The Darwins’ Aubergine and Carrot Cavalry

As a child, I was always drawing on the backs of surplus mimeographs from the college classes my father taught. Slightly younger kids, I suppose, used surplus photocopies. (And today?)

For Francis (1848–1925) and Horace (1851-1928), sons of biologist Charles Darwin, the equivalent material was pages from their father’s manuscript for On the Origin of Species (composed 1858). After all, the book had gone to the printer, and there was no use in wasting that paper.

The picture to the left shows Francis’s watercolor titled (perhaps by cataloguers at Cambridge University since I don’t see a label on it) “Aubergine and Carrot Cavalry.” The rider on the eggplant wears a turban and baggy pants, and bottles hang from his saddle. The carrot-rider in red is clearly on a mission to expand the British Empire. Both men carry pointy swords.

Another page displays bright birds, butterflies, fruits, and a castle on the reverse of a discussion of ants. And there’s a proto-Cubist house seen from both inside and outside, with a cat, gun, and clock.

Though on first glance we might think the boys defaced an important manuscript in the history of world thought, their artwork probably caused those pages to survive. Most of the rest are long gone.

(Thanks to the New York Times ArtsBeat blog for the tip.)

The Dishonesty Behind a Creationist Movie

I was struck by the level of dishonesty from the makers of the creationist movie Expelled that John Rennie and Steve Mirsky have highlighted on Scientific American's blog. Here are two of their "Six Things in Expelled That Ben Stein Doesn't Want You to Know...":

1) Expelled quotes Charles Darwin selectively to connect his ideas to eugenics and the Holocaust.

When the film is building its case that Darwin and the theory of evolution bear some responsibility for the Holocaust, Ben Stein's narration quotes from Darwin's The Descent of Man thusly:

With savages, the weak in body or mind are soon eliminated. We civilized men, on the other hand, do our utmost to check the process of elimination. We build asylums for the imbecile, the maimed and the sick. Thus the weak members of civilized societies propagate their kind. No one who has attended to the breeding of domestic animals will doubt that this must be highly injurious to the race of man. Hardly anyone is so ignorant as to allow his worst animals to breed.

This is how the original passage in The Descent of Man reads (unquoted sections emphasized in italics):

With savages, the weak in body or mind are soon eliminated; and those that survive commonly exhibit a vigorous state of health. We civilized men, on the other hand, do our utmost to check the process of elimination. We build asylums for the imbecile, the maimed and the sick; we institute poor-laws; and our medical men exert their utmost skill to save the life of every one to the last moment. There is reason to believe that vaccination has preserved thousands, who from a weak constitution would formerly have succumbed to small-pox. Thus the weak members of civilized societies propagate their kind. No one who has attended to the breeding of domestic animals will doubt that this must be highly injurious to the race of man. It is surprising how soon a want of care, or care wrongly directed, leads to the degeneration of a domestic race; but excepting in the case of man himself, hardly anyone is so ignorant as to allow his worst animals to breed.

The producers of the film did not mention the very next sentences in the book (emphasis added in italics):

The aid which we feel impelled to give to the helpless is mainly an incidental result of the instinct of sympathy, which was originally acquired as part of the social instincts, but subsequently rendered, in the manner previously indicated, more tender and more widely diffused. Nor could we check our sympathy, even at the urging of hard reason, without deterioration in the noblest part of our nature. The surgeon may harden himself whilst performing an operation, for he knows that he is acting for the good of his patient; but if we were intentionally to neglect the weak and helpless, it could only be for a contingent benefit, with an overwhelming present evil.

Darwin explicitly rejected the idea of eliminating the "weak" as dehumanizing and evil. Those words falsify Expelled's argument. The filmmakers had to be aware of the full Darwin passage, but they chose to quote only the sections that suited their purposes. . . .


3) Scientists in the film thought they were being interviewed for a different movie.

As Richard Dawkins, PZ Myers, Eugenie Scott, Michael Shermer and other proponents of evolution appearing in Expelled have publicly remarked, the producers first arranged to interview them for a film that was to be called Crossroads, which was allegedly a documentary on "the intersection of science and religion." They were subsequently surprised to learn that they were appearing in Expelled, which "exposes the widespread persecution of scientists and educators who are pursuing legitimate, opposing scientific views to the reigning orthodoxy," to quote from the film's press kit.

When exactly did Crossroads become Expelled? The producers have said that the shift in the film's title and message occurred after the interviews with the scientists, as the accumulating evidence gradually persuaded them that ID believers were oppressed. Yet as blogger Wesley Elsberry discovered when he searched domain registrations, the producers registered the URL "expelledthemovie.com" on March 1, 2007--more than a month (and in some cases, several months) before the scientists were interviewed. The producers never registered the URL "crossroadsthemovie.com". [See also the Bad Idea Blog on these registrations last September.] Those facts raise doubt that Crossroads was still the working title for the movie when the scientists were interviewed.

Until now Ben Stein, the public face of the Expelled movie, had been my favorite old Nixon hand. Of course, that was based only on his game show. But he seems to be once again in a nest of liars.

The people behind Expelled probably think of themselves as doing God's work. (There's always the possibility, however, that they're cynics aiming at a gullible market.) Seeing such obvious lies from those moviemakers leads me once again to ponder physicist Steven Weinberg's remark: "With or without [religion], you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things it takes religion."

Charles Darwin Argues Away for a Good While

The New York Times alerted me to the Darwin Correspondence Project out of Cambridge, which includes the biologist's first surviving letter. Its recipient can't be identified, but the 1822 date indicates that Darwin wrote it as a twelve-year-old just back from his boarding school.

Young Charles complained about a heated conversation with his older sister and tutor, Caroline. Their relationship seems not unlike the relationship of many other sisters and brothers:

My Dear friend

you must know that after my Georgraphy, she said I should go down to ask for Richards poney [unidentified], just as I was going, she said she must ask me not a very decent question, that was whether I wash all over every morning no

then she said it was quite disgustin then she asked me if I did every other morning, and I said no

then she said how often I did, and I said once a week, then she said of cour you wash your feet every day, and I said no,

then she begun saying how very disgusting and went on that way a good while, then she said I ought to do it,

I said I would wash my neck and shoulders,

then she said you had better do it all over

then I said upon my word I would not,

then she told me, and made me promise I would not tell,

then I said, why I only wash my fett once a month at school, which I confess is nasty, but I cannot help it, for we have nothing to do it with,

so then Caroline pretended to be quite sick, and left the room, so then I went and told [older brother] erasmus, and he bust out in laughing and said I had better tell he[r] to come and wash them her self, besides that she said she did not like sitting by me or Erasmus for we smelt of not washing all over, there we sat arguing away for a good while.

I remain your affectionately

The epistolary editors add that to understand "the sanitary arrangements at Shrewsbury School in the early nineteenth century," we should consult James Basil Oldham, A History of the Shrewsbury School (Oxford: 1952), page 155.

See also the Complete Works of Charles Darwin Online, source of the picture above of Charles and his younger sister Catherine in about 1816.