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Darwin's Muses Behind His 1859 Diagram

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Darwin's Muses Behind His 1859 Diagram ARBOR Ciencia, Pensamiento y Cultura Vol. 189-763, septiembre-octubre 2013, a072 | ISSN-L: 0210-1963 doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.3989/arbor.2013.763n5009 VARIA / VARIA LAS MUSAS DE DARWIN TRAS DARWIN’S MUSES BEHIND HIS EL DIAGRAMA DE 1859 1859 DIAGRAM Erica Torrens y Ana Barahona Grupo de Estudios Sociales de la Ciencia, Facultad de Ciencias, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México [email protected] Citation/Cómo citar este artículo: Torrens, E. y Barahona, Copyright: © 2013 CSIC. This is an open-access article distribu- A. (2013). “Darwin’s muses behind his 1859 diagram”. ted under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-Non Arbor, 189 (763): a072. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.3989/ Commercial (by-nc) Spain 3.0 License. arbor.2013.763n5009 Recibido: 30 abril 2013. Aceptado: 29 julio 2013. RESUMEN: En este artículo queremos mostrar mediante una re- ABSTRACT: This article uses a review of a number of tree visión de algunos diagramas en forma de árbol, que el hecho de diagrams to highlight how the fact that Darwin was to choose que Darwin escogiera la metáfora de un árbol para representar the metaphor of a tree to describe evolutionary relationships relaciones evolutivas entre los organismos no resulta enteramen- between organisms should come as no great surprise, as the te sorpresivo, ya que la figura arbórea ya guardaba una posición tree already occupied an important position in European ico- importante en la tradición iconográfica europea. En la revisión nography. In the review of some of the uses of a “tree” to de algunos usos del “árbol” para representar diferentes clases represent different types of relationships in the pre-Darwinian de relaciones en la época pre-darwiniana, queremos ilustrar dos age, we want to illustrate two basic issues. One particularly cuestiones fundamentales. Una particularmente importante es important issue is that Darwin had the insight of including va- que Darwin tuvo la brillantez de incorporar una variedad de sím- rious symbols and metaphors that were already being used bolos y metáforas que ya estaban siendo usadas para represen- to represent different aspects of the living world in his own tar diferentes aspectos del mundo vivo, en su propia teoría de theory of evolution, particularly the general metaphor of la evolución, particularmente la metáfora general de la ramifica- branching and rebranching. The other is that when Darwin pu- ción y re-ramificación. La otra es que cuando Darwin publicó El blished On the Origin of Species in 1859, people were already Origen de las especies en 1859, la gente ya estaba familiarizada familiar with the idea of a tree to represent genealogy. This con el tema del “árbol” para representar genealogías. Esto pudo may have been an important factor in people’s familiarity with haber sido importante para sentirse familiarizado con los diagra- evolutionary diagrams and also in strongly associating them mas evolutivos y para aceptarlos como entidades reales, también with religious metaphors. para asociarlos fuertemente con metáforas religiosas. PALABRAS CLAVE: Árbol evolutivo; El árbol de la vida; Evolución; KEYWORDS: Evolutionary tree; The tree of life; Evolution; Darwin; Genealogía. Darwin; Genealogy. “Genealogy is the history of the symbolic, iconographic and rhetorical practices, the systems for recording and the techniques of culture through and in which the knowledge of families, races and species or of the succession of life within time is handed down.” (Weigel, 2007, 1). INTRODUCTION: TREES BEFORE ON THE ORIGIN OF This may have been important for people to feel a fa- SPECIES miliarity with evolutionary diagrams and to embrace them as real entities, but also to associate them stron- a072 Soon after his return from the voyage on the H.M.S. Beagle, Darwin was struck by the fact that a gly with religious metaphors higher vs. lower, good vs. Darwin’s muses behind his 1859 diagram Darwin’s continuous evolutionary process is taking place in bad, moral vs. reprehensible or complex vs. simpler, nature. Although the idea that all living beings are which interfered with purely evolutionary interpreta- nature’s productions and that the resulting biodiver- tions (see for example Gould, 1997). sity of the Earth has been produced over eons due to an inherent and indefinite mutability of species had THE TREE AS A SYMBOL OF MYSTICAL THOUGHT been around before him, and many people already The family tree is one of the oldest relationship believed in some sort of transformation occurring diagrams. During the Middle Ages it was a powerful in the organic world, at his return from travelling symbol for Jewish mystical thought; it had its roots around the world he saw clearly that this was the in a mythical Biblical scene: the Fall of Man. The Old case. He wondered about the driving force behind Testament mentions two trees, the tree of knowled- this transformation, about the nature of the entities ge and the tree of life, the tree of knowledge was a that evolve and about the nature and speed of the medieval device used to “visualize the hierarchy of changes. He came up with a plausible mechanism learning” (Hellström, 2012) and to depict logical divi- rather soon. After reading Thomas Malthus’ essay in sions. The tree of knowledge is also considered to be 1838, among other influential authors, he started de- the first ‘family tree’ not because it represented ori- veloping the idea of Natural Selection and for many gin and descent per se but because having tasted the years he worked hard to gather large quantities of forbidden fruit involved the beginning of the origin of evidence to support his argument. Albeit in On the kinship relationships by starting the propagation of Origin of Species (1859) he explains the action of di- human kind (Weigel, 2007) (Fig. 1). vergence by means of natural selection and states that “The accompanying diagram will aid us in un- derstanding this rather perplexing subject” (Darwin, 1859, 116), he had made use of the image of a tree Figure 1. Medieval Scene, Berthold Furtmeyer: Baum as soon as 1837 to materialize his ideas on species des Todes und des Lebens, 1481 (depiction of both descent from a common ancestor. trees in a single one) (Cook, 1974, 44) The fact that Darwin chose the metaphor of a tree to represent evolutionary relationships between or- ganisms is not entirely surprising since that figure holds an important position in European iconogra- phic tradition. A review of the pre-Darwinian use of ‘trees’, illustra- tes two fundamental notions. In the one hand, Darwin had the brilliance to incorporate a variety of symbols and metaphors already at use to represent different aspects of the living world, into his own theory of evolution. One particularly important was the gene- ral metaphor of branching and rebranching that had appeal to some before him to represent the order of species. On the other hand, by the time Darwin published the Origin in 1859 people was familiar with the mo- tif of a ‘tree’ to represent genealogy. Once the ‘tree’ turned into an icon of evolution in late nineteenth century, the representations of evolutionary trees for popular audiences normally included images to represent the groups of organisms depicted just like in religious and some other family-descent diagrams. 2 ARBOR Vol. 189-763, septiembre-octubre 2013, a072. ISSN-L: 0210-1963 doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.3989/arbor.2013.763n5009 The first western tree laid the groundwork for ted in the fact that is Jesus himself often the ‘tree’, subsequent representations of origin and descent during the Middle Ages, it adopted several variants. diagrams. From the ninth century the image of a tree Genealogical or family trees, dynastic or genealogical in Christendom continued to be used to illustrate Je- tables, pedigrees, scales and other soon appeared a072 sus’ descent and also other components of the Bible’s when the coexistence of genealogical tales such as y Ana Barahona Torrens Erica sacred genealogy. epic poems emerged (Fig. 2). Even though Jesus’ tree is quite different in meaning However, the tree was also used to represent phi- and purpose from subsequent trees, which is reflec- losophical deduction systems and knowledge about Figure 2. Family tree of Herzog Ludwig I of Württemberg (1568-1593) different types of relationships (the medieval arbores PRE-DARWINIAN TREES OF SPECIES which sprouted from the biblical Tree of Knowledge It was not until the early nineteenth century when and that were hierarchical tables of the classical tradi- the representation of relationships between orga- tion, typically descending schemas of circles joined by nisms as branched systems, even as trees albeit wi- lines (Hellström, 2011)). One of the favorite medieval thout an evolutionary meaning, except for Lamarck, diagrams was the arbor porphyrianna or Porphyry’s emerged. One example is Augustin Augier who, in Tree1. This image completely resembles a tree in the 1801, illustrated the relationship between the plants botanical sense. It has roots, a trunk, and six twigs on by means of a rich Arbre botanique (see Stevens, either side adorned by different sorts of leaves. It was 1983) (Fig. 5). This is possibly the first representation used to represent the logical ‘dichotomous division’ of the natural system with this image. His tree was the proposed by Plato and inherited by Aristotle (Fig. 3). result of an unsuccessful battle to fit plants into a sin- This diagram was widely used by the Scholastics for gle series: educational purposes to illustrate the logical division “I worked for a long time trying to fit families into a or dieresis of the supreme genus ‘substance’, which is continuous series but I found great difficulty… finally indicated by a crown (Papavero, Llorente, and Bueno, I solved it by separating the branches in two and was 1994).
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