The "Poor Hugh" Strickland Connections to Matthew, Darwin, Wallace and the Hookers of Kew: Ingredients for a silly conspiracy theory

Background: On a Small Sample Typical Darwinite Credulous Stupidity

Following Scottish press coverage of the bombshell historical discovery that Patrick Matthew's orignal and prior-published conception of macro-evolution by natural selection, had - as opposed to the prior 'knowledge claim' by the world's leading Darwinists - in fact had been discovered (by me) to be 100 per cent proven to have been read by naturalists pre-1858, because they cited Matthew (1831) in pre-1858 publications, and that these newly discovered Matthew citing naturalists were at the epicentre of influence of Darwin and Wallace, science historian John van Wyhe resigned from the journal that published my (Sutton 2016) peer reviewed science paper on these new discoveries, following its publication, and sent a statement to the journalist Michael Alexander of the Scottish press that what has been newly discovered is both silly and a conspiracy theory (read the facts on van Wyhe's press statement here).

In reality, as opposed to desperate and completely unevidenced new paradigm resisting Darwinite propagandising, my orignal work in this field deals in facts only and I make it absolutely clear that there is no evidence of any orchestrated conspiracy against Matthew. That said, it is a fact that Darwin, Lyell and Joseph Hooker did conspire to present Darwin's paper before Wallace's Ternate paper at the Linnean Society in 1858, and Hooker and Lyell mislead the Linnean society to believe Wallace had given permission for his paper to be read. Moreover, we know that following Matthew's (1860) first letter to the Gardener's Chronicle, laying claim to his prior-published origination, that Joseph Hooker forwarded, dated and confirmed his approval of Darwin's reply that no naturalist had read Matthew's orignal ideas pre-1860. Yet Matthew's letter revealed that the famous naturalist John Loudon had read and reviewed his book in 1832. In his review Loudon (1832) noted that Matthew appeared to have something orignal to say on the origin of species.

Here is proof Charles Darwin engaged in heinous fraudulent glory-theft of the original discovery of another. pic.twitter.com/hA3aFDYr2Y

— Dr Mike Sutton (@Dysology) December 8, 2015

Loudon, a noted botanist and polymath, was without doubt a noted naturalist and Darwin would have known it. Besides the highly respected books he published on trees, Loudon owned and edited The Magazine of natural history and journal of zoology, botany, on the front cover of which he always proclaimed himself a member of various natural history societies. On some editions it carried the following strapline: The Magazine of Natural History, JOURNAL OF ZOOLOGY BOTANY MINERALOGY GEOLOGY AND METEOROLOGY : CONDUCTED By JC LOUDON FLS GS &c MEMBER OF THE ZOOLOGICAL SOCIETY OF LONDON AND OF VARIOUS NATURAL HISTORY SOCIETIES ON THE CONTINENT.  As his journal notes, with letters F.L G and ZS after his name, he was, being a noted and respected naturalist, a member of the Linnean Society, Geological Society and Zoological Societies of London. If Loudon was not a naturalist, then neither was Darwin or any other 19th century naturalist either.

Both Hooker and Darwin were immensely familiar with the published work of Loudon on botany - Hooker positively reviewed one of Loudon's books and Darwin heavily annotated several books by Loudon in his personal library, and he and Hooker mentioned Loudon positively in correspondence. (see Sutton 2016 for the fully cited sources). These facts reveal the great concerted public dishonesty of Darwin and the depths his closest friends were prepared to sink to in order to support him in weaving a tapestry of fallacies to create the myth of his independent conception of Matthew's prior published, read and cited orignal ideas. No conspiracy theory there, just dishonesty and dreadfully biased pseudo-scholarly Darwinite fallacy spreading that no naturalist read Matthew's  pre-1858.

On which note....

All the ingredients needed to construct a silly, fun, conspiracy theory can be found in the history of discovery of natural selection. As an amusing exercise, here is one example. 

They found poor Hugh Strickland dead. 

His gold watch had stopped at 4.20 pm, the precise time 
of impact by the express train.

The origin of the following facts from Nullius (Sutton 2014) are fully referenced in the book:

• On 23rd July 1845 Hugh Stickland was married at Jardine Hall to Catherine, D. M. Jardine, second daughter of  the famous naturalist Sir William Jardine Bart. 
• William Jardine bought a copy of Matthew's (1831) On Naval Timber for Selby, who cited it many times in 1842. Most significantly, Selby was the chief editor of the journal that published Alfred Wallace's famous 1855 Sarawak paper on organic evolution. 
• In 1849 Strickland very forcefully slapped-down Darwin's concerted self-interested attempts to have the rules of academic priority changed so that more famous naturalists would have priority for the earlier discoveries of those who were lesser known if the later replicators published more evidences and details.
• In 1852 Stickland was made a member of the Royal Society. 
• In 1853 he attended a meeting of The British Association for Advancement of Science at Hull. Following discussions at the geological section, on his way home he stopped off at Retford to examine a railway cutting through the rock. There he was struck and killed by a train.
• William Jardine (Strickland's father in law) was a correspondent of Darwin, receiving a first edition review copy of his Origin of Species in 1859.
• Darwin's notebook of books read, pre-1858, is jam-packed with references to Jardine's books.
• William Jardine was co-editor with William Hooker (father of Darwin's best friend Joseph Hooker) of the Magazine of Zoology and Botany.
• William Hooker (pre-1858) was Alfred Wallace's mentor, sponsor and correspondent.
• William Hooker was best friends with the botanist John Lindley, who was an associate and secret co-author with Loudon. The botanical naturalist Loudon reviewed Matthew's book in 1832 and wrote, on p. 703. then that it had something original to say on "the origin of species" no less! John Lindley's book 'An outline of the first principles of Horticulture' was reviewed immediately below the prominent review of Matthew's book - on the very same page! Not far below, on Page 706, is a review of William Hooker's and Greville's book on ferns, Then on page 712,  a  book review of William Hooker's Botanical Miscellany is ti be found. 
• Loudon's botanical work on trees was extremely well respected and well known to Darwin (who heavily annotated several of Loudon's works in his private library and listed several in his notebook of books read) and to Darwin's best friend Joseph Hooker, who wrote a stunning review of one of Loudon's books pre-1858 (see Sutton 2016).  Yet Joseph Hooker (1860) agreed the contents of Darwin's reply to Matthew's (1860) letter to the Gardener's Chronicle, in which Darwin claimed no naturalist had read Matthew's orignal ideas before 1860.
• Lindley, subsequently wrote several papers on Naval Timber, and - like Loudon - is known to have believed in the transmutation of species. In 2016 it was discovered that Lindley stole Matthew's glory in 1853. Because, despite possessing a letter from Matthew to prove that Matthew and his son John were first. Lindley claimed that he was first to propagate the hugely famous and much loved giant Californian redwoods in Britain and that Lobb was first to export them to Britain. This deception facilitated Darwin's (1860) subsequent tale that Matthew was an obscure author.
• The year after Jameson (1853) cited Matthew's book and mentioned his natural selection related observation that tree species could grow better outside their natural environment William Hooker blocked his promotion within the East India Company.
• The British Association for Advancement of science was founded in 1831 - the very same year Matthew's bombshell book was published. It was founded, in great part, for the purpose of addressing work on the topic of the origin of species.  
• Selby and William Jardine were founding members of The British Association for Advancement of Science.
• Selby was a friend of both Darwin's father and Darwin's great friend Jenyns. Both had been his house guests and Jenyns wrote a book about Selby.
• Later it was at the 1868 British Association for Advancement of Science meeting where Matthew was platform blocked from speaking about his orignal discoveries. By then Darwin's friends, Lyell, Hooker and Huxley had ensured Darwinians controlled the British Association. Lyell, Hooker, Chambers and Wallace were all allowed to speak on Matthew's prior-published idea. Matthew was not. And no mention was made of Matthew's origination. 
• David Douglas (of the Douglas Fir tree fame) worked as an apprentice gardener at Scone palace, from where he became William Hooker's protégé. Significantly, Matthew was born at Rome Farm in the grounds of Scone Palace. Later moving to inherit Gourdie Hill House and orchards nearby -  and the two had ample opportunities to meet . From 1823 onwards, Douglas went on many plant collecting expeditions and corresponded regularly with his mentor William Hooker. Many of those letters are in the Director's Archive at Kew Gardens. Douglas met an ignoble end in 1834 in Hawaii, where he was either gored by a bull after falling into a 'wild bullock-trap  pit' or else - claim some - most likely murdered!

When Blogging Splits the Universe

Blog Post Begins

Trumpet from the rooftopsPublic Domain

The Divergent Ramifications of Your Own Actions!

In quantum physics, observations at the sub atomic level prove that matter operates according to natural laws that do not apply for larger objects. For example, in our own world in our own universe, much as we might wish it was the case, it is impossible for any of us to be in more than one place at once. However, at the sub-atomic level,things become 'spooky' because sub-atomic particles exist as both particle and wave. A wave can be in more than one place at a time, and we have those same spooky little particles inside us.

As Josh Clark neatly explains: http://science.howstuffworks.com/science-vs-myth/everyday-myths/parallel-universe2.htm   

Trumpet from the rooftopsPublic Domain

At the quantum level, matter can exist as both particles and waves

‘As unsettling as it may sound, Everett's Many-Worlds interpretation has implications beyond the quantum level. If an action has more than one possible outcome, then -- if Everett's theory is correct -- the universe splits when that action is taken. This holds true even when a person chooses not to take an action.

This means that if you have ever found yourself in a situation where death was a possible outcome, then in a universe parallel to ours, you are dead. This is just one reason that some find the Many-Worlds interpretation disturbing.’

This might sound like whacked-out pseudo-science to you, but I can assure you that many of the t   op minds in the world    of physics think it currently the best theoretical explanation for what scientists are observing.

Many World's Theory is different to the Classic Copenhagen Interpretation

Sean Carroll    explains the difference:

'The situation in quantum mechanics is superficially entirely different. Think of Schrödinger’s Cat. Quantum mechanics describes reality in terms of wave functions, which assign numbers (amplitudes) to all the various possibilities of what we can see when we make an observation. The cat is neither alive nor dead; it is in a superposition of alive + dead. At least, until we observe it. In the simplistic Copenhagen interpretation, at the moment of observation the wave function “collapses” onto one actual possibility. We see either an alive cat or a dead cat; the other possibility has simply ceased to exist. In the Many Worlds or Everett interpretation, both possibilities continue to exist, but “we” (the macroscopic observers) are split into two, one that observes a live cat and one that observes a dead one. There are now two of us, both equally real, never to come back into contact.'

If it's true, then just how spooky is that?

Why a splitting universe is both unsettling and quite appealing

Last week I was out for a 6 mile run. On the last ½ mile, I found the pavement was completely blocked by two large ladies in their 70’s who were ambling along with their backs to me. Both ladies were deep in conversation. Not wanting to run up behind them and scare them out of their wits by stage-whispering "excuse me", I calculated that for the 1-2 seconds it would take to get around them it would be OK to step out into the bus lane, without needing to look over my shoulder, since I could not hear a bus coming and running one way whilst overtaking ladies and looking backwards is rather difficult.

Something made me look over my shoulder at the very last instant – so last in fact that I lost my balance and trod one foot into the curb of the bus lane. At that very split-second a big green bus shot past me and missed my foot by no more than a couple of inches - our bus lanes being so narrow and buses so wide.

Had a synapse in my brain not fired one way rather than the other I’d have been “obliviated” for sure. Yet in a parallel world, proximal to our own and in our own universe, but inaccessible, unmeasurable and invisible to us, if the theory is right, I never looked over my shoulder. In that world I died under a bus! And so you my friend have a double in that world who is not reading these very words!

This brings me to a personally appealing feature of Everett’s Many Worlds interpretation of quantum physics.

It is a little known fact that Charles Darwin, writing on the subject of naming discoveries, argued with Hugh Strickland in a desperate attempt to change the rules of scientific priority for discovery so that lesser known first discoverers would lose their priority to better known naturalists such as Darwin. In sum, Strickland and Darwin argued over the attribution of 'priority' regarding who should have the right to be attributed with a discovery. Strickland thought it should go to the person who first discovered and named something. Darwin thought it should go to the more senior naturalist if they did more important work on the discovery.

The letter that Darwin (1849) wrote on the subject is lost to the sands of time. However, his correspondent, Strickland, kept a record of exactly what Darwin proposed, which includes the following[1]:

“… if the first description was originally imperfect, & had been superseded by any better description, it wd perhaps be better to omit all reference to it, for the sooner such an author's name was buried in oblivion the better”[2]

Trumpet from the rooftopsPublic Domain

Hugh Strickland thwarted Darwin's Unethical and Selfish Priority Plans

Strickland would have none of it and so essentially thwarted Darwin’s protracted scheming selfish ambitions in this regard. For example, in his letter of the 31st January 1849, Strickland - the more senior scientist - lectured Darwin on his ethical scientific responsibilities as a synthesiser, which is certainly a description of Darwin that most would agree with:

‘ I say that the compilers of monographs or of systematic works are bound in justice to search out the cognate labours of others in ever possible direction, and where they have (even unavoidably) overlooked other persons' writings, they must still pay the penalty by having their nomenclature superseded in favour of a prior one. Scientific natural history has now become as much a matter of literary research as of physical observation. I have had this forcibly brought home to me last autumn, when looking through the fine collection of foreign periodicals in the Bodleian Library, when I was astonished at the mass of original memoirs on zoology and other sciences which seem never to have made their way beyond the scientific but limited coterie in whose periodical they are printed. Authors should be encouraged to publish matters of science in standard and accessible periodicals (& the Association code has a clause ([SYMBOL]D) to that effect, still we cannot prevent them from doing otherwise, and we must (as the law does with libels) regard the act of printing as tantamount to publication, and deal out equal justice accordingly.’

Unfortunately for the history of biology, Strickland’s brain – at least in our world – failed to tell him to look over his shoulder in a dangerous situation. Because Strickland died in 1853, six years before the publication of Darwin's (1859) Origin of Species , when he is said to have accidentally stepped into the path of one train in order to avoid another.

Yet if the Many World's Theory is true, in a parallel world, Strickland looked over his shoulder in 1853 – saw the train coming – and lived to a ripe old age.

Accordingly, and according to quantum physics experts, in a parallel world in our universe Patrick Matthew - instead of Charles Darwin - is now most definitely on the back of the British £10 note!

Public Domain

Patrick Matthew (1831) was the first to fully explain natural selection as new species branching from a common ancestor by way of nature selecting varieties that were best circumstance suited. He even uniquely called it: 'the natural process of selection'. A term Darwin (1859) would uniquely four word shuffle into 'process of natural selection'.

In that parallel world where Strickland looked and lived, when Darwin fully admitted in an 1860 letter of reply to Matthew in the Gardener’s Chronicle that Patrick Matthew had in 1831 published the full and complete hypothesis of natural selection, Strickland - true to form - made sure that Matthew was hailed and celebrated thereafter as the immortal great thinker of science who first discovered natural selection and so had full priority over Darwin. In that universe it is Patrick Matthew’s head – not Darwin’s – that currently adorns the back of the British £10 note. Imagine that!

Despite Darwin’s fallacious protestations in 1860 that no naturalist known to him had read it, we know today (in our world at least) that at least seven naturalists did in fact read Matthew’s bombshell ideas in his  book of 1831 because they cited it. Moreover, three of those seven - well known to Darwin and his best friends - played key roles at the very epicentre of influence on the pre-1858 work of Darwin and Wallace on evolution

QUANTUM SALES PITCH FOR THE AUTHOR'S OWN BOMBSHELL BOOK.

BEWARE: READING THE TEXT BELOW MAY SPLIT THE UNIVERSE!

If you would like to read a great deal more about Strickland, Darwin - and those who big data has newly revealed cited Matthew's 1831 book - naturalists and others who Darwin actually knew well – then you could do worse than read my book Nullius in Verba: Darwin's greatest secret.  On which note, you may or may not be pleased to know that there is absolutely nothing at all in it on quantum physics and parallel worlds. Well, not in this world anyway.

Go on now, split the universe. You know it makes sense.

Trumpet from the rooftopsPublic Domain

Darwin merely replicated Matthew's 'divergent ramification' explanation of how species change and branch to evolve from a common ancestor

Remember, according to Many Worlds Theory, if you don't buy my e-book then YOU personally just split the universe, which means that now your double, in another world, just clicked here. Consequently, your double will soon know a whole lot more than YOU about the real origin of The Origin of Species. No pressure. Just click here to split the universe again, or not - just as the case may be.

[1] The reference for this is in footnote no 6 of Darwin’s letter to Strickland (29th January 1849) on the Darwin Correspondence Project: http://www.darwinproject.ac.uk/entry-1215   
[2] Coincidentally, or perhaps not, as the case may be, the popular Victorian phrase ‘buried in oblivion’ was used in the same year in an article about Erasamus Darwin’s writing (Harris 1848) : ‘I trust however that these remarks may stimulate inquiry in relation to principles which every day practice acknowledges as true but which in the writings of the day appear to be almost buried in oblivion.’

Leave a Comment

AllAuthor's FavoritesThinker Recommended

There are currently no comments.

Return to Main Blog Page

---