Book contents
- Darwin Mythology
- Darwin Mythology
- Copyright page
- Dedication
- Contents
- Figures
- Contributors
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction: Myths and Darwin
- Myth 1 That Myths Are Simple Falsehoods
- Myth 2 That Most European Naturalists Before Darwin Did Not Think That Species Change Was Possible
- Myth 3 That Charles Darwin Was Not Directly Influenced by the Evolutionary Views of His Grandfather Erasmus
- Myth 4 That Darwin Always Rejected the Argument from Design in Nature and Developed His Own Theory to Replace It
- Myth 5 That Darwin Converted to Evolutionary Theory During His Historic Galápagos Islands Visit
- Myth 6 That Darwin’s Galápagos Finches Inspired His Most Important Evolutionary Insights
- Myth 7 That Darwin Was a Recluse, and a Theoretician Rather Than a Practical Scientist
- Myth 8 That Darwin Rejected Lamarck’s Ideas of Use and Disuse and of the Inheritance of Acquired Traits
- Myth 9 That Darwin’s Theory Was Essentially Complete Once He Came Up with the Idea of Natural Selection
- Myth 10 That Darwin Delayed the Publication of His Theory for Twenty Years, Being Afraid of the Reactions It Would Cause
- Myth 11 That Wallace’s and Darwin’s Theories Were the Same, and That Darwin Did Not Reveal Wallace’s 1858 Letter and Theory Until He Ensured His Own Priority
- Myth 12 That Huxley Was Darwin’s Bulldog and Accepted All Aspects of His Theory
- Myth 13 That Huxley Defeated Wilberforce, and Ridiculed His Obscurantism, in the 1860 Oxford Debate
- Myth 14 That Darwin’s Critics Such as Owen Were Prejudiced and Had No Scientific Arguments
- Myth 15 That Natural Selection Can Also Be Accurately Described As the Survival of the Fittest
- Myth 16 That Darwin Banished Teleology from Biology
- Myth 17 That Darwin’s Success Depended on Undermining “Aristotelian Essentialism”
- Myth 18 That Darwin’s Theory Would Have Become More Widely Accepted Immediately Had He Read Mendel’s 1866 Paper
- Myth 19 That Darwin Faced a Conspiracy of Silence in Lamarck’s Country
- Myth 20 That Hitler Endorsed and Was Influenced by Darwin’s Theory
- Myth 21 That Sexual Selection Was Darwin’s Afterthought to Natural Selection
- Myth 22 That Darwin’s Hatred of Slavery Reflected His Beliefs in Racial Equality
- Myth 23 That the Discovery of Australopithecus in 1925 Belatedly Confirmed Darwin’s 1871 Scientific Prediction of African Human Origins
- Myth 24 That Darwin’s Theory Brought an Instant and Immediate Revolution in the Life Sciences
- Conclusion: What Inferences About Science Can We Draw from Charles Darwin’s Life and Work?
- Further Reading
- Index
Myth 6 - That Darwin’s Galápagos Finches Inspired His Most Important Evolutionary Insights
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 30 May 2024
- Darwin Mythology
- Darwin Mythology
- Copyright page
- Dedication
- Contents
- Figures
- Contributors
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction: Myths and Darwin
- Myth 1 That Myths Are Simple Falsehoods
- Myth 2 That Most European Naturalists Before Darwin Did Not Think That Species Change Was Possible
- Myth 3 That Charles Darwin Was Not Directly Influenced by the Evolutionary Views of His Grandfather Erasmus
- Myth 4 That Darwin Always Rejected the Argument from Design in Nature and Developed His Own Theory to Replace It
- Myth 5 That Darwin Converted to Evolutionary Theory During His Historic Galápagos Islands Visit
- Myth 6 That Darwin’s Galápagos Finches Inspired His Most Important Evolutionary Insights
- Myth 7 That Darwin Was a Recluse, and a Theoretician Rather Than a Practical Scientist
- Myth 8 That Darwin Rejected Lamarck’s Ideas of Use and Disuse and of the Inheritance of Acquired Traits
- Myth 9 That Darwin’s Theory Was Essentially Complete Once He Came Up with the Idea of Natural Selection
- Myth 10 That Darwin Delayed the Publication of His Theory for Twenty Years, Being Afraid of the Reactions It Would Cause
- Myth 11 That Wallace’s and Darwin’s Theories Were the Same, and That Darwin Did Not Reveal Wallace’s 1858 Letter and Theory Until He Ensured His Own Priority
- Myth 12 That Huxley Was Darwin’s Bulldog and Accepted All Aspects of His Theory
- Myth 13 That Huxley Defeated Wilberforce, and Ridiculed His Obscurantism, in the 1860 Oxford Debate
- Myth 14 That Darwin’s Critics Such as Owen Were Prejudiced and Had No Scientific Arguments
- Myth 15 That Natural Selection Can Also Be Accurately Described As the Survival of the Fittest
- Myth 16 That Darwin Banished Teleology from Biology
- Myth 17 That Darwin’s Success Depended on Undermining “Aristotelian Essentialism”
- Myth 18 That Darwin’s Theory Would Have Become More Widely Accepted Immediately Had He Read Mendel’s 1866 Paper
- Myth 19 That Darwin Faced a Conspiracy of Silence in Lamarck’s Country
- Myth 20 That Hitler Endorsed and Was Influenced by Darwin’s Theory
- Myth 21 That Sexual Selection Was Darwin’s Afterthought to Natural Selection
- Myth 22 That Darwin’s Hatred of Slavery Reflected His Beliefs in Racial Equality
- Myth 23 That the Discovery of Australopithecus in 1925 Belatedly Confirmed Darwin’s 1871 Scientific Prediction of African Human Origins
- Myth 24 That Darwin’s Theory Brought an Instant and Immediate Revolution in the Life Sciences
- Conclusion: What Inferences About Science Can We Draw from Charles Darwin’s Life and Work?
- Further Reading
- Index
Summary
It is widely believed that Darwin’s Galápagos finches inspired his theory of natural selection. Nothing could be further from the truth. Darwin’s failure to label his Galápagos finch specimens by island, and his lack of useful behavioral observations about the differing diets of these birds, limited his ability to argue that their diverse beaks had evolved by natural selection to fill different ecological niches. For these reasons, these birds are not even mentioned in the Origin of Species. As is well established by historians of science, and as is further supported by Darwin’s own testimony, his revolutionary theory of natural selection was inspired by his reading of Thomas Robert Malthus’s book On Population in September 1838, three years after Darwin’s historic visit to the Galápagos Islands and two years after his return to England on the Beagle. What Darwin’s Galápagos birds, including the famous finches, helped him to understand is that species often grade insensibly into one another and that varieties, as he later argued in the Origin of Species, are “incipient species.” It was the largely underappreciated existence of this variability among species in nature that allowed Darwin to grasp how natural selection might give rise to new species. Inspired in part by David Lack’s (1947) influential book Darwin’s Finches, the pervasive myth associated with these iconic birds is a classic instance of how important scientific discoveries often become telescoped around a dramatic moment of eureka-like insight, obscuring what typically proves to be a more protracted and conceptually multifaceted processes of scientific innovation.
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- Darwin MythologyDebunking Myths, Correcting Falsehoods, pp. 68 - 79Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2024