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Plagiarising Science Fraud
Newly Discovered Facts, Published in Peer Reviewed Science Journals, Mean Charles Darwin is a 100 Per Cent Proven Lying, Plagiarising Science Fraudster by Glory Theft of Patrick Matthew's Prior-Published Conception of the Hypothesis of Macro Evolution by Natural Selection
What is notable about this is that in the story of the discovery of natural selection is that Joseph Hooker was Darwin's best friend and Hooker's father - William Hooker - was Alfred Wallace's mentor and correspondent pre-1858. And it was William Jardine - a great friend of Selby - who obtained from Scotland, at Selby''s request, a copy of Patrick Matthew's 1831 book, which contained the full prior published hypothesis of natural selection. Selby cited Matthew's book many time in 1842 (see Sutton 2014a; Sutton 2014b) and then went on to be editor of Wallace's (1855) Sarawak paper on organic evolution. Notably, Darwin's great friend Jenyns and Darwin's father were guests at Selby's house pre-1858. Jenyns (1885) went on to write a book about Selby.
Interestingly, William Jardine wrote a savage review of Darwin's Origin of Species in the Edinburgh New Philosophical Journal (1860). A copy of it is here. In his review Jardine - in as 19th century gentlemanly way as possible - points out Darwin's obvious plagiarism: "Many of the facts are second-hand, and without authority given."
Clearly more research is needed into the relationships pre-1858 between the Hookers of Kew and William Jardine.
Post Sutton (2016) Further Newly discovered routes of potential pre-1858 knowledge contamination of Matthew's original ideas to Darwin and Wallace.
William Jardine made the acquaintance of William Hooker (father of Darwin's best friend Joseph Hooker) in 1847 (see page 24 of Jackson).
Amazingly, the scientific community has never had the gumption to question Alfred Wallace's audaciously ludicrous claim to have independently conceived Patrick Matthew's (1831) prior-publication of the hypothesis of macro evolution by natural selection whilst in a state of malarial delirium (e.g. Smith 2002, and Beccaloni 2015). If Wallace really did that, it is a miraculously unique case of malarial cognitive enhancement, the only one ever recorded in the history of medicine and science.
Helps having screws loose to believe Wallace conceived idea of natural selection suffering from Malarial brain fever pic.twitter.com/JZe8hCsw4j
Laughably, there is even a puppet show video which embeds this credulously daft quasi-religious shamanesque cultish, insight through delerium, indoctrination nonsense into our wider society. Of course, his own tale would have appealed to Wallace, because - when not suffering from malarial delirium - he was a most enthusiastic believer in occult nonsense such as parlor room seances.
The much more plausible and sensible answer for how Wallace suddenly conceived this complex idea is by knowledge contamination (Sutton 2016). Because, as I originally discovered, Wallace's 1855 Sarawak paper's editor, Selby, had years earlier read and cited Patrick Matthew's (1831) orignal and prior-published conception of the exact same complex idea. Moreover, Wallace's mentor and correspondent was William Hooker, who was a friend and correspondent of John Loudon. And in 1832, Loudon reviewed Matthew's book and wrote that he appeared to have something orignal to say on "the origin of species" no less! Moreover, Loudon was co-author and friends with William Hooker's very best friend John Lindley. Hooker and Lindley both had their own books reviewed in the same prominent 1832 Gardener's Magazine publication that contained Loudon's review of Matthew's bomshel book. And Lindley, who went on to write two publications on the topic of naval timber (see Sutton 2014) was known to believe in the transmutation of species. Pre 1858, Lindley went on to claim the glory for being the first to propagate in Britain the much loved famous Californian giant redwood trees and to claim that Lobb was the first to import them into Britain. Lindley did so whist in possession of a letter from Matthew proving that Matthew was first to import and propagate giant redwood seeds. His son John Matthew being first to deliver them into the UK. By this act of deceptive glory theft, Lindley cleared the way for Darwin to make his excuses for replicating without citing Matthew's work by successfully labelling Matthew as an obscure Scottish writer on forest trees. Get the facts on Lindley's fraud here.
What follows is from an earlier blog post (Sutton 2015) - minimally updated.
It is obvious why Matthew (1831) the farming botanist and hybridising orchard owner, was able to see artificial selection and its effects as the key to understanding natural selection, but where in all his - Far East butterfly chasing, great ape shooting and rare wild bird shooting, netting and stuffing for sale - commercial endeavours are we supposed to believe Wallace independently alighted upon the same vital understanding? He claimed only to have gotten it all from the ideas of Malthus while in a recovering state of malarial delirium. Since Malthus wrote no such analogy about artificial selection, we might be led to wonder whether perhaps Wallace may have been delirious with fever when he dreamed up such a batty explanation.
Now see what Wallace (1858) took from the Originator, because audaciously, Wallace (1858) in the jungles of the Far East incredibly replicates Matthew’s discovery that artificial selection is the key to explaining natural selection:
‘…those that prolong their existence can only be the most perfect in health and vigour - those who are best able to obtain food regularly, and avoid their numerous enemies. It is, as we commenced by remarking, "a struggle for existence," in which the weakest and least perfectly organized must always succumb.’ [And]: ‘We see, then, that no inferences as to varieties in a state of nature can be deduced from the observation of those occurring among domestic animals. The two are so much opposed to each other in every circumstance of their existence, that what applies to the one is almost sure not to apply to the other. Domestic animals are abnormal, irregular, artificial; they are subject to varieties which never occur and never can occur in a state of nature: their very existence depends altogether on human care; so far are many of them removed from that just proportion of faculties, that true balance of organization, by means of which alone an animal left to its own resources can preserve its existence and continue its race.’
In his unpublished essay of 1844, Darwin wrote.
‘In the case of forest trees raised in nurseries, which vary more than the same trees do in their aboriginal forests, the cause would seem to lie in their not having to struggle against other trees and weeds, which in their natural state doubtless would limit the conditions of their existence…’
Eiseley (1979) was convinced that the number of similarities between these sections of Matthew's and Darwin's text was too great to be coincidental. But he would no doubt had been doubly convinced had he spotted that the above paragraph from NTA contains the phrase that Darwin (1859) four-word-shuffled into ‘process of natural selection.
If Darwinists are not yet convinced by this combined discovery that Darwin had read NTA by 1844, then they will need to explain why, as Eiseley (1979) discovered, Darwin’s same paragraph re-appears, shortened, with additional information from NTA in Darwin’s (1868) book ‘The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication’, where Darwin actually cites Matthew. Surely, if Darwin’s use of the example of trees raised in nurseries versus those in nature had not been ‘lifted’ by him, in 1844, from Matthew, then why else did he cite Matthew as the source when he reproduced the exact same idiosyncratic example twenty four years later in 1868 – seven years after Matthew challenged him for replicating his 1831 discovery of the law of natural selection?
In his book ‘On Landed Property, and the Economy of Estates’ (1844), on Page 546, Low was once again apparently first to be second with an NTA expression – once again without citing Matthew. In this later book it was Matthew’s original phrase: ‘overpowering the less.’ This discovery, of Low twice replicating Matthew’s unique phrases in different books confirms the veracity of the First to be Second Hypothesis. And the value of the method in identifying plagiarism of ideas is further confirmed by the fact that Low replicated Matthew’s exclusive theme that trees grown by means of artificial selection in nurseries were inferior to those naturally selected by nature:
‘The Wild Pine attains its greatest perfection of growth and form in the colder countries, and on the older rock formations. It is in its native regions of granite, gneiss and the allied deposits, that it grows in extended forests over hundreds of leagues, overpowering the less robust species. When transplanted to the lower plains and subjected to culture, it loses so much of the aspect and characters of the noble original, as scarcely to appear the same. No change can be greater to the habits of a plant than the transportation of this child of the mountain to the shelter and cultivated soil of the nursery; and when the seeds of these cultivated trees are collected and sown again, the progeny diverges more and more from the parent type. Hence one of the reasons why so many worthless plantations of pine appear in the plains of England and Scotland, and why so much discredit has become attached to the culture of the species.’
Low's book was identified through searching for unique Matthewisms. It was the Matthewism “overpowering the less” that fetched Lows book down from the virtual bookshelf. We can see how Matthew (1831 pp. 106-108) first used it:
'When woods are planted of various kinds of timber, the stronger, larger growing kinds will sometimes acquire room by overwhelming the smaller: but when the forest is of one kind of tree, and too close, all suffer nearly alike, and follow each other fast in decay, as their various strength of constitution gives way; unless, from some negligence or defect in planting, a portion of the plants have come away quickly, and the others hung back sickly for several years, so that the former might master the latter: or when some strong growing variety overtops its congeners. In the natural forest of America, when a clearance by any means is effected, the young seedlings, generally all of one kind, spring up so numerous, that, choaking each other, they all die together in a few years. This close springing up and dying is sometimes repeated several times over; different kinds of trees rising in succession, till the seeds in the soil be so reduced as to throw up plants so far asunder as to afford better opportunity for the larger growing varieties to develop their strength; and, overpowering the less, thus acquire spread of branches commensurate to the height, and thence strength of constitution sufficient to bear them forward to large trees.'
In Matthew’s paragraph below, we see the arbourist’s most natural choice of phrase ‘diverging ramifications of life’, which can be essentially visualized exactly as Darwin later drew his famous tree of life – the word ramify meaning to branch, and divergence meaning to spread outward.
Matthew (1831 p. 383) wrote:
‘…diverging ramifications of life, which from the connected sexual system of vegetables, and the natural instincts of animals to herd and combine with their own kind, would fall into specific groups, these remnants in the course of time moulding and accommodating their being anew to the change of circumstances, and to every possible means of subsistence, and the millions of ages of regularity which appear to have followed between the epochs, probably after this accommodation was completed affording fossil deposit of regular specific character.’
In addition to the same use of words, though slightly modified, readers can plainly see for themselves the exact same complex ideas, originated by Matthew and replicated by Darwin in the following three snippets of his text from the Origin.
Darwin (1859 - respectively p.383; p. 129 and 331):
‘…as before remarked, one order; and this order, from the continued effects of extinction and divergence of character, has become divided into several sub-families and families, some of which are supposed to have perished at different periods, and some to have endured to the present day.’
‘…ramifying branches may well represent the classification of all extinct and living species in groups subordinate to groups…’
’Hence we can understand the rule that the most ancient fossils differ most from existing forms. We must not, however, assume that divergence of character is a necessary contingency; it depends solely on the descendants from a species being thus enabled to seize on many and different places in the economy of nature.’
From these three snippets of his text, we can see that Darwin bloated, dispersed and re-phrased Matthew’s text in an effort to hide its provenance. Unmistakably, in 1859, he used Matthew's (1831) book as a template for key text in the Origin.
As I uniquely discovered (Sutton 2014), Selby cited Matthew's book many times in his own book of 1844, he then went on to edit Wallace's 1855 Sarawak paper. Darwin read that Sarawak paper and corresponded with Wallace, encouragingly, about its contents pre-1858. Knowledge contamination – however the knowledge contamination probably happened – from Matthew to Wallace is plainly in evidence in the few examples below that are sampled also from Nullius:
The following primary exercise is a simple comparative textual analysis that focuses on Wallace’s (1855) famous Sarawak paper only.
Wallace (1855): wrote
‘Most or perhaps all the variations from the typical form of a species must have some definite effect, however slight, on the habits or capacities of the individuals. Even a change of colour might, by rendering them more or less distinguishable, affect their safety; a greater or less development of hair might modify their habits. More important changes, such as an increase in the power or dimensions of the limbs...’
Going back twenty four years earlier to Matthew, we can see exactly where Wallace got his ideas. Matthew (1831) wrote:
‘This principle is in constant action, it regulates the colour, the figure, the capacities, and instincts; those individuals of each species, whose colour and covering are best suited to concealment or protection from enemies, or defence from vicissitude and inclemencies of climate, whose figure is best accommodated to health, strength, defence, and support…’
And there are many more audacious replications to be seen before we are done with Wallace. In the following presentation of them, I believe no further commentary is required. Wallace’s plagiarism unfolds clearly once followed by Matthew’s original text.
Wallace (1855):
‘We are also made aware of the difficulty of arriving at a true classification, even in a small and perfect group;- in the actual state of nature it is almost impossible, the species being so numerous and the modifications of form and structure so varied.’ [And] ‘Many more of these modifications should we behold, and more complete series of them, had we a view of all the forms which have ceased to live. The great gaps that exist between fishes, reptiles, birds and mammals would then, no doubt, be softened down by intermediate groups…’
‘It has now been shown, though most briefly and imperfectly, how the law that "Every species has come into existence coincident both in time and space with a pre-existing closely allied species," connects together and renders intelligible a vast number of independent and hitherto unexplained facts. The natural system of arrangement of organic beings, their geographical distribution, their geological sequence, the phenomena of representative and substituted groups in all their modification.’
Matthew (1831):
‘… we have felt considerable inconvenience from the adopted dogmatical classification of plants and have all along been floundering between species and variety which certainly under culture soften into each other’.
‘In endeavouring to trace in the former way, the principle of these changes of fashion which have taken place in the domiciles of life, the following questions occur: Do they arise from admixture of species nearly allied producing intermediate species? Are they the diverging ramifications of the living principle under modification of circumstance.’
Wallace (1855):
‘…being so numerous and the modifications of form and structure so varied, arising probably from the immense number of species which have served as antitypes for the existing species, and thus produced a complicated branching of the lines of affinity, as intricate as the twigs of a gnarled oak or the vascular system of the human body.’
Matthew (1831);
‘…one of the most evident traits of natural history, that vegetables as well as animals are generally liable to an almost unlimited diversification, regulated by climate, soil, nourishment, and new commixture of already formed varieties..’ ‘…for new diverging ramifications of life…’
From this simple preliminary comparison of extracts from the Sarawak paper with NTA, it is patently obvious that, three years before he sent his Ternate paper to Darwin, Wallace had plagiarized Matthew’s hypotheses in his 1855 Sarawak paper. The similarities in wording, concepts and ideas are too great and to numerous for Wallace to have possibly come up with them independently the Originator. Most crucially, Wallace’s Sarawak articulation includes many of Matthew’s key natural selection concepts:
(a) Variety in species being restricted by necessary adaptations to conditions, (b) the importance of adaptation for survival (c) the extinction of others through competitive struggle (d) only the best circumstance suited most successfully reproducing (e), and the process of unlimited organic change through modification over almost unimaginable periods of time to originate new species. Wallace, like Darwin, took not only Matthew’s discovery and his invented hypothesis, he stole also his unique synthesis of ideas, phrases and examples. For example, in his Ternate Paper Wallace replicated Matthew’s unique use of artificial selection as a heuristic device to explain natural selection. It is blatantly obvious, by this replication of so many of Matthew’s original ideas, that Wallace relied heavily upon Matthew’s 1831 book to structure his thoughts on natural selection and then to explain them.
Without Matthew, the descriptive prose that changed the way we understand the world would have been completely different. Without Matthew, the discovery of the natural law of organic evolution would, most likely, have been penned not in the 19th century, but much later in the 20th century. Almost certainly, it would not have been called natural selection. Perhaps it might have been called The Development Theory.
How do we decide which story is true? Were the Replicators, Darwin and Wallace, Schnooks or Crooks?
As far as I can tell, the only way is to weigh all the relevant data we have (not just cherry pick out the odd bit that suits us) in light of what we know about the way the world operates. In other words, without a confession or a smoking gun, all we have is multiple whiffs of cordite. In the light of where that gun-smoke lingers, we act as jury members and weigh all the hard and independently verifiable evidence - subjectively. We do, however have better than smoking gun evidence that - as opposed to the old paradigm of "no natuaralist read it so Darwin and Wallace independently conceived it" Matthew's original ideas in fact - we now newly knw - were read by other naturalists. Indeed by naturalists at the epicentre of influence of Darwin and Wallace and their influencer's influencers (see Sutton 2016for the 100 per cent independently verifiable facts) . And that represents smoking gun evidence for the existence of the rational likelihood of some form of Matthewian knowledge contamination of the pre-1858 minds of Darwin and Wallace through one of the newly discovered routes for it to have happened via one of the three subtypes of knowledge contamination outlined in Sutton 2016.
Some Darwinists, one or two of whom I have named and shamed for their unethical or desperately pseudo-scholarly behavior, and others here have sought to deny the importance of the New Data. From that cause, to seek to put a stop to such wormy efforts in original and new fact-burial, I have released here, into the public domain, a small part of my original research findings from my new book "Nullius".
I ask Darwinists to please avoid the temptation to engage in cherry-picking from the New Data only what suits them. To do so would be to seek to misrepresent the significance of my findings, rather than weighing the whole, as they know they should.
Many more important new findings are in my book Nullius. They are too numerous to be covered in full here, and I hope you will forgive my lack of altruism in not giving way all of my unique work for free. Both my publisher, their employees and I need to eat and we all have others for whom it is our duty to provide.
I hope that providing this information will serve as a freely available reference point for others to see some of what has actually been newly discovered, so that they might weigh its importance. I expect they will in some way weigh it as a jury member would. The idea is that people can now judge for themselves what the New Data means for the veracious history of the discovery of the theory of natural selection.
I would like to make here one essential argument that is independent of my on research. It is that Patrick Matthew, by virtue of the Arago Effect, as enshrined in the principles of priority for scientific discovery (Merton 1957) has always had full priority over Darwin and Wallace, because the accepted rule is that being first is everything. With regard to this fact I have a peer reviewed paper another here (Sutton 2016) on the topic.
The New Data, however, takes us even further to debunk the unjust, uniquely "made for Mathew", priority denial rationalization fallacies, created by Darwinists to effectively deny Matthew his rightful priority. The story of how these 'special privileges' for Darwin and Wallace and 'special prejudices' against Matthew have been effectively used by Darwinists occupying key positions in the British Association for Advancement of Science and in the Royal Society of London is told in Nullius.
Did Alfred Russel Wallace wear a tinfoil hat? Did Darwin have a miraculous cognitive condom?
I discovered some interesting new information about the botanist Robert Hogg and his associations with Matthew's orchards, Matthew's son Robert and later (post-1859) with Charles Darwin.
Hogg was a leading expert on apples and apple trees. Click here to see a sample of his important publications.
I have as yet found no evidence to suggest that Darwin met or corresponded with Robert Hogg before Darwin had published his Origin of Species (the book that replicated Matthew's prior-published hypothesis - but never cited Matthew). However, information provided by Hogg is most important for purposes of verifying other examples of botanical and agricultural importance of particular trees in Matthew's orchards in the 19th century.
In 1859 Hogg wrote about Matthew's son Robert providing him with valuable advice on apple trees. Then in 1884 Hogg wrote about an earlier visit to Matthew's orchard in 1846 and that he was shown an important fruit producing shoot one of the rare trees within it.
Robert Hogg - botanist - at Matthew's orchard in 1846.
The Golden Pippin Mere-Coincidence?
Is it a mere coincidence that Dariwin's notebook of books to read had in it a reference to the journal that contained a lengthy correspondence by Matthew (1829) on the subject of Matthew's apple hybridization expertise, in which Matthew wrote of his own famously unique scarlet golden pippin apple tree - most importantly grown from a pip and not a mutant fruiting branch graft onto old crab-apple tree stock - as is the usual necessity to maintain any new hybridized or 'ramifying' variety of apple fruit?
Is it then also mere-coincidence that Darwin's Zoonomia notebook - dated by Darwin 1837-38 - began on the very subject of fruit trees and had in it the famous phrase that Darwin's son, Francis, saw as the first clue that Darwin had begun then to first understand the role of mutation by natural selection in the generation of new varieties and species of all organic life?
Darwin wrote 'They die; without they change; like Golden Pippens. It is a generation of species. Like generation of individuals.'
Matthew was an expert on apple trees - he owned one of the best orchards in Scotland and had a published and cited international reputation as a hybridization expert and agriculturalist. He was even listed by Loudon as a botanist. Darwin was no expert on the topic of trees. Darwin even misspelled Pippins as "Pippens" and later made a simple mistake regarding what species of crab apple tree he owned. This topic - and the role of crab-apple trees- in helping Mathew and then Darwin understand the natural process of selection is discussed in-depth in my book:Nullius in Verba: Darwin''s Greatest Secret.
As said, it is not known whether Darwin associated with Hogg before Darwin published the Origin of Species (I have found nothing to suggest they met or corresponded before 1859) , And post-Origin Darwin published articles in Hogg's journal 'The Cottage Gardener' (later re-named The Journal of Horticulture). And Hogg was mentioned to Darwin in later correspondence: https://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/letter/DCP-LETT-6721.xml
Hogg was also an early Secretary of the Royal Horticultural Society.
According to a local historic society, Hogg had a background that reveals to us his interests were not dissimilar to Matthew's involvement with forestry, and also their respective wider family connections with nursery work:
Robert Hogg (1818 - 1897), Farmer, Fireburnmill Farm, Coldstream, was the son of Robert Hogg of the firm of Hogg & Wood of Coldstream, suppliers of forest trees and agricultural seeds. Hogg was educated at a private school in Duns and Edinburgh University. In 1836 he worked in the nursery of John Ronalds, London, and after traviling and studying in Europe he bought Brompton Nursery ( on the site of the Victoria and Albert Museum), renaming it Gray, Adams and Hogg. Hogg was the General Secretary for the International Horticultural Congress, 1866 and represented the Royal Horticultural Society at the International Exhibition, St Petersburg. He was Secretary to the RHS 1875 - 1884. He had many publications on Horticulture and Fruit.
Further research into Hogg's role in the story of Matthew, Wallace and Darwin is on-going.
References for Hogg
Hogg, R. (1859) The apple and its varieties being a history and description of the varieties of apples cultivated in the gardens and orchards of Great Britain. London. Groombridge and sons.
Hogg, R, (1884) The fruit manual : a guide to the fruits and fruit trees of Great Britain.London : Journal of Horticulture Office,
In Nullius (Sutton 2014) I explain the importance of crab apple trees as an explanatory analogy of differences for the difference between natural and artificially selected varities of plants and animals and how those long selected by nature are far better able to survive in the wild than those selected by human breeding (artificial slection) interference. Being an internationally famous apple grower and breeder in the 19th century, Matthew mentions crab apple trees in this regard quite a lot in his (1831) book - On Naval Timber - which is the the first publication of the full hypothesis of macro evolution by natural selection.
Matthew (1831) was the first to write the artificial v natural selection explanatory of differences. It is so important that Wallace used it in his (1858) Ternate Paper and Darwin used it to open the very first chapter of the Origin of Species.
In Nullius, I also discuss how fruit trees were the very first thing that Darwin wrote about organic evolution in his 1837-38 private Zoonomia notebook, and how his notebook of books read reveals that pre-1858 held in his hands five publications - including one all about apples written by Matthew - citing Matthew's work on fruit breeding and trees. Darwin (1837-1838) being no expert could not even consistently spell pippin correctly.The plodding replicator wrote:
‘Never They die, without they change; like Golden Pippens it is a generation of species like generation of individuals.’
Darwin spelled pippin correctly elsewhere in his Zoonomia notebook. Searching on the term within his notebook reveals just how important the example of elected apples was in influencing his thinking
On page 72 he wrote:
'If species generate other species, their race is not utterly cut off; — like golden pippen, if produced by seed go on. — otherwise all die. — The fossil horse generated in S. Africa Zebra — & continued. — perished in America'
On page 220 Darwin (1837-38) writes about crab apples:
'Important. For instance take Valvata & Conus (??) which now run together; were not both genera formerly abundant.
Seed of Ribston Pippin tree go producing crab is the offspring of a male & female animal of one variety going back ? Whether this going back may not be owing to cross from other trees????'
On page 230:
'Do the seeds of Ribston Pippin & Golden Pippin &c produce real crabs, & in each case similar or mere mongrels?
It really would be worth trying to isolate some plants under glass bells & see what offspring would come from them. Ask Henslow for some plants whose seeds go back again, not a monstrous plant, but any marked variety. — Strawberry produced by seeds?? '
Matthew was world famous for owning a Golden Pippin apple tree grown from seed and Darwin (pre 1858) owned a copy of the publication containing Matthew's article on it. The famous botanist Hogg wrote about it (here). William Lawrence hinted at organic evolution, mentioning crab apples. Therefore, it is quite possible his work would have influenced Matthew - Here.In the same blog post, I include a reference to Erasmus Darwin (Darwin's grandfather's) interest in crab apples and Golden Pippins. This work may have influenced both Charles Darwin and Patrick Matthew, but neither cited it. I conclude my blog post on the topic that it seems - on the available evidence - that Matthew was influenced by Erasmus Darwin's observations on crab apples and grafting.
InNulliusI reveal that there was a copy of Matthew's (1831) book in the library at Kew, but that a librarian there, searching for it at my request, informed me this valuable book was "missing" and so had been, apparently, stolen. Hence, we may never know whether it was one of the books William Hooker donated to the library pre-1858.
Hooker and Darwin had a Meeting of Minds. Only Men Such as They Should be Allowed to Handle the Subject of the Mutability of Species.
(Joseph Hooker 1845 - Letter to Charles Darwin): "And now for species. To begin, I do think it a most fair & most profitable subject for discussion, I have no formed opinion of my own on the subject, I argue for immutability, till I see cause to take a fixed post… I still maintain, that to be able to handle the subject at all, one must have handled hundreds of species with a view to distinguishing them & that over a great part,—or brought from a great many parts,—of the globe." In an earlier blog post, I discuss how this fitted in with the scientific conventions of the time regarding the taboo of deductive reasoning. Unsurprisingly, both Hooker and Darwin did fulfil all of Hooker's gleeful self-selecting criteria for who could be considered eligible to handle to subject of mutability of species. In his 1845 letter to Darwin, Hooker's arrogant self aggrandizing prescriptive proselytizing on who could and could not discuss the topic of the origin of species clearly excluded Patrick Matthew! Because, unlike Hooker and Darwin, Matthew was not a routine species comparison naturalist, and he had not collected many of them from parts of the globe - excluding his role in first importing giant Californian redwoods, the rightful glory for which Hooker's father's friend John Lindley slyly stole. On which note, significantly, Lindley - like his friend and co-author John Loudon - was well known to believe in the mutability of species. And it was Loudon who wrote in 1832 that Matthew appeared to have something interesting to say on the topic of species.
"Mr Darwin begs me to thank you warmly for your letter which has interested him very much. I am sorry to say that he is so unwell as not to be able to write himself."
Mr Darwin begs me to thank you warmly for your letter which has interested him very much. I am sorry to say that he is so unwell as not to be able to write himself.
With regard to Natural Selection he says that he is not staggered by your striking remarks. He is more faithful to your own original child than you are yourself. He says you will understand what he means by the following metaphor.
Fragments of rock fallen from a lofty precipice assume an infinitude of shapes—these shapes being due to the nature of the rock, the law of gravity &c— by merely selecting the well-shaped stones & rejecting the ill-shaped an architect (called Nat. Selection could make many & various noble buildings.
Mr Darwin is much obliged to you for sending him your photograph. He wishes he could send you as good a one of himself. The enclosed was a good likeness taken by his eldest son but the impression is faint.
You express yourself kindly interested about his family. We have 5 sons & 2 daughters, of these 2 only are grown up.Mr Darwin was very ill 2 months ago & his recovery is very slow, so that I am afraid it will be long before he can attend to any scientific subject.
A series of letters passed between Darwin and his hugely powerful naturalist friends and mentors Charles Lyell and Joseph Hooker.
As I reveal in Nullius(Sutton 2014), Darwin emotionally manipulated them at Chritmastime by vacillating between pretending not to care about priority for the discovery of natural selection, when his baby son had just died, and proclaiming that he would do anything to ensure he got it. By such means Hooker and Lyell were apparently emotionally manipulated to present Darwin's paper before Wallace's Ternate Paper - so that it would thereafter be called 'Darwin's and Wallace's theory'; and to do so when Wallace had not given permission for his paper to be read, but to mislead the Linnean Society into thinking he had. Later Wallace would ask for and receive money and favours from the three for what they did with his paper and for his public acceptance of their arrangement. It is originally revealed in Nullius that Wallace later fraudulently doctored a copy of a letter in his autobiography to conceal the fact.
I have just read your letter, & see you want papers at once. I am quite prostrated & can do nothing but I send Wallace & my abstract of abstract of letter to Asa Gray, which gives most imperfectly only the means of change & does not touch on reasons for believing species do change. I daresay all is too late. I hardly care about it.
But you are too generous to sacrifice so much time & kindness. It is most generous, most kind. I send sketch of 1844 solely that you may see by your own handwriting that you did read it.
I really cannot bear to look at it. Do not waste much time. It is miserable in me to care at all about priority.
The table of contents will show what it is. I would make a similar, but shorter & more accurate sketch for Linnean Journal. I will do anything
God Bless you my dear kind friend. I can write no more. I send this by servant to Kew.
'...to someone who has read parts of what Sutton has written, your reply looks very foolish. Contrary to what you state, Darwin does not "cite Matthew as a source" of his thinking. Instead, Darwin admits that Matthew preceded him, but then claims that no naturalists paid attention, and he indirectly blames Matthew for this (by putting his theory in the appendix of an obscure mis-titled book on naval arboriculture). That is, Darwin continues to take credit for what he calls "my theory", and simply writes himself a set of excuses for *not attributing Matthew as the source*, e.g., by referring to it as "Matthew's principle of selection."
Sutton gathers the evidence that Matthew's book was not just read by naturalists, but (1) received multiple published reviews and (2) was cited by (3) naturalists in Darwin's circle of acquaintances and influences. Loudon's review actually mentions that Matthew's book contained interesting ideas on the origin of species. To find out why naval arboriculture was so interesting to Brits, you'll have to read Sutton, or just consider the basis of the British Empire in 1831.
*Clearly*, Matthew has priority by ordinary scholarly standards, and clearly Darwin misrepresented the situation by spinning a yarn about Matthew's obscurity. Sutton points out that Darwin's followers have uncritically repeated that yarn for 150 years.
The only remaining question is whether Darwin was actually influenced in some way, which might range from vague diffusion of ideas through a personal network, to stealing the ideas and trying to hide it.
Sutton offers textual evidence that Darwin was influenced by Matthew, and points out personal connections that may have been a conduit for this influence. I have not spent much time reviewing this evidence, but it is based on similarities of phrasing. There is no smoking gun.
However, now that Sutton has pulled back the curtain on this, it is no longer responsible in scholarly writing to assert that Darwin wasn't influenced by Matthew, or even to assert that there is no evidence-- there is circumstantial evidence, however weak. If you doubt the evidence then the appropriate way of saying it is "I'm not convinced by the evidence that Darwin was influenced by Matthew."
But again, this only addresses the issue of borrowing. The issue of priority is already settled, in favor of Matthew.'
Don't unthinkingly go along with the zombie hoard of myth parroting Darwinite mynah birds, who simply repeat whatever their heroes tell them is so. Because the independently verifiable disconfirming facts for the fallacy that Matthew was content with Darwin's reference to his prior publication in the third edition of the Origin of Species (Darwin 1861), and in every edition thereafter, are 100 per cent proven to exist by simple virtue of being in print in the independently verifiable 19th century publication record:
Matthew sent a second letter to the Gardener's Chronicle to politely rebuke and correct Darwin for writing that no naturalist had read Matthew's (1831) orignal ideas before Darwin and Wallace (1858) and Darwin (1859) replicated them without citing Matthew.
In 1864 Matthew published a political pamphlet entitled "SCHLESWIG-HOLSTEIN" that proclaimed him as "Solver of the Problem of Species". That was an act of defiance, one that we know, from his personal correspondence on the Matthew problem, really got under Darwin's skin.
Matthew's futile fight for recognition against the Darwinists, can be seen in a footnote to his letter to the Farmers Magazine, he wrote (Matthew 1862.page 413):
`The writer has not been has not been much used to speak of what he has done. For more than thirty years after the publication of "Naval Timber and Arboriculture" he never, either by the press or in private conversation, alluded to the original ideas therein brought forward, knowing that the age was not suited for such. And even now, notwithstanding the great teaching influence of our cheap daily press, such is the power of sham, bigotry and prejudice over the editors of these, directly by perverting their own minds, or indirectly by perverting their candour, honesty and truth in accommodation to the reader's prejudices, together with the subserviency of the Editors to power and place that he is not sure the age is yet ripe. He was so far of this opinion, that he did not speak of these original ideas till driven to do so in protecting them as his.'
Matthew complained to the Dundee Advertiser in 1862 that he had been platformed blocked from speaking on his origination of natural selection by organisers of the annual meeting of the British Association for Advancement of Science:
'Sir,— The conduct towards me of the soi-disant British Association for the Advancement of Science has been such that I consider it right to lay the subject before the public. I gave in to their Assistant-General Secretary nine papers to be read. Of these they rejected seven and admitted two, one of the latter, on Botany, I withdrew, as I thought it required the rejected to appear along with it. The other I did not withdraw, as it had an immediate importance, but which the Society managed, by delaying the reading till the last, not to read.I will match the importance of these nine papers, in a national point of view, against all that was read at the Dundee meeting, of which the public will have an opportunity to judge. With regard one of these papers, on what is termed Darwin’s Theory of Natural Selection, but which theory was published by me about thirty years before Darwin (honourably acknowledged in his last edition by Darwin), at a time when man was scarcely ready for such thoughts, I surely had the best right to be heard upon this subject. Yet others were allowed to speak upon it, and its parent denied to do so. Such is the conduct of a Society terming itself the British Association for the Advancement of Science.— l am, &c.,'
"In spite of my father's recognition of his claims, Mr. Matthew remained unsatisfied, and complained that an article in the 'Saturday Analyst and Leader' was "scarcely fair in alluding to Mr. Darwin as the parent of the origin of species, seeing that I published the whole that Mr. Darwin attempts to prove, more than twenty-nine years ago."—Saturday Analyst and Leader, Nov. 24, 1860.
Mike Sutton still fighting the corner of Patrick Matthew against great odds. https://t.co/JPcUPqpnzV
Darwin was always considered to be scientific royalty - that is why Robert Grant, being enhanced to meet the grandson of Erasmus Darwin, made the mistake of entrusting, Charles Darwin with his discovery about sea sponges. Charles was, after all, the grandson of Erasmus Darwin, that great proven repeat plagiarist fellow of the Royal Society.
Darwin got away with plagiarism and was able to "crankify" the originator, Matthew, because he was supported in that self-interest glory thieving endeavour by many influential peers - such as Charles Lyell, the Hookers of Kew and David Anstead who were prepared to sink to great depths to deceive the scientific community and wider society on his behalf (see Sutton 2014).
Why was Darwin so Revered?
Why has the Darwin and Wedgwood family (into which Darwin married via his first Cousin Emma) been so honored by the mighty Royal Society - having at least 10 family members receiving prestigious fellowships? Why does the Royal Society refuse to accept the originator Patrick Matthew as having full and complete immortal great thinker, influencer and originator status over Darwin and Wallace for his own prior published, and pre-1858 cited, conception of macroevolution by natural selection?
'I would be happy to explain to you what is the point of exploring the evidence regarding who deserves credit for an idea such as natural selection. The point is the same as for any other idea: as a scholar, one wants to get this right, because correct attribution is an important part of the social fabric of scholarship, including science. The correct source for natural selection, under the normal rules of attribution, is Patrick Matthew. If, instead, everyone decides to give credit to some revered figure who came in second-place, then this diminishes scholarship and science, and makes it into more of an elite popularity contest. Here's a rhetorical question for you: would you like credit to go to scientific royalty, or would you like science to be more of a meritocracy? Everyone agrees that Darwin had more influence. There is no difficulty in adjusting our language to respond to this fact, e.g., consider the case of the Modern Synthesis. Mayr, Simpson and Dobzhansky clearly were the most influential in promoting modern neo-Darwinism, but we attribute the actual combination of Darwinism and genetics to Fisher, Haldane and Wright. We could simply refer to Darwin in the same way-- we could say that natural selection was proposed by Matthew, and perhaps Wells, then popularized by Darwin and his influential social circle. However, what has happened in this case is that, when the evidence that contradicts misinformation peddled by Darwin and his followers is brought forth, Darwinian zombies lurch forward with the same ignorant dismissals, non sequiturs, and so on, which are then cut down, which just makes room for the next wave of zombies. So, the point is really about the zombie horde. If there were no zombie horde, then the point would be about attribution, but given that the horde is activated whenever Darwin is criticized, the zombie horde becomes the central issue.'
And here (Stoltzfus 2016) 'OMG, this is not an "extraordinary claim"! First of all, it is not a claim about evolution, but a claim about scholarship regarding evolution. This is just one of a gazillion cases in which a particular claim with scarcely any foundation is repeated until it becomes part of orthodoxy, e.g., read Ghiselin about how evolutionary biologists endlessly repeat the false trope of a conflict between Lamarck and Darwin. Literally, if we stack up the evidence in the two pans of a balance, on one side *all we have* is Darwin's assertion that naturalists can all be excused for not noticing Matthew's ideas because they appeared only in the appendix of a book on naval arboriculture. In the other pan of the balance, we have the evidence that naturalists read Matthew's work, that the ideas about evolution were not just in the appendix, that the work was reviewed publicly, and that the ideas on evolution were noticed. This evidence shows that Darwin's statement was literally incorrect. Then, there is evidence on a further point: we know that Matthew informed Darwin that, in fact, naturalists had read the book, and we know that Matthew provided verifiable evidence, i.e., he pointed to a citation. If Darwin had cared to ascertain the truth that Loudin reviewed the book, he could have verified Matthew's claims. Matthew made a second, more obscure, claim about an anonymous colleague who was afraid to repeat his radical views, but there was no way for Darwin to verify this. In science, a statement backed by citing a source trumps a mere assertion. [I'm not sure if this is still true, but there was a time when ACS journals instructed reviewers that they could not contradict an author's referenced statement without providing a citation. ] When Matthew wrote his open letter to Darwin citing a source that contradicted Darwin's claim, Darwin was officially trumped. The proper response would have been to rebut Matthew's evidence, or else to retract or withdraw the claim. The incredible amount of heat being generated here is not an indication that this is some kind of extraordinary unicorn-in-the-garden claim. It is simply a sign that Sutton has committed lese majeste, and the defenders of scientific royalty are coming out to defend His Majesty King Darwin. This behavior has become a major curse on evolutionary biology. We're all going to pay a price for the generations of short-sighted hero-worshipping evolutionary biologists who built a brand identity on the reputation and status of a dead person whose views would by no means survive today.'
