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The Paradox of Genius Recognition That, Although Nature Surely BOOK REVIEWS recognition that, although nature surely embodies factual truth accessible to The paradox of genius human investigation (radical historians Stephen Jay Gould might even demur at this evident and necessary proposition), science does not and cannot 'progress' by rising above Darwin. By Adrian Desmond and James Moore. Michael Joseph: 1991. Pp. 808. social embeddedness on wings of a time­ £20. To be published in the United States by Warner Books later this year. less and international 'scientific method'. Science, like all human intellectual activ­ THE botanist J. D. Hooker, Charles kept throughout his life, especially as a ity, must proceed in a complex social, Darwin's closest friend and confidant, young man setting out to reform the political and psychological context: contributed a short preface to the great entire intellectual world. (These docu­ greatness must therefore be grasped as 1909 Cambridge Festschrift commemor­ ments had always been there, but were fruitful use, not as transcendence. ating both the fiftieth anniversary of the ignored and therefore unknown and in­ Darwin, so often depicted as a posi­ Origin of Species and the hundredth of visible.) I have lived ever since in the tivist hero, self-exiled at Downe in Kent Darwin's birth. Hooker, at the age of 92, penumbra of this industry as a practising amidst his plants and pigeons, emerges recalled his pleasure in Dar- win's trust and cited the volume of correspondence H.M.S. BEAGLE that he had received from MIDDLE SECTION FORE AND AFT Darwin alone: "upwards of a thousand pages of foolscap, each page containing, on an average, three hundred words." Darwin lived on that pre­ cious nineteenth-century crux of maximal information for historians - close enough to the present to permit pre­ r. MP'. Dat"tlJin's Sc~tt itt ClljJ/ai1f.'s Cditt 2. Mr. n41"'1uin's Scat ltt Poop Caln'n wit!t Cot s!Jmg beltind lu'm servation and not too close for 5· Captain's SkyliJ:Irl the passage of most com­ munication through electronic channels into permanent obli­ vion. Beyond the range of a shout, every scrap of informa­ tion then passed in palpable written form. With Darwin we are doubly blest. He not only lived at the right time but was also a com­ pulsive keeper of records and tabulations. We even know J, PMJ Ltultkn 3• A,/lerC(mtjxlnt'o11 5· .Gr~s nine /ff;uruir1's, Captm'n's /'Yb•alc j'trq{>er/y 7· Hamm(>("l.- Nr:ttin.~$ the SCQfeSheet Qfl hiS nightly 2• S«-1 Flag L«ktrs 4· Ga~·ways 6. St~ pcullders S. Palt•nt Windlnu bEackgamfmon wilth hOiOsO wife Darwin's home afloat- plans of the ship that gave him passage to a new world. (From Darwin.) mma a ter near y 6 , con- tests at two per evening (Charles was up scientist, darwinian and sometime histo­ from his industrial reconstruction as the by 305 games in January 1876). rian. When I think back to what most finest example of a man who could The combination of Darwin's seminal people knew of Darwin and thought succeed only by virtue of his social importance in the history of human about the history of science just before position and of the political changes, so thought with maximal evidence about his 1959, I am astounded at the salutary fortuitous from the standpoint of his life has spawned a historiographical changes in our understanding, so well power to alter them, that convulsed effort that professionals call the "Darwin embodied in this fine book. England during his career. Darwin has industry", both in admiration for its Preindustrial history of science was now become, and properly, the quintes­ prodigious accomplishment and slight strongly positivist, with emphasis on sentially socially embedded scientist. Des­ amusement at its obsessive probing. individuals whose superior skills in mond and Moore are brilliant in their Adrian Desmond and James Moore are observation and reasoning could break relentless and integrative pursuit of this industry standards, and their ample through social prejudice to reveal na­ truly unifying theme. (I must record as biography, unquestionably the finest ture's objective truths. In this context, my only general criticism of the book ever written about Darwin, is a bright (if biographies of Darwin tended to be some unhappiness at the drastic curtail­ literally ponderous) testimony to the either hagiographical (when written by ing of nearly all traditional material on triumph of this particular industrial scientists who applauded such indepen­ the actual content of Darwin's scientific revolution. dence from social shackles) or critical ideas. We never even get a coherent I was beginning my own higher educa­ (when written by humanists who decried description of natural selection. For tion when the industry received its jump­ Darwin's supposed literary and cultural some of the minor books, we learn about start at the worldwide centennial benightedness, and who therefore print-runs and Darwin's tummy troubles celebrations for the Origin of Species in blamed him directly for all subsequent as he faced the proofs, but virtually 1959 - a start inspired, in large part, by social misuse of his ideas). nothing about their content. As Darwin the 'discovery' of the extensive note­ The history of science has been trans­ knew so well, good revolutions trans­ books and private jottings that Darwin formed during the past 30 years by a mute, but do not entirely raze, older NATURE · VOL 355 · 16 JANUARY 1992 215 © 1992 Nature Publishing Group BOOK REVIEWS ways. Still, I can hardly suggest that shrewd investment in land and railways.) connections) all stood for an accessible, Darwin be lengthened.) He was a philosophical radical in many modernized, paid, professionalized sci­ Charles Darwin was a man in the ways, and he lost all vestiges of conven­ ence against the old, closed world of middle, politically and socially, and this tional religious faith after the death of amateur aristocrats and parsons. Natural position set and conditioned all his his favourite young daughter in 1851. selection was the right doctrine for a strategies. His early teachers and But he was socially conservative and new, secular, urbanized, industrial benefactors were Anglican Tories, the conventional almost to an extreme; he nation. gentlemen and ecclesiastical naturalists hated the radicals as much with his heart I knew the outlines of this social of Oxbridge. (He would have become a as his mind. He could not bear to abet a context before reading Darwin. But his­ parson naturalist, had not another aris­ social transformation that he despised. tory is narrative and true understanding tocratic Tory, Captain FitzRoy, inter­ He had an idyllic marriage with a lies in integrating the details. I thank vened and offered him passage to a new wonderful and brilliant woman (too in­ Desmond and Moore most of all because world on the Beagle.) These men main­ visible in this book and so much deserv­ I think that I have now finally grasped tained an unshakeable conviction that ing her own biography), who had studied the outlines of why Darwin ticked in his our ordered and harmonious Universe piano with Chopin, learned to speak century. (The details of history can be so required the direct and continuous several languages, and then devoted her daunting, but there are no short cuts. No superintendence of a providential God. life to succouring Charles and raising simplifying laws of nature will render the Otherwise, matter would devolve to their family. Emma was devout and wept main puzzles of Darwin's life. Like all chaos and formlessness, just as society for her husband's religious doubts (while people, he was a historical item living in would crumble without direct, intelligent supporting all his work unstintingly, a complex time, and proper explanations government by the upper classes. Anti­ down to the details of reading proofs). lie in the fabric of detail. The saving evolutionism was the core of a world­ How could Darwin proceed with his grace rests with the beauty of the fabric. view, not a question for empirical beloved brainchild - a tenable theory of But I was astounded to note over and resolution. evolution that (as he knew so well, for over again that single paragraphs and Darwin was, by both family tradition he was not a modest man) would change sentences of this ample work have been and personal conviction, a Whig - the world irrevocably? He retreated to the basis for entire tomes by others. The defender of a broad range of freedoms, illness and other projects, including an death of Darwin's mother, rendered from the abolition of slavery to the eight-year study of the taxonomy of here in half a paragraph, is the founda­ least-trammelled of laissez-faire markets barnacles. How can we begin to under­ tion for Bowlby's recent and most in­ with all the malthusian consequences for stand this cardinal story of his intellec­ teresting treatment of Darwin's lifelong those who fail. (We may safely brand as tual life - his 20-year delay from devis­ illness. Less than a page on the "princi­ utter nonsense the common claim that ing the theory in 1838 to his flushing out ple of divergence" caused me months of Darwin happened to pick up Malthus's by Wallace in 1858 - without this intri­ study, resulting in a 100-page chapter in Essay on the Principle of Population for cate social, political and personal con­ a forthcoming book.) fun one day and thus came by chance text? But what made Darwin tick? Why upon the key insight of natural selection. him? For all Desmond and Moore have Malthus stood at the centre of his intel­ Partial answers helped me to understand, their social lectual world; the most strident of En­ The answer is that we simply cannot, approach leaves me with an immensely glish malthusians, Harriet Martineau and that all previous standard explana­ heightened sense of paradox.
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