(January 20th, 2012) Did he or did he not, copy his theory of evolution from fellow scientist Alfred Russel Wallace? Researchers at Singapore University delved into decade-old archives to solve the riddle for good.
It was in the summer of 1858, when at a meeting of the Linnean Society, letters by Darwin and Wallace containing their (r)evolutionary observations were publicly recited for the first time. Geologist Charles Lyell and botanist Joseph Hooker disclosed in their opening remarks, “These gentlemen having, independently and unknown to one another, conceived the very same very ingenious theory to account for the appearance and perpetuation of varieties and of specific forms on our planet, may both fairly claim the merit of being original thinkers in this important line of inquiry (…)”
But, how likely is it that two men arrive at the very same conclusions at just about the same time?? Not very likely, some thought, and claimed that Wallace’s famous Ternate essay (sent to Darwin by mail) ‘inspired’ Darwin to come up with a strikingly similar theory. The story goes that Darwin kept the essay a secret for about 14 days before handing it out to Charles Lyell as requested by Wallace. What fuelled this conspirative fire was another letter that Wallace must have written at about the same time and which arrived two weeks (3 June) before Darwin met Lyell on 18 June.
Behind the conspirative accusations was the 2008 book The Darwin Conspiracy: Origins of a Scientific Crime by Roy Davies, who’s notorious for his ‘revisionist documentaries’ (e.g. for the BBC). The product description states, “The Darwin Conspiracy unravels a 150-year-old mystery namely how did Charles Darwin receive the credit for the Theory of Evolution when it belonged to someone else and why have academics ignored all the documentary evidence that suggests Darwin perpetrated one of the greatest crimes in the history of science?” And so Davies goes on to tell his version of the “true story”.
But John van Wyhe and Kees Rookmaaker, curators of the Darwin Online and Wallace Online archives at the University of Singapore, couldn’t agree less. By poking their noses into old newspapers (Javasche Courant, Singapore Free Press, The Times) and copies of Wallace’s correspondence held in the Natural History Museum in London, the two were able to exactly follow the journey of the Ternate essay from Indonesia, where Wallace stayed in the spring of 1858, to Down House in London, home of Mr Charles Darwin.
Before they embarked on the historical postal voyage, van Wyhe and Rookmaaker collected “two new pieces of evidence”. Firstly, the Ternate essay was a reply to a letter that Darwin posted on December 22nd, 1857 in England. It must have arrived at the Indonesian island on 9 March 1858, “77 days after dispatch”. Secondly, by studying all Wallace’s correspondence, it became clear that Wallace “never replied to a letter by the same mail boat on which it arrived”. As the mail boats only docked once a month, the earliest date, he could have sent the essay off was in early April 1858.
Here’s the route the Ternate essay took:
mail steamer Makasser departed from Ternate 5 April 1858 – arrival at Surabaya 20 April – mail steamer Banda left Surabaya on 20 April and arrived at Jakarta 23 April – Banda continued journey on 26 April, arrived in Singapore on 30 April – steamship Pekin left Singapore on 1 May bound for Bombay via Galle (Sri Lanka) – Pekin arrived at Galle on 10 May (European mail transferred to another steamer, Nemesis, left Galle on 14 May) – Nemesis arrived in Suez on 3 June at 0:30 – transported overland through Egypt from Suez to Alexandria on camels and boats – arrived in Alexandria on 4 June at 11:30, loaded at 17:15 on steamship Colombo, which departed the next day 5 June at 5:00 – Colombo stopped at Malta (8 June) and Gibraltar (12 June) before arriving at Southampton on 16 June at 21:00 (“Fine weather, with generally light winds, throughout the journey”) – transported by train to the general post office in London on 17 June, arriving 5:53 – letter was delivered to Down House on Friday 18 June 1858
According to van Wyhe and Rookmaaker “the travel took the normal period of 75 days” and so, they conclude that “contrary to the frequent assertions of conspiracy theorists, Darwin did not lie about the receipt of Wallace’s Ternate essay, and in fact sent it on to Lyell the very same day. Hence, we should restore the story of the joint announcement of the theory of evolution by natural selection from the recent version of dishonesty and conspiracy to one of those inspiring cases of cooperation in the history of science”.
Kathleen Gransalke
Photo: US Library of Congress