The Royal Society Darwin Medal Scandal: You won't win a Darwin Medal for writing the truth about the discovery of natural selection

Darwin Medal

It is universally accepted by leading evolutionary biologists that Patrick Matthew was first to go into  print with the full and detailed hypothesis of natural selection almost three decades before Wallace and Darwin repeated the same ideas and explanatory examples but failed to cite the originator even though his greatest influencer Blyth had his work edited by a famous naturalist (Loudon) who cited Matthew's original ideas in 1832. Wallace's (1855) Sarawak paper was edited by Selby, another who read and cited Matthew's ideas. And Robert Chambers - who influenced both Darwin and Wallace on evolution - cited Matthew's book before writing the Vestiges of Creation (see Sutton 2015).

In an earlier blog, I revealed that the Royal Society Darwin Medal winners Sir Gavin de Beer and Ernst Mayr both published the nonsense-on-stilts that Matthew's ideas were not read by any naturalists of biologists before 1860 - a year after Darwin replicated the in the Origin of Species (See my blog of 26th August 2015 for the hard facts).

In this blog post, I reveal the totally fallacious Darwin deification claptrap on this topic published by a third Royal Society Darwin Medal Winner - his name is William D. Hamilton. 

Narrow Roads of Gene Land: The Collected Papers of W. D. Hamilton Volume 2: Evolution of Sex: Evolution of Sex Vol 2 (Evolution of Sex, 2) - page 211:

'Darwin, not Patrick Matthew gets the full credit for evolution by natural selection because Darwin wrote his ideas clearly and persistently with extreme multiplicity of illustrations, not a few paragraphs (clear though those paragraphs also were) of note F of an appendix to a book on naval timber and arboriculture.'

Hamilton's biased fallacy spreading confirms the proposition that Royal Society Darwin Medals are not given out to those who write the truth. It seems they are earned by those who write easily discoverable falsehoods to prop up the reputation of  the Royal Society's science royalty darling Charles Darwin at the glory theft expense of the truth that Matthew should be considered the originator and most eminent author on the topic of natural selection.

As Matthew's 1860 letters to Darwin in the Gardener'a Chronicle - and even a cursory examination of his book -  prove Matthew's ideas were spread throughout his 1831 book and not just concentrated in its Appendix. In disconfirmation of the Darwinist myth, propagated by Darwin (1861)  from the third edition onwards of the Origin of Species, that Matthew merely enunciated natural selection in the appendix of his book, it is in fact in the main body of his book where Matthew used facts about varieties bred by means of artificial selection as a way to demonstrate how differently nature worked to mankind, because natural selection results in fewer but more robust varieties.

The following texts represent just three examples among many others that could be used to prove just how completely fallacious was Hamilton's (1998) claim that Matthew's ideas were brief, unclear, and solely in note F of the appendix of his book: For example, in the main body of his book, he wrote (Matthew 1831)

Matthew (1831 Page 67):

‘Our common larch like almost every other kind of tree consists of numberless varieties, which differ considerably in quickness of growth, ultimate size, and value of timber. This subject has been much neglected. We are, however, on the eve of great improvements in arboriculture; the qualities and habits of varieties are just beginning to be studied. It is also found that the uniformity in each kind of wild growing plants called species may be broken down by art or culture and that when once a breach is made, there is almost no limit to disorder, the mele that ensues being nearly incapable of reduction.’

Matthew, 1831 Page 76):

‘The consequences are now being developed of our deplorable ignorance of, or inattention to, 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[1], soil, nourishment, and new commixture of already formed varieties. In those with which man is most intimate, and where his agency in throwing them from their natural locality and dispositions has brought out this power of diversification in stronger shades, it has been forced upon his notice, as in man himself in the dog, horse, cow, sheep, poultry.- in the apple, Pear, plum, gooseberry, potato, pea, which sport in infinite varieties, differing considerably in size, colour, taste, firmness of texture, period of growth, almost in every recognisable quality. In all these kinds man is influential in preventing deterioration, by careful selection of the largest or most valuable as breeders; but in timber trees the opposite course has been pursued. The large growing varieties being so long of coming to produce seed, that many plantations are cut down before they reach this maturity, the small growing and weakly varieties, known by early and extreme seeding, have been continually selected as reproductive stock, from the ease and conveniency with which their seed could be procured; and the husks of several kinds of these invariably kiln dried, in order that the seeds might be the more easily extracted! May we then wonder that our plantations are occupied by a sickly short lived puny race, incapable of supporting existence in situations where their own kind had formerly flourished - particularly evinced in the genus Pinus more particularly in the species Scots fir; so much inferior to those of Nature's own rearing, where only the stronger, more hardy soil, suited varieties can struggle forward to maturity and reproduction?

We say that the rural economist should pay as much regard to the breed or particular variety of his forest trees, as he does to that of his live stock of horses, cows, and sheep. That nurserymen should attest the variety of their timber plants, sowing no seeds but those gathered from the largest, most healthy, and luxuriant growing trees, abstaining from the seed of the prematurely productive, and also from that of the very aged and over mature; as they, from animal analogy, may be expected to give an infirm progeny, subject to premature decay.’

Matthew (1831, p. 308):

‘Man’s interference, by preventing this natural process of selection among plants, independent of the wider range of circumstances to which he introduces them, has increased the differences in varieties particularly in the more domesticated kinds…’