Annie’s death was not the cause of Darwin’s agnosticism 6 Jul 2009 That rough punk of evolution, Mark Pallen, has a table up documenting the formulation and spread of the story that it was the horrible death of Darwin’s favoured daughter, Annie, which, he reckons, is not true. He’s working up a paper on the matter, he says. But Darwin’s stated reasons in the Autobiography, that he found the Christian religion morally outrageous and intellectually unconvincing, and that he was older when he gave up his religion, say otherwise. We’ll have to wait for Pallen’s article, but some people find it hard to accept that anyone, let alone one of the clearest thinkers of all time, might choose a religious position for intellectual reasons. Keep an eye out for it. Evolution History Religion
Evolution Early vision was colourful 28 Oct 20074 Oct 2017 UPDATED: To give some of my colleagues at the University of Queensland some link love, it is being reported that they have sequenced the Queensland lungfish (currently under threat by a proposed dam) opsin genes, showing that they see in ultraviolet and visible light, as well as having the ability… Read More
Evolution Is there a species rank? 8 Jun 200818 Sep 2017 The final of my comments on this topic (see one and two here) addresses the question whether or not there is a rank of species. Read More
Biology My latest paper 4 Jul 2010 I have just had a paper published: “What is a species? Essences and generation” Theory in Biosciences Volume 129, Numbers 2-3 / September, 2010. Pages 141-148 . DOI 10.1007/s12064-010-0090-z Abstract: Arguments against essentialism in biology rely strongly on a claim that modern biology abandoned Aristotle’s notion of a species as… Read More
The autobiography is – as you know – a very imperfect source of information about Darwin. Pallen’s going to have to do a lot better than that if he’s going to correct Moore. Unless he can actually do some digging in the letters, my gut feeling is that he’s fighting a losing game here. (And if he wants to get this published in an historical journal, it’s best to avoid the “spread of a myth” angle. It’s just not interesting.)
If you have evidence of a positive sort that A believed X for reasons R, and a hypothesis that A actually believed X for nonreasons Y, and the argument requires that you must not only disbelieve the evidence, but do so in several instances, because of a prior commitment to the view that people don’t believe things for stated reasons but rather because of emotional and economic forces they are partially if at all aware of, then I would say there’s something wrong here. The Autobiography is not, as I happen to know, all that Mark is relying upon; and the myth is interesting because of who said it and why. And it’s not for a history journal (I also happen to know 🙂 ).