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Journal Number 89
December 2003
HISTORICAL REPRINT
Darwin on God - and von Mueller on Evolution
Mueller's Chatham Island plants (in which he described Pterostylis banksii var. silvicultrix) was published in 1864 when its author was 39: I recently found a copy: its introduction is a fine example of the over-decorated prose of Victorian times.
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Ferdinand von Mueller was born at Rostock, Germany. He studied pharmacy and took his Doctor of Philosophy at the University of Kiel in 1847. He came to Australia in 1848 for health reasons and became a great botanical collector and writer.
He was Victorian Government Botanist from 1853, and for a time Director of the Botanic Gardens. He supported botanical exploration and collecting throughout the colonies. His botanical publications are very extensive. Dr Mueller received honours from many of the ruling Royal Houses of Europe, was made a Baron by the King of Wurtemberg in 1871, and was knighted by Queen Victoria.
Charles Darwin was born in Shrewsbury, England. Five years before Mueller's book was published, and when Darwin was 50, his book Origin of species appeared (though he had been working on his theories of natural selection for 22 years). Origin was an immediate publishing success, selling out the first day it was in print. It was also the immediate source of great controversy. |
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Darwin was depicted as an antichrist, and indeed he later wrote,
"By reflecting that the clearest evidence would be requisite to make any sane man believe in the miracles by which Christianity is supported, - that the more we know of the fixed laws of nature the more incredible do miracles become, - that the men at that time were ignorant and credulous to a degree almost incomprehensible by us, - that the Gospels cannot be proved to have been written simultaneous with the events, - that they differ in many important details, far too important as it seemed to me to be admitted as the usual inaccuracies of eyewitnesses; - by such reflections as these, which I give not as having the least novelty or value, but as they influenced me, I gradually came to disbelieve in Christianity as a divine revelation.
The fact that many false religions have spread over large portions
of the earth like wild-fire had some weight on me. Beautiful as is
the morality of the New Testament, it can hardly be denied that its
perfection depends in part on the interpretation which we now put
on metaphors and allegories". |
One thinks of the opposition to the evolutionary theories of natural selection as arising only from the Church - from nonscientists - but in fact it was ubiquitous.
There is, for instance, a passage in Mueller's introduction that can only have been intended as a direct rebuff to Darwin's theories, ". the writer has never been led to assume, that limitation of species is hopeless, or that an uninterrupted chain of graduations absolutely connects the forms of the living creation.
Analytical dissections have never left such impressions on his mind; but on the contrary convinced him of the great truth, that the Supreme power to which the universe owes its existence, called purposely forth these wonderful and specifically ever unalterable structures of symmetry and perfection, structures in which a transit to other species would destroy the beautiful harmony of their organisation, and would annihilate their power to perform those functions specially allotted to each in this great world from the morn of creation to the end of this epoch".
Mueller was, at least at that time, a creationist. I wonder if he changed his views; his surviving letters have been published recently (he is said to have written over 300,000 in his lifetime!).
It took several years, but eventually the scientific community began to rally behind Darwin, and now, ironically, he is himself almost regarded as a deity, or at least with almost reverent adoration.
PTEROSTYLIS BANKSII
R.Brown, accord. to All. Cunn. in Bot. Mag. t. 3172; All. Cunn. in Hook. Compan. to the Bot. Mag. ii. 376; Lindl. Gener. et Species Orchid. 388; J. Hook. Fl. Nov. Zeel. i. 248.
On grassy places of Chatham-Island.
The plants of Mr. Travers's collection are unusually dwarf, some only a finger's length.
Varietas silvicultrix.
Chatham-Island, in woods only.
The characters of this variety consist in broader and shorter leaves, which are verging from broad-ovate into lanceolate, only 1-2½" long, but 2/3-1" broad and acute but not acuminate, in proportionately broader sepals, of which the inner are lanceolate and simply acute, whilst the outer are hardly or little longer than these and never so much protracted into a narrow acumen as those of the typical form of Pterostylis Banksii. The author however has been unable to detect any important structural differences between these plants and has therefore not ventured to separate them as species, although middle-forms are missing in the collection. New Zealand specimens of P. Banksii prove that plant subject to considerable changes in its external form. |
Mueller's Pterostylis banksii var. silvicultrix is now Pterostylis silvicultrix
(F.Muell.) Molloy, DL Jones & MA Clem. - Ed.
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