Last night and this afternoon, I’ve made my way through about one quarter of Darwin’s The Origin of Species. It’s a more difficult read than a novel, since it’s a “scientific” piece, and it assumes you are familiar with scientists of the day and their works – which I am not.
It astounds me that people consider this “scientific paper” as a breakthrough, or that it was even considered serious scientific work. I’m not being bias here (those who know me, know I am a Christian, so it would stand that I would be against this piece of work). Let me give you just a few things that struck me and caused me to wonder why on earth did people consider this scientific.
First, in his opening (I’m assuming it was written for the second or third edition, not the first), Darwin says, “I need not here enter on details” p. 54. Then on the first page of his introduction (p. 65) he says “I cannot here give references and authorities for my several statements; and I must trust to the reader reposing some confidence in my accuracy. No doubt errors will have crept in…” In chapter 1 (p. 72) he goes on with, “I cannot here enter on the copious details which I have collected…” Phrases such as these have cropped up several times in the first two chapters.
I’ve taken a few science classes in my time, and read numerous scientific books, papers and journals. All of them have to cite their findings, show their tests/experiments, show their proof, etc in order to pass the grade, so to speak. Yet Darwin got by (and still does) by stating we have to have confidence in his accuracy? Granted, I don’t have any idea what the scientific community required of its researchers back then, but still…
Anyway, I’m disappointed. I wanted to see his great revelations (okay, that was a bit facetious), but in all seriousness, I do love science and I do like to see ideas and theories and see how they work out. So far all of this book has been filled with “this guys says this” and “this guy’s research says that” and “I presume this and that.” Even more disappointing, the last part of chapter 2, where he’s trying to describe the difficulty in assessing whether something is a “species” or a “variety” and how the more dominant species/variety has more groups than a smaller collection of species/variety, he performs only one test. One.
Would we have sent a man into space with only one test of a rocket launcher? Would we have given out vaccines for small pox with only one test of the serum? Seriously.
So far, the intro and first two chapters are nothing more than his opinions on the works of others and what he thinks they should have concluded. If this is all this ends up being, we should all sit down and question why this world accepts this as the basis for what is taught in our schools.
