In Our Time - Darwin: On the Origin of Species

Episode Date: January 7, 2009

To celebrate the 200th anniversary of the birth of Charles Darwin and the 150th anniversary of the publication of On the Origin of Species, Melvyn Bragg presents a series about Darwin's life and work.How Darwin was eventually persuaded to publish On the Origin of Species in November 1859 and the book's impact on fellow scientists and the general public.Featuring contributions from Darwin biographer Jim Moore, Steve Jones, geneticist at University College London, Jim Secord of the Darwin Correspondence Project and Johannes Vogel, Sandy Knapp and Judith Magee, all of the National History Museum.

This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. Thank you for downloading this episode of In Our Time. For more details about in our time, and for our terms of use, please go to BBC.co.com.uk slash radio four. I hope you enjoy the programme. We ended yesterday's programme with a question. In May 1842, Darwin wrote an outline of what would later become his theory of evolution by natural selection.

But he waited another 17 years until November 1859 before publishing his theory in book form. Why did he wait so long? Part of the answer to that question is here at Burlington House on London's Piccadilly. By the mid-19th century, Burlington House had become the hub of British science. The Royal Society had offices here.

So did the Linnaean Society, the Chemical Society, the Geological Society and the Royal Astronomical Society. This was a world that Darwin wanted to be part of. I have with me Jim Moore, Darwin biographer, Jim Seacord, Director of the Darwin Correspondence Project, and Sandy Knapp, a botanist at the Natural History Museum and Botanical Secretary of the Linnaean Society. Jim Seacord, I mentioned some of the societies that had premises here.

Can you tell us little more about them and which of them Darwin belonged to? Well, when Darwin went on his great voyage around the world and the Beagle, he came back to London, and in London, he really wanted to be associated with the best men of science at the time. Science in this period was a gentlemanly activity. So, effectively, the societies that we see around us were extensions of that gentlemanly world. They were effectively gentlemen's clubs for science. And so almost immediately he joined the various societies that were relevant to his interests,

particularly the Geological Society in 1836. He became a fellow of the Zoological Society in 1837, and then he was elected a fellow of the Royal Society a couple of years after that. Jim Moore, in this part of London and it wasn't just the learned societies that it offices here. Jim Seekord mentioned the word gentleman. This was a gentleman's part of London.

Could you develop that, Jim Moore? Well, today's West End was a bit like a large and fashionable village in relationship to the city of London back in Darwin's day. And here in this upper-class village were the gentlemen's clubs. And Darwin was elected to a proper gentleman's club,

the Athenayum. And he could stay there overnight. He could eat there. He could meet his friends. there. This gave him a connection with what was later called the intellectual aristocracy. Another thing, just around the corner here on Albemile Street, was a major science publisher, John Murray's, and it was there that Darwin would eventually publish the origin of species and most of his other later books.

I think it's worth emphasising for listeners who don't know this part of London, that when Jim Moor says around the corner, he means around the corner. Around the corner is Oldham Street, and Darwin joined the Athenayam Club, which is across the road and down the street, And there's the Athenayam Club, which were not just scientists, but there were bishops, there were scholars from Oxford and Cambridge. This was an extraordinary, at that time, centre. It was the sort of Silicon Valley of Science of its time. Can I ask you, Sunday now, your botanical secretary of the Lanaiian Society,

which still has offices here, why was it so important for him to be part of this scientific community? I think being part of a community as a scientist is actually as important now as it was then, and being part of a community meant you met people, you met people who had ideas. And I think being a member of the Lanayan Society was particularly important

because it was the one society that combined all of natural history. It combined zoology, botany, geology. It was a little bit of everything, that whole natural philosophy, which was lacking in the other more specialist societies. He would come up to London to attend these learned societies

after he moved to Downhouse Jim Moore, and we've got to realize that there was this double life. There was a Downhouse working away on his classification and coming up here to meet like-minded men. Absolutely. He didn't have to be here all the time. He could go away from it all and control access to himself in that way. He could borrow books here and take them away with them. He could borrow specimens in London, take them away with them and return them. He had a trusted relationship with these people because the most important thing about a gentleman

of science is that you were trustworthy, that you're a moral and upright person that was defining sine qua non. And then Darwin got a terrible shock. In November 1844, eight years after he'd come back from the voyage of the Beagle. An anonymous book called Vestages of the Natural History of Creation was published and we'll go into the Lanai Society to talk about it. So here we go. Come in, come in to my lair. We're in this very small room, about 12 by 12, wonderful bookshelves,

wonderful sliding drawers with all the specimens in, and this is the heart of the Linnaean Society, Sandy. It is. It's the heart of the Linnaean Society. It's the strong room that's built to house Linnaeus's own library collections when Linnaeus died. and this is where we keep very important things. When you say strong you mean it, we came to a door that would do credit to Fort Knox. It is a strong room.

And I can never quite remember how to use the key. Jim Seacord, why did this book, vestiges of the natural history of creation, come as such a shock to Darwin? Darwin had been working on an evolutionary theory really from the time that he got back from the Beagle voyage, and he had actually written up a draft of it in the spring of 1844.

In other words, his ideas were pretty, pretty well formed. And so when Vestis was published towards the end of the year, suddenly you had a book which was arguing for effectively a broad-scale evolutionary cosmology and it was doing it in a very accessible kind of way. And what impact did it have at the time on the reading public? Well, the impact I think is really pretty gigantic because evolutionary theories and theories of the natural creation of species have been quite common currency during the Enlightenment. But with the French Revolution, these tended to go underground.

Vestages really brought this kind of question back onto the intellectual map of Victorian Britain. It meant that people were talking about it everywhere, from pubs to the corridors of places like Leninian society. It was really a huge sensation and something like 20,000 copies sold during its first few decades of publication. It was a big seller. I use the word shock, that you gave Darwin a shock. Can you describe the extent and effect of the shock? Well, in some sense, it was muddying the waters for him. worried that people were actually going to see his theory of something like vestiges, that he was

going to be identified as one of the anonymous authors, that he was Mr. Vestages. In another way, though, the book was actually quite useful for him. One level, of course, it was like a lightning rod, it drew controversy. It made a place where people could debate these questions in really quite a vehement sort of way. I think also for Darwin, it was an object lesson in things to avoid when he was working on his own theory. He was much more reticent about stressing the relationship between his theory and a general theory of progress, for example. The relationship between man and his book was much more toned down when he started to think about how to deal with this. So it was an object lesson for him. Jim Moore, can you take that argument

forward? Vestages was a perfect example to Darwin of what not to do when he got around to publishing his theory. Darwin avoided the origin of the universe. He avoided the origin of life. He avoided the origin of man. He made his theory ideologically more acceptable by not committing the anonymous vestiges errors. In 1844, the same year of vestiges came out, but earlier, he had completed a publishable draft of his theory. That draft got set aside, and he got to work on barnacles, comprehensively revising the classification of all of the barnacles, living and extinct in the entire world at that time. Why barnacles? Somebody challenged. Somebody challenged. You can't talk about the origin of species

unless you can describe many species and shown how they differ ever so slightly from one another. Now that's a very important thing to do in a seafaring nation. Any expert on barnacles is obviously promoting British trade. Ships can go faster if you understand how these things behave and how to get them

off your hulls. So it's not surprising that in 1853, Darwin has awarded the Royal Medal of the Royal Society of London, the great gold medal. Before we go on with that, Jim, an event in his own life affected him considerably. In April 1851, Darwin's favourite daughter, Annie, died. It was a terrible vote to him and to the whole family, but what impact you think it had on his studies, on the

way he was thinking about what he was doing? While he was working on Barnacles, Darwin, without realizing it, reached watershed in his personal life. In 1848, his father died, not unexpectedly, but Darwin was deeply moved and plunged into a state of depression. A couple of years after that, just when he was starting to recover, his eldest daughter and his favorite daughter, Anne Elizabeth, became ill with what Darwin believed was a hereditary ailment. And he, of course, put her under his own doctor who had helped get him back on his feet. But she deteriorated, his wife was pregnant with her eighth child, and over Easter weekend, 1851, this little girl died in Darwin's presence.

And you would think maybe he would get over this. He wrote a beautiful Threnody about her a week after the death. You might think that it put an end to it. But if you read the origin of species carefully, in the third chapter in the Stokel for Existence, we see an evocation of this child in the face of nature, bright with gladness, into which Darwin says selection,

like the force of 100,000 wedges, is being driven, adapting species to their environments. And at the end of that chapter, Darwin talks about consoling ourselves. And the question is, in a scientific book, like the origin of species, why should someone console themselves at the struggle for existence? In this period, when he's working on barnacles, leading up to the great work he would embark upon in 1856, Darwin was struck by the tragedy of life and how all life must die that other life might succeed it. And that became part of his emotional reaction to nature and all of his subsequent.

work. Jim Seacord, throughout this period we have a sense of the pace of scientific inquiry into your illusion hotting up. First, there was vestiges we've been talking about. Then in 1855, Alfred Russell Wallis published on the law which has regulated the introduction of new species. And I think Jim Seacord, that Darwin had to take this publication much more seriously than any previous one. During the late 1840s, and particularly in the 1850s, it was clear that the species problem was really coming on to the scientific education. agenda. Wallace was working half a world away and writing these really very fascinating papers about geographical distribution. I think above all, it showed that potentially a climate for his

work was starting to appear. So that combined with the completion of his barnacle monographs really meant that he could start to be more open about this question. One of the most interesting things, I think, is the first time Darwin really starts to tell some of his real scientific colleagues and friends about the specifics of his views is in relationship. to this paper from Wallace. Haven't Darwin actually received information specimens from Wallace who was in Borneo? And they corresponded as well?

It's important to understand Darwin and Wallace's relationship. Wallace was not, strictly speaking, a gentleman. He was a self-employed specimen collector, working in the Far East, supporting himself by sending back collections. Darwin was one of his clients, or you could say that Wallace was employed by Darwin to send certain bird specimens back.

Darwin complained about how much it cost. but used these specimens as some of his evidence for the varieties of domesticated races that were so important for his theory of natural selection. As I understand it, Jumur, three years later, Wallace finally forced Darwin's hand in February 1858 when he sent Darwin another paper called On the Tendences of Varieties to depart indefinitely

from the original type. The argument Wallace put forward is very close to Darwin's own thing about evolution at this time, and Darwin perhaps some of the fact. all that is a threat. Wallace's paper arrived at Down, Darwin's house, in June 1858. Darwin was in a state of crisis. The children were ill. The disease was rampant in the village. And on the 1st of July, 1858, of course he was standing in the graveyard, burying his infant

son, Charles. This paper, he read as an anticipation of his own theory. He read it quickly and he decided that this man had scooped him. He couldn't deal with it himself. He was in an emotional mess. And he turned the entire matter over to his friends, Charles Lyle and Joseph Hooker, and he had to claim somehow his own priority. And then we had a famous meeting Sunday now here,

in this building, in the Linnaean Society. Can you tell us what happened there where joint papers were presented, but neither Darwin or Wallace were present? after Darwin received the manuscript version because the paper arrived at him from Wallace. It wasn't published and then arrived to him. Wallace sent him the draft paper wanting to have comment on it. And when this was all resolved and his friends Lyle and Hooker basically said,

well, we think the best thing to do here is to have your paper and Wallace's paper both read at the Lanian Society, which was common practice at the time. Scientists were often not present when their papers were read. And so a meeting was arranged for the 1st of July 1858 at which Darwin and Waller Wallace's papers were specially put on the agenda and were read first Darwin's and then Wallace's. And the president of the Renan Society in May 1859 of that year said the year hadn't been marked by any revolutionary discoveries. And so that presentation can't have stirred up much. I think it stirred up things in conversation.

His actual words are, the year which has passed since I last had the pleasure of meeting you on our anniversary has not been unproductive in. contributions of interest and value, blah, blah. It has not indeed been marked by any of those striking discoveries which at once revolutionized. So he acknowledged that there were things of interest and value, but what he didn't see is the fact that these two papers, this idea, would actually revolutionize science. And I think perhaps no one really saw how it would revolutionize science so completely, except perhaps Darwin himself. We've moved from the small, studious, intimate rooms of the Linnaean Society to the booming, large,

open spaces of the Natural History Museum in Kensington just before it opens. On Monday, we began Darwin's story in the Church of St. Mary's in Cambridge. And this building, where I am now, has the same reverberating acoustic. In a sense, that shouldn't be surprising. Strongly influenced by religious architecture, this museum was conceived as a place where God could be worshipped through nature. So it has all the architectural trappings of a Romanesque cathedral, rounded arches,

carved capitals, stained glass and side chapels. But unlike Great St. Mary's in Cambridge, there's no pulpit or altar here. Instead, this central neighbour I'm standing is filled with a vast skeleton of a diplodocus, 26 metres from head to tail. And sitting at the top of a flight of stairs, looking relaxed with legs crossed, is Charles Darwin. Sixteen months after that meeting at the Lenean Society, Darwin had completed a substantial book that would guarantee his own immortality.

On the 22nd of November 1859, John Murray published On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection or the preservation of favoured races in the struggle for life. We're now in the Darwin exhibition in the museum, Galapagos, Acoustics and All. The Origin of Species is all of the few books that have revolutionised the way we understand the world. Despite Darwin's publisher John Murray having reservations about the book's appeal, the entire stock of 1,250 copies was sold on the first day.

day. A second edition was quickly prepared and the book was back in the bookshop by January 1860. So why was it so popular? What impact did its ideas have? I'm joined now by Johannes Vogel and Sandinap again, both from the Natural History Museum. Also by

the biologist Steve Jones. Steve Jones, how important is the origin of species as a piece of sustained argument in support of evolution by natural selection? What did Darwin understand by that phrase? Of course he, of invented the term and I think he understood it pretty clearly. Natural selection is simply inherited differences in the chances of reproduction. So that if a certain individual bears a variant, which makes it more likely that he or she will survive, find a mate and reproduce, whereas others have different versions of the same thing which make it less likely, one will prevail and the others will disappear. And as this goes on, there will be more and more change until at last new forms of life appear. And that's what evolution under natural selection is.

But you're persuaded in chapter one that life is flexible, it can change. Look at all these different pigeons we've got around us here. How did that happen? And then we go step by step, very logically, inexorably, from the familiar to the less familiar, to the unknown, to embryology and instinct, and then a sort of killer summary at the end. The word evolution never appears in the whole book. The only time the word evolved appears is the very last word of the book. And the whole book almost leads up to that last word.

And you put it down with a sense of relief, but also you can't fail to have a sense of conviction that this argument is logical, it's straightforward, it's supported, it's right. Sandin up, would you like to develop that? I think the Origin of Species is a beautifully constructed book, and I hadn't read the Origin of Species for 20 years, and in preparation for 2009 I thought, well, probably I ought to read this great book again. And I was completely struck by how beautifully it was put together

and how each chapter develops the argument, summarizes the argument, sets you up for the next chapter. You start with pigeons, and that's all quite familiar, because you see them all around you. And by the time you get to embryology, you feel as though you kind of understand where this is going and how it's working, and you feel surrounded by a set of things

that you, any reader, can understand. And I think it's that construction of the book, and it's very plain, simple, and straightforward language that, you know, has its Victorian idiosyncrasies, of course, but it's really the construction of this book and the way it leads you from one step into another that's so wonderful. Johannes Vogel.

What is so powerful about Charles Darwin and in this book he starts this way of developing things is that he takes the reader with him and the type of observations and experiments is something that can actually be in a way not just understood but potentially also repeated by ordinary members of science. Any pigeon breeder has the power to inflict artificial selection under domestication on his animals and so on and so forth.

So it's really something that relates very well to the ordinary person and in a way also a bit demystifies science as something that has only to be done by anointed man in white coat. This is an aspect, isn't it, Steve Jones, that Darwin loved being with pigeon man. He became the pigeon fanciers, pigeon fancier. And the idea of saying to people what you're doing is part of the essential scheme of things was very important to him.

It's not by an accident that his last book was on the work. Yes, I mean, he has a phrase somewhere, de minimis non-curant legs. The law does not concern itself with trifles. Does not apply to science. And that's a brilliant, brilliant statement. Because what it means is, however trivial your interest might be, breeding a pigeon with a bigger tail. Actually, it makes a noticeable addition to science. Many people then and now open the origin species chapter one and say,

this is going to be like reading Nietzsche or Kant. It's going to change my first. philosophy of life. It's not. It's going to tell you about the banal birds that pool all over the payments, but it's that ability to take the simple, to take the apparently trivial, and join these trifles into a magnificent hole which makes the book a book. And in a way I feel that that is also one of the arguments that still rage today. We have a lot of arguments that concern citizens and science today. Technology is advancing. But this book, in a way, gives people the choice to say you actually have the power with your observations, with your

interests to actually be scientific in your everyday life. And so you have a stake in the development of the world. And that is, for me, also one of the lasting legacies of this book and Charles Darwin's work. Sandina. Another thing that Darwin does very well in the origin of species is he opens a wide door for people to participate, but he also opens a door by saying there are many things that we do not know. And I think that's an important thing that science says, and it says it to day as well. And that means there's plenty of scope for people to contribute to science. And, you know, in his kind of obsession with the marshalling of facts, I always think of him as a sort of pack rat who marshalled facts in a kind of corner somewhere, and he must have a huge pile of them, which he

selectively used. Imagine if he actually put all the facts in Orchon of Species, it would be so big we couldn't carry it around. But the realization that every fact or every piece of evidence can be brought to bear to support an idea is actually the central tenet of science. In his autobiography, which he wrote when he was an old man, he said, My mind is like a machine for grinding general laws out of collections of facts. That would make a wonderful obituary for any scientist. Do you think the central idea is sufficiently supported by the facts in the book? Johannes Vogel.

Probably not. A lot of developments have come along since the incorporation of Mendelian laws, the discovery of chromosomes, the discovery of DNA as the mechanism, the sequencing of DNA. lots of evidence that has come since that has allowed us to examine these ideas in more detail but fortunately they all support

this original idea so that's the enduring power. Steve Jones would you like to talk to that? Yes I think that's right. The great strength of the book is its framework strength of this museum is its framework its contents have changed enormously over the years and what goes on behind the doors of the museum

would not be recognised in many ways by 19th century biology but what the book in some ways did was to invent the science of biology. There was no single science of biology before that. There were people who studied islands or fossils or domestic animals, but nobody realized they were doing the same thing. And suddenly you

have this crystalline argument that points out to these unlikely individuals, many of whom hated each other's guts. But actually, this was the unifying theory and what you're doing is what your worst enemy is also doing. And that must have been a very refreshing experience. Sandin up, what sort of criticisms did the book face at the time?

Darwin was, of course, very nervous about publishing his book, partly because he was pushed into it by circumstances beyond his control, but also because I think he was concerned about what his ideas would engender. And one of the things he says in the book is that many naturalists may believe that all life is interconnected by descent

with modification, but that actually what he's doing in the book is providing the mechanism by which that happens. And I think it was the joining of those two ideas which probably frightened him a bit. And there was a certain amount of Furoi and there were reviews that were written that were very negative. A lot of that negative reaction at the very

publication of the book was the knee-jerk thing to people actually hating each other's guts. Were there people at the time criticizing the evidence, were they saying there isn't enough of this, he has not convinced us? I'm talking about 1859, 1860, Steve. There were many people who bitterly disputed the book. First of all, they disputed the evidence. One of them went so far as to say, when I read this book, I laughed out loud, and that must have been difficult. I've never laughed out loud, and I've read it several times. Yes, they disputed the evidence, they disputed the age of the earth, the nature of the fossils, the fact that there were, you know, you know, you know, intermediate forms, all this people fought against. But of course, that's a natural method of

scientists. I mean, scientists are professional pessimists. Their job is to dispute the evidence. And there are certainly holes in Darwin's arguments, there's no question, but most of those holes have been filled. It's ironic that in this museum here, Richard Owen, who founded it, loathed Darwin. Darwin wrote about Owen that he was, in his response to the origin, and Owen was written a view that was spiteful, extremely malignant and clever. And then he wrote, It is painful to be hated in the intense degree with which Owen hates me. That gives you a flavour of the times. This museum here, this was the temple of anti-evolutionism when it was built.

And now, ironically, we've torn down the temple, and we've rebuilt it in the form of Darwinism. There's almost no mention of man on the origin of species. This seems a bit of a strange omission. Can you explain it? People have speculated about it. The light may be cast upon man than his origins is all that really says. I think the reason was twofold. First of all, almost nothing was known about the origin of the man.

The first human fossil had not really been recognized as such. There was one that was clearly human-like. And secondly, he was concerned about, you know, he was already turning over the apple cart and overturning the idols by talking about evolution itself. To suggest that it would apply to humans might have been a step too far. It took him another 12 years before he wrote a book on that. And thirdly, and probably the simplest explanation is he wrote it in such a rush that he felt,

do I need to open this can of worms, so to speak, and his last book was, of course, about worms, by talking about man. And I think he just nodded, I'm going to come back to this. But doesn't he also, in a way, do the clever thing by saying, I will present you with a very powerful argument, and then you, the intelligent reader, if you extrapolate from that, if you think the argument through to the end, you can come to your own conclusions and again sort of deflecting

any controversy but leaves it to the reader and the audience to actually come up with the answer themselves. I think that's right and I think one of the things that's clever about the origin of species is it develops the argument without the specifics. I mean it is full of facts and it could have been full of lots more facts but in a way

it develops an overarching framework argument to which any specific piece of evidence can be put and in a way by introducing man into the origin of species what would have happened, I think, is that we would have had an argument about man's origins instead of about what really is important about the book. Thank you. I'm in the library of the Natural History Museum with Judith McGee, a librarian. We have a number of additions on the origin of species here, Judith.

Could you tell us something about them? Yes, certainly. The Darwin collection in the library of the Natural History Museum is the foremost library internationally. We have a splenable. We have a splen collection of just under 2,000 items of Darwin published material in many languages. And here we have a wonderful example of a first edition of On the Origin of Species. This volume is particularly interesting because it was sent to a gentleman called William Tegart-Meyer, who was a pigeon fancier amongst other things. and Darwin corresponded with him on selection of features and characteristics in pigeons because he was interested obviously in selection.

Darwin wrote to Teggitmire and here is a letter just before on the Origin of Species was published telling Teggat Mier that he was going to send him a first edition copy. Teggit Meyer had the good sense to tip it into his book so that this book is of great value. Not only is it a first edition but there's a letter. better as well. Can you tell us about some of the other editions you've laid out? Yes. These are different language additions of origin of species. We have 29 different languages in total. The most recent is Icelandic translation. But here, in front of us here, we have an Arabic edition, which is quite unusual, I think. Armenian, Turkish, as you see, Chinese,

We also have Japanese and here is Catalan edition. Have you any idea how many editions there are? We hold just under 500 editions but there are many more. From the range of stuff here you're talking about Hebrew, Arabic,

Japanese, Chinese, all the European language and so on it doesn't seem that religious and cultural differences around the world have stopped people reading Darwin. No, quite. That's what's so wonderful about the collection that no matter where you go you'll find it's being translated because the theory of natural selection is so important

and science isn't alien to any culture or nation I think and it's wonderful to have them translated, yes. In a few moments the museum doors will open and the public will come streaming in. Many of them will make their way to a special exhibition about Charles Darwin called Darwin's Big Idea. One of the most eye-catching part of the exhibition are the animals, some stuffed, some living. They're all specimens that Darwin would have seen, and in many cases eaten, on the Beagle voyage we talked about yesterday.

It's a richly exotic world of iguanas, amadillos, giant tortoises, and hornet frogs. Jim Seacord, there's clearly a public appetite for these sort of displays today. In Darwin's Day, were people just as excited by them? People in the 19th century were absolutely fascinated by the kinds of objects we see around us. In fact, many of them date from the 19th century, and many of them came, in fact, from Darwin's own collections. The British Museum, natural history, as it was called then, was a place where the Victorian just flocked

to see all sorts of animals from around the world, from the growing British Empire. Would you say that there was already a natural audience, if I can use the word, natural, waiting for Darwin, that people were already greatly interested in stuff we see around us now? Absolutely. In fact, Darwin, it helped to create this audience through the journal of the Beagle that he had written.

This became a bestseller, especially during the 1840s when it was published in the Colonial and Home Library by John Murray. And in that book, he describes all sorts of creatures from around the world. We're sitting in the middle of the Darwin exhibition. So can you, Jim, as you called, give us some idea of what is surrounding us? Well, there's a range of animals, particularly there's an exhibition of birds, which were one of the Victorian's favorite creatures. But I think the most interesting one that we can see behind us

is the toxidon. This was one of the great mammal, ancient mammals, that Darwin found when he was on the Beagle voyage. For the Victorians, the Toxodon was just one of a number of creatures that allowed the imagination to extend into the deep past, not only just into these mammals, but ultimately back into dinosaurs, to early reptiles, to amphibians, and ultimately to the very origins of life itself. This was an incredibly new vision for the Victorians, really from the 1820s and 30s onwards, and it's one that Darwin was able to have. appeal to very directly in the origin. Jim, what impact did the book success have on Darwin himself? The obvious impact on Darwin is he extremely busy preparing new editions. He spent a very large

percentage of his time for the next 12 or 13 years answering his critics by changing sentence after sentence after sentence. The book became about 25% larger as a result. That's one effect. The other fact is that he got quite a lot of income. This was a real bread and butter book for John Murray, the publisher. The book sold for 15 shillings, which was about a week's wages for an average paid laborer. And if you just take 15 shillings, Darwin got about 10% of that and multiply it by thousands upon thousands upon thousands of copies. You can see why Darwin died a multimillionaire in our money. The other effect that this book had on Darwin was to make him famous.

across Europe and across the world as a result of this book. Can you tell us how the book was received at the time, let's say a few months afterwards, we'll stay in that period at the moment, Jim Moore, by Darwin's academic peers? The origin of species was received with a great deal of serious consideration. The fears that the book would be burnt in public and a great battle royal breaking out are simply not true.

And Darwin was pleased to discover that the academics that he respected most were polite when they disagreed with him. So the book was taken seriously, Darwin was famous, and he had a lot of money. Nevertheless, a great debate broke out, a debate between the different factions which came to a head in June 1860, and what's become known as the Oxford Evolution debate, perhaps you could give listeners some idea of who is involved in the main lines. The extraordinary thing. We talk about the Oxford debate, 30th of June 1860, it's an event like Waterloo.

Well, it really wasn't. This is the story of a 55-year-old bishop, getting mugged in his own diocese by a 35-year-old zoologist. Wilberforce had just published a review of the origin of species, which was fairly negative, condescending. Old plumb-in-the-mouth, Wilberforce, and his own diocese, and young Huxley's lying in wait for him. Wilberforce gives him an opportunity to attack,

and Huxley goes for the juggler. It was not a premeditated set piece debate. It was an opportunistic attack. Huxley says to Wilberforce, you will respect us. We, rising young men of science, you cannot use your authority to crush us. Huxley was ineffective. He was too angry to project his voice. It was young Hooker, Darwin's closest friend in science, who got up and really put the bishop in his place.

I think the bishop did deserve to be put in his place. It would be outrageous if something like that happened today. It was even more outrageous that had happened at that time. But it's come to symbolize a whole series of events because the victors, the Darwinians, have used this contretemps as paradigmatic for the whole discussion of evolution, and that's a mistake. Well, can I ask you then, is this just part of the Darwin legend,

or did it happen that Wilberforce, the Bishop of Oxford, when he inquired whether Huxley, who was known as Darwin's bulldog, whether he was descended from monkeys on his grandfather, side or his grandmother's side, Huxley replied that he would, quote, rather be descended from an ape than from a cultivated man who uses gifts of culture and eloquence in the service of prejudice and falsehood. What's that said? Something like that was probably said. Notice that the issue is apes. The origin of species is not supposed to be about humans, but everyone knew, including Charles Darwin and Huxley and the bishop, that this was a book about people in our origins.

So was it on your mom's side or your dad's side that you have your ape and surgery? That's a frisson there. Could women be descended from apes? Could your mother be? You know, it was a witty jive, typical Wilberforce, ecclesiastical politician, and he got hammered by a young scientific puritan. So Jim Seagood, are we talking about battle lines being drawn up? Is it a split between older and younger scientists or cultured man?

Is the religious divine breaking there already? Well, by the sign of Bishop, of course, there is. is. Can you go into the sort of deeper nature of the fissure of the factunosum? In some ways, I think the Oxford debate just wasn't very typical of the disputes that were happening during this period. There weren't two camps forming in this kind of early period. What we've got here is, in some sense, a bishop that was seen by many to be out of control and a young man who was actually going beyond his remit in terms of what the British Association was about. There certainly are groups which find what Darwin is actually doing abhorrent.

but they tend to be rather marginalized. There are other groups that find what Darwin is doing is fantastic and is going to lead ultimately to the victory of atheism over religion. But those people are in a minority. If you're looking at the general Victorian debate, it's much more people, in some sense, broadly coming to accept that Darwinism can combine the best science with the idea of progress in a kind of way that shows, well, maybe we have come from the apes,

but it's a divinely inspired process. And that's what we can really see with it. Can I ask both of you, when people think of the publication on the origin of species, one of the things that a lot of people think are, it was an attack on religion, the religiously minded people of whom there were a great number, rose up against it, and it began an argument which fuses through to this day. How far is that true? Can I start with you, Jim Moore?

The origin of species was quite a conservative and temperate book. it referred to the God or the creator a fair number of times. This was a personal book. It was a vision of creation by law. It's been put this way. The origin of species addressed a debate that had been going on amongst theologians

in an area called natural theology about whether God works in the world by miracles or by laws of nature. Laws of nature had come out on top in field after field, astronomy, chemistry, so forth. Now Darwin was extending the rule of God's law to the origin of species. And Darwin helped resolve that debate

within natural theology, which was all part of science at that time, in favor of law. It was a law book. On the other hand, I don't think that accurate as I'm absolutely certain you are, I don't think it gets to the question that I'm asking. Did this at the time seem to spark off a debate with the religious-minded people

who thought that they were now being attacked and this they had to defend themselves against and continue to do so. Jim, Jim Seekot. I think that the origin of species really created a focal point for debate about the relationship between God and science. That doesn't mean that it immediately was a weapon for one group or another group. I mean, one of Darwin's best friends at Harvard, Aisa Gray, wrote very movingly about the way in which you could understand both natural selection

and also God and those two things could come together. And that's something I think that Darwin himself was perfectly willing to have read into the book. He didn't think that the natural meaning of the book was atheism. In fact, he generally sent anybody who is a freethinker packing from Downhouse. But it certainly did provide a real kind of sparking point for a variety of debates. Jim Moore.

Atheists love the origin of species, free thinkers, secularists, francophiles. This was a book that could be used in a weapon to liberate British society from the thraldom of religion, the state church, the monarchy, these were Republicans as well as atheists. That's not Darwin's responsibility. The book was extremely useful to that irreligious sector.

The book was not liked by Anglicans as a whole. Politely, they disagreed, even Darwin's colleagues. Many thoughtful dissenters were talking about people outside of the Church of England, thought that the book was devout and useful because it established God's law, rather than his whim as the principle by which the universe is governed. So there was a mixed response. If we take a sort of broad and perhaps too simplistic of you, Jim Cicot, I'm quite prepared to accept the blame for that.

In the balance between science and religion, was this book, the publication of this book, a tipping point where the intellectual energies and the sense of intellectual rightness began to flow towards science? I think it's probably the case. if you look at it in a very long time span, certainly in the last 150 years, then I think that there's something to be said for that view. Of course, that wasn't necessarily Darwin's own meaning.

And I think one of the fascinating things about the origin of species is what a generous text is, and the kind of ways in which it opens up so many possibilities for different forms of reading. And in many ways, when we see that kind of division between science and religion, what we're seeing is not so much something that Darwin necessarily even intended to start, but something that has much broader causes within our society in terms of the way our institutions are organized,

it has effectively to do with the way that we read the origin of species in a different way now than it was read in the 1860s and 70s. However popular and influential on the origin of species has become, Darwin himself was always critical of the book, especially the lack of a factual basis for many of its assertions. In his introduction, he wrote, No one can feel more sensible than I do, of the necessity of hereafter publishing in detail all the facts

with references on which my conclusions have been grounded, and I hope in a future work to do this. Darwin fulfilled his pledge, which is why he sits here at the top of the steps in the museum's main hall, calmly surveying the throng of people who come each day to enjoy natural history and absorb the significance of evolution by natural selection. Tomorrow in the final programme we'll discuss how Darwin spent the last 22 years of his life providing those facts and references in support of his theory,

with a series of books, including books, about flowers, worms and humanity itself. Darwin, in our time, was presented by Melvin Bragg, the producer was John Watkins. There are many more Radio 4 arts and discussion programs to download for free. Find these on the website at BBC.co.uk slash radio 4. The crew of NASA's Artemis 2 mission have successfully completed their voyage around the moon. This is what we've been waiting for for 50 years. Traveling further from the Earth than any human has ever gone before.

And 13 minutes, the BBC Space podcast, told the inside story with audio from the mission. We can see sight. We're seeing more and more of the far side. And insight from experts at NASA. That's the way it is in spaceflight. There are a lot of tough questions. And we could never fly a perfectly safe mission. The safest mission is just staying home in bed.

From liftoff to splashdown, catch up with 13 minutes presents Artemis St. from the BBC World Service. Listen now, wherever you get your BBC podcasts. It just looks...