Download Darwin`s Ghosts: The Secret History of Evolution

Journal of Heredity 2014:105(2):292
doi:10.1093/jhered/est082
Advance Access publication December 13, 2013
© The American Genetic Association. 2013. All rights reserved.
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Book Review
Darwin’s Ghosts: The Secret History of
Evolution
Rebecca Stott
New York: Speigel and Grau, 2012.
Imagine Charles Darwin just after the publication of The
Origin of Species, lying in bed at night in Downe House unable
to sleep, anticipating the firestorm of negative reaction to
the book as well as wondering whether any of his predecessors had recognized that natural selection was the driving
force behind evolutionary change. With regard to his second
worry, Darwin realized that he was a far better naturalist than
historian. In fact, in future editions he included an appendix
citing the work and speculations about evolution of recent
and even contemporary naturalists.
In this book, Rebecca Stott sets out to determine if any
of Darwin’s predecessors had, in fact, anticipated either species change or natural selection, starting with a list Darwin
himself had made. Stott found several on Darwin’s list who
deserved her historical scrutiny, as well as some he had not
considered. She presents wonderful biographies of these
natural philosophers—documenting their accomplishments
while placing their findings in the context of the generally
repressive political and religious atmospheres of their eras.
With the exception of Alfred Russell Wallace, it turns out
that Darwin need not have worried about being preempted.
Wallace, who had read Malthus and understood the limits
of population growth, “saw” in a malarial fever dream the
way that natural selection could explain evolutionary change.
However, Wallace conceded primacy of the idea of natural
selection to Darwin, in deference to the enormous amount
of work Darwin had done in support of the concept. This is
a familiar story to students of evolutionary biology, but Stott
reviews it well and also provides a close look at Wallace’s
other substantial contributions as a naturalist.
Today, we would do well to emulate the generosity of
Wallace when it comes to authorship. He realized the primacy
of getting the ideas and information “out there” to the scientific community. That knowledge remains after the order of
the authors, or indeed, even their names, are forgotten.
But what of the other predecessors Stott investigated,
including Aristotle, who Darwin chose to ignore? For the
most part they were observers, or essentially taxonomists,
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trying to bring a sense of order to the complexity of the living world. Most labored in ignorance of the true age of the
earth and were shackled by the idea that species were fixed
entities. Thus, the need for a mechanism for species change
was simply not considered. Later natural historians began to
appreciate the possibility of evolution, but only Jean-Baptiste
Lamarck meaningfully discussed an underlying mechanism
before Darwin.
There is much more in this beautifully written and thoroughly researched book than simply summaries of the evolutionary hypotheses of Darwin’s intellectual forebears. Their
own speculations on their discoveries are presented, as are
the ordeals that arose from sharing these ideas under the
political systems and religious beliefs of their times.
Imagine, for example, Leonardo da Vinci puzzling over
the presence of fossil seashells dug from mountain tops in
the Alps. Learn with Robert Grant about the intricacies of
sponge biology and, in my favorite chapter, wonder with
Abraham Trembley how, if the animal soul is an indivisible
entity, tiny pieces of a dismembered polyp can regenerate
entire organisms. This observation would lead Denis Diderot
and his fellow philosophers to vigorously debate the very
existence of the élan vitale, or soul, a dangerous discussion in
prerevolutionary Catholic France.
A familiar theme that emerges from this book is how frequently organized religion stifled and punished these scientific
inquirers. Faced with repression or even death by making their
speculations and discoveries known, Darwin’s predecessors
resorted to anonymity (Robert Chambers), pseudonyms (Benoit
de Maillet) and even poetry (Erasmus Darwin). Some, such as
Grant and Diderot, were denied career advancement and kept
in financial impoverishment through the manipulations of disapproving authorities. The unfettered expression and debate of
evolutionary ideas finally emerged in Paris following the French
Revolution (Lamarck, Georges Cuvier, Geoffroy St. Hilaire), but
even here petty jealousies exerted their own kind of repression.
Stott vividly brings the past alive in her writings on
Darwin’s “ghosts.” For me, the book was a page turner.
Ross MacIntyre
Cornell University
Ithaca, NY
doi:10.1093/jhered/est082