Jim Dempster's Handwritten Notes on Darwin's Sly Deceptions in the Origin of Species

Dempster red inks on the Origin of Species - reveals the truth of Darwin's wormy deceptions: https://t.co/VP18uvv2Rf pic.twitter.com/O8jZORyLrA

— Dr Mike Sutton (@Dysology) April 1, 2016

Dempster (1985) reasoned with a multitude of his own evidence that Patrick Matthew should be hailed as the true discoverer of natural selection, simply because he most certainly did more than merely enunciate it, he worked it out and published it in detail as a complex and fully comprehensive law of nature. Moreover, Matthew got it right and Darwin wrong when it came to comprehending the impact of geological disasters on species extinction and emergence. Yet, from the third edition of the Origin onwards, Darwin (1861), a follower of Lyell’s erroneous uniformitarianism, jumped at the chance to denigrate Matthew by slyly inferring that he was a (then to be fashionably ridiculed) catastrophist. The following is from Darwin's 1861 Third Edition of the Origin of Species (p. xv):

The differences of Mr. Matthew's view from mine are not of much importance: he seems to consider that the world was nearly depopulated at successive periods, and then re stocked; and he gives, as an alternative, that new forms may be generated “without the presence of any mould or germ of former aggregates,” I am not sure that I understand some passages; but it seems that he attributes much influence to the direct action of the conditions of life. He clearly saw however the full force of the principle of natural selection.'

Dempster (1996) made this part of Darwin's cleverly subtle muck slinging injustice abundantly clear, but if you can find a Darwinist, or any other biologist, admitting as much and citing Dempster then you've found one more than I have. In effect, Darwin was signifying Matthew as among all the outdated believers in the miracle of Noah's Ark! And yet Matthew believed in no such thing. Matthew simply explained natural selection in terms of what is today called 'Punctuated Equilibrium' – which is, then, essentially Matthew’s discovery. Punctuated Equilibrium is accepted science today. However, Dempster (1995; 2005) noted that its Darwinist purveyors sought to keep the originator of that theory buried in footnote oblivion. Rampino (2011) explains some of the detail.

Dempster wrote that there is no need to accuse Darwin of plagiarising the work of Patrick Matthew because it is already well established that he acted badly in not citing his influencers in the first edition and other editions of the Origin of Species (Dempster, 1983 p. 64):

‘Patrick Matthew and Robert Chambers carried out their great tasks single- handed. Without the help on the one hand of his great wealth and on the other of Hooker, Lyell, Lubbock, Blyth, Wallace and many others, it is doubtful whether Darwin, single-handed, could have avoided making a botch of his theory or even whether he could have, had the Origin published. Even so, in spite of all the outside help, he retreated more and more towards Lamarckism.

There is no need to charge Darwin with plagiarism. His scholarship and integrity were at fault in not providing all his references in the Origin: he had after 1859 another twenty years in which to do so. What one can say is that denigration of Patrick Matthew was unwarrantable and inexcusable.’

Darwinist muck-slinging began after Darwin capitulated to Matthew in the Gardener's Chronicle of 1860

The image below was kindly sent to me by Jim Dempster's daughter Soula Dempster. The red handwriting is her father's. He annotated a copy of the historical sketch in Darwin's Origin of Species, Dempster's copy of the sketch is from the 1872 edition but its the same as that fistpubihed in 1861 from the third edition of the Origin onwards:

Dempster's notes on Darwin's sly Deceptions in the Origin of Species 

Note where Dempster writes "½ sentence missing!". Dempster has spotted that Darwin slyly misled his readers that Matthew believed something, which the facts prove Matthew clearly did not. Note that Dempster writes: "Matthew rejects this in the missing part!"

Because Darwin slyy concealed the context and completeness of Matthew's work, I respectfully disagree with Dempster's view that there is no need to accuse of Darwin of plagiarism. I think that there most certainly is a need to directly name Darwin as a plagiariser, and to do so in no uncertain terms, because, by lying, wriggling, plagiarising  science fraud - by glory theft necessity after 1860 (see Sutton 2016)- Darwin showed only a half a sentence of Matthew's work in order to so deliberately mislead his readership into thinking Matthew simply believed that the population of life was somehow miraculously "re-stocked". 

What matthew actually wrote:

Page 383 of  Matthew (1831) 'On Naval Timber and Arboriculture'

Note - most importantly - Matthew's entire first paragraph on page 383 of his book is one long sentence. The first eight words that darwin left out of his explanation of Matthew's original conception of natural selection are crucial to Darwin's devious dishonest portrayal of Matthew as believing only that some form of complex species creation occurred on Earth after a catastrophic extinction event. 

Matthew wrote: 

So what was the "above" that Darwin concealed in his dishonest portrayal? Amongst a great wealth of additional text, but immediately above page 383, -  it is this:

Matthew (1831) p. 381

Readers should note also that Dempster's red ink annotations note that it is very important how Matthew's ideas are different to those of Darwin "Oh yes they are!"  also that  Dempster notes that it is untrue "Not true" that Matthew's original conception of natural selection was contained in a book of an unrelated title and solely in the scattered pages of the book's appendix.  Those Darwinist myths are completely burst - with hard disconfirming evidence - in  my 2014 book "Nullius in Verba: Darwin's greatest secret", which - in addition - contains a wealth of original and newly discovered hard and independently verifiable facts that overturn the old paradigm that no one known to Darwin or Wallace read Matthew's original ideas before each replicated them, without citing Matthew - and then excused that unscholarly behaviour by claiming (fallaciously) - and by outright proven lying in Darwin's case - that none read those ideas before 1860. My book is dedicated to Jim Dempster.

You can read more about the work and life of the pioneering surgeon and human organ transplant scientist Jim Dempster Here.

Jim Dempster

Leading Evolutionary Biologists are Newly Proven to have Published Dreadfully Biased-Darwinists Errors and Fallacies about the History of Discovery of Natural Selection

Darwinist and Patrick Matthew's
champion Jim Dempter was
wrong about who read
 Matthew's book before 1858

Before the publication in 2014 of the first edition of my book 'Nullius in Verba: Darwin's greatest secret'  Darwinists have been misleading the public and other scholars into believing that Patrick Matthew's full prior published (in 1831) hypothesis of natural selection was unread by anyone in the field who mattered before Matthew brought his book to Darwin's attention by way of the first of two letters he had published in 1860 in the Gardener's Chronicle.

Even my personal Darwinist hero, Jim Dempster, the man Richard Dawkins (2010 in Bryson (Ed.)) calls Patrick Matthew's champion, was misled by the Darwinist literature, and a failure to discover the truth, into believing (Dempster 1983 'Patrick Matthew and Natural Selection' p. 21):

"Matthew's book and its Appendix went unread except by a few reviewers who praised it.'

In 1983, what Dempster wrote  was an easily discovererable fallacy, because it runs counter to what Matthew (1862) wrote to Darwin in his second letter to to the Gardener's Chronicle about an unnamed naturalist who had read his original ideas on natural selection but feared to teach them for fear of pillory punishment. Moreover, Dempster's claim was also even more erroneous, but only so in light of the fact that it is newly discovered (Sutton 2014) that, outside and beyond book reviews, quite a few others did, in fact, read Matthew's book, cite it, and mention the original, yet heretical, ideas in it. Among that number we can count Loudon who, after his 1832 review of Matthew's 1831 book, cited the same book many more times in books on trees and gardening and botany. Before my research everyone appears to have failed to realize that Loudon was a naturalist. Furthermore, I uniquely discovered that, including him, seven naturalists read and cited Matthew's 1831 book before 1858. They are: Loudon, Chambers, Murphy, Johnson, Selby, Norton and Jameson.

The much revered leading
 Darwinist Ernst Mayr was
 totally wrong about who read
Patrick Matthew's  (1831)
book before 1858

The year before Dempster's classic book on Matthew, another top Darwinist - widely proclaimed to be on of the 20th century's leading evolutionary biologists, Ernst Mayr published a more specific fallacy abut Matthew's book and the unique ideas in it going unread by those who mattered.  (Mayr 1982 The Growth of Biological Thought: Diversity, Evolution and Inheritance . p.499)

'The person who has the soundest claim for priority in establishing a theory or evolution by natural selection is Patrick Matthew (1790-1874). He was a wealthy landowner in Scotland, very well read and well traveled (Wells 1974). His views on evolution and natural selection were published in a number of notes in an appendix to his work On Naval Timber and Arboriculture (1831). These notes have virtually no relation to the subject matter of the book, and it is therefore not surprising that neither Darwin nor any other biologist had ever encountered them until Matthew bought forward his claims in an article in 1860 in the Gardener's Chronicle.'

Biologists include  zoologists, botanists, ornithologists, malacologists, naturalists and other specialties - and the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) dictionary definition of what constitutes a biologist has it that a biologist is an expert, specialist or student in biology, and the OED also has it that biology is 'The branch of science that deals with living organisms as objects of study, apart from any utilitarian value they may have, and now comprising more specialized disciplines such as zoology, botany, and bacteriology.' Therefore, Loudon (1832), Chambers (1832), Murphy (1834), Johnson (1842), Selby (1842), Norton (1851) and Jameson (1853) were most certainly all biologists. Indeed  (for what it is worth) Loudon and Selby are listed as such in the Wikipedia page of famous biologists.

The most highly esteemed Darwinist Ernst Mayr is today also proven to have been 100% wrong about the readership of Matthew's book. He is proven wrong by the newly discovered facts fist published in Nullius, because Mathew's 1831 work in fact was read by other biologists. And Loudon (a biologist) - who everyone - including Mayr - seems to have failed to realize was a naturalist (and therefore, being one who studied and wrote about the evolution of animals and plants, as well as geology, that makes him a biologist) until the publication of my work Nullius  in 2014, we can be sure definitely read Matthew's appendix, because Loudon commented upon the original ideas in it by noting that it appeared to have something original to say on what he referred to as 'the origin of species' no less!

Furthermore, it is important to note that Mayr - like so many Darwinists - misleads his readers by failing to mention that Matthew's (1831) original ideas on natural selection were not merely contained in the notorious appendix. As the excerpts included in Matthew's first 1860 letter to Darwin in the Garderner's Chronicle prove - his original ideas on natural selection were also in the main body of his book. And ideas from these were mentioned - albeit  briefly -  by Selby (1842) and Jameson (1853) - both can most certainly be deemed to be naturalists and biologists.

Top Darwinist Sir Gavin de Beer

was totally wrong to write that

Matthew''s ideas went totally unread 

before 1860

As I explained in an earlier blog,  but not earlier than Dempster's and Mayr's work where both read and cited the work that contains de Beers's fallacious claim with no comment upon it - Royal Society Darwin Medal winning Darwinist expert Sir Gavin de Beer (1962) wrote the following absolute claptrap:

'…William Charles Wells and Patrick Matthew were predecessors who had actually published the principle of natural selection in obscure places where their works remained completely unnoticed until Darwin and Wallace reawakened interest in the subject.’

As I explain in depth in Nullius, and have explained in an earlier blog post (Sutton 2015), these fallacies about Matthew's prior published discovery of natural selection being unread were started by Darwin as deliberate lies in the Gardener's Chronicle in 1860 and from the third edition of the Origin of Species onward.

For more original and newly discovered concrete facts that bust Darwinist claptrap, and in so doing drag the vexatious anomaly of Darwin's and Wallace's self-serving claims to have discovered natural selection independently of Matthew's (1831) prior published hypotheses, and independently of those naturalists they knew who actually cited it before they replicated it, under the spotlight of veracity as a ludicrously biased Darwin worshiping belief in a completely unique and paradoxical dual miracle of immaculate conception of a prior published hypothesis - you could do worse than read Nullius in Verba: Darwin's greatest secret. For instance, you might alternatively - if you don't care for hard and independently verifiable facts - read anything at all written on the topic by a top Darwinist!

When mythologized heros tell lies. their lies are invisible, unusually powerful and durable:http://t.co/n1l4w9TZ26 pic.twitter.com/E5sEs0R3l2

— Dr Mike Sutton (@Criminotweet) August 27, 2015

Did Benjamin Franklin Influence Patrick Matthew?

I have earlier (here) explored the likelihood that Matthew (1831) was influenced by Empedocles. In this blog post I explore the very probable influence of Benjamin Franklin.

Writers before me have concluded that Matthew most probably was influenced by the writings of Malthus - the man who both Darwin and Wallace claimed as a most important influence on their "own" work.  Dempster (1983, p. 51) writes that both Malthus and Paley were influenced by Franklin's essay of 1755.  From that cause, it is worth looking at what Franklin wrote that may have influenced Matthew directly, or else indirectly through knowledge contamination.

In 1751, Franklin penned an essay that was finally published in Boston, USA, in 1755. It is entitled: Observations Concerning the Increase of Mankind and the Peopling of Countries.

The relevant sections of Franklin's essay are the very final ones 22 to 24:

22. There is in short, no bound to the prolific nature of plants 
or animals, but what is made by their crowding and interfering 
with each others means of subsistence. Was the face of the earth 
vacant of other plants, it might be gradually sowed and overspread 
with one kind only; as, for instance, with Fennel; and were it empty 
of other inhabitants, it might in a few Ages be replenish d from one 
nation only; as for Instance, with Englishmen. Thus there are 
suppos d to be now upwards of One Million English Souls in North 
America, (tho tis thought scarce 80,000 have been brought over 
sea) and yet perhaps there is not one the fewer in Britain, but rather 
many more, on Account of the employment the Colonies afford to 
manufacturers at home. This million doubling, suppose but once 
in twenty-five years, will in another century be more than the peo 
ple of England, and the greatest Number of Englishmen will be on 
this side the water. What an accession of Power to the British 
empire by the Sea as well as Land! What increase of trade and navi 
gation! What numbers of ships and seamen! We have been here 
but little more than one hundred years, and yet the force of our 
Privateers in the late war, united, was greater, both in men and 
guns, than that of the whole British Navy in Queen Elizabeth s time. 
How important an affair then to Britain, is the present treaty for 
settling the bounds between her Colonies and the French, and how 
careful should she be to secure room enough, since on the room de 
pends so much the increase of her people? 

223 



10 OBSERVATIONS CONCERNING THE INCREASE OF MANKIND 

23. In fine, A nation well regulated is like a Polypus; take 
away a limb, its place is soon supply d; cut it in two, and each de 
ficient part shall speedily grow out of the part remaining. Thus 
if you have room and subsistence enough, as you may by dividing 
make ten Polypes out of one, you may of one make ten nations, 
equally populous and powerful; or rather, increase a nation ten fold 
in numbers and strength. 

And since detachments of English horn Britain sent to America, 
will have their places at home so soon supply d and increase so large 
ly here; why should the Palatine Boors be suffered to swarm into 
our settlements, and by herding together establish their languages 
and manners to the exclusion of ours? Why should Pennsylvania, 
founded by the English, become a colony of Aliens, who will shortly 
be so numerous as to Germanize us instead of our Anglifying them, 
and will never adopt our language or customs, any more than they 
can acquire our complexion? 

24. Which leads me to add one remark: That the number 
of purely white people in the world is proportionably very small. 
All Africa is black or tawny. Asia chiefly tawny. America (ex 
clusive of the new comers) wholly so. And in Europe, the Span 
iards, Italians, French, Russians and Swedes are generally of what 
we call a swarthy complexion ; as are the Germans also, the Saxons 
only excepted, who with the English make the principal body of 
white people on the face of the earth. I could wish their numbers 
were increased. And while we are, as I may call it, scouring our 
planet, by clearing America of woods, and so making this side of 
our globe reflect a brighter light to the eyes of inhabitants in Mars 
or Venus, why should we in the sight of superior beings, darken its 
people? why increase the sons of Africa, by planting them in Ameri 
ca, where we have so fair an opportunity, by excluding all blacks 
and tawneys, of increasing the lovely white and red? But perhaps 
I am partial to the complexion of my Country, for such kind of 
partiality is natural to Mankind. 

If these three sections of  Franklin's (1755) essay, with what Zirkle (1941) saw as the texts that influenced Malthus, that so by 'knowledge contamination' influenced Darwin (and also Wallace)  did not inspire Matthew to write "On Naval Timber" in 1831 and "Emigration Fields" in 1839 then the coincidences are astounding. For Franklin writes on so many of Matthew's key themes: (1) A belief in the superiority of the Saxon's (2) The importance of trade and navigation, (3) The voracious need of the British to obtain timber (4) The fact that some varieties of the human species suffer overcrowding and so need to emigrate so as not to be 'interfering with each other's means of subsistence' (5) The likelihood that by emigration Anglo Saxon's would overtop existing populations in colonies. (6) The ability for any species  to have an ecological power of occupancy in the most circumstance suited environment - namely one that is supportive of life and devoid of superior competitors (think Dodo - until humans turned up). 

See PatrickMathew.com for more information on the discovery of Natural Selection