time when 'bourgeois' nological, communicational and they work best when they also offer meant radical or even revolutionary, financial advantages afforded a white, readers a glimpse of the secret life of when capitalism was the new threat to upper middle class male living in the another human being—the doubts, tradition, and when liberalism was a most industrialised nation on earth, the fears, the barely expressible dirty word to the powers that be,* not directly plugged into the network of desires. the term of approbation it is in our political and intellectual power. New World Order. Desmond and Moore have made a By 1859 many scientists and thinkers start on unveiling the secret life of Dar Darwin's relationship to this power accepted that species were mutable. win. But their method precludes them structure was always schizophrenic. Darwin's effrontery lay in hypothesis from going much further. I began this He was the grandson of a professional ing a mechanism to explain the trans review with an excerpt from the (Doctor Erasmus Darwin) on one side, mutation of species whicl) relied not preface to Darwin. The question that and of the archetypal English only on 'capitalist' notions of cut ends that excerpt is a rhetorical one— entrepreneur of the Industrial Revolu throat competition and the survival of the answer is predetermined by Des tion (Josiah Wedgwood) on the other. the fittest, but also on the assumption mond and Moore's methodology. Darwin's was not a background of that transmutations were randomly Their 'social biography' cannot help titled inheritance, but it was elite generated and not reliant upon any but explain Darwin's theories as the nonetheless. At the same time, his God. product of his times, of his upbring family on both sides were Whigs and ing, and of those contemporaries he Dissenters—which was as freethink- Unfortunately, Desmond and Moore read—in short, of his material cir ing as Protestants got without being never go beyond pointing to some un cumstances and ideology. socialists or atheists. resolved problems with Darwin's theory of evolution. If a reader wants Shave away the mountains of detail Darwin was consequently both inside to explore the science itself and and the seductive detours in Darwin and outside the establishment. He modern reflections on it, they would and we are left with a reductionist slipped easily into the Cambridge old- do better to read Stephen Jay Gould portrait of Darwin as himself a 'social boy network, and the relatively easy (any of his books, but especially darwinist'—a product of his age who life of a doctor or a country parson Wonderful Life or Ontology and merely projected onto the natural constantly beckoned in his early years. Phytogeny). And if they want to learn world the market-driven, bourgeois, Even as he worked through the about the implications of Darwinian free-for-all ethos which he had been revolutionary implications of his ideas theory for human beings they should brought up to accept as inevitable (and on 'transmutation' he panicked lest read Jared Diamond's Rise and Fall of even desirable) in the human world.

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