Discover, March 31, 1997
I have just finished my sketch of my species theory. If, as I believe that my theory is true and if it be accepted even by one competent judge, it will be a considerable step in science.
It’s a rare pleasure to follow a great thinker on the trail of a great idea, not in the form of a cozy autobiography or some socio-politico-psychosexual analysis but as the events actually unfolded. Fortunately, while Charles Darwin was struggling with the concept of natural selection, he wrote a number of uncommonly enlightening letters, some of which Frederick Burkhardt has culled from Darwin’s vast correspondence.
In a little over 200 pages we get a real sense of how hard it was for Darwin to spend 20 years on Origin of Species only to find that fellow zoologist Alfred Russel Wallace was on the verge of publishing some of the same ideas. Burkhardt also gives us a feel for the less biological side of Darwin, as he writes to his sister, Susan, whom he addresses as “granny,” about the dancing rhinoceroses at the London Zoo, or as he bad-mouths his enemies. (Fretting over what the great anatomist Sir Richard Owen would say about his book, he wrote, “Owen, I do not doubt, will bitterly oppose us; but I regard this very little; as he is a poor reasoner and deeply considers the good opinion of the world, especially the aristocratic world.”) Call it the history of science in real time.
Copyright 1997 Discover Magazine. Reprinted with permission.