deadman_932
Posts: 3094
Joined: May 2006
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Over at the Usual Deceptions website, "Flannery" has written a review of a book written by former BBC producer Roy Davies, entitled "The Darwin Conspiracy - Origins of a Scientific Crime."
"Flannery" begins his UD review in this vein:
| Quote | | " Imagine if you will a rather pathetic little boy oppressed by a domineering father and overshadowed by older sisters assuming maternal roles that directed his every move. Under such conditions it’s not surprising that certain survival strategies would be employed by the boy to establish his place in the family pecking order. Thus it was, according to biographers Adrian Desmond and James Moore, that a young Charles Darwin stole his father’s peaches and plums only to “discover” them later in heroic fashion and would invent “deliberate falsehoods” in order to gain attention. In school he would regale classmates with stories of fantastic birds and remarkable flowers, flowers he could change into different colors. “Once,” write Desmond and Moore, “he invented an elaborate story designed to show how fond he was of telling the truth. It was a boy’s way of manipulating the world.” But what happened when the boy, whose insatiable need for attention never waned, became a man. How might he then manipulate the word? [sic] " |
Well.
Imagine a rather pathetic attempt to psychoanalyze a little boy from a time very nearly two centuries removed. Imagine ignoring that the boy in question ... who admitted in his later Autobiography (pages 21-23) to all the hideous crimes of lying cited above ... was all of eight years old when they happened.
Imagine that his mother was an invalid who died right at that time, in that very year. Imagine his father was a distant figure who assigned his daughters to essentially raise his son up to the age of ten. Alert the press. An eight-year-old that just lost his mother MIGHT have wanted attention and so engaged in utterly trivial and harmless instances of fabrication.
But now imagine a ethically-challenged ID-iot named "Flannery" using bits and pieces of various authors and vapid unsupported speculation to try to forward a laughable thesis that Darwin was
| Quote | | " Perhaps... a rather pathetic attention-getter, interested more in fame and facts, worried more about reputation than science, a borrower, a posuer, a cheat..." who " lied and cheated his way into prominence as the principal discoverer of modern evolutionary theory " |
Imagine the stench of ID-level desperation and duplicity, particularly on the website of a man, William Dembski, who has been caught at lying AS AN ADULT far more times than Darwin ever did -- and has never had the honesty or grace to own up to it.
Yeah, imagine that.
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Now we can turn to the substance of Roy Davies' book that "Flannery" bases his venemous little attack on.
In his press releases and online book-whoring, Roy Davies has stated that his book The Darwin Conspiracy - Origins of a Scientific Crime "uses new research to show that Wallace's first letter from the Malay archipelago to Charles Darwin arrived in London on January 12, 1857 and not at the end of April 1857. "
Here, he goes a bit further:
| Quote | " Its main premise is the method by which Charles Darwin managed to steal his ideas from articles and personal letters written to him by Alfred Russel Wallace and end up being feted around the world as the man who discovered the theory of evolution. The fact is that Wallace sent the complete theory of evolution to Darwin who had it in his hands for nearly 18 months before publishing On the Origin of Species. My book is based on writings about Darwin, Darwin's own correspondence and new evidence relating to when Wallace's letters to Darwin arrived in England and when Darwin claimed they arrived. And yet there is no one in this country - or, at the moment, in yours - who is prepared even to discuss the book or, it seems, to review it despite the fact that it was 150 years ago this year that Darwin claimed his unearned place at Wallace's table when they were both recognised as the discoverers of the theory of evolution. At least your publication will print letters about Darwin's perfidy. In London even that is not something we can look forward to with any hope."
Sincerely, Roy Davies http://www.2theadvocate.com/opinion/19086639.html
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So, what is Davies' claim really based on? It's based on an "analysis" of 19th century Dutch mail-boat timetables and schedules analyzed by Femme Gaastra of Leiden University.. To my knowledge, this material is entirely lacking peer-review.
Davies claims that this alone shows "it was Wallace who was the genius and Darwin, 14 years his senior, who was the plodder." and that Darwin stole all the main ideas about evolution from Wallace at this time (1858).
But does he really show this?
Hell no.
At Richard Dawkins' site, this book was discussed -- and Davies showed up to try to defend this notion that timetables alone accurately determined when the mail arrives. http://richarddawkins.net/forum....=t&sd=a
In that thread, you'll see that
(a) Darwin is KNOWN to have written about and discussed his notions concerning Natural Selection long before 1858. He began thinking about it in the 1830's and had completed all the essential parts of it prior to Wallace's formulation.
(b) Darwin acknowledged his debt to Wallace in the very beginning of the First edition of The Origin of Species.
( C) Roy Davies shows up here and makes some interesting claims
BUT
(d) A poster named "Cinnamon Ape" THEN appears here
To post this, (quoted in full) :
| Quote | I hate to say this...but the actual letters that Wallace sent himself indicates that the mail-boats were often weeks, if not months, off schedule. He once wrote a letter from Dobbo to his agent, Stevens, dated March 10th, 1857. Wallace expected the postal boat to arrive in early April, but when he returned it still had not arrived! On that same letter he added a post-script dated May 16th. Stevens apparently received the letter in late September, and as usual, read the communication to the Entomological Society - on October 5th! Most of the letters to Stevens, Sclater, Wallaces' sister, brother-in-law, or to Frederick Bates...took 4-5 months.
Wallace didn't return to Gilolo until the 1st of March and the mail steamer arrived on the 9th. That arrival was late...Wallace had written HW Bates in January while in Ternate in expectation that the postal boat would have arrived while he was away on Gilolo. When the steamer had yet to arrive he enclosed his previously written letter in a package to Frederick Bates (dated March).
"When the steamer arrived on the 9th [April], I was disappointed in not receiving a box from England (due two months)."
Incidents like this were common. The idea that the shipping schedules were at all accurate reflections of actual events is absurd.
Wallace also packaged letters for redistribution through an intermediary when he didn't know the address of the correspondant, or when there was a substantial enclosure (such as a manuscript). In fact, the critical letter to HW Bates was sent to Frederick Bates in just such a manner. And Darwin himself was asked to pass on the Manuscrift of "On the Tendency of Varieties To Depart Indefinitely from the Original Type" in just such a manner to Lyell.
In addition, a close examination of the exchange of correspondance by CD and ARW indicates that there are unpreserved letters from both sides. But from what we do have we see Darwin encouraging Wallace to theorize more about the issue, to look at Blyth's writings, and mentioned he was involved in doing research in order to publish a "big book" on the subject. It was clear that Darwin was also peppering Wallace with questions about odd varieties, both in the wild and domesticated. Wallace was aware that Darwin was writing a species book, and was equally aware that Darwin had discussed the problem of common origin and diversification in his "Voyage of the Beagle" discussion on the Galapagos. The Galapagos example was used explicitly in Wallace's 1855 "Sarawak Paper".
In addition, even in the MSS of 1844/1856 and the Red Notebook of Darwin there are fundamental differences with Wallace's version of the process of Natural Selection and the supportive evidence used. Wallace considered domesticated animals an inappropriate model for "Natural Selection", for one example. It would be odd that Darwin would plagiarise material ONLY where he had already worked out the idea, and ignore the areas where Wallace was "unique".
And as pointed out by Wallace himself, he didn't intend that the MSS be published. Darwin did what he was told by Wallace-giving the MSS. to Lyell...who then was faced with the issue of who had priority. Darwin, who had shown him summaries and sent Mss. describing the theory to others long before Wallace...or Wallace. As "publisher" Lyell would have been bound to recognize the priority of first submission. Darwin was relunctant to accept this solution so for "appearances sake". Thus the joint-publication solution...giving both men credit, while protecting any future challenges to priority from others that may have seen the hints in Darwin's letters, or Voyage of the HMS Beagle (a la Wallace), or Wallace's 1855 essay.
Once published Darwin was free to use Wallace's ideas to clarify his own work. But many of the actual sets of data from Wallace wasn't in his Mss. - Darwin used Wallace's frequent submissions to various journals. And much of what was used from the now-published mss. of Wallace wasn't "Wallacean"...the information was drawn from other published authors. |
And Roy Davies suddenly disappears from the board.
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AtBC Award for Thoroughness in the Face of Creationism
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