The Book of Darwin

In The Book of Darwin (1982) George Gaylord Simpson weaves his own summaries of and commentary on Darwin's life and work in among excerpts from Darwin's writing. There are long sections of detailed observations on everything from cowslips to worms to barnacles. While these sections constitute a fascinating demonstration of Darwin's meticulous powers of observation, data collection,description, and record-keeping, they will tend to put the average reader to sleep.

What will keep most readers awake are Darwin's personal reflections, as well as the development of his thoughts on evolution and religion.

Among these personal reflections are an account of his suffering from chronic illness, his list of pros and cons when contemplating marriage, and the suggestion that as he became more and more absorbed in his scientific pursuits, his ability to appreciate the arts deteriorated.

As he accumulated more and more evidence for the theory of evolution through natural selection, he pondered the implications for religion and concluded, "I see no good reasons why the views given in this volume should shock the religious feelings of anyone." He notes that "A celebrated author and divine has written to me that 'he has gradually learned to see that it is just as noble a conception of the Deity to believe that He created a few original forms capable of self-development into other and needful forms, as to believe that He required a fresh act of creation to supply the voids caused by the action of His laws.'" (137)

In the famous "tangled bank" passage, Darwin referenced "the Creator" as follows: "Thus, from the war of nature, from famine and death, the most exalted object which we are capable of conceiving, namely, the production of the higher animals, directly follows. There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed by the Creator into a few forms or into one; and that, while this planet has gone circling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being evolved." (143) Apparently, the decline of his senstitivity to the arts did not affect his appreciation for beauty and grandeur in nature.

With respect to science, Darwin defined it as a process of "grouping facts so that general laws or conclusions may be drawn from them." (46) Later, he stated, "From my early youth I have had the strongest desire to understand or explain whatever I observed,--that is, to group all
facts under some general laws." (196) Evolution was the law that best explained his voluminous observations and data collection. It seems he was more interested in the observation and hypothesis-development part of the scientific method than in the testing and experimentation part.

In any case, one comes away from this book full of admiration for Darwin's meticulous attention to detail, his patience and endurance in pursuit of understanding, and his courage in testifying to his truth despite nay-sayers, skeptics, and critics.