Charles Darwin Live and in Concert

Over 100 people packed our meeting room for Richard Milner’s performance of his show Charles Darwin: Live & in Concert. Milner, an anthropologist-songwriter, combined a wide range of musical styles – from Gilbert & Sullivan to Jimmy Durante to The Blues Brothers – to relate the history and science of Charles Darwin and evolution.

Thomas Huxley’s reading Darwin’s On the Origin of Species and his feeling utterly stupid for not having thought of evolution himself was Milner’s first “song cue of history.” Huxley, who coined the term agnostic, felt that evolution was logical and became a fierce defender of evolution against religious dogma. Darwin himself avoided fighting religion because he thought it would be counterproductive. He assumed that people would eventually turn to science on their own. Huxley preferred to engage in lively debates with a bishop who steadfastly avowed Church tenets on creation. Upon learning of the bishop’s death due to being thrown from a horse, Huxley wrote to Darwin that the bishop’s brains “had finally made contact with hard reality and the result was fatal.” Thus began a lively presentation of song and science.

Darwin’s father disapproved of his son becoming a naturalist, and so Darwin entered medical school. He hated medical school and often skipped class to study organisms in whirlpools. After leaving medical school for good, Darwin entered Cambridge to study theology. Then came the opportunity that changed his life – a trip on the HMS Beagle with Captain Fitzroy to South America. Not surprisingly his father opposed such a voyage, but the 22-year-old Darwin prevailed and endured plenty of seasickness during the trip. He collected many specimens from the Brazilian rainforest, and one of the puzzled sailors remarked that it was just a “stinky pile of ripe refuse.” Darwin disagreed.

(Captain Fitzroy’s official mission on the HMS Beagle was to map South America. His personal goal was to prove the superiority of Britain by Christianizing and educating four South American natives so that they could spread British culture in the New World. His expectations were dashed when the four natives returned to their home only to be attacked by their former tribesmen.)

After his adventures aboard the Beagle, Darwin spent the next eight years developing a new classification of barnacles. He was astounded by the variation of life. Erasmus had already thought of evolution, but did not understand the mechanism that caused it. Darwin realized that descendents did not always perfectly resemble their parents. This spontaneous variation produced different traits in organisms of the same species. Organisms with the most advantageous traits for surviving in their environment lived to reproduce and pass their traits on to their descendents. Over time these advantageous adaptations resulted in new species. This theory of natural selection was the key insight to understanding how different species developed.

While Darwin quietly mused about natural selection, Alfred Russell Wallace independently came up with the exact same theory of evolution through natural selection. In 1849 Wallace sailed to the Amazon rainforest to collect specimens. Wallace’s younger brother joined him, caught malaria, and died. Grief-stricken, Wallace decided to return to England. On the way his ship caught fire. Wallace watched from a lifeboat as the ship and all of his specimens burned and sank. Despite his heavy losses, Wallace set out on a new expedition to Malaysia where he caught malaria yet again. While sick he wrote out his theory of natural selection. Wallace sent a letter about his theory to Darwin and asked if it were worth publishing. Darwin at first thought that he should let Wallace be the first person to propose that people were descended from apes – such a suggestion would make Wallace the most hated man in England. But Darwin’s pride prevailed, and he and Wallace presented their papers at the same time. Darwin completed On the Origin of Species in 1859 after a frenzied thirteen months of writing.

The theory of evolution scandalized people who had been taught for generations that God created humans in the Garden of Eden. The idea that their ancestors had been primates caused an enormous backlash. Darwin himself felt guilty about showing the link between humans and primates – he likened it to confessing murder.

Darwin married his cousin Emma Wedgwood and focused his studies on the co-evolution of orchids and pollinating insects. But he could not escape the debate whirling around evolution. His headaches ranged from the Creationists, who staunchly opposed any idea contrary to Biblical creation, to Hegel, an overzealous Darwinist who believed that politics should be based on biology. Hegel’s Social Darwinism philosophy supported eugenics to strengthen the human species by keeping “unfit” people from reproducing. (His ideas influenced the Nazis’ genocidal policies.) Darwin strongly disagreed with Hegel and stated that people should work together compassionately so that the most people survive – not just the fittest.

The debate over evolution has not ceased since Darwin’s time. In 1925 the famed Scopes Monkey Trial in Dayton, Tennessee pitted William Jennings Bryan against Clarence Darrow. Darrow defended John T. Scopes, who was accused of teaching evolution despite a Tennessee law prohibiting evolution in schools. Bryan spiritedly advocated for the anti-evolution law. Scopes was convicted. Bryan celebrated with a feast. Since he was a diabetic, the feast caused him to fall into a coma and die.

Samuel Butler, a novelist, accused Darwin of depriving mankind of hope. Stephen Jay Gould, a middle school friend of Milner, wrote essays and books to explain evolution in modern times. The debate of evolution continues to this day.