Darwin's Bulldog Bites Soapy Sam: The Oxford "Debate" over Evolution, 1860

In June 1860, seven months after Charles Darwin published On the Origin of Species, scientists gathered at the Oxford University Museum. The occasion was the annual meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science. Darwin himself was not in attendance, due to illness. (Image: Oxford Museum of Natural History, as it is today)

The meeting lasted a week but the main event took place on Saturday June 30. It was preceded by a long, tedious presentation by Professor John W. Draper of New York University. His subject was the intellectual development of Europe considered in relation to Darwin's theory. 

The discussion that followed is often called the Huxley-Wilberforce Debate after two the key participants, biologist and comparative anatomist Thomas Henry Huxley and Samuel Wilberforce, the Anglican Bishop of Oxford. 

Their clash has gone down in history as a dramatic moment when evolutionary science, represented by Huxley, self-styled "Darwin's Bulldog" delivered a knockout blow against religion, championed by the Bishop, nicknamed "Soapy Sam." 

How Wilberforce got his nickname is a matter of debate, but he is supposed to have explained it good-humoredly, saying that although often in hot water, he always came out with clean hands. 

The caricatures below are of Wilberforce and Huxley, by "Ape" from Vanity Fair, 1869 and 1871. The artist, Carlo Pellegrini, often signed his work "Ape." It was not a reference to anthropoids, fitting as that might be. It was Italian for "Bee." Pellegrini could sting as well as amuse.

The reality of the Great Debate is more complicated than the legend. No official record exists of the discussion. Those who attended left conflicting recollections of what was said. The main lines are clear enough, however.

Wilberforce and Huxley were not the only participants in the discussion. Both of them were supported by prominent scientists and clergymen, which renders a strict "Science v. Religion" interpretation problematic. Both, however, came to the meeting with the intent of defending their respective positions on "Darwinism."

Huxley's most notable ally at Oxford was the renowned botanist Joseph Dalton Hooker. Darwin's closest friend, Hooker was the Assistant Director of Kew Botanical Gardens. He later became its Director.

Several prominent scientists supported Wilberforce. Among them was Robert Fitzroy, who had commanded the expedition during which Darwin had conceived the outlines of natural selection. After The Origin appeared, Fitzroy is supposed to have declared that he wished he had never taken Darwin along on the Voyage of the Beagle. (Image: Robert Fitzroy)

Fitzroy was a first-rate meteorologist who devoted much of his life developing an effective system for warning ships of approaching stormy weather. He was also a devout Christian literalist. His main contribution to the Oxford Debate seems to have been raising a large Bible over his head and beseeching the audience to believe in God rather than man -- the man in this case being Darwin. 

(Image: HMS Beagle in Tierra del Fuego) 

Another of Bishop Wilberforce's supporters was Richard Owen, professor of biology. An accomplished comparative anatomist and paleontologist, Owen is perhaps best known for coining the word "dinosaur. " His greatest achievement was campaigning for and overseeing the establishment of the vast and wonderful Natural History Museum in South Kensington, London (below).

Owen had written a highly critical review of Darwin's Origin after its publication. He had also helped Wilberforce to write a longer review of his own. Owen encouraged Wilberforce to speak at the Oxford meeting and coached him on the main points of attack. 

Owen did not deny the idea of evolution itself, and some of his views have influenced modern evolutionary theory. But he claimed that Darwin had oversimplified the developmental process, that humans were a unique species, and that all life developed according to designed (divine) laws. (Image: Richard Owen)

Darwin ascribed Owen's hostility to the Origin to jealousy of the attention it brought to Darwin. Owen had also attacked Huxley and Hooker as Darwin's "short-sighted disciples." In particular, Owen had ridiculed Huxley for suggesting that humans were descended from an ape-like creature. 

At the 1860 debate, Bishop Wilberforce used scientific arguments, largely supplied by Owen, to counter Darwin's position. But what made the encounter famous (eventually) was Wilberforce's question, directed at Huxley, which went something like this: 

"Is it through your grandfather or your grandmother that you claim descent from a monkey?" 

Many years later Huxley wrote that hearing that, he turned to the man sitting next to him, Dr. Benjamin Brodie, and said, "The Lord hath delivered him (Wilberforce) into my hands" 

Huxley had not sought this encounter. He had intended to skip the session and head for home. Wilberforce was a famous and accomplished orator. Huxley, not yet the great public speaker he later became, did not relish butting heads with the Bishop. He was persuaded to stay and "defend the cause" by Robert Chambers, a Scottish journalist. 

Chambers had published a book advocating evolution in 1844. The Vestiges of Creation was a bestseller that aroused a huge furor. Huxley, then an evolutionary skeptic, had written a hostile review of the Vestiges, but the two men were now on the same side. Chambers believed that Huxley's knowledge of comparative anatomy could carry the day.

Huxley countered Wilberforce by defending the main points of Darwin's theory of natural selection. Then he finished with the famous declaration that he would not be ashamed to have a monkey for his ancestor. What he would be ashamed of was to be descended from a man who used great gifts to obscure the truth. 

According to later accounts, this put-down of Wilberforce left the audience in an uproar. One woman is reported to have fainted at seeing a bishop treated so disrespectfully. Or, maybe her corset was too tight.

History generally credits Huxley as the winner of the Great Debate. At the time, that was not so clear. Many contemporaries thought Wilberforce had the best of it. Never a shrinking violet, he was sure he had. 

Hooker claimed that Huxley did not adequately defend the arguments of the Origin and added the audience couldn't hear much of what he said anyway. Hooker, who spoke after Huxley, claimed that it was he and not Huxley who done the best job of countering Wilberforce's attacks. Scientists are human, after all.  (Image: Joseph Hooker)

The debate at Oxford did not receive a huge amount of attention at the time. It became legendary as a pivotal moment in the history of science only decades later. The monument memorializing the debate (below) was erected 150 years later outside the Oxford Museum.

Owen feuded with Huxley and Hooker for many years. Their disagreements became more than intellectual. Darwin, once friendly with Owen, wrote in 1871: "I used to be ashamed of hating him (Owen) so much, but now I will carefully cherish my hatred and contempt to the last days of my life."

Interestingly, Huxley and Darwin remained on good terms with Wilberforce after the debate. Darwin had gone to Cambridge with the aim of entering the church as an Anglican minister. Even after he returned from the voyage aboard the Beagle, he seems to have retained that aim for a time. 

In 1839, Rev. John Bachman of Charleston, himself an accomplished naturalist, was visiting England. He met Darwin and asked him what he was going to do with the rest of his life. Darwin replied, he intended to become a bishop. 

If Darwin was serious then he soon abandoned that intention. In his autobiography he explained that he no longer believed in God. His family removed those passages from later editions.  

The Oxford Debate may not have been the clear seismic event some later accounts claimed. But it remains an important and fascinating moment in the history of science. 

  

 

 

"The Tay Bridge Disaster": Magnum Opus of "History's Worst Poet"

On a stormy night in December 1879 one of the worst railway accidents in British history occurred. It resulted from the collapse of a bridge over the River Tay at Dundee, Scotland. A passenger train crossing the bridge at the time plunged into the river. 

The estimated death toll was 75, with 60 known dead. History calls it the Tay Bridge Disaster. A government inquiry determined the cause as faulty construction that left the structure vulnerable to high winds. (Image: photo of the Tay Bridge showing collapsed section.)

The Tay Bridge Disaster is remembered today more than most Victorian railway accidents because it is alleged to have led to another disaster: a poem of the same name by William McGonagall. This hard-rhyming Scots author has been labelled the worst poet in history. I don't know who called him that, but the claim is repeated in every reference to William, pictured below.

That judgment, I humbly maintain, is based on a narrow Anglo-centric analysis. The world in all its festering billions has surely produced worse poets than Willy McG. I would ask those who repeat that slur on the Poet, "Have you read his poetry?" But judge for yourself, Dear Reader. Here are the opening lines:

"Beautiful railway bridge of the silv'ry Tay

Alas I am very sorry to say

That ninety lives have been taken away"

OK, a bit of poetic license here, I admit. The Poet got the number of dead wrong. Dead wrong as it were. But one has to admit his lines do rhyme. How many modern poets accomplish that? 

Moreover, he analyzes, forthrightly, the weaknesses of the bridge. He summarizes hundreds of pages of public reports in concise, vigorous -- one might even venture -- pithy language. And he adds a note of caution to us all. He tells the world 

"fearlessly without the least dismay, 

That your central girders would not have given way,

At least many sensible men do say,

Had they been supported on each side with buttresses

At least many sensible men confesses,

For the stronger we our houses build,

The less chance we have of being killed."

What solid advice in those last two lines! 

In order to flesh out my defense of this unfairly maligned Bard, it is incumbent upon me to note that McGullagal wrote two other poems about Tay Bridges. He wrote the first after the bridge that later collapsed was opened in 1878. He gave it the apt title "The Railway Bridge of the Silvery Tay." 

Here he anticipates a great song of the future -- "By the Light of the Silvery Moon". It is also worth noting how he charms us by altering "silvery" with "silv'ry."

The Poet praises the first bridge as the "Beautiful Railway Bridge of the Silvery Tay" as the best of all bridges, a bridge "unequalled to be seen." Yet, ominously, he seems to have had an ominous feeling about it.

"I hope that God will protect all passengers

By night and by day,

And that no accident will befall them while crossing

The Bridge of the Silvery Tay"

WE can imagine the Poet had already found here the theme of his second poem about the Tay Bridge, the one about the bridge's collapse. Perhaps he had already begun to write it, to be ready just in case. We wonder how his poetical career might have been altered had the first bridge stood erect and firm.

McGagitall wrote the third of his bridge trilogy about the second Tay railway bridge, built to replace the collapsed one. It is entitled, with Willy's typical genius, "An Address to the New Tay Bridge." This poem is brimming with self-confidence. We find The Poet at his cheeriest, predicting a long-lasting and satisfactory erection. 

"With your strong brick piers and buttresses in so grand array, 

And your thirteen central girders, which seem to my eye 

Strong enough all stormy winds to defy 

The Poet excels himself here with his uncanny prescience. The second bridge remains firmly erected in the Year of Our Lord 2021. It carries trains across the Tay right up to this very day. 

WE would be remiss if we did not call attention here to the sheer economy of McGoonagall's poetry. Compare the opening lines of his three Tay Bridge poems:

Poem 1: "Beautiful Railway Bridge of the Silvery Tay!"

Poem 2: "Beautiful railway bridge of the silv'ry Tay"

Poem 3: "BEAUTIFUL railway bridge of the Silvery Tay"

Note the subtle changes he makes in each opening line to convey the mood of the poem's situation. 

The first is triumphant, befitting the rise of an erection that will inject new life into the town of Dundee.

The second is more subdued. This is a sensitive opening, attuned to the tragic subject matter. He omits the enthusiastic exclamation mark and removes the caps from "railway" and "bridge". The Poet effectively dismisses the fallen erection as simply not up to the job. Which is of course true, since large bits of it are in rather than on the Tay.  A subtle distinction perhaps, but crucial in practical terms.

The third opening line marks a revival of the enthusiastic optimism of the first. but in a more muted, cautious way. The bridge is no longer "beautiful." It is "BEAUTIFUL." The word "new" is cleverly added, alerting the reader to the undisputed fact that this poem is not about an old bridge that couldn't. 

The way the Poet transmutes these opening lines is awe-inspiring, even jaw-dropping. I could say much more about this unfairly maligned Bard. But here I will put down my pen in envy of his poetic art. They don't make poets like McGonadgall anymore. We shall never see his like again.

C. 2021 by Sacha Dufuss, PhD, Linguinistics, Oxtonguebridge

PS. It remains incumbent upon me to add that although McGullabal was born in Scotland, he was of Irish ancestry. This may explain his unique lyrical skills.

Pandemics may be Inevitable: Ignorance is Not

"Migration of man and his maladies is the chief cause of epidemics." Alfred W. Crosby, The Columbian Exchange, 2003

(Image: Romanticized depiction of the arrival of Columbus in the New World)

Alfred Crosby's words were written in connection with the European discovery of the New World. In the wake of the discovery, Europeans began to migrate to the Americas, first a trickle, then a flood, then a tsunami. The same is true for Africans, although they did not come by choice. 

Both Europeans and Africans unknowingly brought their microbes along, unleashing an explosion of diseases in the New World. All suffered, but the indigenous inhabitants suffered most -- indeed catastrophically. It was like being attacked by several deadly pandemics at once. War and enslavement worsened things.

Native Americans were extremely vulnerable to Old World diseases. Having been isolated from the rest of the world for thousands of years, they had no experience with or immunity to a host of Old World infections. 

Smallpox, measles, influenza, pneumonia, and many other diseases killed Native Americans in huge numbers. The microbial invasion wiped out, or nearly wiped out, many Native American cultures. It was perhaps the worst demographic disaster in world history. 

The Europeans and Africans, in contrast, grew in numbers. Unlike Native Americans, they had experience and some levels of immunity to the diseases they carried from their own regions, many of which had been around for centuries or even millennia. They suffered, too, just not as much. The only major disease that the New World gave to the Old is, possibly, syphilis. The disease exchange was heavily one-sided.

Africans were vulnerable to some European diseases, especially respiratory disorders such as pneumonia and tuberculosis. Europeans were vulnerable to some African diseases, especially tropical fevers such as falciparum malaria and yellow fever. Bad as these could be, they did not prevent population growth among the new arrivals.

As Western peoples moved around the globe during the orgy of imperialism in the 19th century, the same epidemiological patterns were repeated. Remote island peoples, for example in the South Pacific, faced an onslaught of western diseases. Westerners in some regions faced disease tsunamis of their own when they moved into Sub-Sharan Africa and parts of South Asia. 

There are many other examples of disease that spread through human migration. In the 14th century, the Second Plague Pandemic  (Black Death) migrated along trade routes such as the Silk Road and pilgrimages routes. Swift Mongol horsemen also played a role in spreading plague as they conquered much of Eurasia.  

The Cholera Pandemics of the 19th century followed a similar pattern. Originating in British India, cholera crept along trade routes and reached Western Europe and the Americas by the early 1830s, sparking panic. 

The Third Plague Pandemic, which began in China in the late 19th century, spread around the world aided by steamships and railroads. It reached San Francisco and Sydney, Australia by 1900. It was especially deadly in India, killing about ten million. (Image: Plague in Sydney, Australia, 1900: rat killing)

The mass movement of millions of soldiers in World War I famously spread the Great Influenza of 1918-20. American troops aboard crowded ships brought the influenza to Europe, where it mutated. Then they brought the more virulent mutation back to the Americas. (Image: Pandemic Incubator: US troopship returning from Europe, 1918)

That is history, ancient history for many of us. Today the world is battling against another virulent disease that has spread in part through the temporary migration we call tourism. Commercial airliners can spread microbes around the globe faster rate than even steamships and railways. 

Unprecedented numbers of people are constantly on the move, fleeing from violence, oppression, and poverty. Human migration into hitherto sparsely populated regions like rain forests and increased contact with wild animals have helped to create new deadly viruses like Ebola, SARS and now Covid-19. Unlike the first two, coronavirus is highly contagious and becoming ever more so as new strains like Delta and Omicron evolve. 

One of the main means of controlling Covid, or at least slowing its spread, is to restrict human migration, a difficult and sometimes inhumane thing to do. Countries can close their borders to prevent both in migration and out migration. Many have, but often too late. 

The perceived economic cost led most countries to avoid such restrictions for too long. Governments have mastered the art of closing the barn door after the horses have left. Economies are crashing anyway. 

"No one could have predicted this" is a common but largely false claim. Epidemiologists and public health experts have been predicting something like this for decades. WHO has been warning for decades that "disease X" will come from nowhere and we must be prepared for it. Even the film industry warned us, if often in an overly sensationalized form. Contagion (2011) was the best of these.

Those who made the predictions had science on their side, and history as well. But who pays attention to science and history nowadays?

The present combination of overpopulation, mass migration, tourism, and destruction of natural habitats makes the coming of more more "disease X's" and pandemics almost inevitable. The changes necessary to reduce their likelihood may be beyond the capabilities of the global systems we  have created, with their emphasis on maximizing GDP at all cost to the planet. 

Pandemics may be inevitable. Humans have the ability to minimize their damage if we learn the lessons that history and science can teach us. Ignorance is not inevitable, but overcoming it is a huge task. It will be especially difficult as long as sections of the media, especially social media, give free reign to the spread of false information and bizarre conspiracy theories.