The Darwin Myth

This year being a celebration of the 200th anniversary of Darwin’s birth, and the 150th anniversary of his Origin of the Species, there has been much hagiography produced about Darwin. There is an effort to paint Darwin as a secular saint.

A brand new biography is willing to ask hard questions about his life and teachings. The Darwin Myth, by Benjamin Wiker, is a biographical sketch of Charles Darwin which examines both the man and his thinking, as well as his impact. In it Wiker examines a number of myths that have sprung up around Darwin.

Among the biggest of these myths is the view that Darwinism is the same as evolution, and that Darwin invented the concept of evolution. The truth is that the idea of evolution had been around for at least two generations prior to Charles Darwin, even in his own family. His grandfather Erasmus had propounded the idea, as had numerous other thinkers and scientists prior to Charles.

Darwin’s real originality, as Wiker reminds us, lay in deliberately setting out to create a godless version of evolution. Many of his close friends and allies – such as Gray, Lyell and Wallace — disagreed with Darwin about this. Indeed, they also offered many criticisms of the weight Darwin placed on natural selection, and noted other major problems with his version of events.

Wiker also highlights the major disconnect between Darwin and Darwinism. Darwin the man was kind, polite, humane, a great husband and father, and a gentleman. He was a philanthropist, and keenly supportive of the abolition of slavery movement. But his take on evolution ran directly counter to all of this, for it led of necessity to social Darwinism and the logic of the Nazis.

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