This is my copy of Charles Darwin book On the Origin of Species published 150 years ago today. It is the ugliest-looking book I have in my collection. It doesn’t matter. It is the seventeenth printing of a facsimile of the 1859 original edition that Ernst Mayr, the prominent twentieth century evolutionary biologist, first produced in 1964 to provide mass access to a book that “ushered in a new era in our thinking about the nature of man” (p. vii).

It also happens to have Mayr’s clearest exposition of his population versus typological thinking thesis in the introductory essay written by him, which makes this edition more valuable if you are interested in the history and the philosophy of biological taxonomy.

But, what would have happen if On the Origin of Species had never been published? Would evolutionary theory had rather sprung prominently out of Germany, with a strong von Baerian flavor, as an early EvoDevo? Find out more at Evolving Thoughts and comments therein.

Low Anthem “Charle Darwin” from Lake Fever Sessions on Vimeo.

Set the sails I feel the winds a’stirring
Toward the bright horizon set the way
Cast your reckless dreams upon our Mayflower
Haven from the world and her decay

And who could heed the words of Charlie Darwin
Fighting for a system built to fail
Spooning water from their broken vessels
As far as I can see there is no land

Oh my god, the waters all around us
Oh my god, it’s all around

And who could heed the words of Charlie Darwin
The lords of war just profit from decay
And trade their children’s promise for the jingle
The way we trade our hard earned time for pay

Oh my god, the waters cold and shapeless
Oh my god, it’s all around
Oh my god, life is cold and formless
Oh my god, it’s all around

I can only access the abstract of the original publication unfortunately, but it does seems to be a well done and thorough study. The problem is the way the report gets increasingly hyped by the news media. I first got this: Evolution of the appendix: A biological ‘remnant’ no more. OK, that’s not bad. I then got this: Appendix redux. Yeah, sure, succinct and clever. But today I got this: Darwin wrongly called the appendix a biological ‘remnant’, say researchers:

Charles Darwin was wrong when he theorized that the appendix in humans and other primates was the evolutionary remains of a larger structure, called a cecum, which was used by now-extinct ancestors for digesting food, according to research collaborators from three U.S. institutions.

Here we go again. There is nothing better to sell a story than to bash a long dead historical figure in the very year devoted to celebrate his legacy.

Some precious quotes:

“Darwin simply didn’t have access to the information we have. If Darwin had been aware of the species that have an appendix attached to a large cecum, and if he had known about the widespread nature of the appendix, he probably would not have thought of the appendix as a vestige of evolution,” said Parker.

and

The study report further states that Darwin was not aware of the fact that appendicitis [...] is not due to a faulty appendix, but rather due to cultural changes associated with industrialized society and improved sanitation. [...] The researcher added that that notion wasn’t proposed until the early 1900’s, and “we didn’t really have a good understanding of that principle until the mid 1980’s.”

This last quote completely destroys my admiration for Darwin. I mean, was it all that difficult for him to anticipate scientific findings 100 years into the future? And, why didn’t he embark into time travel instead of wasting his time traveling to the Galapagos islands?

Darwin on rudiments

In the Origin of Species¹. Darwin devotes an entire section in Chapter XIII (the best chapter mind you) entitled Rudimentary, atrophied, or aborted organs in which he discusses how an evolutionary perspective provides the best explanation for the common occurrence of organs that seem not have any apparent function, organs that shouldn’t be there if organisms were independently designed for a specific purpose. They are simply anatomical leftovers from a more glorious past. Darwin even draws an analogy with spelling and pronunciation in comparative linguistics: words may retain letters that are no longer useful in pronunciation. For example, the word for ant in Latin is formica, from which we got formiga in Portuguese and hormiga in Spanish. The latter retained a vestigial h even thought it is mute, and so it has no function in pronunciation.

Now, Darwin does discuss that rudimentary does not necessary means functionless:

An organ serving for two purposes, may become rudimentary or utterly aborted for one, even the more important purpose; and remain perfectly efficient for the other. [pag. 451]

and,

[A]n organ may become rudimentary for its proper purpose, and be used for a distinct object. [pag. 452]

Some of Darwin’s examples for particular evolutionary processes will surely turn out to mistakes, but his clear insight into how evolutionary theory explains the facts of comparative anatomy will always be impeccable. By the way, the new study on the appendix shows that once morphology is done properly, everything falls neatly into place.

Oh, and while we are at historical figure bashing, let me point out that Aristotle did not know that that DNA is the main hereditary material of living systems. What an idiot.

References

I resisted the black T-shirt with the bright red “Darwin’s Tree of Life” on sale at the AMNH Darwin exhibit. I resisted the elegant hardcover reissue of the Origin of Species with an introductory essay by E. O. Wilson. I resisted the little metal key-chain with the H.M.S. Beagle. But I couldn’t resist the pencils on sale at the Darwin’s Evolution exhibit presented by the Gulbenkian Foundation.

It’s a simple all-black regular pencil with a facsimile of Charles Darwin’s handwriting with the words “I think”, as he wrote on the page where he sketched the now iconic cladogram tree of life on one of his transmutation notebooks.

Why this particular souvenir? I guess there is something I find fascinating about the aesthetics of handwriting. Oh, did I mention the pencil is all black!

In a paper published today in the journal Taxon, historian Mary P. Winsor asserts that, in telling the history of the Theory of Evolution, Taxonomy has been unfairly left out. Most of the history written about Darwin, and still often repeated, is that he had his theory of natural selection ready when he wrote his Sketch of 1842, and after that he just sat down on it for almost two decades before publishing the Origin of Species in 1859 after receiving a wake-up letter from Alfred R. Wallace. However many historians have now argued that those sixteen odd years were crucial in shaping Darwin’s theory and that, rather than been in isolation during those years, he actively sought the latest scientific achievements in natural history in an attempt to formulate a refined theory capable of synthesis¹. For many 1800′s naturalists, transmutationists or not, the taxonomic arrangement of groups within groups was such an achievement that provided evidence that organism were truly related to one another. One obstacle in appreciating this simple reading of history is that, for us twentieth-first-century-evolutionists, it is hard to imagine how can someone think of organism as truly related to each other if not phylogenetically.

Winsor ask the reader to see the conceptual relationship between taxonomy and Darwin in an analogous (homologous?) way to the relationship between the work of Copernicus and that of Newton. Darwin, like Newton, set himself the task of providing a causal explanation, a process, capable of explaining the patterns in Nature. And in the same way that the accepted work of Copernicus on planetary motions provided the patterns to be explained by Newton, so for Darwin the accepted patterns crying for explanation, the tree of life alluded in the title of Eldredge’s talk, came from Taxonomy. Darwin’s theory of evolution had to be able to explain the occurrence of groups within groups, it had to be able to account for divergent evolution.

Presented in this clear way, the importance of taxonomy seems so straightforward and unproblematic that one may ask why wasn’t this accepted before? Winsor points to the by-now usual suspect: the essentialism story. This is the view first articulated by Ernst Mayr and followed by many since that maintains that taxonomists before Darwin were victims of a severe case of typological thinking, believing each species has an essence, and thus committing them to fixity of species. After Darwin, the story goes, everyone just got smarter². Winsor work in the last few years has shown that this is a distorted view of history.

Winsor’s paper is a nice addition to a body of growing literature by historians and philosophers reexamining the natural sciences made in the 1800′s and bringing taxonomy, morphology and embryology to their rightful places in history.

Addendum: Read more about Mary P. Winsor’s paper on Evolving Thoughts, including Darwin’s consideration of the then popular Quinarian system.

References and notes

Winsor, Mary P. (2009). Taxonomy was the foundation of Darwin’s evolution Taxon, 58 (1), 43-49

Ever wonder how Charles Darwin gets celebrated the Mexican way? Well, with a piñata of course!

Meet the H.M.S. Beagle piñata.

If you are not familiar with Mexican culture I will just say that beating something with a wooden stick until it bursts into pieces is actually a sign of appreciation. I wasn’t there unfortunately, but I am sure the piñata was filled with exotic fruits and candy.

[Images courtesy of Rodolfo Salas]

Charles Robert Darwin was born 200 years ago today.

As celebrations start around the globe, I just want to recommend a wonderfully written essay on Darwin by Aussie philosopher of science John S. Wilkins:

Not Saint Darwin [pdf]

It is a piece on why do we celebrate Darwin today that provides food for thought for the rest of Darwin’s year.

Everybody likes popular science stories with clear and simple eureka moments. In the case of Charles Darwin’s theory of Evolution his voyage on board the H.M.S. Beagle and exploration of the Galapagos archipelago usually serves for such narrative purpose.

Of course Darwin’s story is much more complex, richer and interesting. Something seldom mentioned is Darwin the taxonomist. He published extensive monographs revising the classification of extant and extinct barnacles (Cirripedia). Taxonomic work at that scale amounted the study of morphology, ontogeny and biogeography across many species in a comparative framework. It does provides a great perspective that was an influential piece in Darwin’s synthesis.

It is with great pleasure then that I see that this week’s Science Magazine cover portraits plates of Darwin’s monographs for their special issue on speciation.

Further reading

Stott, Rebecca. 2003. Darwin and the Barnacle: The Story of One Tiny Creature and History’s Most Spectacular Scientific Breakthrough. W.W. Norton, 309 pages.
ISBN 0393057453, 9780393057454

Darwin’s monographs:

• Darwin, C. 1851-54. A Monograph on the Sub-Class Cirripedia. 2 vols. Ray Society.
• ————  1851. A Monograph on the Fossil Lepadidae. , or, Pedunculated Cirripedes of Great Britain. Palaeontographical Society.
• ————  1854. A Monograph of the Fossil Balanidae and Verrucidae of Great Britain. Palaeontographical Society.