Botanical Dimension in Darwin's Thinking R

Home , Fertilisation of Orchids, The Origin (novel)

Nature Vol. 268 21 July .1977 273 reviews•

Botanical dimension in Darwin's thinking R. H. Richens

Darwin and His Flowers: The Key to plants attracted Darwin as research Miss Allan cannot be our guide. Natural Selection. By Mea Allan. material, not only as exhibiting the Neither her geology-coprolites as Pp. 318. (Faber and Faber: London, operation of natural selection, but as fossil excreta-nor her evolutionary 1977.) £6.95. doing so wi-thout the theoretical com and genetic theory-largely presented plication of "willed" activity. in the semi-Lamarckian, pre-Mendelian IT remains obscure why evolution Miss Allan presents her material in categories of Darwin's later writings became scientifically respectable just roughly chronological order: Darwin's has been brought up to date. when it did. Heritable variation at the childhood, Edinburgh and Cambridge, When it comes to personal interpre varietal level was well known and the voyage of the Beagle, the Origin tation, Darwin becomes unreal; the accepted by nurserymen, animal of Species, his researches on the man has become a scientific hero breeders and biologists. The notion of fertilisation of orchids, climbing figure with the inevitable distortions macroevolutionary change was also in plants, plant variation under domesti that this produces. Her remarks on the air, as purveyed by Lamarck, cation, insectivorous plants, cross- and Darwin's "illness" are· trivial. But one Chambers and Charles Darwin's grand self-fert.ilisation, and heterostyly. imagines that Miss Allan makes no father Erasmus, although less scientifi Darwin's work is presented very pretensions in these areas. What she cally respectable. Malthus' essay had largely in his own terms and in suffi has done, and done well, is to present been widely read. It was not even the cient detail to illustrate his remark a vivid picture of the role of plants in case that a vast body of cumulative ably acute power of observation and Darwin's scientific life, and it was evidence had to be assembled to experimental ingenuity. Darwin himself who wrote that "a vindicate the notion of macroevolution, The chief value of Miss Allan's traveller should be a Botanist, for in and it seems that Wallace only re book, beside the pleasure of just all views plants form the chief quired three days to excogitate the looking at it, is the re-or,ientati.on that embellishment". O theory that Darwin laboured over for it suggests for the interpretation of so many years. Darwin's thought. The botanical R. H. Richens is Director of the Common wealth Bureau of Plant Breeding and Perhaps what had been lacking till dimension has certainly been under Genetics, Department of Applied Biology, 1859 was a protagonist in the right valued in the past. In detail, however, University of Cambridge. UK. club, namely the small group of bio log,ists accepted by themselves and by the general public as representing the forefront of validated scientific Continuing Newtonian disputes thinking. Neither Erasmus Darwin, Chambers nor Wallace were in this The Correspondence of Isaac Newton. could have turned out if the contro club. Charles Darwin, in spite of his Volume 6: 1713-17-18. Edited by versy had never arisen in the first place, lack of formal training, was. Rupert A. Hall and Laura Tilling. Pp. or at any rate had not become From the point of view of the xxxviii + 499. (Cambridge University: envenomed up to the point that British history of science, then, it becomes Cambridge and London, 1976. Pub mathematicians effec.tively cut them more relevant to enquire what led lished for the Royal Society.) £25. selves off for more than a century from Darwin to sponsor evolution than to the main stream of continental mathe ask at what stage the evidence pointed THE core of this sixth volume of the matics. It was a strange nemesis that that way. Miss Allan now provides us Newton correspondence is made up of Newton, who by his work in optics, w.ith some new pe-rspectives. In the a collection of letters and documents re and in the physical, astronomical and course of a very well illustrated lat·ing to the controversy between New philosophical aspects of the Principia, account of Darwin's botanical ton and Leibniz over the calculus, the had made so vast a contribution both activities, she shows how greatly commencement of which was noticed to scientific progress and scientific atti Darwin was taken up with plants, in the previous volume. Only a few of tudes in the eighteenth century, and even though his formal botanical these letters and documents are from had raised the prestige of British qualifications were thin. Newton himself, although some of these science so high, should have exerted It is clear that Darwin was greatly are of great interest, such as the hither through his mathematical attitudes and moved by his encounter wi.th equa to unpublished No. 1053a. On the techniques so retrograde an influence torial forest. Possibly, no botanist is British side the most common corres on British mathematics and mathema most perceptive in his native environ pondent is Newiton's indefatigible tical physics in the same century. ment. It is notorious how botany still champion John Keill, and on the con This volume wi,tnesses the denoue retains clear evidence of its temperate tinental side it is Leibniz himself and ment of the longstanding Newton/ origins and how potently a small dose Johann Bernouilli, with the Italian Flamsteed controversy in which Plam of the tropics contributes to theoretical Conti- even•tually a proselyte to the steed finally had the better of Newton, advancement. On the other hand, one Newtonian camp---acting as inter largely it seems as a result of the can suppose that familiarity with mediary. The editors speculate how eclipse of certain of Newton's sup tropical vegetation can be as soporific Newton might have spent his time if he por,ters after the accession of George I to its denizens as familiarity with had not been involved in this contro in 1715. Flamsteed, who now had temper.ate vegetation is to its. It is also versy with Leibniz. They might equally friends at court, greeted this change clear from Miss Allan's book that have speculated how differently things of power with glee (letter No. 1151)